Female Genital Mutilation

The title sounds horrific, doesn’t it? If you’ve never heard of it, you might be wondering what it is. It is something that is done about 6,000 times a day (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/75814.php) and involves one of four “procedures”. You can read about them here: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/. Basically, it is cutting a womans genital area to either remove the clitoris so a woman cannot experience pleasure during sex or sewing the vaginal opening closed so a woman cannot have sex until she is married, at which point she’ll have to endure another “procedure” to open the vagina back up. There is no medical reason to do any of them.

When I first heard about this, my thought was, “What the hell is wrong with some people??? Why on Earth would anyone want to do that???” Well, it is not a girls choice. Usually, these “procedures” are performed between the ages of birth to 15 years old. As far as why, again, there are a few reasons including religious, social, and cultural influencing factors (see WHO article referenced above).
All three can be summed up in one word: sexism. These are people who obviously consider women to be beneath men and at their whim. So, when someone in the U.S. tries to argue that women have it much better today than they did years ago, there is still a long way to do. When someone tries to argue that treating men and women differently isn’t bad and in fact a good thing, female genital mutilation is an example of how far that logic has been taken by some. When Hitler first got into power, everyone loved his ideas. A strong country, an ideal race of people with a good culture. Who wouldn’t want that? But as soon as you start to say one is better than another, that idea gets carried too far and a genocide begins.
In this case, the painful, physical mutilation of millions of infants and young girls.

If you are interested in doing something about it, check out the following, and other, websites and consider either donating or helping in other ways.

http://www.fgmnetwork.org/index.php

http://equalitynow.org/english/campaigns/fgm/fgm-campaign_en.html

Emphasize boys and discount girls

The title of this post is a Chinese phrase “Zhongnan qingnu” that I had recently read about in the book “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” (Jennifer 8. Lee, 2008). According to the author, it is a common idiom for the cultural phenomenon in China that is sadly only slightly unique. Traditionally, China has favored boys even in the law. For example, up until very recently, women were not allowed to inherit land. This has only changed because of the huge imbalance between boys and girls. Because of the law that families can only have one child, according to one article (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/13/60minutes/main1496589.shtml), there are about 120 boys for every 100 girls, with one school having an imbalance of 150 to 100.

In addition to being extremely sexist, this will lead to many other problems. More unmarried men will likely lead to more crime. The article mentioned above talks about how more and more infant and young girls are being kidnapped and forced into marriage. This will no doubt lead to more violence against the women that are forced into these situations.

The big question is, how do you change a cultural? China is trying by providing some incentives for people to have girls. Changing laws will probably have some effect. In addition to the one mentioned above, another law makes it illegal for a woman to find out the sex of their child while still in the womb. Of course, this has simply led to many back alley ultrasounds, which I suppose is better than back alley abortions. Abortions are free in China.

One of the challenges in changing the culture now is that there are already many more men than women. I suppose the men, if they are rational, will see that it is only right that things be equalized in terms of treatment and birth rates. However, I have never known large groups of people to be rational. Therefore, what I expect is for the next 20 or more years to be very chaotic in terms of cultural changes. This may be similar in scope, and violence, to the cultural revolutions that Mao Zedong started in the 1960’s.

We shall see.