Female genital mutilation: Everything about you is violated by this
Female genital mutilation:
Everything about you is violated by this, which takes less than an hour and completely submerges you
by FiLiA volunteer Gabriella Ribenfors
Female genital mutilation (FGM), previously called female circumcision, is carried out on girls generally when they are between infancy and the age of 15. At least 200 million women and girls alive today are estimated to have been affected, with millions more currently at risk. It takes place predominantly in 30 countries across northern and central Africa, the southern Sahara, Asia and the Middle East, although high numbers of cases have been reported in over 90 countries worldwide. In 1997, the World Health Organization classified the practice into four major types, depending on whether the clitoris is removed (clitoridectomy); or the labia also cut off; and/or the vaginal opening narrowed and mostly sealed (infibulation); or the genitals harmed in other ways, for example by being cauterised. It is neither a religious requirement nor a medical intervention but a cultural tradition, most frequently performed using a razor blade, kitchen knife, sharpened rock, scissors or broken glass.
A FiLiA podcast in 2020 with survivor and campaigner Hibo Wardere summarised the commonalities: “One thing in common between all women and girls who endure FGM is the pain.” Alongside the risk of death from immediate complications, initial outcomes can include haemorrhage, fever and tetanus. Long-term health risks include recurrent urinary tract infections; vaginal, menstrual and sexual problems; and increased likelihood of childbirth complications and newborn deaths. In addition to physical issues, psychological conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder frequently develop. FGM is generally arranged by the child’s family and is often carried out by relatives, sometimes by barbers or medical professionals, but usually by women who have themselves been cut and perpetuate the practice in the belief that it is in the best interests of the girls, given that men in practising communities will otherwise reject them as unclean, undesirable and unmarriageable. Hibo, who underwent infibulation aged six in Somalia, describes how this destroys trust in adults and devastated her relationship with her mother: “It didn't match that you can be so nurturing, so loving that you are my world, and then the next minute you subject me to that. It was two worlds that collided and the outcome of that was millions of pieces shattering”.
Discussing the various beliefs and fears that sustain the custom, Hibo emphasises that all ultimately seek to deny womanhood by repressing female biology and sexuality to promote virginity and marital fidelity. “It is controlling your body from the day you’re born…the root of it is preservation for a man.” Girls who have undergone infibulation, which is almost universal in some countries, can be left with an opening the size of a matchstick head from which to urinate and pass menstrual blood. This may be cut open later in life, for example to permit penetration or childbirth. However, some women are then again subjected to infibulation, undergoing cycles of being sealed and reopened.
FGM is a human rights violation and a form of child abuse: it is violence inflicted on female victims because of their sex, for the benefit of men. As such, it feeds into general patterns of sex-based oppression. However, its specifics are also paralleled in recent or even current Western practices: labial reductions for aesthetic purposes (“designer vaginas”) are growing in popularity, as women seek to meet perceived ideals of desirability, despite the potential for medical complications and reduced sensitivity. It was not unusual for clitoridectomies to be performed by doctors on women up until the 1950s as a purported cure for hysteria or masturbation, and women have reported recent occurrences of the “husband stitch”, an extra stitch after childbirth to decrease the vaginal opening. The familiar objective: to ignore or diminish female pleasure and increase male. “What happened to us in the meantime was completely irrelevant in the pursuit of their pleasure.”
Grassroots movements to end FGM have been underway for decades, with local activists employing multiple strategies: engaging with governments and police to establish and enforce prevention systems; supporting survivors; convincing practitioners of the harm; and encouraging alternative rites of passage that retain cultural significance but dispense with physical and psychological trauma. The Sustainable Development Goals that all 193 member states of the UN adopted in 2015 include the elimination of FGM by 2030.
The UN observes 6th February as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, noting that evidence shows that it can end for good within a generation. Exemplifying this, although Hibo remembers thinking at the time “…just like my mother told me, there will be nothing I can do about it because it's happened to every woman before us”, years later she realised that she was “ready to die” if it happened to her own daughter: “Never could I have reconciled with that.” The prevalence of FGM has declined over the past 30 years, with girls now one-third less likely to experience it. However, urgent action, funding and education are needed to achieve the target of complete elimination by 2030, given growing humanitarian crises, resource gaps, and a global backlash against women’s rights, with girls once again banned from school in some countries and criminalised for abortion in others. “God knows that we are violated from every angle. Our spaces are taken. The word woman is going to be erased if we are not careful. We are constantly, constantly tested.”
I always saw women as one… We should fight abuse as one. Women and girls: the abuse we face is one. It doesn’t have race; it doesn’t have religion; it’s an abuse designed for us.
~Hibo Wardere
You can support or share Hibo’s campaign here. Educate Not Mutilate is a UK-based charity that helps to protect girls and women from FGM by running survivor-led educational workshops for schools, police and healthcare professionals. The government’s health guidance on migrant patients estimates that 137,000 women in the UK have undergone FGM and 60,000 girls under the age of 15 are currently at risk.
Resources
· FGM is illegal in the UK: contact the police on 999 if you or someone you know is in immediate danger.
· It is also illegal to arrange FGM abroad for girls who are UK nationals or UK residents. Contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 020 7008 1500 if you know someone at risk who’s already been taken abroad.
· If you or someone you know is at risk or a victim, you can also contact the NSPCC anonymously for support at fgmhelp@nspcc.org.uk or on 0800 028 3550.
Further listening and reading
· Hibo Wardere interview with FiLiA (podcast): One Woman’s Fight Against FGM
· FiLiA blogs:
o The Patriarchal “Non-State Torture War” Against Women and Girls
· Books available via the FiLiA bookshop:
o Cut: One Woman's Fight Against FGM in Britain Today
o Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West
o In the Name of Tradition: Female Genital Mutilation in Iran
o Taboo: Voices of Women in Uganda on Female Genital Mutilation