Your editorial (Thought police are not the right answer to dangerous speech, 31 May) states that female genital mutilation “has nothing to do with ideologies that can inspire or justify violence”. In fact, it has everything to do with such ideologies, in the form of misogyny and vicious and violent expressions of patriarchy and sexism that lead to the psychological and physical injury of women, and often to their deaths. These ideologies of discrimination and abuse against women have a distinctive force and expression of their own but also form a powerful current in the overwhelming majority of human societies, cultures and religions, and are incorporated within them.
It is not enough to recognise FGM as evil only to downplay the beliefs about women and socially embedded forms of domination and oppression of women that so egregiously violate their human rights, dignity and welfare, and rob them of freedom and legitimate power to self-determine their own lives.
Noam Schimmel
Visiting fellow, Kellogg College, University of Oxford
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