July and August is not just the time for school holidays, it is also known as “the cutting season”. But what sort of cutting do we mean? Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) .
The Bristol Post today reports that around 3500 girls in Bristol alone have been mutilated. Let us remind ourselves, courtesy of the NHS website, what this vile practice involves:
Type 1 – clitoridectomy – removing part or all of the clitoris.
Type 2 – excision – removing part or all of the clitoris and the inner labia (lips that surround the vagina), with or without removal of the labia majora (larger outer lips).
Type 3 – infibulation – narrowing of the vaginal opening by creating a seal, formed by cutting and repositioning the labia.
Other harmful procedures to the female genitals, which include pricking, piercing, cutting, scraping and burning the area.
If you think this all sounds painful, then you are right, because many of these procedures are carried out without anaesthetic and with basic instruments such as knives and even sharp rocks. Those who practice FGM claim that it reduces the sexual desire of women, promoting virginity and chastity, maintaining fidelity in married women and for aesthetic reasons. Apparently, FGM improves a girl’s marriage prospects, its part of society’s definition of womanhood and is to please their husbands. Well, it would please their husbands, wouldn’t it? What man wouldn’t want his wife to have her clitoris and inner labia chopped off and then have her vagina sown up?
FGM, we are told is a cultural matter and it is practiced by countries throughout Africa and – surprise, surprise! – the Middle East. In Bristol, the girls under threat are Somali. For some odd reason, the Bristol Post’s report omits the name of only religion in which FGM occurs, but I think we have a reasonably good idea.
Now the delightfully named “cutting season” has arrived and family members are taking their girls out of the country to have their daughters mutilated. This will obviously be without the girls’ consent since many of them will be very young indeed, but of course a good few people will need to be present at the ceremony to restrain the child. You wouldn’t want an accident to occur during the procedure.
Did you spot the magic “culture” word again a little earlier on? FGM is part of a culture. As a multicultural society, we are told, we must embrace diversity. I do not embrace multiculturalism as a desirable catch-all. In fact, how far do we take it?
I profoundly disagree with the cruel Halal and Kosher means of killing animals. They have no place in a civilised society. I would ban the procedures tomorrow. If some people don’t like it, that’s really too bad. Some cultures embrace slavery, some deny all but basic rights for women, others allow them no rights at all. I say that, in a secular society, we do not allow religious privilege of any kind, because religion, as usual, is what it all comes back to. The Bristol Post ignores the unfortunate truth, presumably not to offend a group of its readers, but we need to be open and above board about it.
That we have 3500 girls who have been “cut”, you’d have thought there must have been countless prosecutions in Bristol, but it’s a very low figure indeed; zero. And that’s the same everywhere else in the country. Not a single person has been prosecuted for practising FGM. It’s obviously hard to obtain evidence and then put a case together for the CPS but if that’s the case we need to invest more in order to go after the miscreants. FGM is surely at the top end of child abuse offences and I would have thought those convicted, and indeed those who have aided and abetted, will be locked up until they are old and grey, or maybe not even at all.
For better or worse, we have a huge Somali population in Bristol and almost all the FGM activity is based in their community. The old excuse that many of them come from a tribal, often backward, society is of no relevance. FGM is a serious crime in the UK and they need to recognise the unacceptability of the practice.
I really don’t care if you call me a racist for condemning FGM, or indeed for being of the opinion that the great experiment of multiculturalism has been a ghastly failure. I am not interested in anyone’s colour, creed or religion but everyone has to live by the rules. I just wish we had a serious politician of the left who had the guts to say it and not leave the rabble-rousing to the far right and Farage and co.
