A great day for women in Egypt!

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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Because just telling someone "You are a bunch of barbaric fucks" isn't likely to get them to listen to you, let alone think about doing what you want them to. Sure it makes you feel good to say that, but it doesn't do any good, and may even, by pissing people off, end up doing more harm and keeping the practice going strong for a longer time.
 
indra said:
Because just telling someone "You are a bunch of barbaric fucks"

That's not what I'm advocating. Apartheid didn't change because people sat around "understanding" where the Afrikaaners were coming from. Voting rights legislation was passed without worrying too much about the hurt feelings of the Klan.


A law getting passed is a step. Encouragement to uphold the law, in whatever form, will go a long way. People sitting around being all "understanding" isn't doing shit to stop it.
 
martha said:


I have to agree with you here. I guess I expected more outrage, rather than all this "understanding about cultural norms." It is barbaric and it's mutilation done to children.

I do understand the need to educate, but we can wait for that to happen and have another generation of women mutilated in the meantime.

If there was any way to get this message across faster, don't you think people would go that way?

I mean, everyone wants to stop it yesterday rather than tomorrow. But how will you get the circumcision stopped? Simply telling them that you find this a crude, barbaric and plain wrong procedure wouldn't make anyone of them stopping it.
These women have gone through the procedure themselves, yet doing it to their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, whatever, because through the generations they've been taught that this is a necessary endurement for the child.
To teach these people that it is not necessary takes time, like it or not.
It's like child work. We would love to stop it by today, but this isn't realistically possible.
 
This was just as a comparison.

I don't think people here have a resigned understanding. Reference was made to the project oceane promoted. And everyone hopes that female circumcision will vanish over the next years, I'm sure of that.

It was just explained what leads to this procedure being caried out, and it was mentioned that only if people understand they can go there and educate these people that it is needed to be stopped.
If you don't know anything about female circumcision, just see that it's cruel, you would go their, tell them not to do it, and nothing would happen. But if you know the background you have a way to show them that you do care about their situation, and when they respect you you can educate them about circumcision not being justified by the Koran, and get them to get rid of that tradition.

And people are actually doing it, with, as oceane said, quite some success.
 
Well I apologize if anyone thinks that the mere thought of what goes on to women in countries where FGM is practiced doesn't make me absolutely sick to my stomach. I've been there. I know women who are circumcised. I've seen women in the hospital suffering from the medical side-effects that can occur from some of the more extreme forms of this practice after bearing children. So believe me when I say, I'm not looking at this issue dispassionately or from my safe armchair. If I had the power to make it stop, I would do so in a hearbeat. But I've also seen enough to realize that short of arresting mass swathes of grandmothers in little villages all over Africa, there is no way on earth that this practice is going to go away overnight.

I am encouraged by the developments that have been happening in Senegal (see yolland's link on a previous page) but it sorta proves what we already know. The only way this kind of practice will stop is when those people involved understand the ramifications, the lack of support which they believe is actually mandatory in their religious texts, and most importantly when women stand up and start to refuse to do this to each other. Because at the end of the day, it will have to come from the women themselves.

I really think that anyone who wants to know more about the real life people behind issues like this really ought to check out the amazing film "Moolaade" by Ousmane Sembene.
 
Vincent Vega said:
It was just explained what leads to this procedure being caried out, and it was mentioned that only if people understand they can go there and educate these people that it is needed to be stopped.
If you don't know anything about female circumcision, just see that it's cruel, you would go their, tell them not to do it, and nothing would happen.

Now you're patronizing me.
 
The "you" wasn't you as you in second person singular.

If people, who want to do something about it, just look at the cruelty, but don't look at, care, learn about, whatever, the background and so on, they won't possibly get through to the women and educating them about the missing religious backing and showing them that FGM is not necessary.

I didn't intend in any way to say that you yourself don't know about it.
 
Perhaps abroad but what about within a liberal nation? Can the force of law be brought to bear then
NORWAY took steps on yesterday to crack down on circumcision of girls by barring families from travelling abroad if officials suspect they plan to have the procedure done outside the country.

The intervention followed reports in Norwegian media that at least 185 girls from Norway - daughters of immigrants - had their genitals cut in just one village in Somalia.

The Government said it would refuse passports to families suspected of sending girls abroad to have the procedure carried out.

Authorities can also forbid a family from travelling if they suspect the purpose is female circumcision, officials said.

“Today's decision is about how to prevent children from being subject to genital mutilation,” Astri Aas-Hansen, a senior official at the Ministry of Justice and Police, told Reuters.

“This is violence,” she said.

Justice Minister Knut Storgberget told Norwegian NTB newswire that officials would not block people from travelling based only on their skin colour or destination.

“The authorities must have concrete suspicions that circumcision is planned to be able to deny a passport,” he said.

Genital cutting, sometimes referred to as female genital mutilation or circumcision, is banned in Norway and arouses widespread horror in the West but is a rite of passage for young women in many countries, predominantly in Africa.

It also occurs in some Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia, in some immigrant communities in Europe and North America and in parts of Asia, including Indonesia.

The practice usually involves removing part or all of the clitoris and other parts of the female genitalia.

Many of the practitioners are untrained and use crude instruments, making the practice life-threatening.

The Norwegian Government is also considering mandatory check-ups for girls to weed out the practice.

In the last three years, Oslo's university hospital has treated 260 children and women for health problems tied to genital mutilation, some as young as 10 or 11 years old.
link
 
martha said:


I have to agree with you here. I guess I expected more outrage, rather than all this "understanding about cultural norms." It is barbaric and it's mutilation done to children.

I do understand the need to educate, but we can wait for that to happen and have another generation of women mutilated in the meantime.

Thank you Martha. I expected more outrage too. There's no excuse to allow this to continue, or to condone it with any kind of 'understanding', especially when it all amounts to abuse of and discrimination against women and girls.

You're right, if you wait to 'educate' it out of them, it will take generations, possibly never. Someone has to say ENOUGH and stop it now and ask questions later.
 
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Most of my awareness of FGM comes out of an academic context--international human rights law articles, documentaries seen in Women's Studies courses I took as an undergrad, reports from organizations like Amnesty and UNICEF and WHO, and serving as a proofreader for a colleague of mine who specializes in Ethiopian women's issues and has been directly involved in campaigns on the ground against FGM there. That does 'bias' me towards a certain approach to the issue, and a focus on the history of strategic attempts to address it and what their results have been like. I'm not personally involved in lending direct practical support to any anti-FGM campaigns on the ground in Africa right now. If you are, that's wonderful, and I'd like to hear about it, but if you're not, then you're just as guilty of "sitting around" on it as I am, and in my book at least, you don't get any moral extra credit for getting more emotionally agitated about it while "sitting around," any more than I do for having read a bit of scholarly literature on it while "sitting around". That's a question of personality, not moral caliber, and it's pointless coming to blows over it or trying to argue for the innate superiority of one type of reaction over the other.
 
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I guess what it comes down to for me is, it really doesn't matter what they did and why and for how long, the only thing is it needs to stop, because it's brutal, abusive and wrong, and Egypt has made the right decision :up:
 
Butterscotch said:


Thank you Martha. I expected more outrage too. There's no excuse to allow this to continue, or to condone it with any kind of 'understanding', especially when it all amounts to abuse of and discrimination against women and girls.

You're right, if you wait to 'educate' it out of them, it will take generations, possibly never. Someone has to say ENOUGH and stop it now and ask questions later.

And how, for God's sake, should they stop it by now?

You can't just stomp your feet on the ground and expect everyone to act accordingly.
 
Vincent Vega said:


And how, for God's sake, should they stop it by now?

You can't just stomp your feet on the ground and expect everyone to act accordingly.

Actually...it really depends on how strict the law is.

I mean... if anyone who has done this, the adult of the whole family went to jail for a live time (don't even have to have death sentence here), I guess it would stop very soon....
 
But we are talking of remote areas with tribal structures here.
The step to make the procedure illegal is an important step, of course. But those countries don't have the structure, and often not even the will, to go after it.
The procedure itself would go on, the just would hide it better.
If you get the people to realize that this is not the right thing to do, they will stop doing it, which in the long-run will be far more effective.
 
Vincent Vega said:
But we are talking of remote areas with tribal structures here.
The step to make the procedure illegal is an important step, of course. But those countries don't have the structure, and often not even the will, to go after it.
The procedure itself would go on, the just would hide it better.
If you get the people to realize that this is not the right thing to do, they will stop doing it, which in the long-run will be far more effective.

How long would it take for most of the western countries to realise that homosexual is natrual?

Or, we couldn't even got this one sort out in this forum wide?

This time, this issue wouldn't be any easier than the homosexual right movement.

Education = carrot

Legal punishment = stick

For the most effective result, we need both.
 
You could explain the cultural reasons for doing a lot of terrible things in this world, does that solve anything? The only solution is to stop it. You're never going to change anyone's mind.
 
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