(BuzzFeed) Twitter has come under fire for allowing a tweet that activists have said is pro–female genital mutilation to be promoted on its site, meaning that it showed up on the timelines of users who didn’t follow the poster’s account.
The tweet, posted by a group calling itself the Dawoodi Bohra Women for Religious Freedom (DBWRF), featured a video of a woman discussing so-called “khafz,” or female circumcision. The group claims on its website FAQ that “female circumcision and female genital mutilation (FGM) have often been confused.”
It goes on to claim that the former involves “removal of a speck of superficial skin, a simple gentle process in which there is negligible, if any, pain.”
In August, an Australian court overturned the conviction of three people who had been carrying out female circumcision, which DBWRF welcomed.
