Nkasiobi Oluikpe
“You or any of your family members may not have practiced female genital mutilation, but that is not enough reason to keep silent about it. You need to speak out against it to discourage others from the practice”- Joseph Osuigwe Chidiebere
‘Simply put, if gender equality was a reality, there would be no female genital mutilation. This is the world we envision, and the Sustainable Development Goals chart the path to get us there.” – Plan International
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one topic that people, especially victims (including this writer) don’t easily discuss about. Yes, one would say there are a lot of write ups on it, but we are talking about real life situations. We all know that the strongest pressure group with much influence is the peer pressure group.
Forget the rest. You obey your parents out of fear as you don’t have the right to question them, same goes for culture and religion. But with your peers, you are very free and the influence they exert over you is voluntary, not forced.
But even at that, how come FGM is still not easily discussed amongst friends and socials? Here is the truth. How do you go telling your friends that your sexuality was taken away from you by a backward and outdated culture? It will take a whole lot of courage to open up on such an issue. And woe betide you if your circle of friends are recklessly immature. They will mock and constantly remind you of how incomplete you are.
Like one of my nieces always tells me, Nkasi, something is wrong with you. You are not normal at all. And in actual fact, if the things she feels in and around her are the things a normal woman ought to be feeling, then she is right that something is critically wrong somewhere.
Ironically too, it is one practice that hypocritical religious leaders, especially the Christian sect, won’t touch with a ten foot pole. They would rather shut down their churches than discuss it. You want them to discuss and discourage its practice when the Bible book of Exodus 20:14 condemns fornication and adultery. But nobody is asking if that section of the Bible is targeted at the womenfolk alone.
Considering how blindly people respect and follow their religious leaders, especially in this part of the world, if they constantly speak up against this practice, the prevalence would have gone down. That practice, that is as old as time, is one of the tools used to hold down the female gender.
Now what is FGM?
In a local parlance, FGM is female circumcision. It is the partial or completely cutting away of the external genitals of a woman or girl child, for non-medical reasons and mostly carried out between infancy and age 15 – UN.
The above is the UN’s definition of it. However, the above age limit is questionable because this writer witnessed it being performed on a 20/21 year old girl who was being prepared for marriage. After the performance, she remained indoors, of course, being fed fat so that according to them, she can appear beautiful for her husband. Two months after the ritual, she was married out.
Did you see the wickedness, selfishness and greed of some parents? Not for her to heal properly, but for her to appear beautiful and ready for the man. This harmful procedure has no health benefits for the girls and women. Rather the lasting psychological effects on its victims can be very traumatic and depressing. It can even lead to long-term mental health issues and sexual dysfunction.
Other health risks associated with the practice include: bleeding, infection, higher risk of maternal and infant mortality, tetanus, infertility, higher risk of contracting HIV, difficult and painful menstruation, painful urination and urinary tract infections, and many more.
Ironically, this wicked practice only became a thing of concern and brought to the global arena in 2008 and in 2012 the United Nations General Assembly officially designated February 6 to be the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.
Some unsubstantiated reasons have been adduced to being behind the practice. These include: As a coming of age ritual or initiation into womanhood; to control female sexuality and ensure virginity; to save a girl for marriage; reasons of family honour/social expectations; higher dowries for girls and women seen as more chaste, etc.
Taking a critical look at the above reasons, it would be discovered that they only just reduced a woman to a thing for marriage and child bearing. That is what it all revolved around. It only goes to say that a woman has no life of her own. Remember her consent is not sought before it is performed. She is just a thing to be used when necessary, which makes the practice a very strong barrier to the attainment of gender equality. In fact, it is the height of child abuse.
And like Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, Professor of Anthropology, Georgetown University, rightly stated, “To get married and have children, which on the surface fulfills gender expectations and the reproductive potential of females, is, in reality, a survival strategy in a society plagued with poverty, disease, and illiteracy….The socio-economic dependency of women on men affects their response to female circumcision.”
It is said to still be very present among Africans, Arabs as well as migrant communities in some western countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US, the UK, and parts of Europe, who have refused to let go of their cultures and ancient practices. It is estimated that 100 to 140 million girls and women have undergone the practice and another three million are at risk of undergoing it every year.
In fact, there is a mild indirect way some parents perform it on their newborn daughters today. This particular practice involves applying Vaseline jelly on the thumb and using it to press hard on the clitoris of the baby.
Constantly doing this while the baby is being bathed, they said, will force the clit inwards and not allow it to protrude or grow out as well as kill its sensitivity. You need to see the babies crying and turning red while this is being done.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted in Maputo on July 11, 2003, provided that female genital mutilation practice be abandoned; UN Commission on the Status of Women 1 of 2008, also calls for the end of the practice.
However, it doesn’t matter the amount of legislations passed against it, the onus basically lies on the parents and health workers, because though it is said to have been banned in 44 countries, yet the practice still continues. Funny enough, there are no mechanisms to ensure enforcement of laws against it. The parents still go behind and perform it on their innocent daughters.
Governments need to equip health workers in the rural areas to re-orientate parents on the physical and psychological implications of the practice on the girl child. The Justice and Women Affairs ministries need to be fully equipped to fearlessly prosecute and criminalise offenders.
Finally, if the Sustainable Development Global Goal 5 for gender equality is to be attained, then tradition needs to be completely eradicated at all costs.
