For discussion: The feminist forum's thoughts on FGM.

[BlueIris]

As a feminist, what are your thoughts on this terrible practice? How did you first learn about it? What are your opinions on the way this topic is being addressed in global society, the media (Western and non) and most recently on DU.com?

I'll start: I think it's hideous and should horrify the world as the human rights abuse it is. I first learned about it in Alice Walker's "Possessing the Secret of Joy." I think the UN and other human rights watch groups are generally doing a good thing by attempting to raise awareness about the phenomenon--did anyone see the film about it (which heavily criticized FGM) that came out in 2005? I've forgotten the title, (it was a drama) but Roger Ebert called it one of the year's ten best. To me, that's a reflection that awareness is slightly higher than it was say, ten years ago, but of course, more needs to be done. Recently, I'm uncomfortable with the way the Western media has adjusted its language with regard to FGM, referring to it most frequently as "genital 'cutting,'" because I feel that while it may make women who have been the subjects of FGM feel less stigmatized, it makes it easier for people who think of this as simply a "foreign problem" to brush it off as "not something we should spend much time worried about." (I've seen foreign papers continue to use the term "mutilation" to describe the injuries sustained by survivors of FGM.) And on DU.com lately...I have to confess, I really hate it when those posters who are strongly opposed to the routine circumcision of male infants in the West take apart the threads on FGM with comments like, "but this happens to baby boys in America every day and no one is outraged about that!!!" To me, that's another example of the way many individuals continue to try to paint men as the victims in our Patriarchal society, and even if this is not their active intention, must interrupt any serious discussion of an issue affecting primarily women and try to turn the focus of those participating in it back to men and the oppressions they face. Finally, it bothers me that so many folks in the most recent discussion on FGM in the LBN forum seemed concerned about the problem only because now a study has documented the high mortality rate suffered by women and their babies in childbirth as a direct result of the genital mutilation suffered by the mothers. What...it didn't matter before, when the "only" risk to the women it happens to was that they might bleed to death during the mutilation, get HIV soon after, and have extreme difficulty experiencing anything like pleasure during sex as a result?

But that's me. Other comments?