Gender and the Social Construction of Illness by Lorber Judith & Moore Lisa Jean

Author:Lorber, Judith & Moore, Lisa Jean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2002-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Female Ritual Genital Surgery

For more than two thousand years, in a broad belt across the middle of Africa, various forms of female genital surgery have been used to ensure women’s virginity until marriage and to inhibit wives’ desire for sexual relations after marriage, and also for aesthetic reasons. (The excised genitals are considered ugly and masculine-looking.) Childbirth becomes more dangerous because of tearing and bleeding, and there are risks of infection and urinary problems after the procedures and throughout life (Bashir 1997). However, there is no comprehensive data on rates of death or on immediate and long-term physical complications from female genital surgery. A review of the studies that did have data on post-surgery problems found a 4- to 16-percent rate of urinary infections, a 7- to 13-percent rate of excessive bleeding, and a 1-percent rate of septicemia (Obermeyer 1999). Some ritual genital surgeries may increase the transmission of HIV infection, but there have been no systematic studies (Brady 1999).

Hanny Lightfoot-Klein estimated that the number of women living in Africa in the 1980s who had their clitorises and vaginal lips excised was 94 million (1989, 31). In the Sudan, these procedures are done on 90 percent of young girls, and in Mali on 93 percent (Dugger 1996). In Egypt, it is estimated that 75 percent of the families excise their daughters’ genitalia (Ericksen 1995). In 1996, the United States passed a law making all of these procedures illegal, and other Western countries with large immigrant populations from Africa have also done so, despite the clash of cultures (Rahman and Toubia 2000; Winter 1994).

The procedures range from mild sunna (removing the tip of the clitoris) to modified sunna (partial or total clitorectomy) to infibulation or pharaonic circumcision, which involves clitorectomy and excision of outer vaginal lips, scraping the inner layers and suturing the raw edges together to form a bridge of scar tissue over the vaginal opening, leaving a small opening for urination and menstruation.5 Many women have reinfibulation after childbirth and go through the process over and over again. It is called adlat el rujal (circumcision for the man) because it is designed to create greater sexual pleasure for men.6 Karen Paige Ericksen’s interviews with sixty-four mothers and twenty-one operators over a ten-year period in Egypt found that the surgical practices were the same, no matter where they were performed or by whom:

The sequence of the operation is basically the same in both rural villages and popular quarters of Cairo, whether performed by midwives, barbers, medically trained doctors, or itinerant specialists. . . . When it is performed in a doctor’s office, a mild sedative, such as Valium, may be given prior to the operation. Surgical instruments, as well as suturing are used, although no mention was made of postoperative checkups. (1995, 313)

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