As we celebrate international women’s week and all their achievements I beg that for a second we focus our attention on the war for control of women in so many parts of the world done through a practice known as “Female Genital Mutilation” or FGM.
The reality for hundreds of thousands of girls as young as three years old is the mutilation of their genitals against their will in an effort to please patriarchal and cultural standards. We must be the voice for the woke who have none. Not every woman has access to an education, a career, the choice of marriage, or a society which will accept her not based on her anatomy but on her as a human being.
You might be asking, what is FGM and why does it occur? This practice has been happening for centuries but sadly did not die in the Middle Ages, instead, according to the United Nations, it continues in thirty African countries, the Middle East but also in some Latin American and Asian countries. A quick google search will show you that it is popular also amongst immigrant populations from these countries to return home to have FGM done to their own daughters as a sort of “rite of passage”.
Female Genital Mutilation can be done several ways but is meant to ensure a girl’s virginity by stopping her from experiencing pleasure through intercourse by partial or full removal of the clitoris and in some cases sewing the labia together. This makes penetration and vaginal birth incredibly difficult. Sometimes these bodily functions are only then achievable via a razor blade cut after the girl is married off. As one can imagine this is both extremely traumatic and painful.
Mortality rates for women who experience FGM at any age are incredibly high with many dying from blood loss, urinary tract infections as they’re unable to fully empty their bladder and extreme discomfort and pain. The procedure is also carried out without the
use of anaesthetic. It is seen as a mark of honour to undergo FGM and girls are praised and congratulated for undergoing it if they do not exhibit signs of the intense pain they are enduring. All women who have suffered at the hands of FGM and the societies that perpetuate its continuation have remembered with sorrow the immense pain and confusion they felt when women they knew and trusted cut into them like they were worthless. In fact, according to one documentary, a girl who has been “cut” can be sold for twice as many cows as an “uncut girl”.
So why is it done? FGM offers physical and tangible pain and suffering to young girls in promise of intangible and lofty ideals of purity, marriage and chastity. It is seen as improper for a girl to be uncut and she may never be married if she remains that way, leading to isolation from her peers that she relies on to survive. FGM is explained and justified by terms like “cultural practice” and “passed on through generations” to mask how it is blatant child abuse. The world needs to wake up and hear the cries of its women.
FGM speaks of wider global issues such as the war on women’s sexuality and freedom. FGM keeps women in pain, vulnerable and ashamed of their own bodies while men live their lives free of such constraints. While in the western society that you and I are accustomed, something such as FGM may seem alien but we can all attest to women’s freedom being deemed a threat to men.
While reconstructive surgery exists, it is mostly inaccessible to the women who need it most as it is seen as a cosmetic procedure and not one of ending suffering. To support women facing the long term consequences of FGM and to criminalise FGM, consider donating to or getting involved with https://www.desertflowerfoundation.org/en Or https://equalitynow.org/.