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Claims that genital autonomy should be considered a human right call into question medically unnecessary genital alterations, including genital cutting of both boy and girl children, the forced or coerced circumcision of adults, and surgical alterations performed on the genitals of intersex children prior to the age of consent. To date, global norms suggest only a narrow applicability of any right to genital autonomy. International organizations, states, and non-governmental organizations increasingly condemn genital cutting of girls and women but generally tolerate both the genital cutting of boys and men and the surgical alteration of the genitals of intersex children. In examining assertions that genital autonomy should be considered a human right, the article considers competing rights claims, including religious and cultural rights, parental rights, and contending perspectives on health rights. Ultimately, this article highlights the limitations of international human rights law as a tool for promoting a right to genital autonomy.

This essay discusses a pedagogical approach to the teaching of international relations grounded in both a pluralist approach to the study of politics and post-modern feminism. Whereas pluralism helpfully draws attention to the wide range of actors that play a role in world politics and the multiplicity of factors that shape the motivations, identities, and behaviors of these actors, post-modern feminism underscores the fact that actors-and their identities, norms, and interests-are constructed rather than given. In combination, these perspectives encourage students and teachers to focus not only on diversity within and across societies but also on the possibilities for constructing alternative models of politics and for building coalitions across presumed divisions of politics, ideology, culture, gender, and other social markers. The essay provides an overview of strategies for integrating a pedagogy of feminist pluralism in the international relations classroom.International Studies Perspectives (2012) 13, 254-269.

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