Female Genital cutting (FGC) and the woman

Female Genital Cutting or (Female Genital Mutilation) as some of us would have it, due to its crude nature, dates to the time of the pharaohs in Egypt and is perpetuated in a given community for a variety of reasons. Its cradle is the African soil.
It refers to amputation of any part of the female
genitalia for cultural rather than medical reasons.

From the late 19th century until the 1950s, clitoridotomy and other more invasive procedures, including excision of the clitoris and infibulation
were practiced in Western countries to control female sexuality. Doctors advocating or performing these procedures claimed that girls of all ages would otherwise engage in more masturbationand be "polluted" by the activity. Through the 1950s, some doctors continued to advocate clitoridotomy for hygienic reasons or to reduce masturbation. After one of such procedures, there was a reported case of a two-year-old girl who said that she was not masturbating so frequently.
Justification of the procedure on hygienic grounds, or to reduce masturbation, has since declined. The view that masturbation is a cause of mental and physical illness has dissipated since the mid-20th century.

In 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then US fist lady, stated at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China that “it is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation”.
By then, African communities that were (and some of them still are) proponents of FGM were being bombarded and lambasted on all fronts. This was in a bid to pressurize them to stop "dehumanizing", "demoralizing" and "debasing" women as they had done for a long time.

As the clitoris holds a massive number of nerve endings, and generates feelings of sexual arousal when stimulated, therefore most communities set out to 'operate' on their women to "preserve the good name of the community". They believed that by cutting the clitoris (a woman's sexual pleasure hub), feelings of sexual arousal would be reduced or terminated. In effect, these women would be much less likely to engage in pre-marital intercourse or adultery.

There are other reasons that such communities hold(held) on to:


• Some believe that the clitoris is dangerous and must be removed for health reasons.
• Some believe that it is a poisonous organ, that can cause a man to sicken or die if contacted by a man's penis.
• Others believe that men can become impotent by contacting a clitoris.
• Others believe that a baby will be hydrocephalic (born with excess cranial fluid) if its head contacts the clitoris during birth.
• Some believe that the milk of the mother will become poisonous if her clitoris touches the baby during childbirth.

Some say that:


• Bad genital odours can only be eliminated by removing the clitoris and labia minora.

• FGM prevents vaginal cancer.

• An unmodified clitoris can lead to masturbation or lesbianism.

• FGM prevents nervousness from developing in girls and women.

• FGM prevents the face from turning yellow.

• FGM makes a woman's face more beautiful.

• If FGM is not done, older men may not be able to match their wives' sex drive and may have to resort to illegal stimulating drugs.


• An intact clitoris generates sexual arousal in women which can cause neuroses (a disorder of the mind in which a person suffers from strong unreasonable fears and ideas about the outside world, troubled relations with other people, and often physical illness) if repressed.

My friends, this practice should be fought by all people on all fronts. It is a degrading practice that should never be allowed to continue enjoying the "complacency" and "compromise" of some of our communities. We are the people educate them.
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