Letters to the Editor
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This is powerful
Most upsetting to these young men," she says, "was the idea that FGM prevents a woman from enjoying sex.
Men as a rule do not want to have harm come to their wives, indeed wanting women to be able to enjoy their bodies.
FGM of any sort is bad bad bad. Be it the equivalent of male corcumcision where only the foreskin is removed, or complete excision of the sex organs.
To turn it around, as always, the question becomes why boys are not included in this campaign. Why is it that ANY genital mutilation of males is also allowed to continue? Do not feminists claim to want to help both women AND men? Where is this constant disconnect coming from?
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Bullshit
The whole point of FGM is to keep women faithful to their husbands by removing their physical desire for sex.
Phrase it THAT way to those "bachelors" - "would you rather have a wife who enjoyed sex with you but was also more likely to cheat on you with other men or a wife who did not enjoy sex but never strayed?" - and there is only one answer.
I also don't believe for a second that those men don't know full well what FGM really is and what it really does. They keep the practice going from knowledge that it works like a charm, not ignorance.
If knowing the "truth" about FGM would stop it from happening, the practice would have died out thousands of years ago.
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That's good news
I thought that the intent of female genital mutilation was specifically to prevent women from enjoying sex, so that when married they would have no desire to seek out sex from men other than their husbands, whom they can always be compelled to perform for. It doesn't hurt the husband's enjoyment, or exclusive access to their wife, and that's all that matters to a practitioner of genital mutilation.
That young bachelors would find a sexually disinterested wife to be less alluring is a good sign, as that kind of thinking undermines one of the prime incentives for the practice, leaving only the prevention of female adultery as a reason. If the men rightly intuit that they will have more enjoyable sex with an enthusiastic partner than they will with a disinterested one, they have an incentive that might override their fears of being cuckolded. You can count on a person to advocate for themselves out of self interest more reliably than they will for others out of a sense of right.
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Stopping female genital mutilation
No, they wouldn't. Of course Sudan is a hideously backward hellhole of a country where ANY kind of education on any subject would be most welcome.
The Darfur situation is also terrible.
It seems like quite a bit is already being done in attempts to eliminate or reduce female genital mutilation or at least implement only the least severe forms.
According to the US State Department, in Sudan:
Attempts have been made to eradicate FGM/FGC for the past 50 years. Despite this, women are still being infibulated today. With the weight of the present government behind it, an intensive campaign against the practice has been launched. Religious groups, the media and women’s organizations have joined forces to eradicate this damaging practice. The government has made limited efforts to educate health personnel on this issue and to introduce information about this practice into the school curricula.
A number of organizations have tried to protect women and fight against this practice. They are SNCTP, the Organization for Eradication of Traditional Harmful Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (ETHP), the Mutawinat Group and the Babiker Badri Organization. The Ministry of Social Planning recognizes all groups and allows them to operate freely. They work closely with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) under the Project for Information, Education and Communication and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
SNCTP, funded primarily by the government of the Netherlands, has as a primary goal the elimination of this practice. It produces educational materials, trains advocates and puts on public awareness seminars to accomplish this.
ETHP was established in 1984 by a resolution signed by the Minister of the Interior and Social Welfare. It succeeded the Sudanese National Committee for the Eradication of Female Circumcision (SNCEFC) which was founded in 1981 by a decree of the Minister of the Interior and Social Welfare.
The objective of ETHP is the eradication of the practice by focusing on instruction and information for key groups. Workshops, seminars, courses and discussions have been held. Local midwives have been given formal training. In 1997, public health sessions were held in rural areas of Khartoum, Nile River, Northern, Sinnar and White Nile states. Informational materials were distributed. Research on the psychosocial aspects of the practice and attitude change was implemented during 1997. This involved health visitors, village midwives and traditional birth attendants (TBAs) from both urban and rural areas and from different religious and cultural backgrounds.
The Babiker Badri Organization has also developed teaching methods for women and children, special games, a question and answer booklet, posters, etc. The aim is total eradication.
The Mutawinat Group, established in 1990, held a workshop in 1997 that brought together governmental and non-governmental organizations. They are pursuing an innovative study that documents the status of women who have not undergone this procedure and are working to get information about the practice into school curricula.
Members of the medical profession are starting to involve themselves in the issue. People are discussing the issue openly. While few have abandoned the practice altogether, many have opted for the milder "sunna" procedure.
Eradication of Type III or infibulation was integrated into the curriculum for community health nurses at the Khartoum Nursing College. It is hoped this approach can also be included in curricula for medical students and student midwives. Eradication of this and other harmful traditional practices is also to be included in nutritional teachers' national education programs.
The main intention of the practice seems to be to protect the virginity of girls until their families can get them married. Thus the real key to ending the practice is probably to create economic conditions where women are more financially independent, which is not easy in one of the poorest and most backward countries on the planet (also the 10th largest).
Apparently the practice is already less common among more educated, affluent urban families.
Of course it is reported today that 1/4 of US female teenagers have venereal diseases:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11573999.htm
No doubt this is largely because of the rape epidemic in the US, but one has to wonder how willing the Sudanese will be to take American advice on matters of genital hygiene under the circumstances. They might even suggest... Hey, no, ouch, it would never work... or would it?
But better sex education for American men might lead to a reduction in venereal diseases, no?