Why Has Female Genital Mutilation Survived For So Long?

Genital mutilation

(AFP photo)

What is Female genital mutilation?

Imagine what eating your favorite food, or any dish, will feel like without the ability of your tongue to taste it. That is female genital mutilation. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is predominantly the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora.

The tongue is to the mouth and eating, what the clitoris is to the vagina and female sexuality and sensuality. There is abounding empirical evidence that the route to female sexual pleasure passes through an arousal of the clitoris. Would you therefore, of sound mental and physical health, and of your own volition, cut your tongue or allow its cutting?

If our answers are identical, it is a resounding NO! As far as ideas for stomping and stamping out this genital mutilation practice, my submission, therefore, is that the questions must be that of finding out “who does this barbaric and ancient practice benefit and why does it persist?”

Who does female genital mutilation benefit?

Men. Yes, indeed, the practice benefits men. In the arsenal of its strongest proponents, a paramount argument is that female genital butchering guarantees that the young girls are presented as trophy wives to the husbands – that these girls are virgins. Principally, therefore, female genital mutilation practice is to please and appease the men in these communities. Men are obviously the beneficiaries of the practice. They are the ones salivating at the prospect of having chaste wives.

There is no question that if female genital mutilation consisted in completely stitching up the female genitalia to only allow room for urination, there would not have been a deafening silence of the men in the societies where this butchering of the clitoris is celebrated. Au contraire! There would have been outrage by men. Men are silent because such mutilation is supposed to curtail the sexual pleasure of the woman to manageable levels for the husband.

But such an argument of manageability, is, admittedly, an admission of weakness that men would not want to espouse or advocate. How many men pound their chests that they are unable to satisfy their spouses in bed? This readily makes sense, without delving into its history and genesis, that women would be championing the merits of a practice that ironically endangers their physical and emotional well-being and that of their daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters and communities.

The inherent paradox informingly points to the origins of the nefarious practice that is mostly prevalent in patriarchal and heavily dogmatic societies. Here, the objectification of women as tools for sex and reproduction is the rule and not the exception. Hence, women are deemed unworthy of enjoying sex because it should be a chore whose benefactor is the man.

It must be said that even the Koran, according to practicing and knowledgeable Muslims, provides no foundational premise for female genital mutilation in any form of Islam, much as its predominance in 29 countries across Africa and the Middle East is largely in Muslim countries. For most of its practitioners, like the Masai in Kenya, the nomadic lifestyle of the male folk justified its incrustation into the cultural fabric as a means for society to watch over the wives of husbands who were out tending to cattle.

Even as US President Obama did not shy away from evoking female genital mutilation during his July visit to Kenya, it is widely reported that many educated Kenyan men who reject the practice have been marrying non-Kenyan wives who are not beholden to the tradition. It is also reported that many of these men are finding out to what extent their mothers are willing to go as custodians of female genital mutilation. And the question then begs to be asked “Why?”

Why does female genital mutilation persist?

Women. Yes, indeed the practice persists because of women. These are the women who are enforcers of the practice. They are the mothers /women who are responsible for organizing what is preposterously known as a rite of passage. The tradition persists because of the mother who takes her daughter(s) to these butchering sessions in the name of circumcision. And by the way, it is inconceivable that anyone of sound mind and judgment would want to equate female genital mutilation with male circumcision.

(Male circumcision, almost universally practiced, is removal, often surgical, of some, or all, of the foreskin from the penis. Unlike the analogy of the tongue that was used in comparing and contrasting female genital butchering at the onset of this piece, male circumcision is like a man scraping skin in the process of shaving his beard. There is necessary bleeding, but the process of male circumcision actually enhances male sexuality and sensuality.)

The tradition arguably persists, we were saying, as a most twisted and upside down form of “pay it forward”. In this context, let us call it “revenge it forward”. It is more of the crab mentality where generation after generation of women are inflicting the pain of genital mutilation on their daughters and granddaughters because it was done to them and they have never figured out how to free themselves from the agony and bondage. While education and time are overpowering ignorance in many of these societies, there is even greater news about surgical reversals of female genital mutilation.

Watch |  Why The Futa Are Turning Away From Genital Mutilation

Beneficiaries of restorative surgery for FGM (Gemale Genital Mutilation) – those who have access to and can afford the procedure – say it is healing their physical scars. Leading experts in the field, like Dr Marci Bowers, not only say it is safe, they say the worst case of female genital mutilation is reversible because the clitoris, though mutilated on the surface, breathes underneath the skin like magma under a sleeping volcano.

The most beautiful part of it is that you and I can also do something about it. One way is certainly by shunning the culture of silence and raising awareness about genital mutilation. In the meantime, DUNIA Magazine is inviting you on to join its “Million Strong for the Afrikan Woman” campaign on September 19, 2015 in Stone Mountain Park, Georgia. The 3K (three mile) Run/Walk gears at raising awareness and making a difference on a backward looking tradition that truly belongs in the dumpsters.

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION VIDEO



Innocent is on Twitter: @InnoChia

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