Female Genital Mutilation

Writing101

6 December 2011

FGM

Female Genital Cutting (FGC) or “Female Genital Mutilation” are the terms used to describe the removal or alteration of the female genitalia. “There are three main types of FGC that are practiced through the world: Type I or Sunna circumcision, Type II or excision, and Type III or infibulation” (Marianna, 1). The severity of the procedure goes up with each type.

Third world countries in Southwest Asia and the Middle East are where you would find the largest number of cases of this happening, due to the cultural significance to those areas. Though the practice has been outlawed in many of the countries, it is a hard law to enforce when small villages that hold the practice as an important ritual, are so isolated. Many tribes find that not performing this ritual will make you unclean, therefore, un-marriageable. Men in these cultures want to be certain that his wife to be is truly a virgin, by removing or sealing the women’s sexual area.

Though there has been medical documentation stating how dangerous the procures are, including death, pain, disease, The argument that mother’s still insist that their daughters get the operation performed to eliminate sexual feeling, which they believe their daughters will remain pure and marriageable. Since the husbands are seeking pure women in these types of cultures, they still feel the need to perform the operation, even if it has been outlawed.

Agencies like the UN, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization has considered FGC to be a violation of Human Rights and have made recommendations to eradicate this practice (Marianna, 1). Medical personnel have made efforts to teach the midwives to be health care workers, educated in woman’s health, and spread the possible harmful effects to local tribes, with the intent to eradicate it completely. Possible alternate rituals have began to be performed which do not involve mutilation, or bleeding at all. In 1994 Patricia Shroeder, a U.S....