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Feminists Fatales
By Michael Weiss / May 17, 2007
Here's how "Type III" female genital mutilation works: First you cut off the clitoris with a pair of shearers. The sound, according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was subjected to this ritual at the age of five, in Saudi Arabia, is like a butcher's scissor snipped through fat. Next, you take a sharp stone and proceed the scrape away at the wound and the surrounding labia, the fleshy remains of which are then stitched together with twine. The girl's legs must be tied together for two to six weeks to prevent her from rupturing the stitches. If she survives the ordeal — and she may not due to poor hygenic conditions and the chance of developing a lethal infection — she'll have a raw carapace where her vagina used to be. The inferior part of the vulva will then be perforated with a pencil-sized hole to allow for the passage of urine and, when she's ready, menstrual fluid.
No anathesia is administered at any point during the procedure and the subsequent period of convalescence.
Type III female genital mutilation is known as "infibulation."
[Eve] Ensler has firsthand knowledge of the unique horrors of Islamic gender fascism. But her "feminist theory" obliterates distinctions between what goes on in Afghanistan and what goes on in Beverly Hills:
I went from Beverly Hills where women were getting vaginal laser rejuvenation surgery–paying four thousand dollars to get their labias trimmed to make them symmetrical because they didn't like the imbalance. And I flew to Kenya where [women were working to stop] the practice of female genital mutilation. And I said to myself, "What is wrong with this picture?"
A better question is: What is wrong with Eve Ensler? These two surgical phenomena are completely different in both scale and purpose. The number of American women who undergo "vaginal labial rejuvenation" is minuscule: There were 793 such procedures in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. By contrast, a World Health Organization 2000 fact sheet reports: "Today, the number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM."
Just a taste of the poverty of American feminism when it comes to showing solidarity — or even just demonstrating a grave moral concern — for the blighted women of the Islamic third world. Christina Hoff Sommers has a devastating cover story in the Weekly Standard. Read it.
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Josh are you saying that not all Muslims are fascists and genital mutilators? Do you any have evidence to back that up sir?
Anonymous: Michael's too kind to you. He's mastered the art of gracefully letting windbags blow wind and spending time on more worthwhile things. Me on the other hand? Not so much. Speaking of obfuscating the truth for another goal…did you notice the only mention of Islam was in the last three sentences–sentences whose function within the post was to summarize the article to which he was directing the audience? If you click on the article, you'll notice his description is faithful to the piece. Real quick (and you aren't allowed to Google it)–who is Shirin Ebadi? Mukhtar Mai? If you actually know, then you only lose points for making absurd leaps in order to mischaracterize Mr. Weiss as a Muslim basher. If you don't know, you lose double, since you know more about neoconservative politicians and their favorite philosophers than you do about Muslim women's rights activists. It's an objective fact that nothing in this posting attributes FGM solely to Muslims. It merely states that Ms. Hirsi Ali's experience took place in a Muslim country and that Hoff's article draws attention to the lack of participation by Western feminists in the struggle for Muslim women's rights. Both are true. There is no question that FGM is not Islamic as much as it is regional, nor is it practiced by anything larger than a minority of Muslims. There is also no question that the practice is given Qu'ranic justification in the places where Muslims practice it, and there is nothing sensible about speaking of FGM outside of the cultural context in which it takes place. Spousal abuse is probably a cultural universal as well, but in adressing the issue with care and specificity, one would be amiss if they failed to account for the cultural influence and context. Just because one speaks about spousal abuse in Idaho, are they saying that domestic violence is a strictly Idahoan phenomenon? Of course not. This is where people who think they are watchdogs for prejudice against Muslims do something weird–they treat Islam as if it has some bizarre power to subsume all items and ideas around it into itself. If I write about cars in Islamic culture, do I therefore imply that all cars are Islamic? Of course not!!! But if somebody speaks of fascism or FGM in Islamic society, they are accused of suggesting that all Muslims are fascists and genital mutilators. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Wait, what was that about feminists not caring about the Middle East?
Anonymous,
Here’s what I found:
“Upon physical examination of the other group, Ethiopian Jews, which resides now in Israel and performed female genital mutilation in Ethiopia, 63% of the women, who all claimed to have been circumcised, did not even have a scar! 20% had scars, in 7%, one square centimeter of the labia minora was removed from beneath the clitoris and only 10% demonstrated a real and severe form of female genital mutilation, total amputation of the clitoris.
Grisaru N, Letzer S, Belmaker RH.
Ritual Female Genital Surgery Among Ethiopian Jews.
Arch Sex Behav 1997;26:211-5.”
Looks like some Ethiopian Jews still practice FGM. Francois, while defending Ethiopian Jews from the charge of practicing FGM, you did not take on your friend Weiss for propagating the false myth that only Muslims practice FGM, when only Africans, whether Muslims, Christians or Jews mutilate women. Talk about Jewish propaganda.
Dear Old Anonymous,
Michael Weiss, did you know that Ethiopian Jews also practice female genital mutilation? That Christians also practice genital mutilation in Africa? That FGM is not an exclusively Muslim practice? that most Muslims don’t practice FGM? Since you claim to be such a smart guy, I suppose you already know this, but you like to slam Muslims every chance you get. Just like your Straussian idol Wolfowitz, obfuscating the truth in the pursuit of a larger Zionist goal comes very easily to you.
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