In this article, I will continue to write about female genital mutilation.
If you do not know what term Female Genital Mutilation means, read my previous article: Female genital mutilation (part I). Here you can read what FGM is, what types of FGM are, why it is a harmful process, and what the consequences are.
WHY Female Genital Mutilation exist?
The reasons why female genital mutilations are performed vary from one region to another as well as overtime and include a mix of sociocultural factors within families and communities.
Where FGM is a social convention, the social pressure to conform to what others do and have been doing, as well as the need to be accepted socially and the fear of being rejected by the community, are strong motivations to perpetuate the practice. In some communities, FGM is almost universally performed and unquestioned.
FGM is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage.
FGM is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered acceptable sexual behavior. It aims to ensure premarital virginity and marital fidelity. FGM is in many communities believed to reduce a woman's libido and therefore believed to help her resist extramarital sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed (Type 3), the fear of the pain of opening it, and the fear that this will be found out, is expected to further discourage extramarital sexual intercourse among women with this type of FGM.
Where it is believed that being cut increases marriageability, FGM is more likely to be carried out.
FGM is associated with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty, which include the notion that girls are clean and beautiful after the removal of body parts that are considered unclean, unfeminine, or male.
Though no religious scripts prescribe the practice, practitioners often believe the practice has religious support.
Religious leaders take varying positions with regard to FGM: some promote it, some consider it irrelevant to religion, and others contribute to its elimination.
Local structures of power and authority, such as community leaders, religious leaders, circumcisers, and even some medical personnel can contribute to upholding the practice. Likewise, when informed, they can be effective advocates for the abandonment of FGM.
In most societies, where FGM is practiced, it is considered a cultural tradition, which is often used as an argument for its continuation.
In some societies, the recent adoption of the practice is linked to copying the traditions of neighboring groups. Sometimes it has started as part of a wider religious or traditional revival movement.
Just think about this.
Are these valid and sufficient reasons?
Do you support this process?
Does culture or religion have the right to decide a woman's body?
Is there at least one valid reason to mutilate and destroy someone else's body?
Please, share your opinion with me and other read.cash members.
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