Various,
often contradictory explanations exist for the tradition. In the main,
rationales reflect prevalent mythology, ignorance of biological and medical
facts, and religious obscurantism. Almost every reference links the custom to
the family’s fear that their daughter won’t be “marriageable.” Unmutilated young
girls are ostracized, labeled as “unclean” or branded as whores; children born
to unexcised women are considered bastards in many societies, and unscarred
genitals are associated with prostitution. Often unmutilated women are
considered illegitimate; they cannot inherit money, cattle or land, nor do they
fetch an adequate bride price.
One
Somalian woman defended her granddaughter’s wish to be infibulated, saying it
“takes away nothing that she needs. If she does not have this done, she will
become a harlot.” The girl’s father, a college-educated businessman, expressed
his uncertainty: “Yes, I know it is bad for the health of girls. But I don’t
want my daughter to blame me later on because she could not find a husband.”
Different
religious and social groupings see genital mutilation as the only way to
protect women from unbridled sexual passion and promiscuity. A19th century
British adventurer/ethnologist who spent many years studying the culture,
language and sexuality of eastern Africa,
wrote that “all consider sexual desire in woman to be ten times greater than in
man. (They cut off the clitoris because, as Aristotle warns, that organ is the
seat and spring of sexual desire.)” Unfortunately, a good portion of the
research was destroyed by his devoted, but Roman Catholic, wife.
Overwhelmingly
the practice is linked to virginity before marriage and fidelity afterward.
Among almost every one of the peoples where the practice exists, polygamy is
the norm. One argument for female excision is that no man can satisfy all of
his wives, so it helps to have women who don’t desire sex. While the truth is
that most men in these societies are too poor to afford more than one wife, the
social reality of male dominance in every sphere of day-to-day existence is the
backdrop to the ritual mutilation of women.
The
origins of this grotesque practice are not known. While often found in Islamic
countries, the procedure is not prescribed in the Koran. In 742 AD the prophet
Mohammed was said to have proposed a reform of genital mutilation; his call to
“reduce but not destroy” has been taken as an instruction to perform only
Sunna, the norm today in Egypt.
While Muslim fundamentalism enforces brutally medieval conditions on women,
including confinement to the home and the stifling veil, only one-fifth of the
world’s 600 million Muslims practice female genital mutilation.
It
is clear that genital mutilations date back to ancient times. The Greek
historian Herodotus noted in the fifth century BC that female circumcision was
practiced by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hittites and Ethiopians. The Sudanese
refer to infibulation as “Pharaonic circumcision”; the murky origins of the
practice, however, may be inferred from the fact that in Egypt it’s
called “Sudanese circumcision.”
Ritual
genital mutilation has been found to have existed at one time in various forms
among different peoples on every continent. Quite independently of the
tradition in sub-Saharan Africa, infibulation was performed by the Conibo
people of Peru.
The Australian aboriginals used to practice introcision, an enlargement of the
vaginal opening. Anthropologists agree that female mutilation has only occurred
in societies which also practice male circumcision, generally in cultures where
the sexes are strongly differentiated in childhood. Thus some believe that the
practice originated to highlight the difference between male and female at
puberty. The Bambara in Mali,
for example, believe that all people are born with both male and female
characteristics; excision rids the girl of her “male element” while
circumcision removes the “female element” from boys.
The
ritual is the norm in an area south of the Sahara and north of the forest line;
this corresponds generally with the area of Africa
where, with no shortage of land, women and children (and slaves) were once
needed to cultivate the fields and tend domestic animals and were easily
absorbed into polygamous households. While the nature of the means of
production does not determine how humans live in a social/sexual sense, it does
set elastic limits. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that female genital
mutilation has its roots in agricultural society which enabled the development
of a social surplus and then private property. It is only when the determination
of paternity for the purpose of inheritance becomes relevant that society puts
a premium on virginity and marital fidelity on the part of women.
Female
mutilations continue to occur in the rural areas which maintain a subsistence
agrarian economy based on a tribal structure. What’s at stake are traditional
property rights in societies where women are sold like cattle, based largely on
their ability to reproduce. The practice is only somewhat less prevalent today
in the cities. Over the centuries it has become an unquestioned, ingrained
custom.
In Prisoners of Ritual Lightfoot-Klein
reflects on these woman-hating practices as merely “a fact of her life, just as
tremendous hardship, poverty, scarce water and little food, back-breaking
labor, overwhelming heat, dust storms, crippling disease, unalleviated pain,
and early death are facts of her life.” Whatever the rationale for the
mutilation of millions of young girls, whatever its origins centuries ago,
female genital mutilation is today a burning symbol of the all-sided sexual,
social and economic oppression of women.
Let’s
take it as a challenge to stop this unnecessary practice.
