When Americans were practicing torture after 9/11 up until 2006,
the horrors inflicted upon captives usually did not include concurrent questioning. It was done not to extract information at that moment but to deliberately
to traumatize the victim in the hope that a particular mental transformation
would take place. We have a
self-preserving instinct that can generate a genuinely submissive, passive
mindset. This likely evolved in order that we not inadvertently provoke our
tormentor.
Pain is not required. Fear alone will produce the Stockholm
syndrome of willing compliance. All that is required is the deep understanding
that we are helpless in the power of another.
Although practitioners of fgm cite suppression of female sexuality
as its only purpose, I believe the actual
function of female genital mutilation is to cause trauma. The pain of having
one’s clitoris sliced off must be horrible beyond words. When your own mother
holds you down during this it amplifies the message that you have no refuge.
The function of this trauma is to convert women into slaves; To
deny them the use of their own talents and energies or possession of personal
ambitions. ..To render them compliant as providers of obedient sexual access
and passive labour to whatever ends their masters desire.
Putting out an eye or cutting off their feet would have the same
effect, but would be disabling. Further, if you have a cultural reverence for wisdom
and abilities magically conferred by the phallus the effects of the process are
given an explanation.
Before we condemn the long-halted American torture program, let us
reflect on the fact that Egypt, besides ‘disappearing’ thousands of its own
citizens, also slices the clitorises of over ninety percent of its women. This
is still happening.
Contrast this with the American culture that made it possible to bring even shameful practices into the light, to reflect and to self-correct.
UNICEF Data: Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women
FGM/C (female genital mutilation and cutting)
October 2014
|
|||
Country
|
FGM/C
prevalence among
girls and women (%)
|
||
Benin
|
7
|
||
Burkina
Faso
|
76
|
||
Cameroon
|
1
|
||
Central
African Republic
|
24
|
||
Chad
|
44
|
||
Côte
d'Ivoire
|
38
|
||
Djibouti
|
93
|
||
Egypt
|
91
|
||
Eritrea
|
83
|
||
Ethiopia
|
74
|
||
Gambia
|
76
|
||
Ghana
|
4
|
||
Guinea
|
97
|
||
Guinea-Bissau
|
50
|
||
Iraq
|
8
|
||
Kenya
|
27
|
||
Liberia
|
66
|
||
Mali
|
89
|
||
Mauritania
|
69
|
||
Niger
|
2
|
||
Nigeria
|
25
|
||
Senegal
|
26
|
||
Sierra
Leone
|
90
|
||
Somalia
|
98
|
||
Sudan
|
88
|
||
Togo
|
4
|
||
Uganda
|
1
|
||
United
Republic of Tanzania
|
15
|
||
Yemen
|
19
|
||
Sub-Saharan
Africa
|
39
|
||
Eastern and
Southern Africa
|
44
|
||
West and Central
Africa
|
31
|
||
