Female Genital Mutilation:
Female genital mutilation is a problem which affects over 100 million women around the world. Female genital mutilation is done for reasons which include religion and economics on girls in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.
FGM has often been referred to as female circumcision and compared to male circumcision. However, such comparison is often misleading. Both practices include the removal of well- functioning parts of the genitalia and are quite unnecessary. Both rituals also serve to perpetuate customs which seek to regulate and keep control over the body and sexuality of the individual. However, FGM is far more drastic and damaging than male circumcision. A more appropriate analogy would be between clitoridectomy and penisdectomy where the entire penis is removed.
The term FGM covers three main varieties of genital mutilation:
1) "Sunna" circumcision: Consists of the removal of the prepuce and/or the tip of the clitoris. Sunna in Arabic means "tradition".
Even though FGM is practiced in mostly Islamic countries, it is not an exclusively Islamic practice. FGM is a cross-cultural and cross-religious ritual. In Africa and the Middle East it is performed by Muslims, Coptic Christians, members of various indigenous groups, Protestants, and Catholics, to name a few.
FGM is mostly done in unsanitary conditions in which a midwife uses unclean sharp instruments such as razor blades, scissors, kitchen knives, and pieces of glass. These instruments are frequently used on several girls in succession and are rarely cleaned, causing the transmission of a variety of viruses such as the HIV virus, and other infections. Antiseptic techniques and anesthesia are generally not used, or for that matter, heard of. This is akin to a doctor who uses the same surgical instrument on a number of women at the same time without cleaning any of them.
Beyond the obvious initial pains of the operations, FGM has long-term physiological, sexual, and psychological effects. The unsanitary environment under which FGM takes place results in infections of the genital and surrounding areas and often results in the transmission of the HIV virus which can cause AIDS. Some of the other health consequences of FGM include primary fatalities as a result of shock, hemorrhage or septicemia. In order to minimize the risk of the transmission of the viruses, some countries like Egypt made it illegal for FGM to be practiced by any other practitioners than trained doctors and nurses in hospitals. While this seems to be a more humane way to deal with FGM and try to reduce its health risks, more tissue is apt to be taken away due to the lack of struggle by the child if anesthesia is used.
Long-term complications include sexual frigidity, genital malformation, delayed menarche, chronic pelvic complications, recurrent urinary retention and infection, and an entire range of obstetric complications whereas the fetus is exposed to a range of infectious diseases as well as facing the risk of having his or her head crushed in the damaged birth canal. In such cases the infibulated mother must undergo another operation whereby she is "opened" further to insure the safe birthing of her child.
Girls undergo FGM when they are around three years old, though some of them are much older than that when they undergo the operation. The age varies depending on the type of the ritual and the customs of the local village or region.
In various cultures there are many "justifications" for these practices. A girl who is not circumcised is considered "unclean" by local villagers and therefore unmarriageable. A girl who does not have her clitoris removed is considered a great danger and ultimately fatal to a man if her clitoris touches his penis.
Family honor, cleanliness, protection against spells, insurance of virginity and faithfulness to the husband, or simply terrorizing women out of sex are sometimes used as excuses for the practice of FGM.
Some people believe that FGM is a barbaric practice done to girls and women in some remote villages in foreign countries of the world. However, up until a few decades ago, it was still believed that the clitoris is a very dangerous part of the female anatomy. Who can forget S. Freud who stated in one of his books entitled Sexuality and the Psychology of Love that the "elimination of clitoral sexuality is a necessary precondition for the development of femininity."
The National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), a networking organization have brought together social scientists and medical practitioners from all over the world who are fighting FGM as well as male circumcision. NOCIRC has also founded the FGM Awareness and Education Project in August 1996. One of the goals of the project is to create an FGM module which will provide information and training material to health care professionals. NOCIRC also organized the Fifth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations at the University of Oxford August 1998.
Congresswoman Patricia Shroeder introduced H.R. 3247, a bill to outlaw FGM in the United States in the fall of 1994. The bill was then combined with The Minority Health Initiatives Act, H.R.3864. This bill was then combined with H.R. 941 on February 14, 1995 which was to be cited as the "Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation of 1995." The bill was passed in September 1996.
Excerpted from: Female Genital Mutilation: An Introduction The Fenale Genital Mutilation Research Homepage
http://www.hollyfeld.org/fgm/
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