Women's Forum

SHRO-CAIRO WOMEN’S FORUM on Female Genital Mutilation

Rasha El-Tigani and Naser El Fouli

Discourse of Power - Kalid Kodi

From Quarterly, Issue No. 1, summer 1995
Translated by Rasha El-Tigani

The Forum opened many sides of the issue. A documentation video film was shown on the mutilation process itself. The show also manifested the frightening side of the operation and its ugliness.

The Forum addressed itself to the historical background of the operation, the African countries that practice it, the concept and means of practicing it, the status of women involved, the objectives of the operation, and the physical and psychological problems it creates. These included the pre-marriage hazards, men’s views about mutilated women, labor and health hazards, and the view of religion.

Female genital mutilation – or pharaonic mutilation – is being practiced in most African countries, if not all of them. It is mostly concentrated and exercised in the African Horn. In Somalia alone the percentage amounts to 98%, in Sudan 89% and Egypt 50%. These are only estimated figures of actual practice already undertaken, let alone new estimated figures that indicate the existence of a real threat of mutilation to the majority of African girls and women, annually.

All societies tend to believe that this habit is meant to suppress girl’s sexuality and have it tightly controlled. There are also so many reasons for the practice such as that the female genitalia are ugly and need surgery for beautification. Societies hold that female genitalia continue to grow and enlarge in size. Therefore, surgery is needed to limit their growth. The operation is said to preserve what is called the Chastity Belt that protects the girls from involvement in premature sex relations before marriage.

Male domination and a strong belief that circumcision leads girls from childhood to full maturity pose another reason for the female genital mutilation. The Forum discussed the issue of the persons who perform the operation who are usually midwives, untrained medical assistants in the past and, recently, some physicians and doctors.

In the past, the performers of the operation were usually medically untrained. They used non-sterilized equipment. Furthermore, they sometimes made use of the same equipment for more than one girl that which led to the death of many victims out of blood poisoning.

The psychological side-effects of circumcised girls are many and always start with a feeling of being incomplete and paranoid which might then develop into a severe state of depression, aggression, or isolation.

The physical side-effects are listed in hemorrhage or uncontrolled bleeding, severe fever which usually follows the operation and in some cases fever gets transmitted to the brain and leads to death. Shocks and heart attacks during the operation are also common and could also be fatal. Urine contamination that could lead to kidney’s infection, in addition to infections causing poisoning of the surgery is common; a lot of other hazards and side effects prevail.

Bearing in mind that pharaonic circumcision is basically the total removal of sensory organs of female genitalia, both psychological and physical complications can be recorded during marriage. This is because the circumcised girls would have to face sever physical and psychological pain during sexual intercourse, especially that each of the sensory organs has a critically sensitive function to complete sexual fulfillment or orgasm. In pharaonic circumcision, the mid-wife or the practitioner removes all sensory organs and then stitches the flesh together, leaving only a minute hole to allow menstruation blood and urine to evacuate.

Sometimes, the hole made is too small to the extent that it doesn’t allow blood to evacuate. It then contaminates inside the womb causing types of bacteria and germs to prevail there, in turn leading to serious infections of the whole damage of the womb in other cases.

Circumcision is primarily an Afro-pharaonic habit that aimed to “protect” women’s sexuality and to control women socially so that they would not get involved in sex relations in case the men were absent or abroad. Some African tribes perform the operation for married women when their husbands would be traveling away. This continues every time the husband leaves his home, several times a year.

As for religion, there are no words in the Qur’an, the holy text of Islam, that dictate necessity of the operation. Neither are there teachings in the Hadith [sayings of the Prophet of Islam] demanding the operation. Furthermore, the Prophet Muhammad himself had not circumcised any of his own daughters. The only Hadith believed to have addressed the issue is hardly supportive of female circumcision.

About the view of men on circumcised women, we find some statistics made available by the W.H.O. and other local association professing that most African men prefer circumcised women because they satisfy their sexual desires more than those who are non-circumcised. What these men actually mean is their own desire to possess and over-dominate women to become carriers for bearing children and looking after them.