Female Genital Mutilation: Ascending Awareness Worldwide
The issue of FGM has reached a stage where it has been freed from its taboo on the social level. Throughout the past 20-30 years, many individuals have invested their time in research and created numerous writings on this topic. The issue of FGM nowadays is more easily discussed than years ago and has reached the international level. Therefore, its sacredness has finally been removed to reveal the true reasons why it occurs. In October 2006 I conducted an interview with Mrs. Marie Assad, an ex-coordinator of the National Task force and veteran activist. She explained to me how about 20 years ago, when she first started to do research of FGM, she relied mainly on primary data and only a small number of secondary data. This was due to the way people viewed the issue of FGM, and how there weren't many doctors and professionals who devoted their time on researching this social phenomenon. Nowadays, thanks to the many writings and studies carried out by Marie Assad, Nawal El Saadawi, Nihad Toubia among others, this issue of FGM is more widely discussed on all social, national and international levels.
The purpose of this essay is to select a number of writings on female circumcision which represent the different perspectives from which FGM is looked at, and which had an impact on changes of attitudes towards it. The different writings I selected look at it through anthropological, sociological, political and feminist views. Some of the perspectives are different and therefore view FGM from a different standpoint. Some of the writings are extreme and feminist, like Nawal El Saadawi's book "The Hidden Face of Eve", while other views remain more political and informative, like Nihad Toubia's book "Arab Women; A Profile of Diversity and Change". Anthropologists and sociologists share very similar techniques in their research and, therefore, the writings of Ellen Gruenbaum and Elizabeth Boyle look at FGM from a very similar perspective. One thing that links...
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