“Why Aren’t We Talking About The Clitoris?”: Female Genital Mutilation In India

*Trigger Warning: Female Genital Mutilation*

“On the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, join us in calling to accelerate investment to end female genital mutilation and uphold the human rights of all women and girls.” – UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

I am not an FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) activist.

Let me be clear: I fully support the UN’s sustainable development goals. Especially Goal number 5, Gender Equality and its target 5.3 that asks all 193 countries committed to the SDG’s to take action to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030”.

As a child rights activist, I know that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is clear that FGM is a form of child abuse. And yet, when it comes to talking about FGM, I shy away.

For someone who counsels teachers and parents about “safe” and “unsafe” touch, young girls about comprehensive sex education and women about consent, law and safety, I cannot deal with FGM and I feel ashamed admitting that. So if you’re a sensitive reader, I’d advise you to stop reading now.

What Is Female Genital Mutilation?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines FGM/C (female genital mutilation/cutting) as follows:

“All procedures that involve the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’s bodies.”

The WHO classifies FGM into four categories:

Type I; Clitoridectimy: The partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and/or the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).

Type II; Excision: The partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora (the inner folds of the vulva), with or without excision of the labia majora (the outer folds of skin of the vulva).

Type III; Infibulation: The narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal by cutting and repositioning the labia minora, or labia majora, sometimes through stitching, with or without removal of the clitoris (clitoridectomy).

Type IV; Other: All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, including pricking; piercing; incising; scraping, and cauterising the genital area (burning the skin or flesh).

According to UNICEF, some 200 million women alive today have undergone FGM. In 2022 alone, around 4.2 million girls will be at risk of FGM. There are 92 countries in the world where girls live with the threat of FGM, but only 51 countries have laws that expressly prohibit FGM.

55% of these laws come from only 28 countries in Africa. Countries like America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand also have laws that prohibit FGM. But from the Middle East, only Iraq and Oman have such laws.

In Asia, there are none. If you think this is because FGM doesn’t happen in India, think again.

FGM In India

For the Dawoodi Bohra community, a minority Shia Muslim group based in Mumbai that accounts for nearly 2 million of India’s population, FGM is still a tradition. The Dawoodi Bohras trace their roots to Yemen, which is probably where the tradition originated from.

Known as Khafz or Khatna, it is a barbaric tradition that is often carried out by women (cutters) and fiercely guarded by other women (mothers, aunts, grandmothers). The Dawoodi Bohra Women’s Association for Religious Freedom, for instance, has vehemently defended it every time activists have tried to challenge this practice.

Interestingly, FGM is a pre-Islamic tradition. The Quran does not mention it but the Daim al-Islam, a holy book that the Bohra community follows, endorses it. They believe that FGM is a harmless act; a nick, a cut, a pinch of skin, one which has no lasting effects on the victim.

To understand the religious, cultural, ethical, physiological and psychological reasons behind FGM, I took an epistemological approach. My extensive research showed me that in various parts of the world where this tradition is widely followed, there is always a patriarchal reason for FGM.

It is seen as a rite of passage into womanhood for young girls. It is a prerequisite for marriage. It is necessary for cleanliness and hygiene. It is a social norm, so if you do not follow it or dare to speak up about it, you could be cut by force, cast out by your family or face ostracisation by your community.

FGM cutters promote it because they stand to benefit financially from its continuation. Families think that FGM protects their family honour, keeps girls’ purity intact and prevents infidelity in married women. Religious leaders often refuse to renounce it because they don’t want to abandon their faith, religion and cultural heritage.

This is why whenever the matter is up in Court, what is clearly a case of child rights abuse, quickly turns into a debate over religion.

The Supreme Court first heard the matter in 2018 when anti-FGM activists filed a petition challenging the constitutional validity of FGM in India. However, it was passed over to another judicial panel that specialised in constitutional review, which began looking into it as a question of religious freedom.

In 2019, the Constitutional Bench passed a judgment in which it grouped the matter with other cases on women’s religious freedom, but the Supreme Court is yet to make a final ruling.

In a study conducted by Sahiyo, an organisation that empowers women from Asian communities and advocates to put an end to FGM through dialogue, education and collaboration, 385 women affiliated with the Bohra community were surveyed.

The survey found that 80% of the respondents had undergone FGM. 66% had been subjected to it between the ages of 6 to 7. When asked for the reason, 56% said it was for religious purposes, 45% said it was to control sexual arousal, 42% said it was to maintain traditions and customs and 27% said it was for cleanliness and hygiene.

How FGM Affects Survivors

To establish that this is clear-cut violence against women, we must look into the effects of FGM on survivors.

The United Nations Population Fund has found that FGM can have serious medical consequences for survivors, both short and long-term. Apart from the immediate risk of bleeding to death, there is the possibility of shock, haemorrhage, injury and infections.

Medicalised FGM lends a certain legitimacy to the practice, where health care providers such as doctors, nurses, midwives and local health workers perform the procedure. This is likely to promote the erroneous belief that it is safe to do FGM. This is particularly egregious because medical FGM may or may not provide a sterile or anaesthetic environment and can still cause grievous injury.

Long-term effects of FGM range from scarring, cysts, abscesses, tissue damage and increased susceptibility to infections to difficulty and excruciating pain during menstruation, urination and sexual intercourse. For women who have gone through infibulation, they have to be cut open again to be able to experience sexual intercourse and childbirth.

The scar tissue may not stretch enough to accommodate the baby, which may lead to a very complicated delivery and require emergency intervention. For both mother and child, prolonged and obstructed labour may increase the risk of death due to the development of a debilitating obstetric fistula.

Statistically, countries with a high prevalence of FGM have some of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world.

Mentally, the trauma is impossible to imagine. Girls and women who have been through FGM suffer from mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, memory loss, sleep disorders and PTSD. Sexual dysfunction as a result of this can put a strain on their marriage. More importantly, that sense of betrayal can go very deep and the loss of trust in their own parents is indescribable.

Women Are Speaking Up

I sat down to talk with Divya Srinivasan, the South Asia consultant for Equality Now, an organisation that is calling for an international response to put an end to FGM, and one of the head writers on its global report on FGM.

I asked Divya what got her interested in writing about FGM as it is not for the faint of heart. Divya admitted that before joining Equality Now, she didn’t know much about FGM. However, the secrecy, taboo and stigma piqued her interest. She told me that FGM is not about any one religion, culture or country; it’s practised by many communities all over the world.

The overarching theme is controlling women’s sexuality and it’s a fallacious argument that it’s just happening in Africa. The global report lends support to those survivors of FGM in countries like India who have been ignored for far too long.

Women from the Bohra community, for example, have been speaking up about the practice and trying to raise awareness by actively initiating community engagement. It’s disappointing then that there is no law in India that addresses FGM or does anything to abolish it.

I wanted to know about the response to the report. What happens when an organisation researches an issue like FGM and puts out a global call?

Divya tells me that an encouraging result is that more people know about FGM now. The UN periodically publishes reports on FGM, but it’s based on approximately 31 countries where the prevalence is extremely high, so the data is somewhat incomplete and can be misleading.

Local activists are changing this trend and collaborating with organisations like Equality Now to highlight an issue that could otherwise easily be sidelined from the feminist agenda. Divya pointed out that a positive development in recent years had been the creation of an Asian network of FGM activists who were raising awareness and lobbying national governments for change in public policy.

Fighting Against FGM

One such inspiring activist was Masooma Ranalvi, an FGM survivor, activist and founder of We Speak Out, an organisation that started an online petition against FGM, launched a Supreme Court case and published a research study.

There are around 50 women on the team, from journalists, doctors and lawyers to homemakers, writers and therapists, all committed to ending FGM.

They have directly appealed to the government by meeting with the Women and Child Development Ministry; they have approached the National Commission for Women and the Human Rights Commission; they have been working on drafting an anti-FGM bill with Jindal Law University; they’ve been preparing a stakeholder’s report on India for the Universal Periodic Review by the UN which is coming up in March.

Masooma Ranalvi’s We Speak Out has spearheaded the advocacy campaign against FGM in India. When I reached out to her, I was delighted to find a wonderful, courageous and eloquent woman who turned out to be my richest source of information on FGM with a wealth of knowledge, wisdom and resources.

I started by asking her how she had found a way to speak up about what was a very traumatic episode in her life. She told me that it had been a 40-year long journey for her to get to a point where she could actually talk about it. She had been silent for a very long time because she came from a culture of silence.

“When it happened to me, I was 7. There was no preparation before I was taken to the room where it was done. And, you know, it was all very hush-hush. My mother never mentioned it afterwards. Even as a teenager, there was never any opportunity to talk about it. 

“And when I looked around, I saw that all the other girls had also been through it. I was enveloped in a culture of silence. I think there were also some very negative emotions associated with that moment in my life. There’s that inherent shame about a woman’s private parts and the embarrassment of trying to talk about it. 

“I remember as I grew up, I started reading a lot. I became a feminist and I happened to come across this FGM case in Australia and it’s like all those memories came rushing back. And I knew the time had come for me to speak up.”

The greatest barrier to putting an end to FGM is undoubtedly religion. I asked Masooma how we could envisage a day when FGM was no longer practised when we were constantly being pitted against religious doctrine, ecclesiastical forces and orthodox beliefs.

“For me, it is not about religion at all.” She explained, “No, FGM predates Islam and Christianity. It comes from a time in history when a feudal system existed that wanted to control women: their desires, their sexuality, even their reproduction. 

“And let’s say for a second, it is religious. Why isn’t it practised uniformly all over the world? Why aren’t all Muslims doing it? To be fair, if we are going to argue about religion, doesn’t religion owe it to its followers that it evolve over time? When you can see what it’s doing to little girls, does it really matter whether it’s about religion or not? 

“You can take any example of a primitive ritual that has been cast aside in contemporary times like Sati, Triple Talaq. Religious reform is about calling out these harmful practices. What we must accept is that this is a patriarchal culture that is promoting violence against women.”

During our conversation, I sensed that Masooma was open to suggestions about what the general public could do to change this patriarchal culture, so I asked her if she felt that CSE or Comprehensive Sex Education in schools could help young women in taking a stand against FGM. After all, if they knew what was being done to them, they would want to put a stop to it.

“Oh, absolutely,” she replied enthusiastically. “So many young girls I know that have been through FGM did not have any idea what was going on. Apart from the pain and the trauma they felt, they were not cognizant of the facts. And they were livid when they found out. To be subjected to a medical procedure like that without your knowledge or consent is heartbreaking. 

“If more women knew about it, then why would any mother put her own daughter through it? And FGM doesn’t just impact those young women. It also adversely affects their relationships, their husbands, their children, their families, their communities. This is a social issue. 

“Sex Ed would be a great way to start a conversation about the clitoris. I mean, even medical students don’t know about it. Why aren’t we talking about the clitoris?”

Why indeed? It reminds me of a rather tragic tale from Greek mythology. Tiresias, a blind Theban seer, was the son of the nymph Chariclo. He lived for nearly seven generations as a man, then a woman and then again as a man. But his life of having lived as both the sexes may have inadvertently caused his blindness.

As the legend goes, Zeus and Hera were having an argument over sex. They disagreed on who experienced more pleasure during sex. When they consulted Tiresias, he asserted that women enjoyed sex more than men and Hera thereupon struck him blind.

So as we celebrate the International Day of Zero Tolerance on Female Genital Mutilation, all we need to do is ask ourselves one simple question: Do women have the right to sex?