Mona Eltahawy
by Mona Eltahawy, The Huffington Post, February 9, 2010
Imagine if 3 million boys had their penises cut off every year.
Imagine that despite accounts of the unfathomable pain boys endure to ensure chastity and passage into manhood, religious leaders for decades taught their communities that God had decreed such mutilation.
A world tongue-tied by cultural relativism says nothing.
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
It’s a painful reality for at least 3 million girls who each year have parts or all of their clitorises cut off in a procedure known as female genital mutilation (FGM). The clitoris has double the nerve endings of a penis so my analogy to chopping off little boys’ organs isn’t too far off.
This past weekend marked International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM, so allow me to shake you out of oblivion by reminding you that 6,000 girls a day are subjected to one of four types of FGM. (more…)