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Womanhood Brings Pain To Kurdish Girls
New York, 8:55 PM
Mon Dec 7
60 posts in the last 24 hours
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Womanhood Brings Pain To Kurdish Girls |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/29/08
It isn't comparable in terms of pain or long term effects. The cultural and religious issues surrounding them are totally different. You can stretch it to make it relevant (50 years ago they circumcised boys so they wouldn't masturbate! That's totally like circumcising a little girl so she'll never enjoy sex!), but its like equating removing a non-cancerous mole with removing a leg.
It is the ultimate "What about the Menz!"
12/29/08
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12/29/08
Male circumcision is closer to piercing an infant's ears than it is to FGM. It ignores the horrors of FGM to equate the two.
12/29/08
At the same time, it's a difference of degree rather than kind. I am opposed to both.
12/29/08
@SarahMC: Well put.
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12/29/08
Sums it up. I realize that religious practices are inarguable to those who subscribe to whatever particular religion. I get it. This realization does not in any way convince me that cutting up little girls is okay. It's just not. And for any of those who argue that circumcision is the same thing as FGM, here's the difference: FGM was designed specifically to make sex unenjoyable and undesirable for girls so they aren't promiscuous and so they won't cheat on their husbands. That is its' sole purpose. Circumcision is also a religion-derived practice BUT IT IS NOT PERFORMED TO PREVENT INFIDELITY OR REDUCE SEXUAL ENJOYMENT. That's why it's different. The only similarity is that boys are typically circumcised against their will because they are infants and unable to protest.
12/29/08
I can't believe this is done at all, let alone without any sort of anesthetic.
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12/29/08
This is sickening. Wrong. Heartbreaking. Enraging. And "culturally" fucked up. I come from a heavy Irish background and my culture is filled to the brim with alcoholism. Sure, it's in the culture, but the savagery that comes with alcoholic rage is ravaging. Fuck cultural horror shows. They need to stop. Period.
12/29/08
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12/29/08
I look at it from the point of view of you are mutilating a body part of a person who has zero say in the matter. Not cool.
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12/29/08
I have no problem with an aspect of one culture being defined as more humanistic than an aspect of another culture. It's not 'better', or more advanced, or what the hell ever, its more humane, it has more dignity, its more respectful of a person's innate right to the things that we as human beings are entitled to. That child is screaming in terror. THAT IS FUCKING WRONG. And then the mother has the fucking gall to stand there and say "we don't know why we do it, but its something we always did!?". You know what else some cultures did because they always did it? Bury girl babies alive.
12/29/08
12/29/08
"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said her mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town 50 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."
Religion has compelled people to do some really fucked up things in this world. And continues to do so.
12/29/08
12/29/08
I realise it's probably unrealistic, I assume it would be done anyway, maybe just later, but to just stand by and let it happen?
She films it because it's wrong, and so it seems wrong not to try and stop it. Or maybe it is, on a larger scale, easier to stop other mutilations by documenting this one?
I think I might be getting kind of rambly and repetitive, but I just don't get it...
12/29/08
I couldn't be the person filming it, but I see why they do. One Western documentary can bring in NGOs, money and pressure to change the law.
12/29/08
Those poor girls.
12/29/08
Obvi, FGM is terrible though because it is NOT for religion and causes women a lifetime of pain.
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12/29/08
If girls want to have their clits/labia removed and choose to do so: FINE. If guys want to do so: FINE. But CHILDREN cannot make this decision nor should it be made for them unless medically necessary somehow.
12/29/08
12/29/08
"Why is it that the men are never asked to alter or change anything about themselves."
But in many cultures, it's the males who are circumsized. Granted it's done when they are younger and usually far less extreme than what is done to these girls but it still happens.
Why can't people of ALL genders stop listening to crazy talk from the book of some invisible sky daddy? How can you mutilate your own child in the name of some imaginary character?
12/29/08
12/29/08
My point wasn't that they are one in the same. I just wanted to point out that it DOES happen and both practices are unacceptable.
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12/29/08
I guess I just have a real problem with circumcision in all it's forms. Clearly if one has to be wiped out first I certainly hope it's FGM but I don't think that male circumcision should be looked at as if it's no big deal.
(I would also like to apologize if my first comments came off as nasty. I re-read them and they definitely had a tone I didn't intend)
12/29/08
I do think it is a little messed up to cut off a part of a baby, but I don't have a penis. Its not my place to tell men how they should see their own experience when the change is more cosmetic than anything else.
Comparing the two is very "What about the Menz!" but it also can weaken the case againist FGM since so many guys are okay with the fact they were cut and can then start thinking FGM is somehow on par.
12/29/08
As far as negative feelings about male circumcision, I think the lack of outspoken criticism is a perfect example of ignorance of the issue in the west. Just as the Kurdish women in the above story see no harm in their actions and see it as a cultural thing, so do people who choose to circumcise their sons. Would you condone a Kurdish man who said of his daughter "well, I don't agree with FGM, but I don't have a vagina, so it's up to my wife"? That's how these things continue. Apathy and the blind following of social norms because they've always been that way and not many people openly have a problem with it.
I am in no way trying to say that male circumcision is on par with female circumcision. No one can argue that functionally handicapping someone is the same as removing what may well be superfluous skin - but both of them are mutilation of an unwilling participant. I can be against both, even if one is way worse than the other. To say otherwise is like saying someone who is against beating a child with a baseball bat can't also be against beating a kid with a hand. Both are abuse but on different levels.
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12/29/08
I am still wary of this topic. I was always of the mind that this is a horrific experience, but I was always countered back then by being accused of disrespecting their culture. The whole thing makes me scowl.