Earp Brian D
Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2016 Jun;26(2):105-44. doi: 10.1353/ken.2016.0009.
The spectrum of practices termed "Female Genital Mutilation" (or FGM) by the World Health Organization is sometimes held up as a counterexample to moral relativism. Those who advance this line of thought suggest the practices are so harmful in terms of their physical and emotional consequences, as well as so problematic in terms of their sexist or oppressive implications, that they provide sufficient, rational grounds for the assertion of a universal moral claim--namely, that all forms of FGM are wrong, regardless of the cultural context. However, others point to cultural bias and moral double standards on the part of those who espouse this argument, and have begun to question the received interpretation of the relevant empirical data on FGM as well. In this article I assess the merits of these competing perspectives. I argue that each of them involves valid moral concerns that should be taken seriously in order to move the discussion forward. In doing so, I draw on the biomedical "enhancement" literature in order to develop a novel ethical framework for evaluating FGM (and related interventions--such as female genital "cosmetic" surgery and nontherapeutic male circumcision) that takes into account the genuine harms that are at stake in these procedures, but which does not suffer from being based on cultural or moral double standards.
世界卫生组织称为“女性生殖器切割”（FGM）的一系列行为，有时被视为道德相对主义的反例。提出这一思路的人认为，这些行为在身体和情感后果方面极具危害性，在性别歧视或压迫性影响方面也存在诸多问题，因此它们为主张一种普遍的道德诉求提供了充分、合理的依据，即所有形式的女性生殖器切割都是错误的，无论文化背景如何。然而，另一些人指出，支持这一论点的人存在文化偏见和道德双重标准，并且也开始质疑对女性生殖器切割相关实证数据的传统解读。在本文中，我评估了这些相互竞争的观点的优点。我认为它们各自都涉及到合理的道德关切，为推动讨论的进展，这些关切都应得到认真对待。在此过程中，我借鉴了生物医学“增强”方面的文献，以构建一个新颖的伦理框架来评估女性生殖器切割（以及相关干预措施——如女性生殖器“美容”手术和非治疗性男性包皮环切术），该框架考虑到了这些手术中切实存在的危害，但又不存在基于文化或道德双重标准的问题。
