In this chapter, we discuss how cultural expertise can be used to neutralize stereotyped images of minority cultures in court in female genital mutilation/cutting–related cases because, wisely employed, it may counteract possible negative effects of typification and judicial stereotyping.

In Sweden, as well as in an international context, professionals are urged to acquire knowledge about possible health effects of female genital cutting (FGC) in order to tackle prevention and care in relation to the practice. While professionals are guided by policies and interventions focusing on medical effects of FGC, some scholars have cautioned that many popular beliefs about health risks rest on inconclusive evidence. The way professionals understand and respond to health information about FGC has in this context largely been left unexamined. This article aims to provide a qualitative exploration of how professionals in Sweden approach adolescent sexual and reproductive healthcare encounters in relation to acquired knowledge about FGC, using menstrual pain as an empirical example. The analysis shows that there was a tendency in counselling to differentiate young migrant women's menstrual complaints from ordinary menstrual pain, with professionals understanding pain complaints either in terms of FGC or as culturally influenced. The study shows how professionals navigated their various sources of knowledge where FGC awareness worked as a lens through which young women's health complaints were understood. Biomedical knowledge and culture-specific expectations and assumptions regarding menstrual pain also informed counselling. Finally, the article discusses how FGC awareness about health risks was used constructively as a tool to establish rapport and take a history on both menstrual pain and FGC. The analysis also recognises potential pitfalls of the approaches used, if not based in well-informed policies and interventions in the first place.

This chapter focuses on cultural variation regarding sexual activities and erotic practices. First, there is a presentation of how research data on these questions have been collected historically, acknowledging scientific and moral shortcomings of such compilations. Then, an empirical example—heterosexual intercourse—is used to show that there is wide cultural variation even in “dominant” sexual practices around the world. Sexual script theory is presented to introduce the overarching theoretical lens, social constructionism, that most scholars in the social sciences and humanities use to understand and describe sexuality. Cultural variation in views of acceptable sexual expressions may create challenges in multicultural societies, and this is discussed with respect to the fraught issue of sexuality and children. The chapter ends with a discussion of cultural change and globalization, pointing to current and future directions in anthropological approaches to understanding human sexuality.

“Female genital mutilation” (FGM) or “female genital cutting” (often FGM/C) are the most widespread terms to designate nonmedical practices that alter or affect the external female genitalia. Medical consequences are often classified into immediate and long-term complications. FGM/C in some form is practiced in more than 30 countries, primarily in Africa and Asia, and there is vast variation as regards motives and age of the girls who undergo the procedure. FGM/C is illegal in Europe, North America, and Australia, and in most high-prevalence countries in Africa. Few cases of illegal FGM/C procedures have reached criminal courts in the west. A growing body of research demonstrates that cultural change regarding FGM/C attitudes and practices among migrant communities may be an important explanatory factor. Current contested issues include how the prevalent zero-tolerance approach to FGM/C is in line with the general acceptance of male circumcision, intersex surgery, and cosmetic female genital surgeries.

“Sex as self-injury” is a well-established concept within Swedish society and is a new label for categorizing sexual risk-taking. The phenomenon has been discussed in Sweden since 2008, and about a decade later the concept appeared for the first time in Swedish scientific literature. “Sex as self-injury” is not yet an idea accepted by the international research field, but it can be assumed that it will eventually reach the international arena: the discourse about “self-destructive sex” has the potential to be established as a new diagnostic category of sexual dysfunction through “concept creep.” In this article, based on an analysis of media material from Sweden, we argue that the burgeoning discourse around “sex as self-injury” leads to a further strengthening of the normative division between “good” and “bad” sexualities, as described in Gayle Rubin’s work on a sex hierarchy.

In recent years, the dominant Western discourse on "female genital mutilation" (FGM) has increasingly been challenged by scholars. Numerous researchers contest both the terminology used and the empirical claims made in what has come to be called "the standard tale" of FGM (also termed "female genital cutting" [FGC]). The World Health Organization (WHO), a major player in setting the global agenda on this issue, maintains that all medically unnecessary cutting of the external female genitalia, no matter how slight, should be banned as torture and a violation of the human right to bodily integrity. However, the WHO targets only non-Western forms of female-only genital cutting, raising concerns about gender bias and cultural imperialism. Here, we summarize ongoing critiques of the WHO's terminology, ethicolegal assumptions, and empirical claims, including the claim that non-Western FGC as such constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. To this end, we highlight recent comparative studies of medically unnecessary genital cutting of all types, including those affecting adult women and teenagers in Western societies, individuals with differences of sex development (DSD), transgender persons, and males. In so doing, we attempt to clarify the grounds for a growing critical consensus that current anti-FGM laws and policies may be ethically incoherent, empirically unsupportable, and legally unsustainable.

When activism to combat «female circumcision» gained momentum in the 1980s, a discursive gap was created that persists until today. On the one hand, campaigners, activists, governments and some scholars promoted a discourse that focused on these practices as mutilations; on the other hand, not all scholars were willing to adopt the new term (FGM, «female genital mutilation») or to drop the perspective that these practices must be described within their wider contexts, with the full variations in different settings. Starting from this gap, this article discusses «reconstructive clitoral surgery», or «clitoris repair», as a cultural phenomenon growing out of the first discursive stream. Using Ian Hacking’s concepts «interactive kinds» and «looping effect», I argue that the increasing demand for reconstructive clitoral surgery in European countries needs to be understood in relation to the dominant anti-FGM discourse. While many interdisciplinary teams around Europe strive toward providing a holistic and respectful care for women requesting the surgery, I contend that the ubiquitous anti-FGM discourse has negative effects for both circumcised women who opt for surgery and those who do not.

Quand les activistes combattent « l’excision » dans les années 1980, un fossé discursif s’est créé et persiste aujourd’hui. Les militants, les ONG, les gouvernements et certains chercheurs considèrent ces pratiques comme des mutilations, tandis que d’autres chercheurs n’ont pas adopté le nouveau terme de « mutilations génitales féminines » ou MGF et n’adhéraient pas à la perspective que ces pratiques devaient être décrites à l’intérieur d’un contexte plus large comprenant une multitude de variations. Partant de ce décalage, cet article discute la « chirurgie reconstructive clitoridienne » ou « la reconstruction clitoridienne » comme un phénomène culturel en plein essor. Utilisant le concept de « loupe grossissante » de Ian Hacking, nous montrons que la demande croissante pour la chirurgie reconstructive clitoridienne dans les pays européens doit être comprise en relation au discours dominant contre les mutilations génitales féminines. Alors que beaucoup d’équipes interdisciplinaires en Europe essayent de fournir un encadrement holistique et respectueux pour les femmes qui ont recours à la chirurgie, nous observons que ce discours hégémonique anti-FGM a des effets négatifs pour les femmes qui choisissent ou non la chirurgie.