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A seven-year-old girl is screaming hysterically in a secluded room. She has just had her clitoris cut off, her vagina sewn together and the surrounding areas of her genitalia burnt with corrosives. Her legs have been tied together and for months she will not be able to walk. Furthermore she will have no choice but to urinate through her fleshy wounds. The physical pain and psychological trauma will haunt her until the day she dies, unless she bleeds to death first.
Although types of cutting may vary, this is the uncomfortable truth behind Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Practicing communities believe that FGM preserves virginity until marriage, enhances male sexual pleasure, is part of custom or tradition and finally (false) belief that it a religious requirement. According to the World Health Organization, Female Genital Mutilation is practiced in 28 African countries, Israel, Iraqi Kurdistan, Oman, Yemen, and now occurs within migrant communities in the United Kingdom and America. It is estimated that as many as 100-150 million women around the world have been subjected to FGM.
During the two years that I spent researching and developing a play based on Female Genital Mutilation, I met a number of agencies that work in preventative capacities, including Project Azure (The Metropolitan Police Child Protection Unit), the NHS and Forward U.K. Aside from the physical violation, it became clear to me that Female Genital Mutilation was designed to destroy the spirit and self-worth of young girls before they developed into women.
At a young age, the girls are schooled into believing that they exist, purely for male gratification and that their bodies are just vessels to facilitate that pleasure. Some will never have been educated and some will also be forced into marriage under the age of 16. When they marry, the husbands decide how they will be re-opened. If he is 'kind' he will have her cut open, though most men from practicing communities feel as though it compromises their masculinity and prefer to force them open through penetrative sex. After they are impregnated a process of de-infibulation occurs when the genitalia is re-opened for childbirth. During the course of their lives, they can look forward to extensive problems during childbirth, menstrual difficulties, recurring infections and endless trauma.
Under all of these circumstances it is nigh-on impossible for women to reach their full potential and that is the real reason that they are subjected to Female Genital Mutilation. Denying them their basic human rights to bodily integrity is psychological manipulation. When those rights are taken away and handed over to men or the community, women can subsequently believe that they are insignificant members of society and become resigned to roles as second class citizens.
Female Genital Mutilation is a crime in the U.K and many other countries around the world, but despite this it is still widely practiced. The only way it can be stopped is by educating practicing communities about the disastrous effects that is has on women and children and ensuring that they are treated as autonomous human beings that have a right to their dignity and integrity.
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Our 'boy circumcision is good / girl circumcision is bad' approach in the West is sexist, hypocritical, culturally biased and is not based on the fundamental human rights of individuals to bodily integrity.
An alien visitor may not notice the subtle anatomical differences between still-developing sexual organs of young boys and girls being subjected to forced circumcision. I suspect what they would see, is terrified children in excruciating pain, blood, erogenous tissues as the primary focus of attention and adults exercising power over a weak and vulnerable person, while callously ignoring their desperate cries for mercy. They would hear the very same justifications in terms of culture, tradition, myths of improved hygiene & cleanliness and a desire to impose on others, the aesthetic preferences of those who were themselves cut as children.
The uncomfortable truth is; cultural bias is the biggest difference between male and female genital cutting. Let's aim to end the whole ghastly business!
There is no reason to tolerate this brutal assault of innocent beings who cannot protect themselves. Its being a cultural tradition is no excuse. Stoning would not be tolerated. Polygamy is not tolerated. Neither should this be.
Circumcision is bad enough, but this is just grotesque. This must stop and it must stop NOW ! Politicians around the world need to pressurise the countries involved and maybe reduce the aid to them as long as this goes on, because it must stop !!!
But it does still happen in Britain, and probably well over 20 thousand children are at risk here every year. That averages out at two children every hour. In Britain.
May I please urge all UK citizens and residents to sign the HM Govt e-petition to 'STOP FGM in the UK': http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/35313.
We must not wait any longer to ensure that this unspeakable practice becomes history.
Thanks, Hilary
PS There is also a Twitter feed which links to this e-petition: @NoFGM1 / #NoFGM
What I've written repeatedly on this topic is that FGM is a cultural problem, and cultural problems require cultural solutions. I've looked at countries that have tackled FGM with cultural solutions and found they've been effective in reducing the practice. In my experience, only solutions that correctly identify a problem work. Put another way: if they work, they've probably correctly identified the problem. Coercive measures can work, but that is due to the coercion. However, in those countries that I know of that have used punitive laws, FGM has not been reduced.
This is what I think: -
Those who are concerned about FGM should be grown up about it, accept that in some cultures it is an accepted practice, and should campaign for health and education programmes based on understanding and respect but, specifically, counter the cultural beliefs that foster the practice. The reason they should take this approach is it works. I don't want little girls to be cut so I like this approach.
On the other side, there are those who take an ideological position. They talk about oppression and human rights and, especially, they talk about their outrage. The more girls that are cut the better because then they can demonstrate just how terribly upset and distressed they are about it. You see, what matters is not the distress of the little girls being cut, but their distress. They want to have it properly acknowledged.
Mutilating children of any sex is wrong and where it is found it should be punished and not given understanding of legal privileged of any sort. Either children are our responsibility or our property, which is it to be ?
The societies you speak about don't consider themselves to be denying 50% of their individuals rights. They might look at our society and conclude that for all our rights and equality, we are a pretty unhealthy and dysfunctional lot. They might wonder what benefits are conferred by the rights we value so highly.
I don't approve of FGM and think it should be outlawed in this country, but it should be tackled amongst immigrants primarily through education. It should not be outlawed where it's practiced due to western pressure, as is the current situation. Instead, it should be treated as a health education issue.
If you only read one book this year I suggest it is this one. My sentiments come from reading her work and not from a western perspective.
http://www.economist.com/node/8663231?story_id=8663231
If you really are interested in FGM, there is an interesting paper on the practice in Kenya here:
http://www.carraguard.com/pdfs/frontiers/FR_FinalReports/Kenya_FGC.pdf
Contrast the approach being taken in Kenya, where it is not illegal, to Egypt, where it is illegal. I know it may seem anathema to suggest it may be relevant or helpful, but the Kenyan report also details the beliefs and attitudes of those who practice FGM.
One way of making inroads is probably to punish the mothers, maybe with lifelong prison sentences. That'll be expensive initially, but may be a deterrent. Every time a girl or young woman presents at a clinic and the doctor notices it, he/she must be obliged to report it so the mother can be punished.
You could also have medical examinations when awarding people a visa and make them sign they will not engage in this practice. Should they be found to have breached this agreement, that is grounds to cancel the residential visa or even newly aquired citizenship. Trying to convince them is all very sweet, but the general consensus seems to be they leave their countries for a better one but then not acknowledge the parameters why that country is better.
By all means send the WHOLE FAMILY back to where-ever they came from or throw the whole extended family in jail to rot, but the men in the family are just as guilty if not more so!
I'll bet they would never accept the idea of having their son's "family jewels" mutilated to make things more comfortable for their future (mutilated) wives! Put THAT idea in their heads and watch those fathers squirm!
Make it clear anyone who does this disgusting procedure in the UK will be treated with the full majesty of the law. Every effort should be made to stop it. Seems the police spend far too much time on the 'easy nicks' when there is seriously nasty stuff like gross physical and mental abuse of children for religious and cultural reasons going on behind closed doors.
Any parents in the U.K. who have FGM practised on their children need to be prosecuted. The PC brigade - re: ethnic communities - should be ignored for the naive fools they are.