"Breast-ironing" why the hell isn't this higher profile!

[Salbertina]

Anyone hear the feature just now on Womans Hour? If not, its the practice of pounding a girl's growing breasts "with a hard object" in an attempt to thwart male attention/ further education/prevent early marriage or shame being brought on family. Can, unsurprisingly, cause breast cancer.
Practised in Cameroon, Kenya..even Zimbabwe and S Africa! Not sure how widespread.
Why haven't i heard of international dev campaigns focussed on this?

Bloody HELL! I had no idea about this. That is disgusting.

OMG. ACK. Utter utter horror.

Have googled.

found info here

and here

caution. This is upsetting.

what I am getting from these articles is that this is happening because of fear of men! to make your child less likely to be raped or forced into a marriage as a child

What we need is not to mutilate our daughters, but to teach our sons to not rape!

Indeed, sounds like its due to concern for daughter's fate, tho obv horrifically misdirected! As said below, should be educating boys instead.
Why the HELL isn't this high profile tho??? If it happened to boys methinks effort would be much greater

So anyone know what's being done? Google link earlier referred to national campaign on Cameroon where c 25% of girls suffer this

I can't find any indication that very much is being done at all.

Awareness really MUST be raised. It is a disgusting thing.

To mutilate your daughter because you feel it is the only way to protect her from rape

So true, Heinous.what shall we do? Online petition, MN campaign???

Anything we can do to raise awareness.

Indeed so BUMP!

Bump

That's awful. Is there an existing campaign we can join/contribute to?

I can't find much of anything.

It seems there's not really a lot of awareness at all.

I had never heard of it until this thread!

Fucking hell that is horrendous! So with that along with FGM, it's a great time to be female in this world....

I'd never heard of this either.

Dear Heaven. If they want to stop girls being raped perhaps penis ironing would be more effective......

Oh gosh this is appalling, can we do something?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zzq3m
To listen to R4 segment about this

www.cawogido.org/
London-based organization campaigning to enhance awareness of this horrible practice

They're after UK based volunteers, donations and VSO-linked Cameroon- based volunteers. Email- [email protected]

Oh and Grimble, with you on the penIs-ironing!

This is so horrendous

I am shocked by this.

(weeps)

I know! Had never heard of prior to R4 prog.
There was a conference on oct 19 in London. Maybe they'll be some good material, publicity arising from it.
In meantime, donate at
www.cawogido.org/donate.html
Or volunteer if u can!

Probably, while it is horrible, it's only a small cog in a larger machine that isn't being discussed. The women are trying to do the best they can to avoid what the rest of the world refuses to talk about and is contributing to.

Rape Insurance in South Africa is becoming common practice for women and is spreading. That women need this should be international attention.

Cameroon and Kenya are becoming hot sex tourist destinations as the old reliable places are tring to crack down on it, particularly for White Western Men (and these and similar practices are as much to avoid them and the pimps for them as the local population). Does anyone really talk about sex tourism and the problems with it to men and boys here other than awkward jokes about Thailand? It's a rampant and growing problem connected with sex trafficking and exploitation and it's pretty much a joke swept under the rug in most Western countries even when we know it's happening. This should get international attention.

It's a symptom of the bigger problem and even if this were to be abolished it would not solve the over all issue and likely be replaced by something else. I just can't get riled up to campaign on this before the problem that caused this to be seen as worthwhile and needed is even acknowledged in the mainstream.

Hear what you're saying, but worth campaigning on as part of an overall health/education programme as often case with FGM. Looks like Cawogido takes this approach .