Female Circumcision

"She only loses a little piece of the clitoris, just the part that protrudes. The girl doesn't miss it. She can still feel, after all. There is hardly any pain. Women's pain thresholds are so much higher than men's" (Denniston, 7).

This was a direct quote from an interview of people who unquestionably accept sexual mutilations. The interviews were conducted from 1979-1994 in Sudan and from 1984-1995 in parts of the United States and Europe. The exact location and date of the person who said this was not revealed. Sexual mutilations among females are also known as female circumcision, infibulations or clitoridectomy. Although there are variations in procedure, many times the above names are used interchangeable. The practice of female circumcision has long been a part of the lives of many young Muslim, Christian, Jewish and African girls.

The July 14, 1996, Los Angeles Times, states that more than 120 million women across a broad swath of the African continent have been subjected to the brutal genital mutilation. Most are children between the ages of 4 and 10 when the ritual takes place. Although Westerners condemn it as torture, child abuse and a viola

Denniston, George C., & Milos, Marilyn Fayre. (1997). Sexual Mutilations A Human Tradegy. (1st ed.). New York: Plenum Press

The issue of circumcision tends to be one accompanied with opposition. "Female circumcision [is] a ritualized form of child abuse and violence against women, a violation of human rights" (Althaus, 4) The topic of female circumcision was not openly discussed until the second half of this century, when in the 1950's and 1960's African activists and medical