'...
This history matters little to the young girls brutalized and
butchered as their own mothers watch, and sometimes
even help to hold them down. Can there be a greater betrayal? And in
the name of love! Yes, love. These mothers do not hate their
daughters. They have not forgotten the brutalization they themselves
endured as their own mother held them down. How could they? Surely
they have not forgotten the pain. Yes they understand – as they
hear their daughters' screams, echoes of their own screams of decades
earlier - that without such butchery, their girls will be considered
sexually out of control and unmarriageable. So they cut away to make
them complete – the irony of cutting, of mutilating, to make
whole!'
...
'... Now do you understand why mothers will hold
down their daughters and block out their screams? They know what must
be done, what must be suffered, what must be silenced, and what must
be said for their daughters to earn a husband.'
From 'Headscarves
and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution' by Mona
Eltahawy.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all
procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external
female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for
non-medical reasons.
It is estimated that more than 200 million
girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation
in the countries where the practice is concentrated .
More than 3
million girls are estimated to be at risk of female genital
mutilation annually.
In the UK the 'cutting season' is when
girls are flown abroad (to their family's country) to have FGM
performed on them. This happens during the school summer holidays.
