Female Circumcision
In my senior year of high school I took an Anatomy and Physiology course in which we discussed a lot of things, especially about diseases and the things that other cultures practiced. But the one thing that still sticks out in my mind is the topic of female circumcision. My teacher, Mrs. Vanrouski, showed us a video in which model Waris Dirie reflects on her childhood in Somalia where she herself was circumcised at the young age of five. She says “And since the prevailing wisdom in Somalia is that there are bad things between a girl's legs, a woman is considered dirty, oversexed and unmarriageable unless those parts--the clitoris, the labia minora, and most of the labia majora-are removed. Then the wound is stitched shut, leaving only a small opening and a scar where the genitals had been-a practice called infibulation.” In an interview published in Jet magazine she said that she is still curious as to how the practice began and is still searching to find an answer. This made me want to research the topic and find out more about the subject and since doing so, I’ve come to find that it’s a lot worse than I thought it was. In fact, female circumcision is one of the most horrific practices that survive in the 21st century,
The procedure usually takes place when girls begin puberty or are close to the marriage age, in some areas the operation can be done as early as two years of age. The operation is often done by the girl’s grandmother or an old midwife. If a girl does not go through with this procedure, she will be viewed as being “impure” and immature by the community since this is the “rite of passage” from childhood to adulthood. She will also experience many taboos such as not being allowed to touch many items or not being allowed to perform social rites. Her family will be looked down upon, and of course she won’t be able to marry because she wouldn’t be considered to be good marriage material.
This procedure called female...
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