Inconceivable and witless even by today’s standards of reality-twisting – the Journal for Medical Ethics no less has printed a 9000 word essay from global academics proclaiming that objections to female genital mutilation are misplaced. It claims that laws banning FGM are “stigmatising” towards migrant communities and global efforts to end FGM are based on “racialised stereotypes” and “western sensationalism”. Neo-colonial is bandied about; with a suggestion that girls who have been forcibly mutilated are being “objectified as victims”.
There has been a furious response from survivors, doctors and midwives outraged that a medical journal would minimise the massively-documented harms FGM causes which they fear could set back decades of progress.
More than 230 million girls and women around the world have had their genitalia mutilated, mostly in Africa, but also in parts of Asia and the Middle East, usually on historic religious or cultural grounds.
It is a barbaric and misogynistic practice aimed to remove sexual pleasure from women (and presumably thereby preventing them from straying from their controlling husband) and usually performed on young girls without anaesthetic.
The Journal of Medical Ethics, founded in 1975 is part of the British Medical Journal Group whose first issue was published on 3 October 1840.
The 1840 chart has a Leo Sun conjunct Alphard (the water serpent brings honours and danger by poisoning) with both conjunct the South Node. The Aquarius North Node will give it a tendency towards activism. There is also a bleak, can-be-cruel Fire Grand Trine of Mars South Node trine Saturn trine Pluto in Aries giving self-confidence and a hint of self-righteousness.
At the moment there is a Solar Arc Jupiter square Mars with Solar Arc Neptune square the Jupiter. Mars Jupiter can be opportunistic, extremist and has a tendency to glorify fighting crusades to gain social approval. Jupiter Neptune is scandal-prone, tending to impractical idealism, lacking in discrimination.
The BMJ midpoints hint at a nerve-stretched and turbulent few months ahead. Which is the least of what they deserve.
It may not be quite as damaging a scandal as the Lancet in 1998 publishing Andrew Wakefield’s article linking the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism which set off more than two decades of distorted thinking about vaccines despite his findings being exposed as bogus.
The Lancet, 5 October 1823, like the BMJ has a Libra Sun and Mars in Leo and similarly Jupiter Neptune aspects = purports to be balanced but blows its own trumpet without stopping to double check.
When that scandal blew up their Solar Arc Neptune was square Pluto and their SA Uranus opposing Neptune. So some similarities.
The post Ban on female mutilation dubbed neocolonial first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
