Female Genital Mutilation

A bit of an odd topic to choose. I’m just reading an article about it in sociology, and I didn’t realise quite how bad it was. I’m not posting about it to ‘gross you out’; I simply think it’s such a serious thing that we should all probably roughly know what it is and involves. In 1996 in Sudan, 99% of females have some form of FGM, and 83% its most complete form, infibulation. In Somalia, it was 99% and 76% . FGM in various forms is a practise mainly centered in Islamic North East Africa (from the West coast savannah land above the middle jungle, up to Egpyt and down to Kenya in the East). So here’s the explanation of its most complete manifestation, infibulation (from Gerry Mackie, 1996):

Infibulation/Pharaonic circumcision:
Clitoridectomy and the excision of the labia minora as well as the inner walls of the labia majora. The raw edges of the vulva are then sewn together with catgut or held against each other with thorns. The raw edges of the labia majora are
sutured together or approximated so that the opposite sides will heal together and form a wall over the vaginal opening. A small sliver of wood is inserted into the vagina to stop coalescence of the labia majora in front of the vaginal orifice and to allow for the passage of urine and menstrual flow.

The operation takes place from a few days after birth to before the birth of the first child (depending on local custom), but mostly seems to be performed on girls around age eight, safely before puberty. It is usually done among women, in private, with little ceremony; only rarely does it have the trappings of an initiation rite. The girl is held down amid singing and shouting, which drown out her screams. Except recently among the affluent, the operation is inflicted without painkiller or antiseptic precaution. Then the girl lies with her legs tied together for several weeks. Urination and (later) menstruation are difficult because of the pencil-point opening left by the operation. After marriage, penetration takes two weeks to two years to accomplish, or is facilitated by knife; it is traumatically painful for the female, and some men feel guilt and revulsion at the cruelty involved. Childbirth requires introcision and resewing of the genital area. Virtually every ethnography and report states that FGM is defended and transmitted by the women. The mothers who have this done to their daughters love their children and want the best for them (Assaad 1980).

Health consequences are severe.

Immediate: Pain, hemorrhage, shock, acute urinary retention, urinary infection, blood poisoning (septicemia), fever, tetanus, and death.

Intermediate: Delay in wound healing, pelvic infection, dysmenorrhea, cysts and abscesses, keloid scar, and painful intercourse.

Late: Haematocolpos (vaginal closure and accumulation of menstrual fluid), infertility and miscarriage, recurrent urinary tract infection, difficulty in urinating, calculus and stone formation, hypersensitivity, and anal incontinence and fissure.

Intercourse: Difficulty in penetration, painful intercourse, and use of misplaced deinfibulation wound as false vagina.

Delivery: Prolonged and obstructed labor, hemorrhage leading to shock and death, perineal laceration, uterine inertia, and stillborn or brain-damaged infants.

Postnatal: Urinary and rectal fistula causing odor and miscarriages, and prolapse of uterus and adjacent organs. Sexual problems: Lack of orgasm, anxiety, depression, and frustration (summarized from headings in Koso-Thomas 1987:25-28).

Why is this happening? Why are loving mothers imposing this on their children?

FGM is mainly carried out because it is seen as necessary to allowing the girl child to get a husband, or at least a perceived ‘good husband’.

Firstly, it becomes a sign of ‘something desirable’ such as chastity, virginity, membership of the right ethnic group, something that enhances sex, safety in childbirth, etc.

Secondly, it’s believed by Mackie to be especially high where there was historically a lot of hypergyny (women marrying into higher social class) due to hence polygyny (many wives) at the top levels of society. The many wives of those at the top have to really make their fidelity obvious to their husband, because of the martial competition, and because it’s harder for the husband to monitor many wives’ fidelity. This practise then spreads from the top of society downwards as women from increasingly lower levels compete for upwards social mobility.

Thirdly, it seems that it’s become so prevalent (70-100%) in some areas that most women now don’t know that the above problems they face are caused by the FGM, rather than simply standard occurences. For example, one researcher was asking women who’d been infibulated how long it takes them to urinate, and they were all replying that it didn’t affect them, their urination was normal. She began to ask more descriptive questions, “How long does it take you?” and they’d say, “Normal- about 15 minutes”. Also, myths about non-FGM don’t get busted through experience (and no one’s willing to take the gamble), such as the myth that if the baby’s head touches the cliterous in childbirth, the baby will die.

In China, foot-binding ended very quickly, and Mackie explains this by reference to an education campaign that showed that this practise was harmful and an out-of-date embarassment to China, and helped parents organise into groups that pledged to neither footbind their girl children, nor allow their boy children to marry foot-bound girls. Together, the education and joint action created communities of non-footbinding large enough to make the costs of footbinding outweigh the benefits, and the practise ended in a generation. Perhaps something similar could work with FGM. There may be a reason it wouldn’t, but I can’t see what that reason is.