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Human Female Sexuality

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Veronica Poe
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« on: August 03, 2007, 12:31:04 am »

Medical consequences

Among practicing cultures, FGC is most commonly performed between the ages of four and eight. As with most plastic surgery, advocates of it believe it should be performed under hygienic conditions and with the application of an appropriate anaesthetic. However, this technology has only been available for a relatively short time, and even today the procedure is usually carried out without anesthesia and under unsanitary conditions. As with any procedure, FGC can be extremely painful and dangerous to health when not performed hygienically.

In the case of Clitoridectomy, the principal and most obvious social/medical consequence, irrespective of the sanitary conditions, is the elimination of what is assumed to be the individual's main organ of sexual pleasure, which is the basis upon which the United Nations and most societies to classify it as a human-rights violation.

Some argue that making the process illegal drives it underground and thus puts the recipients at greater risk. Some opponents of the practice argue that the deterrent effect of prohibition outweighs such risks.

Practices such as infibulation, when carried out with shards of glass and other unsanitary tools, can commonly cause infections, sometimes resulting in death or serious long term health effects. These include urinary and reproductive tract infections (caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood), various forms of scarring and infertility. First sexual intercourse will always be extremely painful, and infibulated women also need to open the labia majora carefully. Sexual pleasure through stimulation of the external part of the clitoris, almost universally regarded outside of practicing cultures as an important part of typical female sexuality, is assumed to be eliminated. However, many circumcised women dispute this claim (see below).

Prohibition has led to FGC being undertaken without any anaesthetic or sterilization, and by persons with no medical training. The procedure, when performed without any anaesthetic, can lead to death through shock or excessive bleeding. The failure to use sterile medical instruments can lead to infections and the spread of disease, such as AIDS, especially when the same instruments are used to perform procedures on multiple women.

The health consequences of FGC vary from region to region and from researcher to researcher. An in-depth analysis by Carla Obermeyer (2003) shows that past studies, plagued by “incomplete analysis” and “inconsistent numbers”, have greatly overestimated the likelihood of serious medical complications resulting from FGC procedures (401). She notes that there is no significant statistically represented relationship between FGC and sexually transmitted diseases/infections, infertility or birth complications (402). Her study is not intended to portray FGC as harmless, simply to illustrate the inadequacy of the health data that anti-FGC advocates and organizations rely upon to justify their opposition.

As anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu (2000) pointed out, her experience with ritual excision, though painful, empowered her as a woman in the Kono culture of Sierra Leone, increased her sexual sensitivity, and (due to its partial medicalization) led to no health problems beyond the initial heavy bleeding. She claims it did not interfere with her transnational life at all (305), thus was not “anti-progress”, and argues for its complete medicalization, not elimination (304).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting
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