Female Genital Mutilation Essay example

To our culture female genital cutting is considered mutilation and wrong. One reason why it is considered a crime against humanity is because it is not in our cultural norms to do such a thing. It is a practice that is considered to be very important to different cultures around the world like foot-binding or other forms of cutting or piercings. It is something we can’t understand because we see it as brutality. We don’t see male circumcision as mutilation because it is common in America. When actually, many other cultures can’t understand why Americans do it and they see it as just as brutal as female genital cutting. Cultural perspective has a lot to do with what we find acceptable and what we don’t.
My personal opinion on female genital cutting is that it is simply for aesthetics and the consequences are so grave and serious. The consequences affect many different aspects of a woman’s life from sexual health to child-bearing and birth. To remove the clitoris would make it so hard for a woman to achieve sexual pleasure and orgasm since so much sexual pleasure comes from the clitoris for a woman. And to have the opening of her vagina stitched up just to be cut open again sounds like a lifetime of pain. Immediate complications are extreme pain, bleeding out, deadly infections and retention of urine (which is also a deadly emergency situation). But the long term consequences are very severe. Childbirth would be extremely difficult and deadly for mother and child, infertility, cysts and reoccurring bladder infections could happen. I find it troubling and problematic (WHO, 2013).
To mar a minor child’s body without their permission is absolutely horrible to me, which is why I am also against circumcision. There is also a list of deadly possible complications from male circumcisions as well. According to the Stanford School of Medicine the complications that could happen include urinary retention, infection, amputation of the glans (similar to the removal of the clitoris), necrosis, mistakes that could require future surgeries and even death ("Complications of circumcision," 2009).
These acts are

Show More