The FGM Controversy

The debate at the Battle of Ideas October 2014, with Lisa Harker (NSPCC), Bríd Hehir (former NHS health visitor and senior manager), Dr Christine Louis-Dit-Sully (research biologist) at the Barbican, London.

https://soundcloud.com/institute-of-ideas/the-fgm-controversy 

A tribute to nurses

As Christmas approaches, people like to reflect and think about what is important in their lives, be it family, friends, careers, jobs or hobbies.

Increasingly, we get the appreciative, flattering, sentimental, or mawkish round-robin messages via social media, encouraging us to ‘share’.

It’s a great (if unfair) world

Publicity about the newest and most astonishing health care development of our time vied for attention recently with a disease that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of ‘untouchables’ in underdeveloped countries.

FGM CRUSADE: WITH FEMINISTS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS MISOGYNISTS?

My latest piece on the Anti-FGM campaign explains why the crusade is doing violence to women's rights.

It traces feminists' journey from state opposition in pursuit of freedom and equality to their active support for state intervention around the issue by not challenging the restriction of people’s freedom of movement, the removal of passports, racist finger-pointing to identify ‘at risk’ children, girls and young women, and mandatory examination of girls’ genitals.

The emperor's new clothes? The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign

My Battle in Print essay, written in preparation for the Battle of Ideas discussion on the FGM controversy, can be accessed here.

It covers a history of the practice, types and prevalence, movers and shakers, discusses abuse, the law in regard to it, official responses, as well as why anti-FGM moral crusaders should be challenged.

The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign

On Saturday, Oct 18th, I will debate The FGM Controversy at the Battle of Ideas festival. In preparation, I wrote an essay The Emperor's New Clothes? The dangers of the anti-FGM campaign, which can be accessed here.

http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/BiP_2014/BiP_FGM_Brid_Hehir.pdf

The motivation for the debate reads as follows: 

Over the past year, female genital mutilation (FGM) has rarely been out of the headlines, from Channel 4’s Cruel Cut video, to high-profile campaigns by the Evening Standard and the Guardian. In December 2013, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee set up an inquiry into FGM; the former education secretary Michael Gove wrote to schools urging them to protect girls from ‘this very serious form of child abuse’. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has called on school staff to watch for signs of FGM and to scrutinise holiday requests from members of communities that practise FGM. In May, police and border officials ran an awareness-raising campaign at airports, intercepting families suspected of going abroad to inflict FGM on their daughters. What has prompted all this? While FGM is practised in some African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries, there is no evidence that it is widespread in Britain. It has been prohibited in the UK since 1985, and it is also illegal for British citizens abroad. Nevertheless, it has only recently become the focus of widespread political concern. The first criminal charges for performing FGM came only in March 2014.

Does charity giving begin at home or on Facebook?

Social media and online giving are playing increasingly important and influential roles in determining how the public gets involved in fundraising for and donating to charities, and in how fundraisers like me raise money.