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Femal Genital Mutilation - Why all the fuss?

© Moira Richards

Well the surest way of making sure any husband wouldn't cheat  would be to ummm .... cut off his penis? In fact, if all men had their penis amputated at say, age ten, then every woman would also be pretty much guaranteed that her fiancé was a sexually pure virgin on their wedding night.

When a woman wanted to have a child, it should be a simple enough matter then, to arrange for her to be artificially inseminated with her husband's semen.... Better yet, if all men were castrated at an early age, then none of their families would be likely to suffer the shame of having a son who turned out to be a rapist.

This all sounds pretty radical, but after practicing it for a few hundred years or so, it will surely become a perfectly acceptable social custom, don't you think?

The practice, known as Female Genital Mutilation or Female Circumcision has been with us for centuries. These terms cover a variety of ways in which the genitals of girls are butchered, although of course, they themselves don't get to have much choice in the matter.

In recent years, people have begun to publicize and protest these practices. The United Nations and the World Health Organization are looking at ways to try and abolish FGM, and high-profile media celebrities like Oprah Winfrey are also working to increase public awareness of it.

Two very interesting books to read on the subject are "Do They Hear You When You Cry?" , Fauziya Kassindja's story of how she escaped FGM in the West African country of Togo. Alice Walker's "Possessing the Secret of Joy" which is a novel about a young woman who voluntarily undergoes FGM.