Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
NEW YORK – Imagine if 3 million boys had their penises cut off every year.
Imagine that despite accounts of the unfathomable pain boys endure to ensure chastity and passage into manhood, religious leaders for decades taught their communities that God had decreed such mutilation.
A world tongue-tied by cultural relativism says nothing
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
It’s a painful reality for at least 3 million girls who each year have parts or all of their clitorises cut off in a procedure known as female genital mutilation (FGM). The clitoris has double the nerve endings of a penis so my analogy to chopping off little boys’ organs isn’t too far off.
This past weekend marked International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM so allow me to shake you out of oblivion by reminding you that 6,000 girls a day are subjected to one of four types of FGM.
The most “minor” – known as clitoridectomy – is the partial or total removal of the clitoris. The most severe – known as infibulation – is the removal of parts of the external genitalia followed by stitching together of what remains. The girl subjected to this then has her legs bound for about two weeks to create a seal over her genitals.
Have I been graphic enough?
FGM is not an abstract issue I’ve collected under the umbrella of my feminism. Along with an aunt who is four years older than me, I belong to the first generation of women in my extended family not to have been subjected to it.
I began to share that sad family history because I could no longer stand to hear misguided cultural relativists gloss over the horrors of FGM with the same brush of labioplasty, a form of cosmetic plastic surgery for the genitals that has become popular in the U.S. and Europe.
It is unconscionable to compare a woman’s choice to subject herself to surgery to the enforced cutting of girls from infancy to about the age of 15 in at least 28 countries. Prevalent mostly in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, FGM is no longer a traditional practice that harms girls just “over there”. As a result of immigration and refugee movements, FGM is now being practiced in the U.S. Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
According to the Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development as many as 6,500 girls are at risk of FGM within the UK every year, where some 66,000 women have been cut, most before leaving their country of origin.
Some of those at-risk girls are cut in their parent’s country of origin during vacations. Women’s rights groups warn that some communities fly “cutters” to the UK to carry out the mutilation at “parties” involving up to 20 girls to save money.
Parents in those communities – like my grandparents – don’t hate their daughters. They are socialized to believe the cutting guarantees their girls acceptance and protection by their communities. I’ve never forgotten the 17-year old uncut bride I wrote about in Cairo years ago who on her wedding night was sent home to her mother with a message from the groom: if you want your daughter to be married, you know what you need to do. A traditional midwife was called in and the bride was cut.
I’m tired of hearing “but it’s the mothers who do it to their daughters” with no thought as to why and as if men were innocent benefactors of a mother’s cruelty. At its heart, FGM is the starkest embodiment of the disempowerment of girls and women.
As recent as the 1950s, partial or total removal of the clitoris was prescribed in western Europe and the U.S. in response to hysteria, epilepsy, mental disorders, masturbation, nymphomania, melancholia and lesbianism.
My opening analogy of penis chopping was absurd not just because if boys were being mutilated the world would not be so silent but because, really, who would want to control male sexuality? We invent little blue pills to boost it.
What to do?
Legislation is a start but it’s useless unless combined with unblinking education about the harm of FGM – lasting psychological trauma, extreme pain, chronic infections, bleeding, abscesses, tumors, urinary tract infections, infertility and decreased sexual desire – and more forceful denunciations from religious leaders.
The UK outlawed FGM in 1985 and in 2003, it became illegal to take a girl overseas for cutting. Yet in a country where up to 500 girls a day are at risk, the police have failed to secure a single conviction.
My country of birth Egypt finally passed a total ban on FGM in 2008. Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood and independent parliamentarians objected, arguing that the practice was part of Islamic law because it protected a woman’s chastity.
That was despite an edict in 2007 from Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa saying FGM was religiously prohibited. The grand sheikh of Cairo’s al-Azhar, bastion of Sunni Muslim learning, and Egypt’s Coptic Christian pope have said neither the Koran nor the Bible demand or even mention cutting.
But why the long silence in a country where 96 percent of women – Muslim and Christian – have been cut? It explains why among Egyptian girls aged 10 – 19 prevalence is still as high as 84 percent.
Confused? Put yourself in the shoes of mothers trying to ensure their daughters don’t become outcasts. Put yourself in the shoes of my aunt who almost bled to death at the age of 7, no doubt wondering why the person who was supposed to love and protect her the most had subjected her to that most awful of pain.
Comments (11)
Ahmed Shaban said:
What a load of baloney!!!
Which religious “leaders” are those your talking about? and which silence are you smashing??? I mean the topic is has been discussed like a trillion time, and documentaries, books, movies had been discussing it for decades. I am completely 110% against female circumcision but to claim that religion has to do with this crap is just ignorant.
I can’t still believe you used the word leaders My god, you need help.
February 10th, 2010, 8:54 am
Anyta said:
The practice of FGM is possibly one of the worst kind of inhumanity against young girls and women. It needs to be criminalized in my opinion.
Thank you for publicizing this heinous practice.
February 11th, 2010, 7:10 am
Mona Eltahawy said:
Ahmed – I covered a court case in Egypt that was raised by human rights activists against the Grand Mufti at the time Gal el-Haq. He said that “circumcision” was obligatory for boys and girls. I believe being Grand Mufti makes him a “religious leader”. It took until 2007 for Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa to say that “female circumcision” was haraam.
I interviewed two Kenyan sisters in 2002 who ran away from home after a priest said the Bible ordered female circumcision. I believe a priest is a “religious leader”. Those two sister have managed to persuade the Kenyan parliament to pass a law against FGM.
I believe you need to get your facts straight before you come on my blog acting all defensive and thinking you can defend “religious leaders” or even Islam from me. I made it clear in my column that in Egypt Muslims and Christians subject their daugthers to this horror. Maybe you should read slower.
February 12th, 2010, 6:32 pm
Mr M said:
I am only aware of Somali women campaigns against FGM, but I am not sure about Arab countries. You mentioned about men, but the majority of the blame lies at women who bully and coerce each other to “become a woman”.
Men would rather be needed than render women’s sex lives useless, and there is no way we will be against FGM.
Good luck and don’t be sabotaged by the ignorant whom I fight on a daily basis from the simple chores of putting up a picture of my family at home to whether drinking Coca Cola makes me “Kufar”. Religion is good at a personal level, but miserably fails people when applied to society at large.
February 13th, 2010, 1:27 pm
Rob Neave said:
Dear Mona
Just listened to your interview with Romona Koval on ABC Radio. Thanks, it was great – that is why I am here.
Fully support your position on FGM. Your opening line made my eyes water, and the rest of your article did as well.
Cultural relativism is a problem here in Australia. The aboriginal people have a cultural disposition toward child sexual abuse.
Religious people seem to have a problem. If they want to embrace an irrational belief that they should not eat pork, or should cover their hair, or should not use contraception, that is OK. The problem comes when they say “… and you must do the same”.
Ahmed said that you need help. I hope you get all the help you need.
February 14th, 2010, 6:31 am
Mahashakti Dasi said:
Why is Amhad Shaban so upset, all those questions marks, and exclamation marks? It’s not as if you went near his nerve endings with a cutter. It takes a lot of talking about to bring such an uncomfortable topic into the consciousness of a society. And such a violent, ignorant practice as FGM has to be kept in the spotlight. The world, as a whole, is still very primative in many ways. But there are some people who are actually wanting to lead us out of the darkness.
February 15th, 2010, 6:01 am
Annette said:
Thank you for what you do.Please dont let anyone deter you from shinning light on this subject.
February 16th, 2010, 5:34 pm
Don Sharpe said:
I have two daughters and the subject of FGM shocks me anew every time I think of it. As much as I have tried to protect my family, the thought that some parents enforce FGM, that muslim world leaders enforce FGM, and that some women help perform FGM on their sisters makes me so angry.
If ever there was a case for capital punishment, in my opinion the forced mutilation of an entire gender would qualify.
Anyone who ever mutilated my daughter would regret it, but only until I was finished with them.
This is one of the most important subjects in the world today, and I was unaware there was a ‘Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM’ until I read your article. Thanks.
February 18th, 2010, 10:17 am
Deborah Analauren said:
3 million girls and 13.3 million boys are subjected to involuntary amputation of part or all of their external sex organs every year. While the extent of female genital cutting is often more devastating than male genital cutting, the screams of boys and girls undergoing the procedures are genderless. Such harmful traditional practices have no place in the 21st century. This is not an issue of competitive suffering. Any forced amputation of a healthy body part from either a female or male child is a human rights violation and the perpetrators–whether parents, doctors, healthcare practitioners, or religious practitioners–should be held culpable, accountable, and should be punished for these atrocious crimes against our infants and children! The presumption that anyone has the right to remove healthy sexual tissue from a child, be the child female or male, is a fundamental human rights issue. Genital cutting is neither healthy, nor holy and needs to be seen for what it is: child sexual abuse.
February 19th, 2010, 10:31 am
Mia said:
Deborah, I can’t believe you would try to compare FGM with male circumcision. I don’t argue that the ethics of cutting an unconsenting person are not clearly problematic, but otherwise the similarities between the two practices, the beliefs they represent, and the freedoms they curtail, are worlds apart.
Talking about male circumcision is nothing more than hot air that distracts from progress, and from the fact of the deep misogyny that FGM signals.
March 6th, 2010, 6:21 am
Deborah Analauren said:
Actually, Mia, there are many points of comparison between female and male genital cutting. As with those societies that downplay the harm caused by female genital cutting, those that cut the genitals of their boys likewise trivialize the damage inflicted and are silent to the abuse of human rights involved. It is often much easier to see harmful cultural practices outside one’s own culture while remaining blind to the harms practiced from within.
The World Health Organization classifies female genital cutting into four categories http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/overview/en/:
***Type I — Partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the prepuce (clitoridectomy).
a. When it is important to distinguish between the major variations of Type I mutilation, the following subdivisions are proposed: Type Ia, removal of the clitoral hood or prepuce only; Type Ib, removal of the clitoris with the prepuce.
***Type II — Partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (excision).
a. When it is important to distinguish between the major variations that have been documented, the following subdivisions are proposed:
Type IIa, removal of the labia minora only; Type IIb, partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora; Type IIc, partial or total removal of the clitoris, the labia minora and the labia majora.
b. Note also that, in French, the term ‘excision’ is often used as a general term covering all types of female genital mutilation.
***Type III — Narrowing of the vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and appositioning the labia minora and/or the labia majora, with or without excision of the clitoris (infibulation).
a. Type IIIa, removal and apposition of the labia minora; Type IIIb, removal and apposition of the labia majora.
***Type IV — All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example: pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.
Likewise, there is a wide variety of practices when it comes to male genital cutting. The International Coalition for Genital Integrity http://www.icgi.org/information/hgm-classification/ makes the following classifications:
• Type I – Excision or injury of part or all of the skin and specialized
mucosal tissues of the penis including the prepuce and frenulum (circumcision, dorsal slit
without closure). Incision; perforation (perforatio glandis); severing of the frenulum.
a. Cutting of the prepuce to draw blood, or a complete cutting away of the prepuce so as to expose the glans.
b. The glans is perforated by an Ampallang, nail or other sharp object, with or without circumcision of the prepuce.
c. The foreskin is retained, but the connective tissue (frenulum) between it and the
penile shaft is severed.
• Type II – Excision or injury to the glans (glandectomy) and/or penis shaft, (penectomy) along with Type I MGM. Any procedure that alters or interferes with normal reproductive or sexual function in the adult male.
• Type III – Excision or destruction of the testes (castration, orchidectomy) with or without Type II MGM.
• Type IV – All other harmful procedures to the male genitalia for non-medical purposes: includes pricking, piercing or incision of the prepuce, glans, scrotum or other genital tissue; cutting and suturing of the prepuce over the glans (infibulation); slitting open the urethra along the ventral surface of the penis (subincision); slitting open the foreskin along its dorsal surface (superincision); severing the frenulum; stripping the skin from the shaft of the penis; introducing corrosive or scalding substances onto the genital area; any other procedure which falls
under the definition of MGM given above.
March 16th, 2010, 6:52 am
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