Female Genital Mutilation

This is a picture of a young Middle Eastern girl, would you want her to go through Female Genital Mutilation?

Below is a video about an Egyptian woman and her fight for her daughter to not go under female genital mutilation.


In the Arab world one of the most possessions a girl owns is her hymen. Her hymen is the essence of her honor, her families honor, and her societies honor. If her hymen is prematurely broken then she is disgraced because the assumption is she had sexual intercourse before marriage, and therefore no one would want her. The Middle East religious values and honor usually intertwine with each other so intricately that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is thought to derive from their religion, when it fact it actually derives from their culture. The tribulations with rooting all honor on a young girl’s hymen is that anatomically and biologically females differ from each other. “For it is known that 11.2% of girls are born with an elastic hymen, 16.16% with so fine a membrane that it is easily torn, 31.21% with a thick elastic hymen, and only 41.32% with what may be considered a normal hymen” (Saadawai, p26). Less then half of all girls have a “normal hymen” and because of their biological makeup some girls’ honor is already stripped from them. What is more of a surprise is that “if a girl lost her life, it would be considered less of a catastrophe than if she lost her hymen” (Saadawai, p26). One way that a woman can preserve her virginity is to cut off her clitoris before she reaches puberty. By cutting off her clitoris it removes all sexual sensation, and therefore the theory is removing her sexual desire. That is not the solution because many women still have desires to have sexual intercourse because the desires derive from her thoughts and emotions, not a small organ in between her thighs.



Although countries like Egypt (see above video for more information) have started joining forces with UNICEF (an organization that helps for gender equality, nutrition, health awareness, etc) about educating their people FGM is more harmful to women physiologically and mentally and is starting to put an end to it. Educating people who practice FGM may be the means to ending this barbaric problem, but unfortunately people’s cultures may still be hesitant. Even the women and men in medical school still believed in FGM which was astonishing. The reason that Nawal Saadawai, the author of The Hidden Face of Eve, suggest this is due to the lack of education of the clitoris and the role in women’s sexuality. The clitoris, which is considered an organ, is often neglected in most medicine teachings. Therefore the assumption would be it lacks relevance. However not only does it play a role in a women’s lives, the way the women lose their clitoris is barbaric.


For more information:

The Hidden Face of Eve: Woman in the Arab World by: Nawal El Saadawi
http://books.google.com/books?id=u5n9zUZuVI8C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=the+very+fine+membrane+called+honour&source=bl&ots=kHE9oHw7s8&sig=7kTCbP_F5GjWbKrY73xIT9fuFBc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

For personal story of a girl who underwent FGM, and her experience from it.
Opening the Gates by Alifa Rifaat

UNICEF’s website
http://www.unicef.org/whatwedo/index.html