Tabooing female genital cutting

August 13, 2012 By Emeritus Professor Keith Allan in Health

Tabooing female genital cutting

Enlarge

While FGC is common in Africa, the practice is illegal in many Western countries. Image: Tlupic (Flickr)

Female genital cutting (FGC) also known as female genital mutilation (FGM) and female circumcision is widely practised in Africa. FGC, described by UNICEF as “one of the worst violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”, is usually performed on girls between the ages of four and eight, but up to menarche (first menstrual cycle). It is increasingly relevant to Australia because of the growing influx of people from communities that practise FGC. In 2010 Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital reported seeing as many as 700 women a year who had suffered some form of FGC.

There are three types of FGC ranging in severity from clitoridectomy (Type I), to the added excision of the labia minora (Type II), to full infibulation or ‘pharaonic circumcision’ (Type III), which removes part of the labia majora too, leaving nothing of the normal anatomy of the genitalia except for a wall of flesh from the pubis to the anus, with the exception of a pencil-size opening at the inferior portion of the vulva to allow urine and menstrual blood to pass through.

In the latter case, the adult woman will often suffer reverse infibulation to allow for sexual intercourse; this may be effected by the husband using a knife on their wedding night.

During childbirth, the enlargement is too small to allow vaginal delivery and so the infibulation must be opened completely by enlarging the vagina with deep episiotomies.

Afterwards, the mother will often insist that what is left of her vulva be closed again so that her husband does not reject her nor her friends and family ostracise her.

FGC is illegal in many Western countries and often regarded as sadistic mutilation of girls and women. So what explains the practice?

For behaviour to be proscribed it must be perceived as in some way harmful to an individual or their community. That is not the case in those communities that practice FGC. Evidence from Egyptian mummies shows both clitoridectomy and infibulation occurred in Pharaonic times. Although it is sometimes claimed that the practice was spread from Egypt by Arab traders, there is no evidence for this. FGC transcends both culture and religion.

It seems likely that one motive for FGC is to decrease the risk of female promiscuity, since it reduces and may remove the woman’s sexual pleasure. This ill-effect, however, is firmly disputed by some infibulated women who do undoubtedly enjoy orgasm (Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, Prisoners of Ritual, 1989). Nevertheless, FGC is most likely to have negative effects on the woman’s sexual pleasure.

Infibulation supposedly provides a proof of virginity, which is a necessary condition for marriage in many FGC societies. This creates an economic advantage by permitting parents to demand a high bridal price. Furthermore, in some societies, men are forbidden to marry uncircumcised women.

One other reason given for FGC is that removal of secreting parts of the genitalia maintains cleanliness. This is unquestionably spurious because FGC cannot prevent micturition, menstruation, nor vaginal secretions resulting from sexual arousal.

FGC is sometimes claimed to cure depression, hysteria, and insanity. This is almost certainly pure myth. It is reported that the Mossi of Burkina Faso and the Igbo of Nigeria believe that babies will die if they touch the clitoris during birth; once again, this is incorrect.

More believably, it is sometimes claimed that FGC enhances beauty and that FGC prolongs the sexual pleasure of men. Of course, the same can be said of those Western women who insert rings through their clitoris and labia – in our society an acceptable form of genital mutilation.

FGC is inflicted on about two million girls a year, mostly by people who have had no medical training and who perform the cutting without anaesthetic, sterilisation, or the use of proper medical instruments. Most girls do survive, but the procedure can lead to death through shock from immense pain, excessive bleeding, or infection. There is often scarring or obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood, which leads to urinary- and reproductive-tract infections and infertility.

According to the World Health Organization, all types of FGC pose an increased risk of death to the baby (15 per cent for Type I, 32 per cent for Type II, and 55 per cent for Type III). Infibulated women are 30 per cent more at risk for caesarean sections and have a 70 per cent increase in postpartum haemorrhage compared to women without FGC. Between 10 and 20 of every thousand babies born in die during delivery as a result of the mothers having undergone genital cutting.

According to a 1997 joint WHO--UNFPA paper, “female genital mutilation is an infringement on the physical and psychosexual integrity of women and girls, is a form of violence against them, and is therefore universally unacceptable”. Shouldn’t it therefore be proscribed everywhere?

FGC (like male circumcision) is committed almost exclusively on children, and it is the preferences of the child’s parents which dominate. Those preferences reflect the values of the society in which they live; parents need for their daughter to be socially acceptable. To be proscribed in FGC practising communities, female genital cutting has to be accepted as an injurious practice. Mothers would have to accept that they themselves had been harmed by their own parents; next, they would need to persuade their menfolk that FGC should be tabooed.

It is not going to happen any day soon.

Provided by Monash University search and more info website

not rated yet  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

freethinking
Aug 13, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
When people compare FGC to male circumcision, it shows how little they know about FGC.
Rank not rated yet
Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Gym class reduces probability of obesity, study finds for first time

Little is known about the effect of physical education (PE) on child weight, but a new study from Cornell University finds that increasing the amount of time that elementary schoolchildren spent in gym class reduces the probability ...

Health created 1 hour ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Prenatal exposure to traffic is associated with respiratory infection in young children

Living near a major roadway during the prenatal period is associated with an increased risk of respiratory infection developing in children by the age of 3, according to a new study from researchers in Boston.

Health created 3 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Combined wood and tobacco smoke exposure increases risk and symptoms of COPD

People who are consistently exposed to both wood smoke and tobacco smoke are at a greater risk for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and for experiencing more frequent and severe symptoms of the disease, ...

Health created 3 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Having a nighttime critical care physician in the ICU doesn't improve patient outcomes, research finds

With little evidence to guide them, many hospital intensive care units (ICUs) have been employing critical care physicians at night with the notion it would improve patients' outcomes. However, new results from a one-year ...

Health created 3 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Study finds air pollution and noise pollution increase cardiovascular risk

Both fine-particle air pollution and noise pollution may increase a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to German researchers who have conducted a large population study, in which both factors were ...

Health created 3 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0


Study suggests new source of kidneys for transplant

Nearly 20 percent of kidneys that are recovered from deceased donors in the U.S. are refused for transplant due to factors ranging from scarring in small blood vessels of the kidney's filtering units to the organ going too ...

SARS-like virus claims new life in Saudi

A Saudi man who had contracted the coronavirus has died, raising the death toll in the kingdom from the SARS-like virus to 16, the health ministry announced on Monday on its Internet website.

The compound in the Mediterranean diet that makes cancer cells 'mortal'

New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells' "superpower" to escape death. By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer ...

Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages

(Medical Xpress)—Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.

Discovery of circadian clock in mice hair reveals period of time when damage from radiotherapy can be quickly repaired

Discovering that mouse hair has a circadian clock - a 24-hour cycle of growth followed by restorative repair - researchers suspect that hair loss in humans from toxic cancer radiotherapy and chemotherapy ...

Do salamanders hold the solution to regeneration?

Salamanders' immune systems are key to their remarkable ability to regrow limbs, and could also underpin their ability to regenerate spinal cords, brain tissue and even parts of their hearts, scientists have ...