Harmful Traditional Incision – Female Genital Mutilation

Harmful Traditional Incision – Female Genital Mutilation

Contents

• What is an Incision?
• Female Genital Mutilation
• Types Of Female Genital Mutilation
• Reasons For Female Genital Mutilation
• The Harm Effects of Female Genital Mutilation
• Facts About Female Genital Mutilation

What is an Incision?

An Incision is an ​opening that is made in something with a ​sharp​tool, ​especially in someone’s ​body during an ​operation. An incision is a cut made into the tissues of the body to expose the underlying tissue, bone or organ so that a surgical procedure can be performed. An incision is typically made with a sharp instrument, such as a scalpel, that is extremely sharp and leaves the skin and tissues with clean edges that are able to heal well.  

Here we’ll be considering majorly Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). 

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia. External genitals include the clitoris, labia, mons pubis (the fatty tissue over the pubic bone), and the urethral and vaginal openings.

The practice of FGM is often called “female circumcision” (FC), implying that it is similar to male circumcision. However, the degree of cutting is much more extensive, often impairing a woman’s sexual and reproductive functions. The traditional custom of ritual cutting and alteration of the genitalia of female infants, girls, and adolescents, referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM), persists primarily in Africa and among certain communities in the Middle East and Asia.
Traditionally,  a local village practitioner,  or midwife is engaged for a fee to perform the procedure, which is done without anesthesia using a variety of instruments, such as knives, razor blades, broken glass, or scissors not considering the health indications of using these instruments.

Types Of Female Genital Mutilation

• Circumcision or “Sunna”: This involves the removal of the prepuce and the tip of the clitoris. This is the only operation which, medically, can be likened to male circumcision.
• Excision or clitoridectomy: This involves the removal of the clitoris, and often also of the labia minora. It is the most common operation and is practised throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula.
• Infibulation or Pharaonic circumcision: This is the most severe operation, involving excision plus the removal of the labia majora and the sealing of the two sides, through stitching or natural fusion of scar tissue. What is left is a very smooth surface, and a small opening to permit urination and the passing of menstrual blood. This artificial opening is sometimes not larger that the head of a match.
• Introcision: In this form of mutilation, When a girl reaches puberty, the whole tribe – both sexes – assembles. The operator, an elderly man, enlarges the vaginal orifice by tearing it downward with three fingers bound with opposum string. In other districts, the perineum is split with a stone knife. This is usually followed by compulsory sexual intercourse with a number of young men. As soon as a girl reaches maturity, she is intoxicated and subjected to mutilation in front of her community. The operation is performed by an elderly woman, using a bamboo knife. She cuts around the hymen from the vaginal entrance and severs the hymen from the labia, at the same time exposing the clitoris. Medicinal herbs are applied followed by the insertion into the vagina of a slightly moistened penis-shaped object made of clay.
• Unclassified types of FGM: This includes pricking, piercing or incision of clitoris and/or labia; stretching of clitoris and/or labia; cauterisation by burning of clitoris and surrounding tissues; scraping (angurya cuts) of the vaginal orifice or cutting (gishiri cuts) of the vagina; introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding or herbs into the vagina with the aim of tightening or narrowing the vagina; any other procedures which fall under the definition of FGM given above.

 

Reasons For Female Genital Mutilation

This procedure has a lot to do with traditions and cultural beliefs. It is believed that cutting or removal of the tissues around the vagina would prevent women from having pleasurable sexual feelings. These reasons range from cultural, religious to social.

• This procedure is used for social and cultural control of women’s sexuality and feelings of sexual arousal.
• FGM is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl properly, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage
• In its most extreme form, INFIBULATION, where the girl’s vagina is sewn shut, the procedure ensures virginity.
• FGM is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered proper sexual behaviour, linking procedures to premarital virginity and marital fidelity. FGM is in many communities believed to reduce a woman’s libido and therefore believed to help her resist “illicit” sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed, the fear of the pain of opening it, and the fear that this will be found out, is expected to further discourage “illicit” sexual intercourse among women.
• In some cultures where female circumcision has been a tradition for hundreds of years, this procedure is considered a rite of passage for young girls. Families fear that if their daughters are left uncircumcised, they may not be marriageable.
• FGM is associated with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty, which include the notion that girls are “clean” and “beautiful” after removal of body parts that are considered “male” or “unclean”.
• As in most cultures, there is also the fear that the girl might bring shame to the family by being sexually active and becoming pregnant before marriage.