Africa: The Spectrum of FGM is NOT homogenous

“Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable;–and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.” Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

Screaming cakes losing the FGM message

At the beginning of the last week, we ran the gauntlet of a travesty masquerading as art; it was art that was tasteless, ignorant, stupid and worthy of excoriation.

Indeed, we need to bring to light the horrors of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Circumcision but there is no excuse to treat this matter with levity and caricature if you have any inkling or knowledge of what it entails, who is affected, how entrenched it is and the obstacles in culture, traditions, norms and values that need to be overcome to consign these acts to oblivion.

Such was the display of utterly, utterly bad art when on a cake made almost to the form of Sarah Baartman [Wikipedia] who in the early 19^th Century was the unfortunate freak show in Europe.

The cake was cut into in Sweden by people who should know better of the suffering of women less fortunate than themselves to their entertainment and the artist with face painted like the cross between a golliwog [Wikipedia] and a piccaninny squealing and crying at each cut in the supposedly virginal area of the cake representing the act of circumcision.

It plumbed the depths of distaste and disgust but more importantly, it drew no attention to FGM or the plight of women who suffer from the debilitating effects of FGM, rather it became an odious platform for the artist, galvanised the global rebuke of the Swedish Culture Minister with a petition online asking for her to apologise for her cretinism to culminate in her resignation.

Mind Of Malaka does this matter the greatest justice with her blog titled Of Cakes and Clitorises.

FGM is NOT a Single Story

Now, I have been engaged in a rather robust discussion on Twitter on the matter of FGM where I have a rather pragmatic approach to the subject.

Having taken a stance on the event of the Swedish cake one should be careful not to be railroaded by what is turning out to be a single narrative of FGM thereby conflating the desired end of FGM with every societal, traditional, religious, economic and social strand as if the practitioners are a homogeneous entity – they are not.

Looking at the prevalence of FGM [Wikipedia] across Africa [Graphic from Wikipedia], the practice cuts across 30 countries from West Africa, through Central to East Africa and veering up to the North of Africa where in Egypt it affects 97% of females but you then wonder why the countries to the West of Egypt that have affinity with its peoples like Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco do not practice FGM.

However, this practice appears to date back to the Pharaonic times, in essence there is a mountain of entrenched traditions and customs behind this activity that might prove immovable even to those with the very best intentions.

Beyond this, each country and within these countries we have communities that implement any of the 4 types of FGM [Wikipedia] cutting with Ethiopia, Gambia and Guinea implementing the most intrusive Type IV mutilation that could affect 73%, 60-90% and 99% of females in those countries respectively.

Whilst Gambia and Guinea are close neighbours in West Africa, Ethiopia is as remote as you can get from West Africa as you wonder about the correlations between these countries.

Tough work ahead

Much as we would that FGM is outlawed, banned, proscribed, abrogated or even criminalised, we are nowhere near seeing that desire in reality, the practice is rife, the practitioners cover a broad spectrum of people from the enlightened to the oblivious and resistance to being sacrificed on the altars of traditions and customs is at best patchy and within relatively minor tribes.

Outlawing FGM in Africa requires political will and concerted efforts at education to persuade the core practitioners of alternatives if possible or ameliorating measures need to be implemented to monitor and regulate the practice.

Applying the political theory of the Overton Window [Wikipedia] to FGM, there are quite a number to whom the prospect of outlawing FGM is unthinkable whilst the cake eaters of Sweden and certain activists on this matter are on the other side of the spectrum where the idea is popular and they are ready to make it policy.

As for so many new ideas because the concept of the eradication of FGM is relatively new by reason of its extant prevalence, the unthinkable has to become radical, then acceptable before it is regarded as sensible from which point it might become popular and consequently it might become policy.

Developing approaches to eradication or regulation

The age-old value systems that aimed to deprive females of sexual expression for the fear that overarching patriarchy might lose complete control of their womenfolk needs to be visited with temperance because the diehards might well prefer to die out than to see needed change threaten their station.

There is no easy solution to this matter and it continues to this present day, girls sacrificed to long held belief systems many put at untenable risk to life, health and welfare – each of these need addressing as much as the aggressive push to make FGM history.

There are proactive and reactive approaches to consider much as some might deign to bludgeon and others might be indifferent. These customs being part of the societal framework of the affected communities has both men and women involved in the propagation of the acts as their norms and no greater purpose is served if any side is castigated as if to blackmail them into submission to the intended goal of the eradication of FGM.

Proactive alternative

On the proactive side, the Guardian newspaper Fighting Back [The Guardian UK] section filmed a documentary about changing attitudes to FGM amongst the Pokot people [Wikipedia] of Kenya where parents, daughters and activists worked towards adopting alternative womanhood initiation rites.

The main thrust of this exercise had to address a number of underlying issues –

• The reassessment of the value of females in those communities.
• The need for the education of females with the promise that they can be of greater significance to their communities than the immediate value of a dowry mostly comprised of cows and beer
• Addressing the apparent sense of loss of a girl is not circumcised and married off
• Addressing the communal stigmatisation that accompanies girls who have refused to be initiated through FGM
• Persuading the elders, men and the community to accommodate new thinking that makes FGM insignificant and unnecessary as a precursor to marriage
• Removing FGM from the process of initiation into womanhood.

One striking thing that came out of the documentary was the recognition that girls who have decided not to follow tradition might harm themselves though it was also encouraging that honour killings prevalent in other societies where the price placed on female chastity is astronomically high did not present itself in the Pokot narrative.

Reactive for safety

On the reactive side, this came as a result of a botched FGM activity [AkinBlog.NL] in Nigeria in 2012 that led to the loss of life by exsanguination – the poor girl bled to death in hospital, the perpetrators being her grandmother and other womenfolk relations having run out of options after crudely mutilating the girl.

It goes without saying that FGM entails radical intrusive surgery outside of professional supervision with crude implements in possibly non-sterile conditions.

What is interesting is the news [The Guardian UK] that as many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone the FGM procedure. Much as it is illegal in the UK, ethnic minorities who one would expect are enlightened, emancipated, educated and well aware of the complications that do result from FGM procedures are adhering to the practice and are not persuaded of the need to change.

The news story highlights a more interesting development. There is a part of these ethnic minority communities that are concerned about surgical procedures carried out by the unschooled that they have procured the services of medical practitioners to perform the FGM procedure.

In my blog written in February, the death of the girl was preventable if the FGM procedure was not carried out and where I ran the gauntlet of serious opposition and the amazingly implacable was when I suggested that as long as FGM continues to exist in whatever community until it is eradicated, the girls made to suffer such procedures must have at the minimum a safe environment under medical supervision where the procedure is carried out.

Bridging the contrary and the compromise

In my view, this is not to find a workaround that will give FGM a new lease of life halting the drive to have it eradicated but it is to bring the activity under regulation, supervision and safe environments to deal with the immediate complications of administering FGM.

This is by no means comfortable, but the practitioners who have not been persuaded of the need to stop FGM will procure the services wherever they can – it is only sensible and it will be utterly curmudgeonly to refuse girls safe environments for FGM when the battle and the war to abolish FGM is far from won.

I extended that thinking yesterday with the suggestion that FGM education be aggregated into primary healthcare delivery systems and having brought FGM under medical supervision, it offers the opportunity to address this matter as elective surgery with outcomes and consequences all of which must be preceded with levels of counselling, consultation, possible success factors and the repercussions for maternal welfare which can be debilitating on quality of life for the person, her offspring and her community.

In effect, if we are cajoled into adopting a single story on FGM so as to treat it as a homogenous procedure practiced by a non-diverse people of Africa with apparently similar traditions and customs such that activism simply presents an unyielding single solution without working out different compromises for the varied communities that will help those immediately affected, we would be no further than what we saw in Sweden and we might well go up there and eat some cake.

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

FGM banned in Eritrea

Too prevalent for comfort

This is topic I think experts would celebrate better than I could in this write up. I was quite shocked to find out how prevalent it was in Africa, Middle-East and Indonesia, no more so when I also heard that the practices does still thrive in Nigeria.

Learning that Eritrea has banned the practice of Female Genital Mutilation or Circumcision (FGM or FGC) is definitely great news and to be celebrated.

It marks a beginning of what should be a wave of the civilising of customs, traditions and religious practices that cause undue physical harm without any particular health benefit apart from a modicum of social acceptance.

With this law, the practitioners of these acts of mutilation who are usually female too and matriarchs of those communities when caught could face fines and possible imprisonments.

Enforcing the law

However, the issue at hand would be how to break down the ranks after this illegal act has been committed; people can be sworn to silence, risk ostracism within their communities or even suffer worse fates like "honour killing" - basically, one wonders about the enforceability of this law.

Beyond this is the need to health and material support for the victims of this heinous mutilation which at times to other health complications.

Now, we also have the aspect of Male Genital Mutilation known as circumcision which seemingly has a religious progeny has been found to provide health benefits in arresting the spread of HIV/AIDS, this is no way comparable to the mutilation that females suffer as a rite of passage into womanhood.

Conserving the good bits

In all, there is no way that the 4 listed types of mutilation which are just too revolting and despicable to list here but covers excision of critical parts of female sexual organs and in some cases the application of corrosive substances can be justified in the 21^st Century, in fact, it is violent abuse and now considered a violation of human rights by the UN. The other types are no less atrocious in trying to understand what they are trying to achieve.

It is time to ensure that these archaic and barbaric customs are rolled back and consigned to history; we should not condone or countenance anymore the sacrifice of human beings to customs, traditions, culture or religious practices just for the sake of keeping uncivilised practices alive.

We can conserve the positive parts of our heritage whilst losing the negative parts without necessarily losing our identity, acts of separation and differentiation through mutilation have no place in what is now a global village of interacting peoples.

Finally, it is a welcome development that even Muslim scholars have called for an end to this practice, with bans and sanctions; it might require religious leaders sounding the word from the pulpit about how unnecessary these acts are without rubbing up too hard on long held but out-dated customs - the abuse must be stopped forthwith.

References

FGM on the rise in the UK - 2004

Images of FGC - cautionary viewing advised