For discussion: The feminist forum's thoughts on FGM.

As a feminist, what are your thoughts on this terrible practice? How did you first learn about it? What are your opinions on the way this topic is being addressed in global society, the media (Western and non) and most recently on DU.com?

I'll start: I think it's hideous and should horrify the world as the human rights abuse it is. I first learned about it in Alice Walker's "Possessing the Secret of Joy." I think the UN and other human rights watch groups are generally doing a good thing by attempting to raise awareness about the phenomenon--did anyone see the film about it (which heavily criticized FGM) that came out in 2005? I've forgotten the title, (it was a drama) but Roger Ebert called it one of the year's ten best. To me, that's a reflection that awareness is slightly higher than it was say, ten years ago, but of course, more needs to be done. Recently, I'm uncomfortable with the way the Western media has adjusted its language with regard to FGM, referring to it most frequently as "genital 'cutting,'" because I feel that while it may make women who have been the subjects of FGM feel less stigmatized, it makes it easier for people who think of this as simply a "foreign problem" to brush it off as "not something we should spend much time worried about." (I've seen foreign papers continue to use the term "mutilation" to describe the injuries sustained by survivors of FGM.) And on DU.com lately...I have to confess, I really hate it when those posters who are strongly opposed to the routine circumcision of male infants in the West take apart the threads on FGM with comments like, "but this happens to baby boys in America every day and no one is outraged about that!!!" To me, that's another example of the way many individuals continue to try to paint men as the victims in our Patriarchal society, and even if this is not their active intention, must interrupt any serious discussion of an issue affecting primarily women and try to turn the focus of those participating in it back to men and the oppressions they face. Finally, it bothers me that so many folks in the most recent discussion on FGM in the LBN forum seemed concerned about the problem only because now a study has documented the high mortality rate suffered by women and their babies in childbirth as a direct result of the genital mutilation suffered by the mothers. What...it didn't matter before, when the "only" risk to the women it happens to was that they might bleed to death during the mutilation, get HIV soon after, and have extreme difficulty experiencing anything like pleasure during sex as a result?

But that's me. Other comments?

I first heard about FGM way back in college doing some volunteer work with two feminist groups on campus. I don't recall specifically reading anything or seeing anything about it, but I'm sure I did. I know it was discussed.

I have no idea how FGM became a part of any culture and I don't think I really want to know. I think it's a sadistic, vicious practice. You have to be a pushy fundamentalist of some kind to inflict that on anyone and think it's a good thing. You have to ignore the all the health problems that result from it, or not care. There is a whole lot of callous disregard for women built into FGM, even when it's women doing it to girls.

The fact that this brutality can become such a core part of a society that any woman would willingly do this to a girl boggles my mind. I'm sure it started out that it was only done to certain women who had lesser status and no protection, and somehow it ended up gaining some religious value and was spread to all women.

Please don't take offense at my next statement. I'm often very glad I was born a boy.

One of the only positive things about that vile LBN thread was that the posters who confuse male circumcision with clitoridectomies and the mutilation of external genitalia that takes place in FGM rituals were promptly checked by those who are better informed.

"You have to be a pushy fundamentalist of some kind to inflict that on anyone and think it's a good thing."

The psycho-cultural damage that has been done to the members of societies that practice FGM goes quite a bit deeper than that, friend. Alice Walker discusses that quite a bit in "Possessing the Secret of Joy," which addresses, as you seem to know, the disturbing fact that FGM is a practice primarily inflicted by women upon women to appease the misogynist male-dominated social order those women are regarded as little more than breeding devices in.

girls, and most likely for the same reasons.

The reason footbinding was practiced was that a woman who didn't have a husband (or a son) had no way to survive economically, other than possibly prostitution or being a house servant, and men, especially those with money and power, but even those with less, demanded wives with crippled feet who had to walk with canes. Only the lowest ranking peasants, whose wives had to be able to do their share of the heavy work, would accept a wife with normal feet.

Therefore, women felt compelled to bind their daughters' feet--a nasty process that involved breaking the bones of the feet and curling the foot under-- in order to ensure their economic futures.

I saw a few elderly women with bound feet in Beijing in 1990, but nowhere else in China. I asked one of our women guides about this, and she said that the rich kept the practice up longer than the poor.

Anyway, I think the psychology is the same with FGM or with 18" corsets or lip disks or neck rings or any other ways in which women's bodies have been mutilated from childhood:

Mothers know that their daughters need to be married to survive.

The eligible men demand that their wives be multilated in a certain way.

Therefore, mothers participate in these horrific customs out of a misguided sense of concern for their daughters' futures.

I bet if some of the prominent men in the countries where FGM is practiced were to announce that their daughters would not be mutilated and that they wanted their sons to marry unmutilated women, the custom would die out pretty fast.

Yeah, I'll bet you are, especially when subject matter like this comes up.

Hey, ThomCat? It's great that you don't want to offend feminist posters here...I guess, but if that is your objective, I would suggest you try harder. Posts like the one you just made easily offend me, because comments in which men happily state how glad they are that they were not born women really undervalue the depth and gravity of widespread misogyny and the women it kills every day. The blase "Whew, I'm just glad it's not me up on the chopping block, ladies!" attitude is really quite repulsive. So is the apparent need you feel to condescendingly request that the female feminists here don't get offended by statements which you appear to be admitting are so poorly worded they almost seemed designed to be offensive. That implication--that we high-strung women who are feminists "just take offense to every little thing"--is shit we've all heard too often and are damn sick of. I hope that in the future, you will consider the impact that your comments can have before just throwing around carelessly phrased statements. Most of us take a great deal of care to avoid angering or upsetting any feminists here. I also hope you'll review the rules for participating in this group--I don't believe you're familiar with them.

I will be more carefull.

I am familar with the rules. Thank you.

I posted that not to belittle anything or anyone but because I often recognize that I have benefitted a great deal simply being male. Whenever I am reminded of things that women endure, I make note of how much I have been spared. I recognize all the privilages and protections being male gives me. That doesn't meant that I wouldn't abolish male-privilage if I could, just that I am not unaware or unappreciative of the special treatment I have been given un-earned.

I don't think anyone on this board is "high-strung." In fact, that is why I started hanging out here. I came here to escape GD, where people often are high-strung.

Again, I'm sorry.

a hymenotomy after birth, the snipping away of another useless piece of flesh that causes untold misery down the road.

I first learned about FGM in an obstetrics text that carefully detailed how these women were supposed to be sewn back up after childbirth so the husband would have the pleasure of "retaking the virginity(!)" I kid you not. It was one of those texts that was trying to turn itself into an ethical pretzel in the name of cultural sensitivity. I'm delighted to say it's been out of print for over 30 years.

They glossed over the complications of pregnancy and childbirth, the increased morbidity and mortaility of both mother and child, that this hideous practice causes.

It really needs to be stopped.

"To me, that's another example of the way many individuals continue to try to paint men as the victims in our Patriarchal society, and even if this is not their active intention, must interrupt any serious discussion of an issue affecting primarily women and try to turn the focus of those participating in it back to men and the oppressions they face."

I couldn't have put it any better. It's my number one complaint with most of the liberal men I know. No matter how much they may say they support women's rights...they always have to have their oppression acknowledged first...and their ego stroked :eyes:...before we can DARE to talk about women's problems. *sigh*

Guys will go on and on about things like divorce laws, circumcision, and even how male characters are portrayed as dolts in some stupid TV ad or sitcom. But most will not stand up to the corporate and military industrial structures that view them as cannon fodder or cogs to be worked into an early grave. Neither will they stand up to the homo-social order that puts intense pressure on them to fit into an impossible manly ideal and requires them to repudiate their emotional needs.

So screw 'em, I say. We try to tell them and they don't listen.

Abusive, perverted, bullshit misogynist practice that needs to be stopped YESTERDAY. I don't give a FUCK how many years it's been practiced, or that Grandmothers do it to their grandchildren, or that some disputed reference is quoted in the Qu'ran. Or that it's culturally entrenched. It has No fucking relation to male circumcision other than the general area of anatomy. I don't NEED to be culturally sensitive to this bullshit other than not make a cut woman ashamed. If I had the time, and the money, and probably the GUTS, I'd get my ass over in Somalia, where some of the worst forms of it is practiced. And see if I could change the mind of ONE person who thinks this is OK. It would be worth it.

Those women, among other things, RIP UP during childbirth because of scar tissue. Those painful episotomies? Nothing compared to ripping and tearing the wrong fucking way.

I found out about this years ago and I don't remember when. At the time I worked with, and got close too, several Ethiopian and Eritrean women. Some were cut some were not. I worked with Somalian women, who at that particular time were walking poster children for PTSD. One or two of my Ethiopian friends were more open about it, because they were not cut,(although they said it was widespread in Eritrea) I think I posted in that LPN thread that I know a women who took her daughter back home to have the mutilation done. This women had serious issues other than that.

The whole topic is instant rage for me right now, partly because of the dismissive bullshit I was reading. I know there are movements in several African countries to educate the population to have the mutilation stopped. It certaintly won't happen yesterday, but it NEEDS to be stopped.
And don't think forms of this haven't been practiced in America, because they most certaintly have. Sorry for the rant.