Talk:Tostan

Cutting or mutilation?

The article repeatedly refers to female genital cutting and gives the acronym FGC, whereas the literature overwhelmingly refers to it to the same activity as female genital mutilation. In addition, none of the FGC references in the article are hyperlinked to existing FGM articles on WP.

This article from womenshealth.gov specifically refers to female genital cutting (FGC), female circumcision, and female genital mutilation (FGM) as all being synonymous. It also describes some cultural background as a possible explanation of why some people may prefer one term over another. Currently the terms FGM, Female circumcision and Female genital cutting are all redirects on WP to Female genital mutilation.

But shouldn't WP go with the preponderance of sources on this? It's possible the person who authored the sections of the Tostan article using the FGC term had an agenda similar to that described in the Women's Health article.

As a first step, I'll hyperlink the existing text in the article without changing the 'cutting' terminology and let the redirect handle it, but shouldn't we actually just change them all to 'mutilation'? Mathglot (talk) 18:54, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay, it looks like the article previously used the standard terminology, until this edit by User:41.82.10.166 with the summary

Terminology changed: female genital mutilation to female genital cutting. Reflects terminology used by Tostan and is more accurate way of describing phenomenon (mutilation implies intention to harm).)

First of all, mutilation certainly does not imply any intent to harm; bodies mutilated in a car wreck for example. Secondly, it is not 'a more accurate way of describing' the phenomenon, as not just cutting is involved but various other procedures, including suturing for example. Mutilate is defined as Inflict a violent and disfiguring injury on; the leg was badly mutilated (New Oxford American Dict. 2001) and that sounds very much like what happens with infibulation. Third, and most importantly, the fact that Tostan may use alternative terms such as FGC and cutting is irrelevant; WP articles are encyclopedic and must maintain NPOV and must not be modified to reflect the opinion of the subject of the article.

In addition, User 41.82.10.166 has contributed to only one article on WP, viz. the one on Tostan and the IP address traces to Dakar, Senegal, which is the location of the international headquarters of Tostan.

I'm inclined now to revert edit 497077291 as a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:COI but welcome comments. Mathglot (talk) 19:39, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Note: (User:Donahuec has a similar contribution history. Mathglot (talk) 20:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Helped Comments on reverting the edit described above in section Cutting or mutilation? would be helpful. Mathglot (talk) 19:50, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like the conversation is proceeding just fine, the help template is not a tool to recruit more opinions on a topic. I would suggest asking at the project above for more comments or views.- McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 20:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a somewhat murky issue. Wikipedia should follow what third-party sources report. The problem here is that third-party sources in the article are scarce, with most of it based solely on Tostan's publications. The US State Department uses "genital mutilation", the UN and Reuters use "circumcision", while Reuters also uses "cutting". I looked for additional sources, and they are an equally mixed bag: The Guardian goes with "mutilation", The New York Times primarily uses "cutting", ABC uses both interchangeably, and so on. Tostan itself says it uses "cutting" because it makes for more effective campaigning, but acknowledges that "mutilation" is the more common term. So there is some justification for either of the three terms. However, Wikipedia is not concerned with campaigning, Tostan itself agrees that FGM is the more common term, and it's the title of our article and category anyway. For these reasons, going with "mutilation" here seems appropriate. Huon (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)