“Is it possible that some women may choose to undergo female circumcision?”

“Is it possible that some women may elect to undergo female circumcision?” This was the question that popped up on my face book after I had joined a group against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Some may want to get into a debate on the term FGM. There is a difference. The practices vary from circumcision which involves cutting the tip of the clitoris. Then there is what couldn’t really be called circumcision, it involves removing everything except for a tiny opening to pass water and for an excruciatingly painful intercourse. That is mutilation and any other name is nothing more than euphemism. There is also something called introcision involving an elderly man who enlarges the girl’s vaginal orifice by tearing it downward with three fingers bound with a string or a stone knife.

Back to the question, luckily I know the person who asked about women who may chose to be circumcised. He is someone who applies his mind. So instead of flipping out, I probed him to say more because I was genuinely curious of someone’s take that is different from those who blindly follow certain causes just because they are fashionable. I also thought it would be interesting to get a man’s perspective on an issue that I normally discuss with women.

I suspected that what may have been the issue for J was how most Westerners cry barbarism in most of African cultural practices. Like him I find that kind of empty cultural arrogance offensive. But his argument went further to point out that “there was this other issue about individual rights and freedoms. The right to determine for oneself what is wrong or right, good, bad or even harmful. Remember in South Africa people died for these rights. The liberation movement was pretty much about these rights, the right to determine our own destiny.”


Again this was the point I fully support. I am all for basic reasonable codes that serve as a form of social cohesion to avoid chaos but when they begin to take away my personal choice I balk. I begin to have a problem, when certain practices in culture pay unwanted attention on girls body parts to control procreation. I am enraged when it comes to a fact that such acts as FGM and circumcision are performed not on women but on girls. I am all for women making their own choices, but the thing is that infant girls and teenagers do not have a choice.


Sadly, the elderly women who oversee these practices have always been custodians of frozen tradition, how things were in their days. This is where the power of hegemony lies, it ensures that the practice is approved and seen as way of life by elders including women themselves.


As for Westerners thinking their cultures are clean and superior, it should be duly noted that FGM or female circumcision is not a uniquely African cultural practices. History would show that:
“The origin of FGM has not yet been established, but records show that the practice
predates Christianity and Islam in practising communities of today. In ancient Rome,
metal rings were passed through the labia minora of slaves to prevent procreation; in
medieval England, metal chastity belts were worn by women to prevent promiscuity
during their husbands' absence; evidence from mummified bodies reveals that, in ancient
Egypt, both excision and infibulation were performed, hence Pharaonic circumcision; in
tsarist Russia, as well as nineteenth-century England, France and America,
records indicate the practice of clitoridectomy. In England and America, FGM was
performed on women as a "cure" for numerous psychological ailments.” (UNCHR, Fact
Sheet No.23,)

As the global village becomes smaller, I have had the pleasure of befriending women who at a tender age have had to endure unimaginable pain of being circumcised . The issue of sex for them is a thorny issues. Excuse the pun since some them were literally stitched with thorns.

The question however remains, is it possible that there could be women out there who would offer to be circumcised and be left nothing but a tiny bit to pee with? Well, we have people piercing every part of their body. We have people who inject poison on their lips and faces, we have those who have operated on their tongues to a shape similar to snakes or kept they nails until they look like claws. People have done amazing sometimes bizarre things to their bodies. They have one thing in common – Choice. They chose. So yes J, there is a possibility that some adult women may choose to do it. But genitally mutilated and circumcised girls are mostly pinned down kicking and screaming and bleeding and shitting scared.