female genital mutilation on tv right now

[iminshock]

Community Chanel .
I can hardly believe what I am seeing. Older women tying down a young girl and slicing off her clitoris, and inner and outer labia . ( type 3 FGM)
No anaesthetic , and using a razor blade that has been used many times before .
While the poor child shrieks in terror and agony the women including her mother are smiling and chanting to drown out her screams.

I cannot express my horror and sorrow on behalf of this girl and many others like her

Of course the men are brainwashed

But they aren't the ones that are going to suffer physically so for many it's not really an issue

And a few more men saying no more will make a huge difference the men who really need to speak out are religious leaders

Lass what is the documentary called?

This is YouTube link.

The Cutting Tradition.

Ah, my apologies. It's turned into that sort of thread.

Such a shame when people allow their fear and ignorance to overwhelm their ability to discuss things.

What sort of thread is that Palmer?

I don't see any fear and ignorance on this thread?

I see a huge amount of ignorance

Victim blaming ......

Didn't watch this programme and not sure I could. Sure, there are cultural reasons for mutilating children and I completely understand that lack of education means people do stupid things, but it is 100% wrong and is something world leaders should be using their influence to stop. It makes me so angry.

Women have been and are on the front lines to change the culture in which FGM is tied to a girls value.
Women and girls campaign, train and educate other women. They fight for girls access to education, healthcare & political rights.

Unless men step up and start supporting the campaign to end FGM, girls will continue to be cut by mothers, aunts & grandmothers terrified that their girls will be shunned by the community.

Suggesting FGM is about 'vicious bitches' is to fundamentally ignore the context in which it happens and to completely erase the women and girls fighting to end the practise.

There was a debate recently on TV on FGM, night have been Hard Talk. There was one FGM victim who now works against it and Fuambai Sia Ahmadu is an black American anthropologist who defends it and who voluntarily went through FGM. It was very interesting if you can find it. Fuambai is quite a lot to take though. The other wonan looked like she wanted to hit her.

It's here if anyone wants to watch it.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6UfEaZHBE

Nimco Ali is wonderful. That other woman is a prime example of a trendy liberal academic who is trying so hard to be open minded that her brains have fallen out. How someone can lie (because that's what it is) with a straight face that FGM has no health consequences is just beyond my comprehension.

I had to listen twice but Fuambai Sia Ahmadu said at the beginning she travelled with a younger sister aged 8 to be cut.

I just don't get her. Fair enough if that was her experience and she freely chose it - i just don't understand how she can just ignore the more traumatic results for many other girls and women.

Horrible woman.

I picked up on that too Lass and I was willing the interviewer to pick up on it - he skirted round the issue indirectly at the end.

I thought Ali did a magnificent job of keeping her temper and addressing the audience rather than getting drawn into the details of arguing with someone with clearly crazy ideas. It reminded me of the days when every story the BBC ran about smoking had to have a quote from FORREST "for balance". I really think this is one of these debates where dissenting voices don't need to be given equal airtime.

Interestingly the interviewer describes her as a professor of anthropology but doesn't say where. Her Wikipedia entry (which has no critique of her work) mentions working with UNICEF and the British Medical Research Council, but not inwhat ccapacity, and only lists PhD and one post doc, not any subsequent positions. Interesting when the slant in the interview is to present her aa some sort of world renowned expert in the anthropology of FGM as a cultural phenomenon.

Waris Dirie has spent her life campaigning against FGM and is worth following.

FGM is totally unjustafiable

She claims it is more widespread than official records state, and there is no reason other than making a girl more compliant, marry-able, and make her hate sex.

A victim of FGM has less desire for sex, so therefore won't bring a family to shame in choosing a partner for herself. God forbid the "wrong" partner. The man gets to choose, and enjoy. How super for the man. And the family don't then need to worry that she will stray. She might well die in childbirth but at least she never strayed.

Waris Dirie is an amazing woman I have read her book Desert Flower

it's all about honour and that is placed all on the women of the family while the men so often do as they please

I've been reading on FGM in Indonesia. Seems, apart from some more hardline areas - they have a much less invasive form which does no lasting damage. There is a movement to make it more a symbolic in using a cotton bud. The reasoning behind needing to do some form of "cleansing," is still not great - but still better for the girls in Indonesia than a more damaging alternative.

I have honestly never seen anything so shocking in my life, this is one of the most unimaginably horrific things i have ever heard.

So what is that awful woman's justification for the mutilation of children??

Right at the end of the interview, she started wittering that in her culture, male foreskins were seen as dangly flappy things and therefore reminiscent of labia and therefore had to be removed in order for the child to grow up properly masculine, while the clitoris was a sticky out thing, therefore reminiscent of a penis, therefore had to be removed in order for the girl to grow up properly feminine. (No explanation was offered as to why, if foreskins were flappy like labia and therefore feminine, her circumcision had involved removal of the supposedly "feminine" flappy labia in the pursuit of making her properly "feminine").

I sat there with my jaw on the floor. Completely fucking bonkers