- Here is a video from YouTube lasts about 16 minutes talked about female circumcision in Egypt. The video gives us the reasons and the story which specifically explain why females need to take circumcision in Egypt.
"FEMALE CIRCUMCISION AS A HEALTH ISSUE" by NAHID TOUBIA M.D.
Nahid Toubia wrote an article “Female Circumcision As a Public Health Issue”, in this article, it reviews the common types of circumcision, their complications and the health issues happened to females. Moreover, he analyzes female circumcision into many parts, including the procedures, physical complications, psychological and sexual effects, the cultural meaning of female circumcision, and clinical management. He said female circumcision only had bad effects to women and it happened in many counties in Africa. At the end, he put his opinion about this practice, what he thought is this practice can no longer be seen as a traditional custom. He holds the idea that we should forbid this practice as soon as possible.
Tianying Li
Professor Bieber
ENGL 113B
25 February 2013
Female Circumcision in Egypt
Female circumcision existed for a very long time. According to Emon Manoncourt’s words, Egypt is one of the few countries in the Middle East where female circumcision is a problem, with a level of 77 percent of young girls between 15 and 17 years, and around 60 percent among girls under the age of three being affected. What he said indicates there is a large amount of females that have been circumcised in Egypt. Moreover, as circumcision began in Egypt, I pay more attention to know about the female circumcision in Egypt. Then I found out the reasons why Egyptian women being circumcised. It’s because people think it’s a “good tradition” and they regarded this practice as a religious requirement and some other reasons like a better marriage prospect. Since this practice lasted for a long time, more and more people have begun to focus on this problem. After people knowing what FGM is, they thought this practice is absolutely cruel and unnecessary. Then, Egypt government started to take actions to solve this problem. The power of government seems like the practice has been eliminated effectively, but actually the FGM is still happening on certain place in Egypt. I think the most important thing we need to do is educate more people to have the right attitude in FGM and take more measure to stop this practice thoroughly.
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What exactly is female circumcision? Female circumcision is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "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.". In “Demographic and Health Survey - Egypt (1995)”, we see most girls undergo FGM (Female genital mutilation) when they are between 7 and 10 years old. There are four different types of FGM— some more egregious than others. TypeⅠ is taking off the clitoral hood; typeⅡ is removing from the clitoris and inner labia; typeⅢ is the removal of all external genitalia ; a variety of other procedures are collectively known as typeⅣ. Different countries used different type of FGM. About 85 percent of all FGM are operated Type I and Type II. However, in parts of Egypt, they also used typeⅢ.
What is the reason why they take this practice to women and why this practice lasts many years? The Reasons for supporting FGM include “the beliefs that it is a "good tradition", a religious requirement, or a necessary custom of passage to womanhood”, which is mentioned by N Toubia (1993)’s article “Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action”. Moreover, in the “Demographic and Health Survey – Egypt (1995)”, they think this practice can “ensure cleanliness or a better marriage prospect, prevent promiscuity and excessive clitoral growth, preserves virginity, enhances male sexuality, and facilitates childbirth by widening the birth canal”. Some religious Islamic leaders consider this practice as a mandate of Islam. What it shows to us is female circumcision existed for many reason that we cannot stop it easily and immediately. We need to change the idea of people who believes it is a good tradition and educate them to know about FGM, let them know both the good and bad effects of FGM.
From the perspective of culture, they believe this procedure is the best way to protect women’s sexuality. In other words, what they try to do is to maintain a female’s purity. They think removal or partial removal of the clitoris is beneficial to marriage because a woman would be more likely to remain faithful to her husband if she had no sexual drive. Some people said it would bring health benefits like avoiding AIDS or lower the risk of infecting with HIV. Actually, they found out there is no medical benefit from circumcision for girls and women. It is even bad for female in both physical complications and psychological effects. Female circumcision is performed with unsterilized instruments and can produce serious health problems of physical complications such as pain, tetanus, rupture of the vaginal walls, infertility, increased risk in childbirth and even death. Although it caused so many bad effects to female, the custom has never changed. To psychological and sexual effects, Comfort Momoh in his books says “there are fear, anxiety and depression arising from worry over the state of their genitals after they did female circumcision” (Momoh 260). We can see this practice leads to severe medical consequences for the women. Therefore we must stop this practice by taking some action.
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More and more countries began to take action to eliminate female circumcision. Many of African countries have created new legislation against it. In some western countries, they have clear legal mandate to ban female circumcision, which can be seen as a crime. Also, in Danida’s report, we see women in Egypt and Sudan recommended education as the best means to end this practice and Egyptian government began to support FGM eradication. In 1992, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics published a joint statement on female circumcision with World Health Organization. These statements all claimed the practice of female circumcision need to be abolished as it’s harmful. Those actions, laws and legislations have effectively helped large amounts of female population to escape from female circumcision so far.
As far as I am concerned, as Egypt is the birthplace of FGM, we need to tell the government in Egypt to take more effective measures to stop this practice thoroughly. What we should do is educate more women and parents on the harmful health risks caused by infibulation and prevent more females from suffering FGM. This cruel custom should be forbidden as soon as possible because although female circumcision is a traditional custom, it is harmful and unnecessary to the female body. I hold the idea that this practice cannot be existed anymore since FGM has no benefits but lead a lot of bad effects to females.
Works Cited
“UNICEF urges Egypt to stop female circumcision.” The Arab American News.
29 Sep 2007. Print.
"Female Genital Mutilation." WHO. Media Centre, Feb. 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2013.
Demographic and Health Survey - Egypt. (1995). Calverton, MD: Macro International Inc. pp.175.
Toubia, N. (1993). Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action. New York: Women, Ink; pp. 21.
Demographic and Health Survey - Egypt. (1995). Calverton, MD: Macro International Inc.
pp. 173.
Momoh, Comfort. Female Genital Mutilation. Oxford: Radcliffe Pub., 2005. Print.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Danida. (1995). "Report from the Seminar on Female Genital Mutilation". Copenhagen: Axel Nielsen & Son; pp. 17
Congressional Record -House. (September 28, 1996). H11829 / SEC. 645. Criminalization of Female Genital Mutilation.
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