Thought Picnic: FGM - On my use of "Clitoral Disgust"

Courtesy of UNIVERSAL Health: Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

Why the title?

Soon after publishing my blog about FGM in Nigeria, I entered into discussion about the title I had given the blog with the view that I review the construct and possibly the wording.

FGM in Nigeria: Raze the Abattoirs of Clitoral Disgust

I am sure most of us know what Female Genital Mutilation is, it is also called Female Circumcision and it is evident what the practice entails; the mutilation of female sexual organs.

In coming up with the title, I could have used one of seven easily mentionable names of the object but I chose an adjective which contextually was already attributive and followed that with the noun form rather than the verb form of Disgust to create an adjectival phrase.

This in my view captured the fact that butchering exercise redolent of abattoirs was in traditional disgust of the object that was only mentioned in my blog within the types of FGM that WHO indicated.

Between abattoir and surgery

The use of the word abattoirs cannot be faulted if one views the implements used in this exercise which are by no means surgical by any stretch of the imagination and primitive in the extreme. The victims of FGM do not have the luxury of anaesthesia when then these caveman procedures are done apart from physical restraint and it is unlikely that the practitioners are trained to handle emergencies if they do occur.

If we can move beyond the title which at worst should be forgiven for taking artistic licence and read the story, it is of a girl, Joy Youmgbo who went to visit her grandmother for Christmas, she was mutilated, suffered great agony for days and died a horrific painful death that medical records cited as a result of post-circumcision haemorrhage.

Face up!

We would not have heard of this criminality – and I say criminality because no such operations as cutting the flesh in tender areas, no matter the traditional expertise should ever be conducted outside hospitals, in this day and age – if the other sister had not run away from home in the fear that the same fate might befall her.

Now, this topic is controversial and there are those for and against FGM, in my view, if the practise cannot be stopped, then the theatre of that practice must change.

If FGM must occur then it should only be in hospitals under strict medical supervision all the parties involved having undergone essential counselling and therapy before the decision to cut is made.

In the end, I stand by the title I chose, it in my view conveys the complete context of the blog that follows and the sooner we called a spade, a spade, we can start digging.

Thank you.

Reference

UNIVERSAL Health: Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

FGM in Nigeria: Raze the Abattoirs of Clitoral Disgust

Note: On my decision to retain the blog title see opinion.

This discreditable practice

This is 2012 and I find myself writing about acts in parts of the world that belong in a museum of antiquity long before mediaeval times as types of torture that defeminise women in a manifestly atrocious cultural or traditional rite.

Female Genital Mutilation [1] (FGM) despite the international activism against it is still rife and it does take lives without consequences for the perpetrators who do it still with impunity in their quest to hold on to their Neanderthal customs.

In this case, the news [2] in Nigeria is of a 17-year old girl who fled her family home and has been declared missing having witnessed the painful and agonising death over days of her younger sister who was grievously mutilated on January the 15^th 2012.

Embracing shabby traditions

This reprehensibly irresponsible act was coordinated by her grandmother who corralled the family into participating in this rite of torture and enduring grievous bodily harm and what is almost unbelievable about this is the parties involved cannot be so matured in age to be oblivious of modern thinking.

The girls lived in Lagos, a sprawling metropolis and had returned to their homestead for the Christmas holidays in Ijaw-land, which happens to be the place from which our current highly educated, PhD holding President hails. Though from research, this practice is not restricted to that area, it is quite pervasive and it cuts a swathe through the whole south of West-Africa and parts of Chad arcing up through Sudan and Egypt to the north and through Ethiopia and Somalia to the east and horn of Africa where the prevalence [3] is up to 95% like a plague.

Types of FGM

The WHO identifies four types of Female Genital Mutilation [1] which intensify in the incredibly macabre for each more intrusive act that could involve cauterisation; it is almost unreadable for the horror of the exercise.

Type I: removal of the clitoral hood, the skin around the clitoris, with or without partial or complete removal of the clitoris;

Type II: removal of the clitoris with partial or complete removal of the labia minora;

Type III: removal of all or part of the labia minora and labia majora, and the stitching of a seal across the vagina, leaving a small opening for the passage of urine and menstrual blood (infibulation);

Type IV: other miscellaneous acts, including cauterization of the clitoris, cutting of the vagina (gishiri cutting), and introducing corrosive substances into the vagina to tighten it.

Abattoirs of clitoral disgust

These are at best radical surgery, if tradition or custom and in some cases conflated with religion so dictates that this practice is essential, important and of the highest priority, they must be conducted under strict medical conditions probably under general anaesthetic and these village abattoirs of clitoral disgust must be razed.

The barbarity of this exercise is in the fact that seeming knowledgeable people aware of hygienic needs for surgical practice engage in the use of crude implements and unschooled hands hoping to be vindicated by long held traditions and the evidence of those who barely survived the ordeal.

It might be difficult to criminalise FGM in the many societies that practise it but all the charlatans who engage in the mutilation of genitalia outside of accredited modern medical facilities most be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and made a public example of.

Much as one will prefer that this practice be totally outlawed and completely stopped, if that is not possible, then this event must only occur in a hospital under professional supervision after extensive counselling of all parties involved.

This was murder

However, back to the case in Nigeria, the news story says the victim “suffered severe excruciating pains for days after the mutilation of her genital before her death.”

It is very likely that after the mutilation she suffered severe bleeding and the perpetrators waited too long before they took her to hospital, by which time little could be done to save her life and that medical reports indicated she died of a “Post Circumcision haemorrhage.”

She basically bled to death.

Now, one can understand the sadness that accompanies the loss of a child, a grandchild, a sister and being back at the homestead, a close relation. It would appear that death did not remove the blinkers of absurd traditions from the perpetrators that they were ready to butcher the elder sister.

One cannot put it beyond these evil people that they were afraid that their heinous acts will be exposed that they could have schemed to sacrifice two young girls on the altar of tradition in order to cover their criminal enterprise – that calls for an intervention, it is an emergency that calls for justice to be expedited so that Joy Youmgbo would not have died in vain.

Arrest, indict, prosecute

The medical evidence is there, she died of a Post-Circumcision haemorrhage, it is now for the police to go after the grandmother and all her accomplices and pursue at the minimum a charge of manslaughter against all these people.

We have to come to a point in our society where no human being stands the risk of being sacrificed with impunity and with no consequence on the altar of custom, tradition, practice, creed or any belief system and civil society is able to protect the absoluteness of the right to life and happiness without anyone being subjected to the unpalatable for the preservation of the censurably odious.

If anything, the untimely and avoidable death of Joy Youmgbo must lead to greater agitation to stop the practice of FGM in Nigeria, one death is already one too many. I can only hope that Patricia Youmgbo finds succour for her pain of loss and protection from what those demons did to her sister.

STOP FGM NOW!

Sources

[1] Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Wikipedia

[2] Girl, 17 flees home over forced circumcision | Premium Times Nigeria

[3] Prevalence of female genital mutilation by country, Wkipedia

Egyptian Grand Mufti - FGM is forbidden by Islam

Tell on those people

It can only be welcome news as a £20,000 reward for information on practitioners of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the UK is accompanied with a law that expressly forbids the practice in Egypt.

The practice had already been banned in Egypt since 1997, but a UNICEF report in 2005 indicated that 97% of Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 have been circumcised.

It is heartening to know that the Grand Mufti (Highest Official of Islamic law) of Egypt has clearly stated that there is no religious basis for FGM that it is forbidden by Islam and there is no Christian law on the practice either.

This is a rotten "tradition of men" that has become a kind of doctrinal belief system such that there are people who think there is a religious obligation to commit what is literally a heinous mutilating crime against the humanity of pre-pubescent girls.

Patriarchy denying women's rights

As one commentator did state, this thing thrives in highly patriarchal societies where the rights of women are suppressed in servitude to men and where the premise is about keeping the women pure - that kind of purity however, does not seem to pertain to men.

Now, Christianity and Islam does support male circumcision and this is part of the Abrahamic covenant which God made with Abraham - all of his male seed were to have their foreskin cut off - this religious practise does also have health benefits and has been advocated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an anti-HIV/AIDS drive.

None of the beneficial experience can be alluded to the same barbaric practice on girls apart from sexual dysfunction, psychological trauma, tetanus, blood poisoning and irreparable damage to the urethra, bladder and vulva.

One in five girls are said to die during this procedure to keep up with tradition.

No safety in formal medicine

This "rite of passage" which presumably keeps girls chaste got its worst publicity just over two weeks ago when astute parents decided to use the medical profession rather than traditional charlatans to perform the procedure on their 11-year old daughter.

The hapless and helpless girl was given too much anaesthetic - now this is humane compared to videos of girls shrieking with utter terror being held down by their mothers and other related woman folk as her genitalia is being cut and sliced in the fulfilment of some long held tradition.

Cautionary Viewing - FGM Mutilation Information Video

The girl died, but not in vain, there was such uproar about it that this law would also make the medical profession liable to prosecution for performing the procedure on anyone, it is hopefully a fully enforceable ban .

Vengeful mothers on helpless daughters

I wrote about the banning of FGM in Eritrea in April and the more this practice is explicitly outlawed in societies that think their traditions are dying out if they do not continue to practise barbarity and savagery the better the chance for the more amenable parts of their traditions to survive.

The problem is however growing in immigrant communities in Diaspora where some tend to be greater adherents than those in the indigenous homelands because of the nostalgic complex that beclouds the judgement of some in societies that appear alien to them.

Any information leading to the stoppage of these acts as well as the naming, shaming and prosecution of FGM practitioners must be very welcome, women who have lost their things should not vengefully visit this thing on generations after them, their daughters and grand-daughters, there is no use or benefit from this practice and it most stop forthwith in all societies civilised or uncivilised.

I am sorry if anyone has suffered this kind of mutilation, but it must stop with you and go no further.

Reference

Making trouble in the name of mutilated women