How torture works: In defense of America

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