Upcoming events
Conference "Whose Autonomy Counts? A Feminist and Decolonial Bioethics Approach to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting and Female Genital Cosmetic Surgeries" - FAB 2026 World Congress
8th-10th July 2026. Johannesburg, South Africa.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) is typically framed as a coercive practice imposed on unconsenting children, while Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery (FGCS) is widely accepted as an autonomous choice made by adult women. However, this binary does not always hold: minors also undergo FGCS, often with parental approval, while adult women in countries like Kenya have petitioned for the right to access medicalised forms of female circumcision.
Activists and postcolonial scholars have pointed to a striking ethical double standard: whose genital alterations are condoned, and whose are condemned, depends not on the act itself but on who is making the decision and why. Autonomy is differentially recognised and valued depending on race, geography, class, and cultural framing. This paper draws on empirical research in Belgium and Kenya to examine how these distinctions are constructed and maintained in legal, medical, and bioethical discourses.
Using a decolonial and feminist bioethics lens, I argue that autonomy, as it is currently operationalised, functions as a racialised and colonial concept that legitimises some forms of bodily modification while pathologising others. I propose a rethinking of autonomy beyond individualistic liberalism—toward relational and structural understandings that better account for power, culture, and global inequality. In doing so, I call on feminist bioethics to confront its own complicities and take a more critical role in resisting epistemic injustice.
Past events
Open Dialogue on Alternative Rites of Passage