General News Female genital mutilation

Genital mutilation (both male and female) is, I'll admit, a range of cultural practices that I have trouble understanding the justification for. My guess is that the desire to surgically alter the sexual organs of children stems from the everlasting taboo of sexuality. FGM may have originally been done to suppress female sexuality, as female sexuality is the most taboo of all. Women feeling pleasure during sex is often taboo (cf. the fact that women are sometimes called "slut" just for admitting they enjoy sex the same way a man does), so FGM can curb the pleasure that they feel, as well as curb masturbation (something that male circumcision may have originally been intended for as well, as ineffective at that as it may be). From this point on, its original purposes are often obscured, and it becomes something done for the sake of tradition and for the value it holds in the culture (cf. how male circumcision is sometimes justified with "he should look like his father" and "women prefer it"). My comparisons to male circumcision are not meant to be callous or distracting, I recognize that FGM is far more harmful, but it is meant to alert people, especially Americans, to a routine practice of surgically altering a child's genitalia that is done with a complete pass of normality in our society. Perhaps it should be questioned more than it is.

The rise of FGM in America stems from the influx of immigrants from parts of the world, particularly Africa, where it is common. FGM is not, despite what some claim, a "Muslim practice". It's a cultural practice that has been conflated with religion to some extent in the places it occurs. The immigrants who practice it are often uneducated and do not understand to the full extent the condemnation it receives here. More education about the dangers and dehumanization of FGM are needed. This should be a natural consequence of the immigrant population "assimilating". But if they relegate themselves to tight homogenous communities, we can't hope to see a change for the better.