Lyla

Circumcision is wrong, but it’s not in any way equivalent to FGM, and it’s deeply harmful to compare the two. Circumcision impedes sensitivity, but the danger and the damage - both physical and psychological - aren’t even remotely close. To make it equivalent, a 5 or 6 year old boy would be held down by his family members, the people he trusts the most. Then his glans would be cut off by a community elder with scissors or a razor blade without any anesthesia or sanitation, followed by slicing open the shaft, cutting all the meat out, and sewing the skin into a tiny tube — again, using an unsanitized razor blade or knife, with no pain management. And that would just be the beginning. FGM is the total removal of the clitoris and prepuce, followed by the excision of the labia minora. Then they flay the inside of the labia majora and sew everything shut, leaving a tiny hole for urination and menstruation. I’ve seen the results; the victims often look like Barbie dolls down there; flat, with just a swath of scar tissue. It’s usually done in the home, too - with no pain management, using old razor blades. Sometimes they use scissors to cut off the clitoris. There is no sanitation. No one wears gloves or washes their hands. The person doing the cutting is usually a community elder, and the victim is held down by her mother, grandmother, aunts etc. The instruments are not sterilized either; many girls die from infection or blood loss. After the procedure their legs are tied together for several weeks so it heals “properly.” Once it’s healed, the victim’s female relatives check to make sure the hole is small enough and that enough of the external genitalia has been cut away. If they decide it isn’t good enough, the procedure is repeated. Imagine the scene. The screaming child. The blood. The cutter, slicing away with an old razor blade, holding up pieces of flesh with bloody hands for the watching family’s approval. The agony of being flayed internally. Of being sewn shut, sometimes using thorns from the acacia tree if no needle is available. After the procedure, she faces a lifetime of medical consequences: UTIs, the inability to urinate or menstruate properly, and so on. On her wedding night, it gets even worse. First, her husband forces his penis into that tiny hole. Sometimes — it’s said usually — he resorts to the “little knife” to cut her open again before penetrating the bleeding wound. Then there’s childbirth, for which she’s cut open wider (it still drastically increases fetal and maternal mortality). Afterwards, she’s cut and sewn up again….and cut open again when sex resumes. Then there’s the next pregnancy…and the next….and the next. But yeah, let’s compare a mutilation done by an amateur in a hut somewhere that vastly increases your risk of death to a procedure that’s done by a doctor using pain management and sterile instruments in a hospital. Let’s draw parallels between an act that causes a lifetime of shame and blood and agony, and one that leaves the patient/victim fully capable of both having and enjoying sex, and of procreating normally — and let’s do it with an appalling image, so people REALLY think they’re the same thing. 🙄