All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [72]
Equality Now is a global NGO dedicated to ending discrimination and violence against women; its emphasis in Africa is on property ownership and female genital mutilation (FGM). In their animated, musical voices, the two women described the campaign against FGM, the brutal tribal custom of cutting a young girl’s genitals. Sometimes euphemistically called “female circumcision,” the practice is so widespread that an estimated six thousand African girls are threatened with it every day. In some tribes it is a ceremonial nick, but usually the clitoris and labia are sliced off by a traditional circumciser, usually without anesthesia or any regard to hygiene. A tremendous amount of blood is spilled when a girl is cut (many girls hemorrhage to death), and circumcisers often use the same filthy tools on more than one girl in succession, spreading disease. The resulting damage to the genitals makes girls more susceptible to STIs and HIV. It happens at various ages, but invariably, it happens. The desired result is a girl with reduced sexual function, who will remain a virgin until marriage and a faithful wife thereafter. It is an exceedingly grotesque example of pathological attempts to control female sexuality. FGM is so difficult to stop because it is an entrenched and pervasive practice, and women are conditioned to believe that they can never marry without being cut. Because every woman in the group has been mutilated, the peer pressure to conform is enormous. In many places, a mythology has evolved around female genitalia to reinforce the practice. In some tribes, it is believed the clitoris will hurt a baby upon delivery, and that it will kill a man. (Well, of course it does, but it’s a delicious death men love and from which they recover! La petite mort, as the French would say.) FGM is so important that should a woman in Tanzania die uncircumcised, she will be cut postmortem, or it is believed she will not go with her ancestors.
In Kenya, Equality Now representatives travel from village to village, explaining that the clitoris is an organ with an essential function, just like an eye or a hand, using anatomical models of healthy genitals and ones that have been circumcised. They explain that the early onset of vaginal dryness makes sex unbearably painful. The extraordinary pain and difficulties women have with childbirth are related to the lack of elasticity in all the scar tissue where the genitals have been mutilated, including the removed labia. When they do this education face-to-face with both men and women, the practice changes, but Africa is a big place and it’s slow going. They also appeal directly to the older women who perform the mutilations, essentially trying to persuade them to hang up their rusty knives and razors by reeducating them into a small business of some sort or taking the religious route (you’ll go to hell for hurting all these girls so unmercifully!). They are doing fabulous work, and while it is hard, there is progress. Equality Now has partnered with a grassroots group in Maasailand to implement “alternate rites of passage” for schoolgirls. They have engaged in training police officers in ways to enforce anti-FGM laws and have a presence in the courts to hold judges accountable for upholding the rule of law.
Americans might be shocked to learn that FGM practices have spread to this country along with the African diaspora. A federal law passed in 1996 specifically outlawed female genital mutilation in the United States. Equality Now is at the forefront of the