ATTENTION: This blog contents contain some explicit pictures and topics. If you are eating or having a nice social time with people right now, you may want to read this later or take one big breath.
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By Rumika Suzuki
Whether you are a feminist or not, you still need to know about FGM, and its impact on 125 million girls and women. Female Genital Mutilation is predominantly practiced in Africa along with regions of the Middle East and Asia. Across these countries, most daughters have had their genitalia cut, with some flesh removed before ages 5-14. It is never ok under any circumstance to disfigure a female body part against their will. Here’s why we all should talk about FGM.
1. It’s definitely harmful.
There are four types of FGM surgery defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). Type I and II are the most common procedures. It is estimated that 80% of women have experienced either procedure. Type III is known as the most extreme method, and 15% of women have undergone it. The WHO also identifies all other harmful procedures to female genitalia such as pricking, piercing, incising, scraping, and cauterization as Type IV.
2. Because it’s intentional violence against young women.
The WHO defined FGM as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”*1 Since 2008, the WHO is particularly concerned about the increasing trend of FGM and has begun alerting medically trained personnel to stop performing those procedures. The global institution is urging to terminate FGM related rituals. Nevertheless, why is it so difficult to prohibit apparent violence against woman?
3.Traditional values and cultural beliefs say, “You must do it.”
Bleeding, pain, and the daughter’s opinion do not matter in the decision. FGM is conducted by traditional practitioners (often parents or relatives of the young daughter or leaders in a village) who believe all women in the world cut their genitalia for the sake of goodness (no joke). The UNICEF report in 2013 pointed out that one of the factors delaying the end of FGM is the pressure to conform to group norms and social orders. *2 For this reason, it is difficult for individual households to stop the practice on their own.
4.It can lead to death, HIV transmission, infection, septicemia, tetanus, extreme pain during period and urination, and high accident rate during childbirth.
These are all potential outcomes due to FGM. Coercive practice of FGM also damages the integrity and dignity of young women for a lifelong period. The injured young girls also struggle with mental disorders including traumatic stress, depression, and memory loss due to the lack of aftercare by medical specialists.
5. It is a global danger to women’s rights.
Despite the international involvement, cultural belief is a huge factor why FGM still happens today. In “Infidel,” the author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali elaborates her own experience when she was five. When her parents were gone for a week, her grandma cut and sewed her genitalia to preserve her “purity.” Including Ayaan’s grandma, older people who are eager to prolong FGM tradition, tend to believe that children become healthy and fertile once they undergo the surgery.
Social stigma is another common reason for doing FGM. Non-FGM women are treated as prostitutes and threatened that they can’t get married in most rural villages and isolated families. We need a mechanism to destruct the system that slows women’s social mobility; a system perpetuating social hierarchy of vulnerable girls.
6. Is the world capable to terminate FGM?
We should believe that FGM will not exist in the near future. To make this happen, we can ally with the women and support progressive people (such as Pastoralist Child Foundation)to make their voice be heard to a broader audience. Because of a social obligation and a widespread belief in the area, more concerns and voices of individuals outside the closed community are needed to threaten the authority and the advocates of FGM. Listen to these people, go outside, tell your neighbors.
In addition, Synodos, a Japanese academic online journal, reported a case study in Sudan that found that there is less FGM occurrence in areas with higher educational standards and educated parents.*3 As people get more educated, less power FGM holds.
Educational knowledge and free ideology that can address to end FGM are necessary to reduce the FGM proponents. The power and actions of individuals are more potent than prohibition created by law.
References:
*1 World Health Organization Female Genital Mutilation
*2 UNICEF Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change
*3 Synodos article http://synodos.jp/international/5352
