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| Genital mutilation, also referred to as female circumcision , genital cutting, or excision, is a coming-of-age ritual that signifies a girl's entry into womanhood. |
Genital mutilation, also referred to asfemale circumcision, genital cutting, or excision, is a coming-of-age ritual that signifies a girl's entry into womanhood. It is accompanied by public celebrations and is often a source of pride for the girl. For some it also carries religious significance. Usually performed on girls between the ages of 4 and 12, but also on teenagers, it involves the partial or total excision of the external female genitalia.
It is performed by a female elder using a razor, knife, or piece of glass, usually without anesthetic, while several women hold the girl down. Agonizingly painful, it robs her of sexual pleasure and frequently causes medical problems, including hemorrhaging, infection, urinary incontinence, infertility, and complications in childbirth.
 "We have done it, we do it, and we will continue to do it"
Genital cutting is seen as a way of ensuring that a woman is clean, chaste, and ready for marriage; uncut women are associated withpromiscuityand lack of social respectability. Deadening the woman's sexual pleasure is a way of guaranteeing her virginity and fidelity.
Because it is a valued social rite, most girls are willing to succumb to the pain and the subsequent health problems. But whether they wish to be excised or not, the choice is not theirs. Living in a staunchly patriarchal world, they are dependent on men for social and economic survival. As a father from the Ivory Coast told the New York Times," If your daughter has not been excised. . . . No man in the village will marry her. It is an obligation. We have done it, we do it, and we will continue to do it. . . . She has no choice. I decide. Her viewpoint is not important."
Legislation and media awareness
 In 1994, when a 17-year-old girl from Togo sought asylum in the United States to escape genital mutilation, few Americans understood the brutal nature of this ancient and widespread African ritual. Fauziya Kassindja ran away from home the day she would have been forced to undergo ritual genital cutting in preparation for an arranged marriage.
She eventually made her way to the United States, but instead of granting herasylum, immigration officials arrested her for illegal entry and sent her to prison for a year and a half, where she was sometimes shackled and placed in solitary confinement. Although human rights advocates sought her release, the courts found her story "not credible." Only when the media exposed her plight was she freed.
Kassindja's case became a lightning rod for growing legislative and media attention, awakening the nation to a dangerous and painful practice that is the social norm for women in many central African countries.
Senator Harry Reid fought for a ban although "all my staff advised me to stay away from it," considering it a squeamish subject for a male politician.
When Stephanie Walsh was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for her photographs of a genital mutilation rite in Kenya, the inhumanity of the procedure was exposed to the general public, helping to legitimize a subject that many found uncomfortable to discuss.
An ancient tradition resists reform
For the past ten to fifteen years, France has criminallyprosecutedimmigrant parents who have had their daughters excised, and in October 1996 the U.S. Congress outlawed female genital mutilation in this country. The U.N. announced a global campaign in 1997 to eradicate the practice, and a growing number of refugee, women's, and human rights organizations in Africa and around the world have called for its prohibition.
But progress has been slow. Western reform movements are sometimes counterproductive, with Africans resisting the dictates of patronizing outsiders. Outlawing the practice had already been attempted by colonial governments in Africa during the first half of the century, provoking only resistance and protests.
The World Health Organization estimates it will take a minimum of ten years to reduce the prevalence of genital mutilation, and three generations to eradicate it. It will take time to transform awareness of a firmly entrenched ritual that is valued by the local culture but considered dangerous and demeaning by outsiders.
Countries practicing genital mutilation
Genital mutilation is practiced in 28 countries in central Africa, ranging from Somalia in the east coast and stretching westward to Senegal on the Atlantic. The rite is believed to have originated more than two thousand years ago in Egypt or the Horn of Africa (what is now Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia). The World Health Organization estimates that more than 130 million women have undergone the procedure. Although it is most often associated with Islam, it is also practiced by Christians, adherents to traditional African religions, and one Jewish sect.
Background
割礼这一习俗源于犹太教，有2000多年的历史。在犹太人中间，割礼实际上是履行与上帝之立约、确定犹太人身份、进入婚姻许可范围的一种标志。现在，割礼不再局限于犹太人，在非洲，50多个国家中有30多个在不同范围内实行割礼。
非洲割礼的习俗已有4000多年历史。据联合国有关资料透露，目前，受过割礼的女子已有1．3亿人之多，现在平均每天还有约6000名女孩经受刀割之苦。在非洲，女子行割礼十分普遍。一些地区通行割礼，另一些地区，如埃及和肯尼亚半数女孩须行割礼。在塞内加尔和坦桑尼亚，15％的女孩要行割礼。
世界卫生组织2002年的一份报告表明，世界每年大约有200万女孩面临被实施割礼的危险。割礼师肮脏的"手术刀"每年都会造成多起事故，包括伤口溃疡、破伤风、大出血、传播艾滋病乃至死亡，这对妇女特别是少女的身心造成了严重伤害。
日前，肯尼亚总统莫伊代表政府首次就女子割礼问题表明立场称，女子割礼是陈规陋俗，应该予以摈弃。莫伊呼吁人们像同艾滋病作斗争一样来铲除这种陈规陋俗。据新华社报道，此前，坦桑尼亚、多哥、塞内加尔和科特迪瓦等国已通过立法禁止女子割礼，试图铲除这种陈规陋俗。
(英语点津陈蓓编辑）
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