Today, I found myself in a very serious conversation with my mother. I am so grateful for her wisdom, life experience, and close proximity, now that they live so close. We talked of many things, but found our passion today focused on those young girls in the world who have no voice. This is an unhappy topic, but one free women everywhere should discuss, ponder, and concertedly search for solutions. Thousands of little girls are trapped in families whose religious practices include the unthinkable act of genital mutilation. Strapped down by their elders, they are forced to endure the removal of their clitoris. If they are “lucky,” it is done by someone who won’t mutilate them too badly. At worst, they suffer disfigurement so bad that they endure untold dysfunction for the rest of their lives. The only purpose of this evil is to rob them of any sexual pleasure…thus somehow making them more acceptable wives and bearers of children for their religious cultures. It is for control and domination. It is a deplorable and terrible practice.
No one wishes to talk about it. We free women turn blind eyes and plug our ears. We don’t want to acknowledge it, nor do we want to stop it badly enough to risk what might be necessary. In my thoughts, this problem began centuries ago when girls were first labeled as “father’s property.” Girls and wives (and all children, even boys, up to a certain age) were considered and treated as property. They had no rights, no privileges, and no protections. We still see vestiges of this in our own American culture. How many times do our pastors ask during wedding ceremonies, “Who gives this woman?” (When I was a pastor, I refused to ask that questions and indeed, taught the history behind it.) As property, the girls had to be kept pure and untainted in order to fetch the best price or to entice the best family to seek their “hands” for their sons. Different religions created spiritual reasons for this need to keep the property pure. Virginity was seen as one of the necessary requirements for the contractual passing of property from father to husband. “Who gives this woman?” was the question asked of the father as he literally put his daughter’s hand into the hand of the man chosen to be her husband and new owner of her as his property.
Women have endured all sorts of tests for virginity through the ages, including humiliating examinations of all body orifices…and in some cultures, their virginity was to be taken by the chief of the tribe…and in others, friends and colleagues got to watch the happenings on the marriage bed to attest to the woman’s discomfort and bleeding as her virginity was stolen from her. Her virginity became a kind of commodity to be bought, sold, or stolen…all ways of controlling and dominating the female.
The physical pleasure of women has often been seen as evil and the reason for wives who commit adultery, or daughters who “dishonor” their families. Indeed, in some cultures, adultery and dishonoring a family is punishable by death. Rarely is the man put to death…normally it is just the woman. In many religions, women are seen as the one who brought “sinfulness” into humankind. Just read the etiological tale in Genesis and you will see how Woman is blamed for the Sin of Humankind. In some religious cultures, the purity and control of women is so demanded that they are willing to disfigure and mutilate their women in order to control them, to constrain them, and to dominate them. It is wrong. Simply wrong.
What can women in the free world do about this? We need to speak up. We need to make each other aware that this is still being practiced…in the United States among those involved in religious cultures where it is demanded, in Europe…in the Middle East… in Africa…all over the world. And yet, there is no outcry. These little girls have no voice…no loving sister-humans who will speak for them, protect them, rescue them…
This is an uncomfortable and gross subject. It is a necessary one. It is time to talk about it…to advocate for these women and girls… TO STOP IT.
Please take a look at this link and discover 16 organizations that are working to stop this practice. Join us in the fight against it and become a voice for the voiceless.
16 Organisations, Charities and Grassroots Groups Working to Stop Female Genital Mutilation