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I always cringe when I hear or read about FGM. I know it's their culture, but to me it just states that women are less then me. The majority of the women who do this have no sexual sensation much less orgasm. Why should the men have the right to an orgasm and not women? I find it degrading and harmful to the body and mind.

i saw a show about that on pbs. personally, i think that is a weird custom...

Oh, dude. I did my 9th grade Global report on FGM.

Alright, it seems like everything's been said here already.

But here's my stance on interference from other countries: while it is a local problem and in order for effective changes to occur, change needs to begin in the local government and local society, "outsiders" such as the United States definitely have the right to press for these changes and try to interfere, because FGM is a basic violation of human rights. FGM is simply disgusting and universally wrong, not just a cultural thing that Americans can't understand.

Oh man, just reading that makes me ache.

Yes! i must agree with you their dominance is quite strong and in any case 'culture' to their society.

In my sociology class, we saw a documentary called "des marelles et des petites filles" (e.g. hopscotch and little girls) which is about various conditions of little girls throughout the world, and strangely enough, how they all play some form of hopscotch or another no matter what kind of situation they live in.

One part of this film shows a young woman being dragged by her grandmother to have her clitoris ablated, the next scene shows her lying on her back with her legs open. Now of course you don't see any part of her genitals, but you'll see a shot of her face for example and then of her legs from the side, etc. Soon, you see a pool of blood form on the ground and you hear her scream, and scream, and scream. It's quite heart wrenching.

From what I understand, it is a practice based on tradition and social rules. For example marrying a virgin, but also to control women. Some do it because they've had it done to them and assume that it's right.

Like everyone else here, I'd say it's a horrible disgusting experience.

I have a cousin who left home to live in a religious community when she was 18. No one in my family talked to her, or had any other contact with her, for the following year or so. Then one day her mom got a call from a hospital saying that her daughter had been in a comma at the hospital for nearly 2 months and had just come out of it. Once my aunt got there and got the whole story it turns out that my cousin, who was a bit of a trouble maker prior to finding this religion, spent the first 6 months with the religious group learning their ways and being initiated, so to speak. When they found out that she wasn't a virgin they took it upon themselves to "purify" her, which meant that they took my cousin and sewed her labia minora together over her v****a. In the process they severely cut her vaginal walls, so once they had sewn her up and the cuts kept bleeding it was all stuck inside her, giving her severe TSS (Toxic Shock Syndrome). Within a month or so she began to get severely sick and she doesn't remember much after that, or how she got to the hospital, but the doctors said that the person who brought her in found her lying unconscious by a river on a hiking trail. So as far as we can tell, either the person who brought her in lied and was actually one of the people from the community, or the community took her a dumped her when she went into a comma, or my cousin ran away and passed out by herself.