seems i've always got something on the tip of my tongue.    ©

Friday, September 21, 2007

Female Circumcision

I dunno what the fuck's going on with my hosting company over @ SmutandSteff.com. They've installed new servers and have been migrating shit over. Apparently this post posted just fine, but it's not showing up on my site, and I haven't heard sweet fuck all about how they intend to fix the hosting.

Meanwhile, I'll post this here until things improve.

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Work's a bitch, kids. Long days, long days. Tomorrow, however, a short one, then beers, then a concert, then apertifs, then getting to know the local transit. Then Stage Anew in my life officially kicks off with a three-day weekend. Colour me giddy.

But I wanted to pop by because I just found this article to be so good. I really dig The International Herald Tribune, and every now and then an article comes along and just pushes a button or two.

So I thought it was appropriate to share this story about girls who no longer have their buttons. Pardon the pun, but in all seriousness, the act of female circumcision is one of the most barbaric, ass-backward fucked-up "traditions" still going. This whole freedom-of-religion thing is great and all, but to go and cut out a woman's clitoris (which often can result in fatalities) for some dated, stupid, superstitious reason goes a little too fucking far.

Yeah, all right, so now I'm some pigheaded Westerner dogging Islam. Uh, no. I actually think Islam's pretty cool and that most Muslims I know are about the most decent you can imagine. It is one of the most giving faiths there is. Terrorists suck, but they ain't all Muslims. And the American religious right is just as full of shit as anyone.

Heh. Gotta love a tangent. And all I was gonna do was post a linkie.

When Ibrahim was 11 years old, she said, her parents told her she was going for a blood test. The doctor, a relative, put her to sleep and when she woke, she said she could not walk.

The memory haunts her now, and though she says that her parents "will kill" her if they find out, she has become a volunteer in the movement against genital cutting, hoping to spare other women what she endured.


I've had a lot of Muslim friends over the years so I really hate seeing stories like this that paint such a hardcore picture of their faith. Whatever, man. But here's what the IHT had to say about this barbaric tradition's links to Islam.

...the Ministry of Religious Affairs also issued a booklet explaining why the practice was not called for in Islam; Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, declared it haram, or prohibited by Islam; Egypt's highest religious official, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, called it harmful; television advertisements have been shown on state channels to discourage it; and a national hot line was set up to answer the public's questions about genital cutting.


Yet still the tradition continues. It's a strange thing, but boy can men get intimidated by a teensy thing like the clit. But there's hope yet. Here's another bit:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

...But now, quite suddenly, forces opposing genital cutting in Egypt are pressing back as never before. More than a century after the first efforts to curb this custom, the movement has broken through one of the main barriers to change: It is no longer considered taboo to discuss it in public. That shift seems to have coincided with a small but growing acceptance of talking about human sexuality on television and radio.

For the first time, opponents said, television news shows and newspapers have aggressively reported details of botched operations. This summer two young girls died, and it was front-page news in Al Masry al Yom, an independent and popular daily. Activists highlighted the deaths with public demonstrations, which generated even more coverage.