Get Over It! Mutilating Girls Is Not Just A Rite – It’s A Right! (Or Do You Beg To Differ?)

"happy" girl undergoing FGM

Accept it – mutilating girls, in their teens and barely out of the womb, cutting and slicing their genitals with a precision learned over hundreds of generations, sewing them up tight until their wedding night, and leaving  only a small opening for them to pass urine and blood, is a rite of passage and a right itself that cannot be challenged.

Another "happy" girl undergoing FGM

Live with it – taking a girl to an undisclosed location, against her will or not, to a private room where other woman are “waiting”; undressing her, prepping her for the “doctor” without her fully understanding why; lying her down and utilizing the other women in the room to hold her down, (blind folding her if necessary); and, without any anesthesia or anything to dull the pain, plunging the sharp instrument into her fleshy and sensitive genitalia to remove that part of her anatomy associated with “sin” is a practice that cannot be infringed upon.  It happens in America too. 

And another "happy" girl undergoing FGM

Ignore it – these girls who undergo female genital mutilation (FMG) are not your children writhing in excruciating pain and unbearable agony, screaming out in terror for their mother, somebody in that room, to stop what they are doing to them.  What goes in that room, to that girl, stays in that room, and is none of your business.  They have a right to privacy without you trying to intervene to stop it or them.  These people have the right to continue this thousands of years old practice unimpeded, unhindered by you, and over your, biased objections.

Who are you to think you can prevent it?

Either the above is absolute fact, or it is not.  If it is absolute fact, then untold millions more girls will be forced to undergo female genital mutilation for generations and generations to come, while untold, undocumented, numbers of those girls will die, either from blood loss, severe trauma, or any number of health related infections.  If it’s not absolute fact, if it’s just that much wrong, if you are just too undecided, wavering between honoring a “sacred, traditional and religious rite” and what more and more people around the world, including those people living within societies that practice FGM, are realizing is a “human right” to not be mutilated for being female, watch this video:

Ladies and gentlemen – we as human beings have but two options in dealing with the issue of female genital mutilation.  One, we can indeed ignore it, live with it and accept it, shrug our shoulders and tell ourselves that this practice is not of our culture, not of our traditions, not of our religious teachings, not a part of our social norms and therefore none of our business.  Two, we can throw all that nonsense to the wayside and make it our business.

If we choose the latter, do we have the courage to take on a very powerful element in this world that will become, not merely insulted, but very violent and attack us should they feel they, and their religious ideals and practices, are being threatened?  Female genital mutilation is not done for one single health related reason.  It is purely religious, and predominately, vastly so, an Islamic practice.  Are we prepared to attack that part of Islam, or any religion, that supports, compels and commands their female populations have their genitals mutilated and sewn up until they are married to ensure they remain chaste and pure and virgin?

Conservatives support males and females abstaining from sex until marriage, but there is not a serious American conservative that supports FGM.  It is an atrocity; an abomination; an inhumane practice.  One in which either needs to be put to a stop from within those societies that practice it, or (if they refuse, or cannot do it without additional aid) from those societies that find FGM so abhorrently unnecessary, so unwarrantably, excruciatingly painful and agonizing an ordeal, and diametrically opposed to all rational, reasonable and medical advice and knowledge.

We have no qualms entering a society to provide food, clothes, medicine, education and other services.  Why on Earth would we be uncomfortable entering a society to protect girls from being tortured by having their vaginas mutilated, cut apart and sewn up because the male population of that society dictates it be done to ensure virginity?

We have no qualms calling into question, and ridiculing, ancient religious practices once performed by the predecessors of Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism, but now scorned and abandoned and outlawed by the vast, vast majority of its modern-day descendants.  Why on Earth would we be squeamish about calling into question, and ridiculing, current religious practices that continue to mutilate, and kill, girls that have no basis in any religious teachings, but which serve solely to keep in tact the concept of a male dominated society?

If female genital mutilation is more a crime against humanity than it is a rite of passage, then we ought not be so overly worried or concerned about insulting those people, societies and cultures that engage in this atrocious practice.  It is they that need the wake up call.  It is us that must sound the alarm.

Either we can get over our apprehensions, our insecurities and fear of retribution, and start pushing for very harsh and unbearable sanctions, restrictions, and other calculated pressure, on those societies which still practice female genital mutilation, or – we can get over the fact that this practice is still extant.

Millions of girls around the world about to have FGM done to them are awaiting our decision.  Scores, and hundreds of millions more girls, not yet born, will want a decisive answer as well.  The wait may have been funny in Caddyshack. 

Is the wait funny in real life?

(This poll is multiple choice)

  Related articles

• Report alleges 100,000 female mutilations in UK (scotsman.com)
• Britain’s 100,000 Mutilated Women (judithhaire.com)
• End to female genital mutilation urged (upi.com)
• Female Genital Mutilation: A New Fad in Town (koolnews.wordpress.com)
• 100,000 British women clitorectomized UK medics filmed offering female genital mutilation (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• Female Genital Mutilation Being “Offered” In UK (inquisitr.com)
• Investigation Exposes Awful U.K. Doctors Willing to Perform FGM [Unkindest Cut] (jezebel.com)
• Is Female Genital Mutilation a Religious practice? (mohamudali.wordpress.com)
• 100,000 women undergo genital mutilation in Britain and some are 10 -year-olds (kractivist.wordpress.com)