Even though three people are now under arrest for the brutal crime of practicing female genital mutilation in Michigan, the story is still not getting media coverage. Of course, this touches all of the mainstream media’s taboos.

1) It criticizes a sect of Islam.
2) It requires the use of clinical terms for genitalia (for people who claim to be so sexually liberated, why is this a problem?).
3) It points out the existence of evil and requires a moral judgement.

Enter Celia Duggar, health and science editor for the New York Times, who refused to use the term “female genital mutilation” in print.

Why, you ask? When asked about it in a letter in the Times mailbag, Duggar offered this mealy-mouthed explanation.

I began writing about this back in 1996 when I was an immigration reporter on the Metro desk covering the asylum case of Fauziya Kassindja. I decided in the course of reporting that case — especially after a reporting trip to Togo, her home country, and the Ivory Coast — to call it genital cutting rather than mutilation. I never minced words in describing exactly what form of cutting was involved, and there are many gradations of severity, and the terrible damage it did, and stayed away from the euphemistic circumcision, but chose to use the less culturally loaded term, genital cutting. There’s a gulf between the Western (and some African) advocates who campaign against the practice and the people who follow the rite, and I felt the language used widened that chasm.

“Cutting.” What a nice, sanitized term. Why, it almost sounds like someone’s genitals just needed a haircut! And maybe not like actual flesh, tissue, and nerves were cut out of a woman’s vagina. Which is WHAT HAPPENS.

Can we also ask why this story about federal charges being brought against three people, two of them doctors, falls under the purview of the health and science editor to make the editorial call about what term to use? Anyone?

So, in Celia Duggar’s effort to not “widen” a “gulf” between a barbaric surgical practice and people who stand against such evil, she opts for avoiding “culturally loaded” terms. In other words…

People who like to de-emphasize and lessen the acts of abusers are usually called enablers. I leave it to the readers as to whether or not Celia Duggar’s sanitized language, so she doesn’t offend people’s delicate sensibilities, continues to allow the Western world to turn a blind eye to what has been discovered to have been happening in Michigan.