What I Learned Today

[Kozmique]

I just learned that so-called female circumcision, a practice in effect in parts of Africa and the Middle East, is far more horrible than its euphemistic title would suggest. I'm anti-circumcision in either sex anyway, but I always thought that in females it meant cutting off the hood of the clitoris, or even the entire thing. Turns out that's a luxury reserved for females of the higher classes. In poor rural and/or nomadic tribes it involves cutting off the clitoris and labia and then sewing the edges of the wound together to create a tiny aperture for blood and urine to pass through. In the higher classes they use anesthesia and needles with linen thread; the poorest classes just hold it all together with thorns until it passes for being healed. Many women have infections from the procedure or incur them later because all the waste gets trapped inside. Sometimes a woman's menstrual blood will back up and create a solid mass. The resultant swelling is mistaken for pregnacy and the woman is murdered to save the family's honor. In any case, before she can even have sex the scar has to be cut open and lots of women who make it without dying of blood loss or infection will die in childbirth.