Female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is a practice that involves the removal of part or all of the female external genitalia. It occurs throughout the world, but most commonly in Africa where they say that it is a tradition and social custom to keep a young girl pure and a married woman faithful. But to some Westerners, the practice is viewed as being primitive and barbaric. We react with disgust and find it nearly incomprehensible that female genital mutilation can occur in the world today
Woman who live in the United States are not typically circumcised, however some woman live out if the social normality in the United States and have for reasons such as religion been circumcised. Woman all over the United States are affected by the practice of female circumcision even though it is illegal; being circumcised is illegal because there are no medical benefits as a woman. In many cases children of immigrant parents will come to the United States circumcised, this can be difficult for children developing in an environment in which female circumcision is not practiced or widely accepted. The effects of female circumcision and it’s physical, psychological and social effects on women who live in the United States can be impactful to
Many of us never heard of Female Genital Mutilation until the story of Kauziya Kasinga, a woman from West Africa. Her father did not believe in polygamy, forced marriage, or "female circumcision". He died when she was 17 and the father's sister inherited the home, banished the mother, ended Fauziya's schooling, and arranged a marriage as a fourth wife to a man she had never met. The aunt scheduled her for the circumcision and she ran with 3,000 dollars that one of her aunts had saved.
...rtain culture or religion believes. These beliefs may be such that removing pleasure from a female’s body is to prevent temptation, or that circumcising a male’s penis is to follow a religious belief as is the case in Judaism. In both of these practices a human part of the body is removed. The person undergoing the circumcision, unfortunately, usually has no voice on this process; it is totally up to their parents to make a decision for them and in the end it is the child who is really affected because he or she may not be “normal” according to where he or she lives. This issue has been an ethical and political target over the years due to the fact of the consequences of a female genital mutilation could bring at giving birth. Some people will argue that both a male’s and female’s circumcision are moral, while others will argue that both are wrong, even mutilating.
Female Circumcision: Rite of Passage Or Violation of Rights?" Guttmacher Institute: Home Page. Frances A. Althaus. Web. 15 June 2010. .
Many are unaware of the origin and reality of male circumcision and are under the impression that it is a painless and necessary procedure. While providing an explanation of a routine circumcision, being performed on an infant, Dr. Paul M. Fleiss reveals the gruesome truth that “…his foreskin must be torn from his glans, literally skinning it alive.” Most people do not imagine this is the way that a circumcision is performed, nor are they are aware of how the procedure originated. Male circumcision began in the US during the Victorian Era, as a punishment for masturbation, since the practice desensitizes the penis. As time and society progress, more medically relevant reasons are provided for this unnecessary, and barbaric surgery. The routine circumcision of infants should be discontinued, considering the possible health benefits have been greatly exaggerated and do not warrant abolishing a male’s right to control his own body. A lack of education coupled
"Did you know that 125 million women have experienced female genital mutilation worldwide, and 3 million girls estimate at risk of the procedure each year"? (Facts to End FGM). Female genital mutilation is a procedure for females that implicates partial or total removal of the female genital organs. This procedure intentionally alters or causes injury to the female that can have short and long-term health risks with no benefits. In recent years, the practice of female genital mutilation has been increasingly in the news, generating a complex debate about cultural norms and the worth of sexual functioning (Nussbaum 13). Female genital mutilation is known in terms such as female circumcision and female genital cutting. Female circumcision is the action or traditional practices of cutting off the clitoris and sometimes the labia of girls or young women. FGM contemplates as a dull violation of human rights for women and girls. There are four types of FGM operations. The first type is excision or removal of the clitoral hood, that is either with or without removal of parts or all of the clitoris. The second type is the removal of the clitoris together with parts or all the labia minora. The third type is the removal of or all the external genitalia. The fourth type is a variety of procedures that includes, scraping or cutting of the vagina and surrounding tissues. "The World Health Organization estimates that overall, in today's world between 85 and 115 million women have had such operations" (Nussbaum 13).
Taylor, Vivienne. “Female Genital Mutilation: Cultural Practice or Child Abuse?” Pediatric Nursing 15.1 (2003): 31-34.
Female circumcision is viewed as a disgusting and barbaric act by a majority of people in first world countries. The United States has even gone as far as to get an international law made to ban female circumcision because of the harmful physical and psychological problems associated with it. In the “Female Genital Cutting Fact Sheet” created and reviewed by Caroline Banquet-Walsh, Sandra Jordan, and Francesca Moneta I discovered that female genital mutilation is an e...
In Searching for “Voices”: Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debates over Female Genital Operations, Walley discusses the social issues concerning female genital operations as perceived by “westerners”, as well as discusses her ethnographic account of female circumcision. Her main purpose of doing this was to lay the groundwork for “a more productive feminist and anthropological debate” capable of going beyond the binary terms in which female circumcisions are usually discussed. Since female circumcisions are known by a variety of names, such as female genital mutilation and female genital torture, and with her understanding of the negative connotation often associated with those varieties of names, Walley makes the decision to adopt the term female genital operations instead. In 1988, Walley went in the village of KiKhome, in western Kenya as an English teacher and immersed herself in the lives of the people living around the village to better understand the practice of female genital operations as an outsider. One day, some of her students invited her to assist at a female genital operation ceremony. She found out that the participants see circumcision as a rite of passage into adulthood. However, she truly wanted to know the participants’ personal views on the topic rather than the imposed views of their parents and their culture. The four women she interviewed told her that “their custom was good,” and it was something that a person needs to accept with her whole being not to feel the pain. Nevertheless, some of the women told her that they would not want their daughters to undergo circumcision, and that they themselves regretted having done the procedure. Walley finally gave up “searching for real voices,” because what t...
Females as a general population have been faced with discrimination across the ages. In recent history, women have begun to assert their freedom and independence from the male oriented traditions that have spanned generations. In industrialized countries the discrimination of women has diminished, but a serious form of violation of human rights occurs sometimes in parts of the world, such as Africa, the Middle East, and even sometimes the United States and other industrialized countries in North America and Europe. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is an umbrella term for three subtypes of crimes committed against women as a part of various coming of age rituals for young girls in certain patriarchal communities in Africa, spreading through migration of a populace through Northeastern and Western Africa and some spread into the Middle Eastern countries. These communities integrated this practice into women through marriage into these cultures, spreading this practice into their daughters and so forth. FGM has been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) into three basic subtypes, each growing more and more disturbing. Subtype number one is a clitoridectomy which is the complete or partial removal of the clitoris, while subtype two it includes the clitoridectomy plus the removal of the labia minora of the young girl. Alone, these two types of FGM composed approximately 90 percent of female genital mutilation. The third subtype is the most gruesome that is the narrowing the vagina opening by sealing the orifice with the use of the labia majora. These medical procedures have been described the WHO working in conjunction with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Un...
FGM, specifically infibulation, is believed to have started in Arabia and then spread to Africa through a well-established trade route. FGM has never been considered a hygienic practice because most of the procedures make hygiene more difficult (Pieters). The sole purpose of FGM is to make sexual contact unsatisfactory for the woman, no matter what the motive is. Some girls go through FGM procedures at a young age to calm their fathers’ nerves and others undergo the procedures so she won’t stray from her husband. In Egypt, 97 percent of women have undergone a Female Circumcision procedure sometime in their lives while only 82 percent approve of it. An Indonesian study showed that midwives performed from about 68 to 88 percent of all procedures (Skaine 42). Most of the time, girls that receive a Female Circumcision don’t even get a chance to voice their opinions because they are too young when the procedure is performed.
FGM is a procedure that alters the external female genital organs. There are over 100 million girls and women worldwide who are living with the aftermath of female genital mutilation. Most of the women who have undergone FGM were relatively young. This procedure is mainly performed on girls younger than 15 years of age. One of the main reasons this procedure is mostly performed on younger girls is because they are more likely to not form their own decisions on how they feel about mutilation which allows them to be tolerant of the procedure.
Female genital mutilation (also known as female circumcision) is the cutting of female clitoral hood and removing clitoris. Following the cutting of female genital organ, there are many short-term and long-term health risk problems, and even death due to some complicated infections. The reasons for performing female genital mutilation are connected with socio-cultural beliefs, attitudes, values and customs, transition of girls into womanhood, tradition and cultural heritage, the fear of not having access to resources and opportunities as a young woman, perception to reduce sexual desire of females; hence, will sustain premarital virginity, and maintain marital fidelity. Actions have taken at international, national and regional levels since the past many years and have begun to bear fruits, but the practice is still undergoing in many countries in the world and highly prevalent in Africa. To continue and motivate further reduction in changing the society’s attitudes towards female genital mutilation in the countries where the prevalence has remained stable so it’s therefor...
The procedure is described as painful and destructive in the article by a leading medical expert on female “circumcision.” According to the article, many doctors who treat African women, say there is little question about the negative effects of female “circumcision.”