Sunday, April 02, 2006
Clitoridectomy in the name of Allah
In Egypt we have four and a half million spinsters. The definition of a spinster is a woman who has reached 30, without ever receiving a marriage proposal. We have a spinster problem in the Arab world, and the last thing we want is for them to be sexually aroused. Circumcision of the girls who need it makes them chaste, dignified, and pure.
I have an idea: how 'bout we cut off Dr. Muhammad Wahdan's penis, and see if he revises his opinion?
The term "circumcision," when applied to female genital mutilation, is a euphemism that is so deceptive it is fraudulent. The accurate analogy to a male procedure is the surgical removal of the penis.
If any Western scholar got on national television to advocate clitoridectomy, our chattering classes would explode in a mixture of ridicule, condemnation, and unreconstructed fury, as well they should. This is brutal, evil stuff. Yet in the Arab world leading scholars appear on television stations that are operated by the government and call for the barbaric mutilation of girls and everybody just gives it a pass so as to avoid being judgmental. Better that a few million girls a year be mutilated in the name of Allah, apparently, than to denounce the sponsors of genital mutilation as evil scumbags and run the risk -- Allah forfend -- of angering Muslims.
They've got us right where they want us: completely cowed.
5 Comments:
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sun Apr 02, 01:38:00 PM:
Perhaps it is -- I don't perceive it as receiving nearly the attention of other less pernicious injustices in the world, but it would be great if I were wrong.
By Cassandra, at
Sun Apr 02, 04:46:00 PM:
I am with TH. I guarantee you that if this particular sauce were being served to the gander the outrage meter would be off the scale.
As it is, all we really do is tsk, tsk, tsk. No one does anything about it. It ranks right up there with sexual slavery, another lovely issue that most of the so-called civilized West is deafeningly silent on (and which the Bush White House, ironically, has been more active on that any past administration on record, not that they get any credit for this).
But who cares? [yawn] It's just women and little children being brutalized, and all that moralizing is so tiresome, isn't it? Isn't American Idol coming on soon?
By Mike H., at
Mon Apr 03, 02:34:00 AM:
Paint with that broad brush Cassandra. We ganders can trot off to take care of male things now that we know what color we are. Let us know if we ever turn human, would you?
By Cassandra, at
Mon Apr 03, 07:26:00 AM:
*sigh*
If you bothered to read anything I'd written for the past two years, I think you might realize that you are yourself painting with a rather broad brush. I am a woman so I *must* be blaming men, huh? Convenient, but what evidence do you find of this in my comment?
Societies and governments are composed of BOTH men AND women. I did not specifically say that men were at fault for this problem Mike. You chose to infer that this was my opinion on no evidence but your own subjective bias.
It is women's groups which largely complain about this stuff, but yet they give the Bush administration no help and no credit when they try to do something about the problem because they don't like his stand on abortion.
If you knew anything about my writing, you would know that I have several times taken some members of the women's movement and the UN to task for scanting these issues. But if it makes you feel better, on no evidence whatever, to decide I'm some kind of man-hater, go right ahead. But you might want to try something other than the broad-brush argument, since that seems to be your only rationale for accusing me.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Apr 03, 07:28:00 AM:
And last time I checked, Bush (who is finally doing something about this problem) is a man, and his administration is largely male).
But again, let's not let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of a perfectly good rant. I don't see NOW raising money to help these women.
