1200 women and girls subject to FGM in Glasgow in 5 years

[ArabellaSaurus]

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25660782.glasgow-treats-1-200-women-genital-mutilation

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/25662637.glasgow-treats-1-200-women-genital-mutilation/

'Laws protecting girls from genital mutilation remain unimplemented despite being passed five years ago – with more than 1,200 women ‘cut’ in Glasgow in that timeframe. '

Articles paywalled, can't find the source yet.

Absolutely horrific. And what with all the time and effort focusing on the rights of men who want to be women, the Scottish government should be ashamed of themselves.

Any culture that allows or promotes FGM is not a culture worth having IMO.

Absolutely this! Scotland is an utter disgrace with regards to protecting women

correct! The rulers of Glasgow however are hell bent on ruining this once wonderful city 😓

Staggeringly horrible. I’m so frustrated by the lack of convictions for this since it was made illegal in the UK. Even if the numbers weren’t as high as those reported in the article, it would still be far too many girls going through such an awful experience. Schools everywhere should be briefed for warning signs and instructed to give sessions explaining that it’s wrong and that the girls can come to them for support, doctors should be legally required to report, and people should be bloody convicted! So disheartening.

I'd be suspicious of how this headline reads. I don't think it is referring to 1200 women and girls being cut in that time. I think it means that 1200 women or girls who have had FGM have been treated by the NHS (most likely maternity or gynaecological services) in that time. So basically if one woman who had FGM in 2000 had two babies in the last five years, she would be recorded in these statistics twice.

Is there any reason to suppose the situation is much different in England?Presumably there are laws in place here too?

Christ - I haven't the words.

This is based on the fact that in a materntiy booking appointment, it is a routine question and should be asked to everyone, but it isn't. That's why many people might not be familiar with the screening questions that identify women with FGM. Of course you don't say FGM, you talk about "cutting", "piercing", "body modification", "sewing" and use terms that you know are familiar to the woman's specific demographic.

"All women, irrespective of country of origin, should be asked for a history of FGM at their booking
antenatal visit so that FGM can be identified early in the pregnancy. This should be documented in
the maternity record. [New 2015]"
https://www.rcog.org.uk/media/au0jn5of/gtg-53-fgm.pdf

So from here, once you tick the box that this person has had FGM, you can see how you could audit the data and see how many women who have had FGM received NHS treatment. I'm not sure if it is a standard question in all departments, but know it is for maternity, and would imagine it also is for gynaecology and urology.

Maternity departments collect the data to firstly ensure optimum treatment for the patient concerned and to safeguard others around them , but also to see if specialist services or outreach is necessary in their population. I think Glasgow were/are doing the latter and the statistics have been willfully misunderstood by the media.

The newspaper headline is really bad.

It may well be that in Glasgow 1200 women are living with some form of FGM.

And this has been discussed on other threads, under the law health professionals as suppored to report any woman who comes for medical reasons if they are found to have been subjected to this abuse.

But in fact this is a double edged sword. If the response is that officials then intervene or even in the case of a young girl, attempt to move them from the family, women then dont come forward for necessary health treatment.

Same as forced marriage. There is support to help those who feel under pressure, but there is always the block to this happening as many dont want their family to be put in the hands of SS or whoever.

I wish the article had looked at how well the system under current legistalation is working for those who need to want it.

The article is more about shock horror, alien culture.

The sort of article that stops what support there is from seeming something approachable and sympathetic.

https://archive.is/iz9fQ

Thanks for clarification. I did try to find the source for the headline but failed!

And couldn't access the articles, either.

Anyway, that is really helpful. The article is enormously misleading, in that case!

Thanks for the archive link.

'more than 1,200 women ‘cut’ in Glasgow in that timeframe. '

That quote from the article is flat out wrong. Charitably, it's very clumsily written and/or a misunderstanding.

Here is the detail:

'A total of 1,219 women received treatment from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde between 2019 and June 2025, figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives have revealed.'
...
'In Glasgow, 57 women received deinfibulation surgery – reconstruction – from the health board since 2019, with a further 1,157 undergoing another form of treatment, varying from operations to counselling.
In the first six months of 2025, seven women received deinfibulation surgery. If that trend continues in the latter half of the year, it will be a record high.'

...
'Since 2005, there has been just six offences recorded under FGM by Police Scotland. One was record in 2019 and two in 2020.
Another two were ‘detected’ and a further recorded between 2021 and 2022.
FGM is significantly under-reported, however at least 138 women were detected as victims by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in 2017and 2018.
In NHS Lothian, which covers Edinburgh, 93 women were believed to have been subjected to FGM.
And between 1997 and 2011, 2,403 girls were born in Scotland to a mother from an FGM-practicing country, data from the Scottish Government showed.
Figures from the United Nations suggest one in 20 women and girls in the world have undergone some form of FGM.'

This is so vile

https://nationalfgmcentre.org.uk/

Lesson plans here for schools, someone had suggested this might be useful.

I wish they'd make it clear how many women are thought to have suffered FGM while actually living in Glasgow (and whether that could ever have occurred in Scotland, as opposed to girls sent overseas) versus women who are immigrants to the UK, for whom it was an earlier event. It seems to me as if the 1200 could include all cases, which (for the immigrants) makes it a health treatment issue, but not a crime under UK law.

Well because the media know that people are desperate to jump on anything remotely anti-immigration and especially anti-Muslim so they won't even read the article (if they can even understand it). The media always stir up those most vulnerable to misinformation because it creates division and panic which is what they want.

The UN include piercing as FGM.

Hm. I've looked into that before, and sadly Type 4 FGM, piercing, is very rare. I can try to find the breakdown by type of FGM, it's on a thread here, somewhere.

They won't because the tiny numbers won't stir up a productive level of panic for the media and other agencies that benefit from xenophobic, religious and ethnic prejudice.

You realise they are referring to genital piercing here by alternative type people who are into body modification. I can get my clit pierced on my local high street.

If you include all the European/American women who have their genitals pierced, then I can see how it might be 1/20 of all women.

You're going to need to clarify what you mean? Type IV (4) is practised, but not commonly. It includes piercing, but also other types of mutilation.

https://www.who.int/teams/sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-research-(srh)/areas-of-work/female-genital-mutilation/types-of-female-genital-mutilation

'Type IV. All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.'

Yes so when a white woman from Brighton goes and gets her clit pierced, that is type 4 FGM. It is harmful (causes nerve damage), has no clinical and is piercing as listed. It is just seen as a understandable cosmetic procedure that fits in with accepted values of our culture so we don't pressure Western women about it as much.

Then there are people who do more extreme forms of body modification like complete removal of the clitoris and/or labia. This is usually done for sexual reasons as well as the cosmetic.

But yes piercing is FGM. All piercing..there is no medical need for it.

I see, posted before you edited your post.

Minimising and making false equivalences is not helpful.

https://www.unfpa.org/resources/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-frequently-asked-questions

'Types I and II are the most common globally, but there is variation in how they are performed between and within countries. Type III – infibulation – is experienced by about 10 per cent of all affected women and is practiced mostly in Somalia, Sudan and Djibouti.

'Type I, also called clitoridectomy: Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans and/or the prepuce.
Type II, also called excision: Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora. The amount of tissue that is removed varies widely from community to community.'

This is horrifying. So sad for these women and girls.

'At what age is female genital mutilation performed?

It varies, but most performed between 5 and 9 years old. In some areas, female genital mutilation is carried out during infancy – as early as a couple of days after birth. In others, it takes place during childhood, at the time of marriage, during a woman’s first pregnancy or after the birth of her first child. Recent reports suggest that the ages when the practice is performed has been dropping in some countries.'

We are not discussing women getting their clit pierced on the high street. We are discussing the torture, mutilation, and abuse of very young girls.