FGM kills 44000 girls a year

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1758

' FGM kills 44 000 girls each year according to recent research, which analysed 15 African countries.1 This means that FGM is a bigger cause of death than malnutrition, measles, meningitis, HIV/Aids, and many other health threats for girls in the 15 countries studied.1 Yet, no major foundation prioritises funding to end FGM'
...
'We know that over three quarters of the FGM that is happening in Egypt or Sudan is carried out by medical professionals and the medicalisation trend is getting worse.4
This “medicalisation” of FGM is a dangerous trend because it can give the false impression that this violence can somehow be performed in a “safer” way.56 Medicalising FGM does not reduce the harm, it legitimises it. FGM is an act of torture that cannot be made safe no matter who performs it or in what setting it is performed.

Oops sorry Arabella, just clarifying a fact.

I can’t get my head around the fact that some mothers support this practice. I guess the ideology is male led (unclean, preparation for marriage etc) but if all the women stood up and said no to this, what could the men do?

I very much hope that ‘cultural sensitivity’ and not wanting to be seen as racist hasn’t hampered our prevention efforts in the way that the Pakistani grooming gangs are allegedly still being enabled.

As I understand it there’s a wide range of practice from severe mutilation of the area with lifelong implications (assuming the infant recovers) to a ritual/symbolic pricking with a pin.

Obviously the symbolic pin prick isn’t causing all those deaths. Is it possible that the nurses had done the symbolic version, @6thformoptions ? Or did you get the impression they did the full mutilation? Did they discuss having options?

It’s hard to wrap your head around it. We work so hard to keep our infants alive and well. To deliberate damage them… I remember the first time DS1 bled after a tumble. I was so upset.

I did find data on the proportion of different types of mutilation before. Cant quite recall where, now. Will try and find.

https://www.who.int/news/item/28-04-2025-who-issues-new-recommendations-to-end-the-rise-in--medicalized--female-genital-mutilation-and-support-survivors

WHO article.on increasing medicalisation.

This study says type 4 - ritual pricking etc is fairly rare.

https://gh.bmj.com/content/2/4/bmjgh-2017-000467

That’s hard reading. 😢🤬

Study quoted above also says the vast majority of girls and women who've endured FGM have substantial injury to genitals.

And medicalisation is mentioned:

'Medicalising FGM by providing sterile blades or permitting healthcare providers to perform the procedure may also reduce the harms associated with it.

However, these approaches have generated controversy. Some argue that they legitimise a practice that is widely considered a violation of human rights and that allowing healthcare providers to be involved constitutes a violation of medical ethics'

Yes, I'm sorry. The scale of it and the impacts are so shocking. All those girls.

Yes, where are the regulatory bodies and why are they not sanctioning these ‘healthcare professionals’ for their harm to girls?

Agree & I'm sorry I raised it.
It was specifically BECAUSE it's a different, far less important subject!

This is true. One of my grandsons is circumcised for this reason. There is also evidence that women whose sexual partners are circumcised are less likely to get cervical cancer.
And circumcision - removing of the end of the foreskin - is nothing like FGM which, if not pointed out already, involves removal of the clitoris/clitoris head, the inner labia, sometimes the outer labia and the sewing up of what is left so that a only small hole is left for mestruation and peeing. For first intercourse to occur the scar tissue has to be cut to open the vagina. The process removes any form of sexual pleasure for women, causes problems in childbirth, urinary infections etc. Not in the least bit comparable to circumcision.

I don't mean to chastise anyone, its just that we've had threads on the subject veer off before into male circumcision, and vice versa.

Most people take on the values, norms and power structures of the society in which they grow up.

For individual members of an oppressed group, getting power and status (and therefore safety) is more achievable by obeying the rules and trying to gain roles of relative power, or at least respectability, within the existing structure than by demolishing the existing order and freeing everyone.

Women are no different. Plenty of women today and historically align to Patriarchy's values to exploit or control other women and genuinely believe this to be doing the right thing in society. They may even care about those girls and treat them with care within the boundaries of that social context.

If you grow up believing that FGM is doing right by your girls, and it was done to you by a mother who also believed she was doing the right thing, it going to be incredibly hard to allow yourself to recognise something terrible was done to you.

Sadly yes, it was the full cut - I think those were the words they used. I know some are sewn but I we didn't go into detail of anything other than the clitoris being taken off so that it takes away sexual enjoyment. I think one of them said it wasn't about that as much as a visible sign to her future husband that her family knew she was "clean". It makes you wonder how much the ideology behind it is discussed by women and how they justify it in different ways yet come to the same conclusion. I certainly got the impression they were victims themselves which had normalised it but also that there was definite pressure from the husbands in the family to conform.

I would wonder how these women feel living in a country like Britain where women have sexual freedom and independence. Are they shocked when they learn how we live our lives and the pleasure we get from sex. Does it make them question what they knew to be true.

For me it was a big shock to hear it had happened in the UK, and relatively recently to 2015 too for one of them. I have a lot of friends who's families are first gen immigrants from all sorts of countries and a lot of their parents struggled with the liberal attitudes (back in 90's) but most have softened and come around to the majority of things - marrying English men for eg would have been a no-no for most while they were younger but when it has happened the families tend to support, on the whole. I was used to that kind of cultural hardships but this really opened my eyes to how far we have to go. These two in particular had very archaic views on relationships and what to tolerate in a marriage, which of course is also being taught to their girls as a backdrop for their relationships. As I say I do often wonder how their kids are doing.

That's so disturbing! Something that has zero purpose, zero benefit, so pointless, and it is causing so many deaths. It's barbaric.

Well hopefully for their children being brought up in the UK there might be just enough external influence to help make a change to their lives and hopefully their own children's lives further down the line.

i would have reported them. At the expense of my own career. Right away.

Stuff the tutor, stuff anyone protecting their "culture" straight to the police.

I follow a few African men on Twitter who have organisations to educate people about FGM and trying to eradicate it. They are enthusiastic and swimming against the tide but we need to help them.

Is it Hibo Wadare who was chased off X? she took such abuse for being so brave.

And whether they would recognise coercive control suffered by their patients, too.

tbh, i don't want any HCP near me who would allow this. Nowhere near me. Ever.

That's easy. Religious and racial sensitivities make this a taboo subject. I live in South east Asia and knew that the boys underwent circumcision because there were public celebrations of these events but had no idea that women went through these rituals because it was totally hidden and not up for discussion. The indian muslim community which I was familiar with did not practise it but the much wider Malay community did. I was 30 years old when I found out through conversation with a female Malay Muslim religious teacher.(None of my school mates had ever discussed it and it was never in the news, it was that taboo a subject and outsiders had no chance of knowing about it). Genital cutting in SE Asia is not extreme, they assure me that it is just a tiny ritual prick. These days it is done very quickly in medical clinics run by muslim women doctors In Singapore, Malaysia and urban Indonesia when the girls are still babies, about a month old (still no celebration unlike with the boys). I believe the physical harm of FGC in SE Asia may be minimal but the reasons expressed for the ritual are toxic and misogynist in the extreme : it is to curb girl's sexual desires and it is sunnah (approved by religion). In case you think that old practices are dying as women are better educated and more aware of their rights, it is not the case. In 2009, the religious authorities issued a fatwa making it obligatory.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027753951500103X

In Singapore, there is a very recent and muted opposition from a largely malay muslim group but given religious sensitivities, feminists and the state strenuously stay out of this conversation.

https://newnaratif.com/three-myths-of-female-genital-cutting-sunat-perempuan-in-singapore/

FGM occurs in certain communities, you would do well to know which communities. Most Indian subcontinental muslims do not practise it except for one community - Bohra muslims* who are ironically a well-educated and prosperous community who have a significant presence in the diaspora. The Bohris do an extreme version of the FGM. Anyone from SE Asia - Indonesia to Thailand- would have been cut ( I would say the prevalence here is well over 90%). The prevalence in Turkey is very different from Egypt. In Africa, FGM is no longer a muslim issue but prevalent in other faith communities. Thus in the UK, you would have to focus on communities from Africa and the middle-east.

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/29/dawoodi-bohra-imam-mufaddal-saifuddin-visit-uk-british-girls-risk-mutilation-warn-fgm-campaigners

To offer an explanation of why my malay muslim friends and schoolmates never discussed FGC and it is only in the last 10 years that the topic has been raised for discussion is that some women did not even realise they had been cut and are only just finding out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37819753

Sure the mothers often instigate FGM but it is ridiculous to let men off the hook. Men are the religious and tribal leaders who habitually demand FGM, punish the ones who demur and refuse to marry the women who haven't had the procedure. Due to the intimacy of the procedure brainwashed women are involved but the driving force is male control of female sexual agency.