Tuesday, 6 February, 2024 was this year’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). In commemoration of the day, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, addressed the global audience as follows: “WHO is committed to helping countries build capacity to provide healthcare and support the survivors of Female Genital Mutilation and work with communities to prevent it. An estimated 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation. Four million girls are at risk of this harmful practice each year. It harms the health and well-being of women and girls. It is a violation of their human rights.”
Dr. Ghebreyesus continued: “WHO supports countries in training health workers to treat the complications of female genital mutilation in primary care settings. Health workers also have an important role to play in community outreach and in communicating with women and families during routine care to prevent FGM. In fact, health workers in countries where this practice occurs may be survivors themselves. They know the trauma and pain it causes. Many have turned that pain into advocacy and are speaking out against female genital mutilation. Today, on the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, we stand with survivors to hear their voices, to ensure they have the care they need and to support their efforts to stop FGM.”
A 5 February, 2024 WHO document defines FGM as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” This definition, like some others, has been done largely in aseptic language, possibly to respect the sensibilities of the audience or the readers. This is one of the problems with euphemisms: they are generally vague, and may reflect an ambivalent attitude. However, such ambivalence may be inconsistent with the unmistakable target of the procedure of FGM and the stark consequences of the undertaking. In unembellished terms, FGM is the primary targeting of the clitoris for varying degrees of removal or desensitisation which may extend to surrounding genital organs.
WHO notes that “the practice has no health benefits for girls and women.” Rather, many opinions on FGM link it with a variety of resultant short-term and long-term female health problems. These problems, according to WHO, can include severe pain, excessive bleeding (haemorrhage), genital tissue swelling, fever, infections (e.g., tetanus), and urinary problems (e.g., painful urination, and urinary tract infections), wound healing problems, vaginal problems (e.g., discharge, itching, and various infections), injury to surrounding genital tissue, sexual problems (e.g., pain during intercourse, decreased satisfaction, etc.), shock, increased risk of childbirth complications (e.g., difficult delivery, excessive bleeding, caesarean section, need to resuscitate the baby, etc.) and newborn deaths.
WHO further lists the problems that may result from FGM as the “need for later surgeries: for example, the sealing or narrowing of the vaginal opening (type 3) may lead to the practice of cutting open the sealed vagina later to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth (deinfibulation). Sometimes genital tissue is stitched again several times, including after childbirth, hence the woman goes through repeated opening and closing procedures, further increasing both immediate and long-term risks; and psychological problems (depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-esteem, etc.).” If FGM creates this range of serious health problems, why is it practised widely in many societies across the world?
An answer is provided by a Kenyan healthcare worker and former “cutter’, Doris Kemunto Onsomu, who herself went through the process as a teenager. She said: “One reason was that if you were uncircumcised they felt that you would be sexually active unnecessarily, and so, it was like when you’re circumcised, they reduce the libido a bit.” A series of Yoruba songs and proverbs graphically represent and perpetuate this stereotype of females as a sexual cause for concern. In some Yoruba proverbs, human attributes are conferred on the clitoris and it is portrayed as a boastfully competitive and aggressive locus of female sexual prowess. The personification of the clitoris and the attendant practice of FGM may therefore be viewed as a physical attempt to subdue a significant adversary.
One of the rather stark and explicit examples of such proverbs which reveal the socio-psychological basis for FGM is, “Tí a ò bá tètè gé idán ní kékeré, tó bá d’àgbà tán ẹbọ ńlá ni yóò máa gbà l’ọ́wọ́ okó.” (‘If we do not cut the clitoris young, when it grows up, it will continue to receive great sacrifices from the penis.’) The female-denigrating mindset reflected in the proverb, as well as another one which metaphorically refers to the clitoris as “fìlà àgbèrè” (‘the cap of prostitution’), seems to derive from the prejudice that women are seductive, sexually-insatiable and capable of sexually destroying men. Proverbs of this kind, and there are quite a number of them, are, in the 1974 words of Mary Ellen B. Lewis “so descriptive of reality that they devastate and appall.”
WHO rightly notes that FGM “reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against girls and women.” In other words, there is a gender power contest dimension to the problem of FGM. It may be seen as an inequitable, female-subduing intervention designed to give sexual ascendancy or protection to the male. In general and comparative terms, male circumcision is aimed at reducing men’s risk of disease and enhancing male sexual pleasure, whereas FGM is targeted at causing women ill-health and reducing female sexual pleasure. In 1997, this writer referred to FGM as a manifestation of ‘clitoriphobia’: an unreasonable fear, marked by the belief by the afflicted that cure can come only from the mutilation of the clitoris. All considered, it sounds somehow euphemistic to call FGM “a violation of human rights”, as WHO does. It should rather be more prominently presented as an act of violence against women and girls, considering its ostensive motive and the ‘weapons’ with which the ‘attack’ is conducted.
Ironically, a February 2024 United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) document on sexual and reproductive health observes: “Female genital mutilation is typically carried out by elderly people in the community (usually, but not exclusively, women) designated to perform this task or by traditional birth attendants. Among certain populations, female genital mutilation may be carried out by traditional health practitioners, (male) barbers, members of secret societies, herbalists or sometimes a female relative. In some cases, health workers perform female genital mutilation. This is referred to as the “medicalization of female genital mutilation.” A personal experience also underscores the ironical situation in which a significant section of women support and promote the practice. Some years ago, I visited a maternity ward where I met a young woman who had just had a new baby girl. After congratulating her, I advised her not to subject the baby to FGM, because she would run foul of the law if she did. Her cynical response was that we could only apply the law if they performed the FGM on the girl where we could see it being done.
Across the world, there are all sorts of interventions to stop the practice. In Nigeria, the Osun State Branch of the Medical Women Association of Nigeria (MWAN OSUN) issued a release to mark this year’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. In it, MWAN OSUN declared: “FGM has no health benefits but the consequences include physical and psychological trauma to those affected and 200 million children at risk. We, all female medical doctors at MWAN OSUN, are reaching out to policy-makers, scientists, healthcare providers, clinicians, consumers and community representatives in our jurisdiction to identify and prioritize this area as a reproductive health emergency.”
Moreover, in a 6 February, 2024 edition, TVC News reported as follows: “First Lady of Nigeria, Oluremi Tinubu, has asked parents, traditional and community leaders in places where female genital mutilation persists to consider the damage and irreversible health implications inflicted on girls. She says, as the world commemorates the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the society is once again reminded of the responsibility it bears to protect the rights, vulnerability and well-being of the girl child. Senator Oluremi Tinubu acknowledged the progress made in the fight against FGM in Nigeria and emphasized the need to confront the practices that still persist, causing irreparable harm to girls. The wife of President Bola Tinubu wants all key players to collectively strive for the full eradication of female genital mutilation in Nigeria by 2030 and continue to speak up against the injustice done to girls.”
At the level of the Nigerian Federal Government, the United Nations Children’s Educational Fund (UNICEF) notes: “The Government of Nigeria has recognized FGM as a discriminatory practice requiring policy and legal interventions since 2002, when it developed the first National FGM Policy. It enacted the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act in 2015.” In Kenya, as FRANCE 24 television service reports: “Young girls between the ages of 7 and11 sing songs and rhymes urging their parents to save them from FGM. It’s part of an alternative right-of-passage ceremony organized by a local nonprofit in Kenya’s Kisii county. While Kenya banned female genital mutilation in 2011, the practice persists, particularly in Kisii where 80% of the time it’s carried out by healthcare workers.” The report also notes that the United Nations (UN) “seeks to eradicate the practice by 2030.”
Interestingly, some women have been reported to have cited the risk or threat of FGM as a ground for seeking asylum in Western countries. They argue that if they are not given asylum, but are returned to their countries of origin, they face the risk of being subjected to FGM. In some Western countries, FGM is regarded as a form of persecution, and such arguments are countenanced. In addition, as Yule Kim, a Legislative Attorney, observed in a 15 February, 2008 report for the U.S. Congress, “in order to successfully claim asylum based on FGM, the applicant must show, at a minimum, that she is (1) a female, (2) that belongs to a particular ethnic group, and (3) that ethnic group widely practices FGM.” A 19 July, 2023 article by Natasha Mellersh in Infomigrants also said: “Women and young girls facing threat of female genital mutilation can apply for asylum in Germany and the E.U.”
As concerted efforts continue to be made by the UN and various stakeholders to end female genital mutilation totally by the year 2030, it would be counterproductive not to pay due attention to the role that language, in its different forms, plays in reflecting the socio-psychological basis and perpetuation of FGM. This reopens the debate on the extent to which language reflects thought, and the extent to which language conditions action.
