I can oppose female genital mutilation until I go blue in the face, it won’t have the same impact as when she explains it. So I’m very grateful for this piece:
I am familiar with this debate in two ways. First, I come from a culture where virtually every woman has undergone genital cutting. I was 5 years old when mine were cut and sewn. Second, while serving as a member of parliament in the Netherlands, I was assigned the portfolio for the emancipation and integration of immigrant women. One of my missions was to combat practices such as FGM.
To understand this problem, we need to begin with parental motives. The “nicking” option is regarded as a necessary cleansing ritual. The clitoris is considered to be an impure part of the girl-child and bleeding it is believed to make her pure and free of evil spirits.
But the majority of girls are subjected to FGM to ensure their virginity—hence the sewing up of the opening of the vagina—and to curb their libido to guarantee sexual fidelity after marriage—hence the effective removal of the clitoris and scraping of the labia. Think of it as a genital burqa, designed to control female sexuality.
When the motive for FGM is to ensure chastity before marriage and to curb female libido, then the nick option is not sufficient.
Moreover, the nick option does not address the main problem in Western liberal democracies where FGM is outlawed, which is that it can almost never be detected, so that few perpetrators are brought to justice. Even if we were to consider tolerating it in its most limited form, how could we tell that parents who want to ensure that their daughter will be a virgin on her wedding night will not have her (legally) nicked and then a few months later (illegally) infibulated? I applaud the compassion for children that inspires the pediatricians’ proposal, but they need to eliminate this risk for little girls.
When it comes to this subject, there is no middle ground.
[h/t]
by 
This really got me thinking about the topic of virginity as a virtue. While chastity can be virtuous, as it’s a testament of self control, forced chastity (especially a chastity created through mutilation) ceases to be so.
I do disagree, however, with her comment that FGM is a “genital burqa, designed to control female sexuality”. They’re very different things, FGM physically changes a women and makes her unable to experience sex in the ‘normal’ fashion, it’s an attempt to save her from her own desires if you will. FGM puts a woman outside the realm of humanity as she is physically changed to preserve her perceived value as a virgin, as one would lock up a purebred bitch to keep her from losing her ‘worth’ to a less than pure dog. It’s inhumane to treat women in this fashion, and you’re right, middle ground may simply not exist.
The burqa however, controversial as it may be, is a different thing. There is an interesting article on the burqa from a female perspective here http://www.savadati.com/2009/07/30/we-love-islam-so-we-wear-burqa/
This debate boggles my mind. If there was ever an issue on which all feminists should be united, it is this one. But when it comes to radical Islam, they cave with the rest of the cowardly liberal elite. Will the real feminists please stand up!?!
I agree that the mind boggles that there is a debate on this issue in our “enlightened” society. In the name of selfishness, of political corrrectness, of liberalism, we fail to protect the most vulnerable members of society – and congratulate ourselves for it! Although I understand why people can (rightly) attack so-called feminists for not standing against thse atricities, I just cannot see this as a feminist issue…it’s an issue of basic humanity!
The thing I always wonder about is what kind of men want a mutilated wife who is pained by intercourse??? There must be something seriously wrong with the men raised in this kind of culture.