It’s little known and discussed but more than 500,000 women and girls are survivors or at risk of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in the United States. I am one of them. This problem, so often considered to exist only in faraway places, happens right here at home too–and many have fought hard to make that known and curtail it. When the Trump Administration made a mockery of the hard-fought 2020 STOP FGM/C Act by issuing an Executive Order that falsely conflates FGM/C with gender-affirming care and restricts access to life-saving gender-affirming care for young people, it made me boil. The order describes gender-affirming care as “mutilation” and “maiming” and a “horrifying tragedy.” In doing so, it puts thousands of vulnerable children at risk—survivors of FGM/C and trans youth alike—and pits them against each other.
Let me make it perfectly clear: FGM/C and gender-affirming care are not equivalent. Not only do I know because I am a survivor, but I also cofounded an organization that has supported hundreds of FGM/C survivors over the years.
Here’s the difference: FGM/C involves removing part or all of a girl or woman’s healthy female sex organs and surrounding tissue for non-medical reasons and often results in negative health consequences, difficulties during childbirth, lifelong psychological and emotional trauma—and in some cases, even death. It’s considered a human rights violation and an extreme form of violence against women.
Gender-affirming care, on the other hand, is a medically necessary form of care that includes a diverse array of interventions to align one’s identity with their sexual characteristics. This care is only provided with the consent of the individual, and research has also shown that these treatments lead to decreased rates of depression, improvement in psychosocial functioning, and minimal long-term side effects.
FGM/C violates an individual’s bodily autonomy while gender-affirming care preserves it.
But Trump’s Executive Order conflates the two and directs the Department of Justice to use the STOP FGMC Act to coordinate law enforcement to take actions against parents and caregivers who would seek to support their trans youth and help them obtain this vital care. In early February, in response, attorney generals from 16 states released a joint statement to uplift that FGM/C is not the same as gender-affirming care.
“Despite what the Trump Administration has suggested, there is no connection between ‘female genital mutilation’ and gender-affirming care, and no federal law makes gender-affirming care unlawful. President Trump cannot change that by Executive Order.”
In issuing this executive order, not only are trans youth put at risk, but the Trump administration has also ignored the voices of hundreds of anti-FGM/C advocates, like myself, who for years have begged the United States government to recognize that FGM/C is an inherent part of American culture and comes in many different forms.
Last October, nearly forty women sued an OBGYN at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for performing the “husband stitch,” a medically unnecessary postpartum suture, that was identified as FGM/C by the plaintiffs. Like other forms of FGM/C, the “husband stitch” is typically performed to increase men’s sexual pleasure. Since October, 107 more plaintiffs have joined the lawsuit.
Besides the LA cases, in the last few years, a Detroit Emergency Room physician was charged with performing FGM/C on dozens of minor females, some of whom had been brought across state lines to have FGM/C carried out. Additionally, a Texas woman was charged with taking a girl out of the country to have FGM/C performed. In Kentucky, allegations of FGM/C were brought against a couple who were charged with having tortured a young girl. Back in 2006, a man in Georgia was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conducting FGM/C on his 2-year-old daughter. If we go even further back, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, medical professionals performed FGM/C as a treatment for various perceived psychological conditions, including hysteria, “lesbianism,” and excessive masturbation. Renee Bergstrom, a white, midwestern, church-going woman, has courageously written about her experience undergoing FGM/C as a child to prevent masturbation.
Advocacy by survivors over the years has resulted in some progress being made to end this human rights violation. Dozens of petitions by survivor advocates have allowed FGM/C to be recognized as an official form of gender-based violence in the U.S. and as a result survivors have begun to receive the support and care they need. More than 41 states have state laws against FGM/C; FGM/C was included in the 2022 reauthorizations of the Violence Against Women Act; and resources have been created to address FGM/C across the country. And of course, there’s the landmark passage and existence of the bipartisan STOP FGM/C Act.
Today, we can say that FGM/C happens in the United States, it has for centuries, and it takes many different forms.
But what clearly distinguishes FGM/C from gender-affirming care is that FGM/C is driven by misguided attitudes about women’s sexuality, health, and societal roles. It’s motivated by gendered stereotypes about the need for women to be chaste and pure, misconceptions about the female anatomy, a tendency to pathologize women’s sexual desires, and a patriarchal system that prioritizes male sexual pleasure and control over women’s health and bodily autonomy.
Gender-affirming care, on the other hand, requires patient consent and, in the case of a minor, consent and assent from the parent or legal guardian and the patient after a long period of reflection and consultation with health providers.
As a survivor of FGM/C, and a professional advocate who has come across hundreds of FGM/C cases in the United States, I know the truth: gender-affirming care is not “mutilation” or “maiming.” To claim that it is, to conflate the two practices, is an insult to survivors like me and a clear attempt to deny vulnerable trans youth the care they need. It’s also counterproductive, jeopardizing the last decade of progress that FGM/C advocates have made and putting at risk the lives of thousands of children. Those children need support and protection to be able to live healthy and safe lives—not to be made pawns in a political game designed to hurt other vulnerable kids.
About the Author: Mariya Taher, an award-winning social activist, has worked in the gender-based violence field for fifteen years in teaching, research, policy, program development, and direct service. In 2015, she cofounded Sahiyo, an organization with the mission to empower Asian and other communities to end female genital cutting/mutilation (FGM/C). She was named one of ten 2023 L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth nonprofit leaders and is a Public Voices fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls with The OpEd Project and Equality Now.
