The “Cutting Season”: a deeper look at the horrors of female genital mutilation

She is as young as 11 years old. Or six. Or three. It may be in a few days or a few years, but the “cutting season” is an inevitable, brutally painful, and fast-approaching reality for her.

She is as young as 11 years old. Or six. Or three. It may be in a few days or a few years, but the “cutting season” is an inevitable, brutally painful, and fast-approaching reality for her. While her friends go off to summer camp or enjoy spring vacation with their family, she too will be told by her loving mother and father that she is going on vacation. She will be sent off to spend the summer season with her relatives somewhere in The Gambia, Nigeria, or another country in Africa or Asia, depending on her heritage. She will have no idea that grown women, often her aunts or other female family members, will hold her down and cover her mouth to muffle her bloodcurdling screams as they scrape away one of the most sensitive parts of her body. It will take her several months to recover and the healing process includes little more than letting the wound bleed out and covering it with leaves until the tissue begins to scar. In a few months, she will be able to return home to her parents. She will be filled with questions. “Why did they do this to me?” “Why did my parents let them do this to me?” But she will not be allowed to ask. She must not talk about it. All she needs to know is that now she is pure. She is no longer unclean. This is her rite of passage into womanhood. This is female genital mutilation.

In cultures nestled within 29 countries in Africa, several countries in the Middle East, parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, and even in the United States, a girl will undergo one of four types of female genital mutilation (sometimes referred to as female circumcision or genital cutting):

Type I, a clitoridectomy, is the partial or total removal of the clitoris.

Type II, an excision, is the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora (and in some cases, the labia majora as well).

Type III, infibulation, is the sowing up of the outer labia. The clitoris may or may not be removed with Type III FGM. When it comes time for a young girl to marry and give birth to a child, the vaginal area will need to be cut once again to open up the sealed walls. Until then, the narrowed walls of the vagina will create unnecessary difficulties and pain during her menstrual cycle, sexual intercourse, and urination. Not only will she be in pain, she will likely suffer from many infections for the rest of her life.

Type IV is any other kind of FGM including the pricking, cutting, piercing, or scraping of the genital area.

A crude, unsterilized instrument will be used to mutilate her. It may be a pair of scissors, a razor blade, a jagged rock, or a shard of glass. Because this practice is done without anesthesia, she will be overwhelmed by excruciating amounts of pain, shock, hemorrhaging, and possibly death. Immediately, she will be at a dramatically increased risk for infectious disease and HIV since these instruments are generally passed from one girl to the next without ever being properly cleaned.

There will be many more consequences that this young girl will face for the rest of her life, both physical and psychological: anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, pain during intercourse, anemia, chronic diseases and infections, cysts, scars, a greater risk for contracting HIV, and dangerous complications during childbirth that would put both her life and her child’s life at risk.

The purpose of FGM varies from culture to culture, but generally it is practiced to curtail a woman’s sexuality and preserve her virginity until it is time to marry and have children. FGM has no health benefits, only health risks, and is little more than a way to own a woman as property.

This is not just one young girl’s story; it is the story of nearly 200 milion young girls and women around the world today. In some circumstances, there have been older women who undergo FGM by choice because it is so rooted in their cultural background. These women choose FGM because they are told that they will be more pure or hygienic or more of a woman. In truth, FGM has the exact opposite effect. Young girls, however, are forced against their will to endure this barbaric practice. Sadly, many women who underwent FGM themselves will be in favor of their daughters undergoing it as well. Though the practice of FGM has long been ingrained in many societies, it is a clear human rights violation and a dangerous, non-medical procedure that will continue to destroy and rob the lives of young women until these cultures can fully comprehend the irreparable physical, mental, and emotional scarring of the practice.