Per an article written by Jason Straziuso that was printed via the Associated Press in my local newspaper, "The Press Democrat" (Santa Rosa, California), genital mutilation continues. Of a group of 30 teenagers, both boys and girls, all agreed that female genital mutilation is harmful and should be abandoned, but moments later they revealed that girls should have their genitalia cut, just not sewn shut. In fact, all 15 girls that were sitting with the boys at the Sheik Nuur Primary school's after school club have undergone suna - the removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, and all agreed that this was the right thing to do. The article went on to state that in Somalia, the cultural expectation is that girls undergo this process because men expect to marry a virgin, and if a girl has not undergone female genital mutilation, she is considered unclean. UNICEF faces an uphill battle in its' campaign to eradicate the tradition of suna. Despite telling leaders in Somalia that genital mutilation is painful and can lead to death, pain, and mental issues, and that genital mutilation dates back some 6,000 years ago, long before Islam was founded, and hence is not required by Islam, the religious leaders, including the minister of religious affairs, said they cannot agree to abandon suna. The practice of female genital cutting will continue.
Although this practice seems very strange to people in the United States, there is a common theme. In this country there are some groups who still prize women's virtue and purity, and in conservative states there are ever increasing laws being passed that limit women's access to birth control. This includes legislation that prevents birth control from being covered under health insurance plans and legislation that prevents businesses from providing birth control at all in some parts of the country. Legislators often claim that this is because everyone should not have to pay for women to engage in sexual relations. However men's sexual health continues to be covered, and accessible, including prescriptions for erection enhancing drugs. Clearly there are legislators who continue to think that it is okay for men to engage in sexual relations with women, but that they still want women to remain pure and virginal for marriage. Certainly this is not as extreme as genital mutilation, but it does reinforce the notion that misogyny continues to exist worldwide. There is much work to be done to eradicate the double standard that exists between men and women in the world.
I was shocked when I was speaking to a 20 year old British girl, whose parents had immigrated to the U.K. from Somaliland. She was 'lucky' because her parents gave her the choice of whether she wanted to undergo FGM or not, as a teenager. She said she thought about it a bit and spoke to some of her friends and relatives in Somaliland about the practice and then decided "it wasn't really worth it."
ReplyDeleteThe main thing that shocked me was that this girl, who I had only just met, told me this in a casual conversation and in such a casual way, as if she had been deciding something of minor significance, such as whether or not to go out that night. It made me feel that British society and education had failed to make young girls aware of this practice and the harm that it brings and thus had failed to protect those at risk.