Sunday May 31, 2009, 12:41 pm
Genital mutilation is much older than Islam. All forced genital mutilation, of both sexes, must be banned everywhere.

I don't care what adults do to themselves, but this insanity must not be practiced on defenceless children.

Why are we still traumatizing baby boys with circumcision?

Sunday May 31, 2009, 12:50 pm
This is just another version of rape-in my estimation-and to think that the mother is doing it is incomprehensible. Thanks Kit. Noted-you betcha.

Sunday May 31, 2009, 1:17 pm
I completely agree that this should stop! This is horrible i have watched this on television last year and its horrible i joined the group in Facbeook thats fighting against this but found out that people dont speak up for this....
sad but true people seem to think that this is freedom of religion or whatever this is realy something that we cannot accept in 2009 not in Europe not in Africa no where!

Sunday May 31, 2009, 1:30 pm
This barbaric dark ages mutilation must stop NOW. How horrible for these little girls. Those responsible all should be jailed and charged with child endangerment, sexual assault, and harming a child. That should keep them in prison for a while. To think they are doing this so the girl can get a man! No man is worth doing this to a child. Start doing this to the young boys and see how fast it gets outlawed. It is just awful that anyone in this day and age could even consider such cruelty to girls, who never fully recover from this and end up with a horrible smell, then no one wants them around. What is the matter with these idiots?

Sunday May 31, 2009, 1:55 pm
Complete & pure insanity.

These people are nuts!!!!!!

Plant trees for life......

Sunday May 31, 2009, 3:52 pm
It is not just Muslims who practice FGM, it happens in Africa. It may be practiced in other countries and we are just not aware of it.

Monday June 1, 2009, 5:05 am
Judy is right - this madness is much older than Islam.
It's up to us lucky enought to have been spared this to raise awareness all over the world.

Monday June 1, 2009, 12:27 pm
absolutely horrifying, it makes me realise how lucky I am.

Monday June 1, 2009, 8:00 pm
The fact that it has been done to them through beliefs for generations is going to be a hard one to abolish. Like backstreet abortions I can see this still occurring regardless of the law. But, it may and hopefully hinder those that will.
But, personally I see this more acceptable than someone frying people's brains which is very much accepted in America and growing rapidly. Not enjoying sex with a brain is better than enjoying and not having the wherewithal to enjoy it. However, it is still not my idea of sanity but disgusting and demeaning!

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 1:17 am
People in every nation need to take a stand against these attrocities, and damn the notion that it has anything to do with freedom of religion! At one time the Mormon Church approved of men having multiple wives, but our government finally put an end to it (Occasionally, our government actually does something that's right). We cannot allow people to excuse their wrongful acts based on the idea that it's part of their religion.

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 2:12 am
People on this thread who say that nothing is done about this and that no on is speaking out against it, are wrong and haven't read the post!

Over twenty years ago, I personally met two African women who had created an activist group to fight against this practice among the African immigrant population in France. This issue has been on the table for a very long time. Initially, European women who brought it up were often told in substance to mind their own business, because this was a cultural practice and Europeans shouldn't be butting in and denouncing other people's cultures. It's the same with honor killings.

But cultural relativism, with its 'hands off' attitude, has successfully been rebutted in every circumstance and it is absolutely wrong to side with the oppressors, and not the oppressed, of any given culture! This viewpoint is on the way out, and women's rights have become a universal focal point.
As proof, this super-noted C2NN article submitted by an old friend of mine, Sophia,:
18December2006: Muslim scholars from around the world are calling for an end to female genital mutilation. The scholars, meeting at a specially convened conference in Cairo, Egypt,...

Women's rights advocates in Europe launch and get involved in campaigns to protect immigrant girls whose families still want to have the ancient ritual practised on them. Ruth Rendell Speaks Out Against Female Genital Mutilation: The novelist is campaigning to stop up to 20,000 girls in Britain being mutilated each year.

Unfortunately, families can succeed in bypassing the legislation now in place in France, for example, by sending the girls 'home for a vacation' where no one will interfere ! Poor things!

There are now doctors in France who reconstruct the clitoris of women who have undergone FGM, which is possible because the deep root of the clitoris is not removed in FGM, and it can surgically be brought back to the surface. The normal appearance is restored as well, which is important, too, because the women experience embarrassment and even shame at having been mutilated; and often avoid any sexual contact at all due to this shame at the abnormal appearance of their genitals. We have seen an excellent documentary on French TV about this procedure thanks to which women who have been made 'whole' again and now enjoy pleasurable sexual relations. Some of them spoke out in the doc.

I posted some time back on the FGM problem in Iraq, among the Kurds, where it is widespread! From 60% to 95% women are subjected to FGM in Iraqi Kurdistan. The recent refusal to ban it, in addition to the rise in honor killings & female self-immolations, are more evidence that this region has not become more progressive for women. Yet Kurdish women participated fully in underground independence struggle...For Kurdish Girls, Painful Ancient Ritual: Female Genital Mutilation Widespread in Northern Iraq - Print + Photo Essay

It is a common practice in many countries, including Kenya, Egypt and Mali. One of the very first, groundbreaking books that brought this horrendous practice to public awareness was written by the French feminist, Benoite Groult in her 1975 book, «Ainsi soit-elle». In it, she told the story of a German girl who accompanied her new Egyptian husband, met at a European university, back home and while he was with his male relatives, the women tackled this poor young woman, held her down, and practised an excision on her. She bled to death before the husband could do anything to save her!

This post shows how Kenya is trying to fight against it: Safe Haven for Girls: Alternative Right of Passage Offers Women in Kenya An Escape From Female Genital Mutilation

This is an excerpt from a very complete article that examines all the aspects of FGM (historical, physiological, cultural, etc), which I found simply by 'googling' it:, The Crime of Female Genital Mutilation,

"One early morning in an African village not far from Nairobi, Kenya, young girls are roused from sleep and taken to a nearby river. The waters are cold, helping to arrest the bleeding from a first menstrual cycle, making their genitalia stand out and slightly numb. Soon an elder village midwife takes the children one by one and with a rusty razor, scissors or shard of glass cuts out the clitoris, slices off the labia and applies ashes, herbs or cow dung to staunch the flow of blood. As the girl writhes in pain, other women hold her arms down, her legs apart, her mouth shut tight so that she cannot run away or alarm the other unsuspecting children waiting in their cool bath.

Over 80 million women in the world today have been subjected to similar barbaric mutilation, a traditional practice that continues unabated in at least 28 African countries. According to the Minority Rights Group International, 90 percent of women in northern Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, and nearly 100 percent in Somalia and Djibouti, undergo ritualistic genital excision. In these countries women are also infibulated, the two sides of the vulva sewn together with catgut or held with thorns, a match stick shoved in place to ensure an opening the size of a pinhole. Lesser mutilations are performed on women in parts of the Middle East and Pakistan, and among some Muslims in Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka.

Typically the mutilations occur at puberty. But in many countries the procedure is performed on infants and in many others on girls between the ages of 7 and 10. Increasingly girls are excised at a younger age with none of the traditional ceremony associated with ritual initiation into womanhood. These young women are deprived of the organs of sexual pleasure, subjected to hideous pain in urination, menstruation and intercourse, and suffer multiple medical complications throughout their adult lives.

These practices have gone on for centuries, yet most of the world remained ignorant of them. In 1976 the British liberal humanist Jill Tweedie wrote in her column for the London Guardian:

“Those who do it, those to whom it is done, those in whose countries it is done and those outside who know it is done all too often collude in a conspiracy of silence engendered by an odd but very potent combination of ignorance, custom, shame, poverty, and academic aloofness.”

In the late 1970s a number of Western feminists, together with several outspoken African women, drew attention to these barbaric acts against women and forced reluctant United Nations agencies to take up the issue.

A wave of emigration from the desperate poverty and social upheavals in Africa during the ’80s has made the question a concrete reality in Europe as African immigrants and refugees continue to excise their children, either by importing a native midwife or by sending their girls home to have the operation performed. Recently the refusal of the French state to grant asylum to a 22-year-old Malian women fleeing ritual genital mutilation in her native village has received worldwide coverage. And liberal black feminist Alice Walker has just come out with Possessing the Secret of Joy, a powerful novel (surprisingly muted in male-hating bourgeois feminism) depicting the attempt of an African woman to grapple with life after being genitally mutilated. While some of the international reaction to the practice of female genital mutilation is clearly motivated by racist and hypocritical moralism, the practice is a heinous barbarity which must be categorically and unconditionally opposed.

Inhuman Savagery

Three forms of mutilation are generally found in a triangular band stretching from Egypt south to Tanzania in the east and across to Senegal in the west. Although often referred to as “female circumcision,” there is no equation with the removal of the penile foreskin that is practiced among all males in Muslim and Jewish societies and in the U.S. Only the most modified version, Sunna (“tradition”), can correctly be called circumcision. It affects only a small proportion of women, largely in non-African countries. Sunna can entail a simple pinprick of the clitoris; more often the hood of the clitoris is removed.

The Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi, author of The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, wrote about the terrifying experience of her own circumcision at the age of six. She also described her work as a doctor in rural Egypt in the 1950s:

“There I very often had to treat young girls who had come to the out-patients clinic bleeding profusely after a circumcision. Many of them used to lose their lives as a result of the inhuman and primitive way in which the operation, savage enough in itself, was performed. Others were afflicted with acute or chronic infections from which they sometimes suffered for the rest of their days.”

Excision, the most common practice in Africa, entails the cutting of the clitoris, sometimes its removal, and slicing of some or all parts of the labia minora and majora. An inexperienced hand or poor eyesight can lead to puncturing of the urethra, the bladder, the anal sphincter and/or the vaginal walls. Heavy keloid scarring can impair walking; the development of dermoid cysts is not uncommon. A ritual frequently justified as a guarantor of fertility can lead to sterility.

Most women in the Horn of Africa are also infibulated. In addition to clitoridectomy, the reduced labia majora are sewn together, leaving a trivial opening. After the operation, the girl’s legs are bound together from hip to ankle for up to 40 days to permit the formation of scar tissue. Urination and menstruation are excruciating ordeals: it can take up to 30 minutes to empty the bladder; the retention of urine and menstrual blood guarantees infection.

For infibulated women, sexual intercourse becomes a practically unbearable burden, especially on the wedding night. Consummation may take weeks, beginning with the husband having to open his wife’s infibulation with fingers or a knife or ceremonial sword. The woman must lie still with legs spread through repeated, bloody penetrations until a large enough opening becomes permanent. Many women see pregnancy as an escape from these painful and pleasureless sexual encounters, yet childbirth itself is traumatic. Scar tissue is often ripped up as the baby pushes out. Those who have access to hospitals need both anterior and posterior episiotomies. Many infants die or suffer brain damage in the second phase of delivery because thick scarring prevents sufficient dilation of the cervix. In many countries custom demands reinfibulation after each pregnancy to ensure women remain “tight as a virgin.” Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, a social psychologist who spent six years studying female genital mutilation in Sudan, notes that women without reinfibulation fear their husbands will leave them. Some claim to prefer it; in her 1989 book Prisoners of Ritual, she writes: “A tight fit makes the most of what is left after an extreme excision.”

The practice transcends all class, national and religious bounds. In areas where it is the norm, it is so not just for the women of the bush but for those from the elite petty bourgeoisie, professional government bureaucracy and intelligentsia as well. All women in northern Sudan are infibulated, yet the practice has been anathema among the southern peoples. Among every religion on the continent—Coptic Christians, Muslims, animists, the “Black Jews” of Ethiopia, both Catholic and Protestant converts in Nigeria—there are peoples that persist in female mutilations. Moreover, it is practiced in Burkina Faso among tribes with both patriarchal and matriarchal cultures.

Prisoners of Ritual

Various, often contradictory explanations exist for the tradition. In the main, rationales reflect prevalent mythology, ignorance of biological and medical facts, and religious obscurantism. Almost every reference links the custom to the family’s fear that their daughter won’t be “marriageable.” Unmutilated young girls are ostracized, labeled as “unclean” or branded as whores; children born to unexcised women are considered bastards in many societies, and unscarred genitals are associated with prostitution. Often unmutilated women are considered illegitimate; they cannot inherit money, cattle or land, nor do they fetch an adequate bride price. One Somalian woman defended her granddaughter’s wish to be infibulated, saying it “takes away nothing that she needs. If she does not have this done, she will become a harlot.” The girl’s father, a college-educated businessman, expressed his uncertainty: “Yes, I know it is bad for the health of girls. But I don’t want my daughter to blame me later on because she could not find a husband.”

Different religious and social groupings see genital mutilation as the only way to protect women from unbridled sexual passion and promiscuity. Sir Richard Burton, a 19th century British adventurer/ethnologist who spent many years studying the culture, language and sexuality of eastern Africa, wrote that “all consider sexual desire in woman to be ten times greater than in man. (They cut off the clitoris because, as Aristotle warns, that organ is the seat and spring of sexual desire.)” Unfortunately, a good portion of Burton’s research was destroyed by his devoted, but Roman Catholic, wife.

Overwhelmingly the practice is linked to virginity before marriage and fidelity afterward. Among almost every one of the peoples where the practice exists, polygamy is the norm. One argument for female excision is that no man can satisfy all of his wives, so it helps to have women who don’t desire sex. While the truth is that most men in these societies are too poor to afford more than one wife, the social reality of male dominance in every sphere of day-to-day existence is the backdrop to the ritual mutilation of women.

The origins of this grotesque practice are not known. While often found in Islamic countries, the procedure is not prescribed in the Koran. In 742 AD the prophet Mohammed was said to have proposed a reform of genital mutilation; his call to “reduce but not destroy” has been taken as an instruction to perform only Sunna, the norm today in Egypt. While Muslim fundamentalism enforces brutally medieval conditions on women, including confinement to the home and the stifling veil, only one-fifth of the world’s 600 million Muslims practice female genital mutilation.

It is clear that genital mutilations date back to ancient times. The Greek historian Herodotus noted in the fifth century BC that female circumcision was practiced by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hittites and Ethiopians. The Sudanese refer to infibulation as “Pharaonic circumcision”; the murky origins of the practice, however, may be inferred from the fact that in Egypt it’s called “Sudanese circumcision.”

Ritual genital mutilation has been found to have existed at one time in various forms among different peoples on every continent. Quite independently of the tradition in sub-Saharan Africa, infibulation was performed by the Conibo people of Peru. The Australian aboriginals used to practice introcision, an enlargement of the vaginal opening. Anthropologists agree that female mutilation has only occurred in societies which also practice male circumcision, generally in cultures where the sexes are strongly differentiated in childhood. Thus some believe that the practice originated to highlight the difference between male and female at puberty. The Bambara in Mali, for example, believe that all people are born with both male and female characteristics; excision rids the girl of her “male element” while circumcision removes the “female element” from boys.

The ritual is the norm in an area south of the Sahara and north of the forest line; this corresponds generally with the area of Africa where, with no shortage of land, women and children (and slaves) were once needed to cultivate the fields and tend domestic animals and were easily absorbed into polygamous households. While the nature of the means of production does not determine how humans live in a social/sexual sense, it does set elastic limits. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that female genital mutilation has its roots in agricultural society which enabled the development of a social surplus and then private property. It is only when the determination of paternity for the purpose of inheritance becomes relevant that society puts a premium on virginity and marital fidelity on the part of women.

Female mutilations continue to occur in the rural areas which maintain a subsistence agrarian economy based on a tribal structure. What’s at stake are traditional property rights in societies where women are sold like cattle, based largely on their ability to reproduce. The practice is only somewhat less prevalent today in the cities. Over the centuries it has become an unquestioned, ingrained custom. In Prisoners of Ritual Lightfoot-Klein reflects on these woman-hating practices as merely “a fact of her life, just as tremendous hardship, poverty, scarce water and little food, back-breaking labor, overwhelming heat, dust storms, crippling disease, unalleviated pain, and early death are facts of her life.” Whatever the rationale for the mutilation of millions of young girls, whatever its origins centuries ago, female genital mutilation is today a burning symbol of the all-sided sexual, social and economic oppression of women. .../..."

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 9:08 am
Thank you Alba, for this heart felt and very informative post. I too believe things are changing for many of these countries. In some cases it is a slow process, in others because of well educated and compassionate leadership the move to end this torture is more publicized and reaching the people more rapidly.

I believe it is important to continue the dialogue about FGM and to always condemn it however it is not necessary to condemn the entire culture to condemn this or other horrendous forms of torture and subjection. Another example of a modern, progressive leader is new King of Saudi Arabia, a country that has long been known for treating it's women as throw-away, replaceable objects. He is making it known that many of the practices such as honor killings and FGM are simply not acceptable and not condoned by the teaching of their religion. I applaud his efforts and hope he will continue in his efforts and win support among the men in his country. Long held belief systems and ancient practices are very difficult to change because it has become a accepted as THE way to do something. Change is gradual but inevitable.

Women the world over must think of each other as sisters and aid in the struggle to end sexual, social and economic oppression where ever it exists.

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 9:14 am
Sorry, just caught a misspelling * subjugation, not subjection.

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 9:47 am
Sick monsters!

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 11:32 am
Maybe I missed it somewhere
along the way of info but,
aren't these people aware
this procedure is damned by
most of the civilized world?

Aren't these mothers, daughters,
aunts & other aware of how cruel
& medically debilitating this
practice is??

I saw a documentary sometime
back of a poor young black
girl who traveled hundreds
of miles to get her private
parts put back as they were
ment to be........

Also, if these so called custome
render a woman to the point she
smells or can not conceive what
on earth is the use of doing
this for??

Sure would turn the almighty
Koran on its' head if the male
parts were cut off or sewn shut
so it could no longer feel
the pleasure of..........!!

Where on earth is the outrage
from the people/the women over
there? Have the men been so
conditioned to believe that
women deserve to be no more
than tools of their wants &
pleasures!!!!!!

Utterly disgusting!!

Plant trees for life........

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 12:39 pm
Unfortunately B.M. many of these women do not know how the world sees this practice, nor do I think they care. They are simply following an ancient tradition that they believe is the only way to keep their daughters safe and "marriageable" which in these societies is extremely important. As more education reaches these areas and more women from these countries become educated and work to create out reach programs, we are beginning to see some slight decline in FGM.

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 1:54 pm
What is the point of sewing up all but a pee whole...is she not suppossed to be allowed to have children too?

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 2:34 pm
Seems it's a combination of
punishment, degradation and this
......Tight.
Think about that for a
few minutes.......

Women are no more than
servants of sexual slavery.

I find it so hard to
believe this is being
done in this day & age........

Finally....One has to ask
themselves do animals do this?
Seems these people are crazier than
any animal could ever be!!

Plant trees for life......

Tuesday June 2, 2009, 8:33 pm
Noted, thanks Kit. I find it difficult to comprehend why all but a few people in middle eastern countries fail to see anything wrong with this horrible custom. I hope caring people the world over will continue to look for ways to intervene and save as many of these women as possible from being subjected to these attrocities.

Saturday June 13, 2009, 3:39 pm
Very informative thread, on such a horrible topic.

Saturday June 13, 2009, 3:48 pm
Just clicked back here - and one last comment: SICK, NEANDERTHAL BASTARDS!

Saturday June 13, 2009, 4:03 pm
Eureka...Here is a question
worth pondering:

Have you ever known of animals
doing anything comparable to this????????

The answer is no & that is
because the animals are smater
than we are & always will be!!

Plant trees for life......