R v A2 [No 2] (2015) 1221 NSWSC 22 (Johnson J); JabourBridie, ‘FGM Trial: Accused Developed Technique that Would Leave no Scarring, Court Told’, The Guardian (Australia), 29 October 2015, I; JabourBridie, ‘Australia's first Female Genital Mutilation Trial: How a Bright Young Girl Convinced a Jury’, The Guardian (Australia), 13 November 2015, I.
2.
In earlier evidence the Prosecution's medical expert tried to suggest in a statement that an incision would cause skin cells to be removed thus the offence could be classed as an ‘excision’. This argument, though seemingly counterintuitive in its implication that even the smallest amount of possible cell removal (remembering that there was no scarring or evidence of a nick or a cut having occurred) was not run with much vigour by the Prosecution.
I have elaborated the contradictions between attitudes to male circumcision and ‘female genital mutilation’ at length in Chapter 3 of Law's Cut, see RogersJuliet, Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights: Female Circumcision, Torture and Sacred Flesh (Routledge, 2013). A discussion of the imaginative representation of the significance of male flesh cut from the body is beyond the scope of this article.
8.
The exception to this being the case in 2012 of the prosecution of a family in Cologne Germany for circumcising their male child. See KulishNicholas, ‘German Ruling Against Circumcising Boys Draws Criticism’, The New York Times (New York), 26 June 2012, 1.
9.
See SullivanNikki, ‘Transmotechnics and the Matter of Genital Modifications’ (2009) 24 (60) Australian Feminist Studies, for a discussion of the confusions over the criminalisation of cosmetic genital surgeries.
10.
See Jeremy Gans' recent discussion of the confusions and contingencies of the applications of this law in these cases in Modern Criminal Law of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed, 2016). He is referring to the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 (NSW) s 99.
11.
Such confusions are carefully discussed in KennedyAileen, ‘Mutilation and Beautification’ (2009) 24 (60) Australian Feminist Studies211—31; and Sullivan, above n 10.
I have documented much of this history and offered some comparisons in other western contexts in Law's Cut, above n 8.
14.
The underlying assumptions on ‘fgm’ are well documented, for an excellent example see BoddyJanice, ‘Violence Embodied? Circumcision, Gender Politics, and Cultural Aesthetics’ in DobashEmerson and DobashRussell (eds) Rethinking Violence Against Women (Sage Publications, 1998); ‘Gender Crusades: The Female Circumcision Controversy in Cultural Perspective’ in HernlundYlva and Shell-DuncanBettina (eds), Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context (Rutgers, 2007); and for a summation of these logics see The Public Policy Advisory Group on Female Genital Cutting, ‘Seven Things to Know about Female Genital Cutting Surgeries in Africa’, Hastings Centre Report (2012) 42(6), 19–27. For a history of this in the Australian context, see RogersJuliet, ‘Managing Cultural Diversity in Australia: Legislating Female Circumcision, Legislating Communities’ in Hernlund and Shell-Duncan (eds).
15.
ObermeyerCarla, ‘Female Genital Surgeries: The Known, the Unknown and the Unknowable’ (1999) 13 (1) Medical Anthropology Quarterly79–106.
16.
Family Law Council, above n 7.
17.
In 1994 the Eritrean Women's Group was commissioned by the Office of Women's Affairs to evaluate whether legislation would be appropriate as a tool to eradicate the practices. The Group consulted with the Eritrean, Somali and Ethiopian communities and stated the legislation would be detrimental to this project. The OWA published a ‘summary’ of the Report which stated the opposite and refused to publish the report. Their account of the Report is published as Office of Women's Affairs, Report on Community Legal Information Project on Female Circumcision (Unpublished, 1996). I have discussed this event in Law's Cut, fn 8.
18.
Family Law Council, Female Genital Mutilation, Discussion Paper (31 January 1994) 4.
19.
ShwederRichard A, The Goose and the Gander: The Genital Wars' (2013) 3 (2) Global Discourse348–66.
20.
Family Law Council, above n 19.
21.
(2015) 1221 NSWSC 35, 177.
22.
Ibid30.
23.
For complex discussions of the experiences, and research on the experiences, see AhmaduFuambai, ‘Rites and Wrongs: An Insider/Outsider Reflects on Power and Excision’ in Shell-Duncan and Hernlund (eds), Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy and Change (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000); DopicoMansura, ‘Infibulation and the Orgasm Puzzle: Sexual Experiences of Infibulated Eritrean Women in Rural Eritrea and Melbourne Australia’ in Hernlund and Shell-Duncan (eds), above n 15; Public Policy Advisory Group on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa, above n 15, 19–27; GruenbaumEllen, ‘Sexuality Issues in the Movement to Abolish Female Genital Cutting in Sudan’ (2006) 20 (I) Medical Anthropology Quarterly121–38.
24.
R v A2; R v Magennis; R v Vaziri [No 23] (2016) 282 NSWSC 29,31.
