my niece made a point...

[JokersGiggle]

she's very intellectual but views things in a very black and white way.
She has strong feminist views like me (her mum doesn't care much ). In conversation she threw in FGM (as you do!) And in her opinion having a bikini wax done is a mild form of FGM.
Just throwing it out there for consideration. It really made me think.

DD is 7, their geography and social studies this term covered mexico

They learned about tortilla wraps and how to say 'hello'.

I don't believe a 7yr old covered FGM at school

I think it's like the difference between feeling pressure to spend time and money getting your nails done, and someone holding you down and cutting your arm off with a dirty knife, except worse because at least with one arm you could still pee, mensturate and have sex without pain and infection.

If victims of FGM were walking into salons and being temporarily pained as a result of social pressure but their genitals stopped hurting the same day and grew back within 6 weeks and some of them found that sex was more pleasurable, sure, comparable.

But they're not.

They wouldn't, Jenny.

Wow! I be majorly pissed off if my 7 year old learned about FGM in school! It would seriously frighten her. She's still at the stage of learning what is actually real and what isn't. (Watching the Hunger Games last night and she needed reassurance that they were all actors and it was all pretend).

I can see her comparison, but, she's 7! She doesn't have the life experience to apply to the comparison of FGM and bikini waxing. (I'm surprised she knows what a bikini wax is TBH, my 7 year old doesn't).

This sounds like a very sheltered, 1st world way of trying to connect with FGM.

I am all for sisterly solidarity but no one ever died because of a bikini wax or needed to be ripped open during childbirth.

If that was my DN I would have had a gentle but firm conversation with her about privilege.

Its like my DS thinking he knows what slavery is like because he has to get up at 7 to go to his zero hours contract retail job.

Any boy or man stupid enough to "expect" an adult woman to have naked genitals is not worth bothering with ffs.

Which school is this?

After paying ££££ we'd want her covering more than tortilla chips and how to say hello.
FGM is a real life problem and was covered in an age appropriate way.

It's not comparable. Obviously FGM is horrific and not a choice.

We do sometimes discuss foot-binding and high heels as part of a continuum. One was without choice, violent and very harmful. One is by choice, non-violent and just hampering rather than harmful. Still societal expectation of women's acceptance of their bodies being 'wrong' in their natural state is part of both.

JokersGiggle we do need to educate children about life, but bloody hell it needs to be age appropriate FGS!

I'm surprised a 7yo even knows about a bikini wax.

Tragic to think that we don't want our 7 year olds to know about such horrors while elsewhere 7 year olds are having it inflicted upon them :(

But it wasn't covered properly if she has come away from the lesson with a skewed view of it. No point teaching it at all if they aren't going to teach the full truth of it - hence why it's not appropriate for a 7 year old.

Well no it wasn't covered in an age appropriate way because she obviously doesn't understand how serious it is and frankly the reality of it would terrify a 7 year old. Even an intelligent opinionated one, even one who attends an expensive school

Germaine Greer did make a similar comparison between breast implants and labiaplasty and FGM. It was one of the things that put me off her.

Is there any chance that the school is covering it in this way because it may be happening to some of its pupils or their friends from this age onwards?

I'm deeply impressed by your niece OP! I would be proud if mine had come up with that idea. And I think it's wholly appropriate that she should know about these things so young. She's not learning about them in order to copy them, she's thinking.

Talking to 7yr olds about the true horror of FGM is not age appropriate.

And there is no way of condensing/minimising what it really is

Tragic to think that we don't want our 7 year olds to know about such horrors while elsewhere 7 year olds are having it inflicted upon them

Because we'd want our babies/toddlers/preschoolers to know about other babies/toddlers/preschoolers being raped? No thanks, I'd rather protect my children from the horrors of the world until they have the mental and emotional capacity to process such horrific information.

I can't make up my mind. You could argue that pube removal is one end of the scale that fgm sits on the extreme end of. I guess labioplasty or whatever it's called would be somewhere on the middle.

However....fgm is routinely done forcebly by untrained persons causing great pain and risk to the girls, including serious infections, complications in child birth and death.

Bikini waxing is generally done in salons by a trained beautician and involves ripping a few hairs out. It hurts a bit but they grow back in a few weeks. This is a procedure which some western women choose of their own free will.

Meanwhile I find the mn demonising of pube removal really irritating. I remove all pubic hair regardless of whether I'm sexually active. Doesn't make me not a feminist.

My understanding is that teachers have to flag at risk pupils to SS - this may have been a way to see reactions?

Comparing FGM with a bikini wax is so many kinds of wrong that I don't even know where to start.

I am confident and grateful that my 7 year old daughter does not know what FGM is. There is time enough for her to learn when she is old enough to have a sufficient understanding.

This thread has made me angry actually. Most 7 year olds will have a black and white view of the world because they are still don't have the experience to contextualise things, it doesn't mean for one second that they will grow up to be wet rags ffs!

I think I need to stay away from this part of MN to be honest, threads like this give me the rage.

its not comparable in any way except rough location.

At seven shes not going to have any idea of the significance of the clitoris. Im really surprised this was covered at this age

because we'd want our babies/toddlers/preschoolers to know about other babies/toddlers/preschoolers being raped? No thanks, I'd rather protect my children from the horrors of the world until they have the mental and emotional capacity to process such horrific information

You seem to have totally misunderstood the point I was making.

I do not think it is innapropriate to talk about this to 7 year old girls and boys. There are ways of doing it.

Where I live there will be a very, very high % of mothers of those children who have suffered FGM and the girls are at risk of it happening to them.

We cannot keep hiding this. Get it out in the open to protect the next generation of victims.

We need to talk to our kids about all kinds of abuse. Not just the ones that do not involve cutting little girl's genitals.