Articles of Interest

This section of the website provides different in-depth perspectives related to female genital cutting.

Clitoridectomy: A Nineteenth Century Answer to Masturbation - John Duffy

John Duffy's article is a brief historical analysis of clitoridectomy in the United States during Victorian times as a cure to "female sexual perversion", and masturbation. This is not very different from John Harvey Kellogg's (from Kellogg's Corn Flakes) advocacy of male circumcision as a cure to masturbation.

L'Ethique Sexuelle en Droit Musulman et Arabe: Cas de L'Egypte Passe, Present et Avenir. - Sami Al-Deeb

Sexual ethics in Islamic and Arabic Laws: the Case of Ancient, Present, and Future Egypt

Facing Mt. Kenya - Jomo Kenyatta

Jomo Kenyatta, the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man, was among the foremost leaders of African nationalism and one of the great men at the modern world. In the 1930's he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski, one result of which is this now famous account of his own Kikuyu tribe.

Facing Mount Kenya is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature, an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind Facing Mount Kenya is not only a formal study of life and death, work and play, sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa, but a work of considerable literary merit. The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate, and as precise as they are compassionate.

Female Genital Mutilation in Cameroon- Man of God Killed by Chief’s Henchmen. By Austine Arrey –Today Cameroon

This article discusses some of the challenges facing FGC educationists in Cameroon.

Dr. Nawal El Saadawi's Introduction to "Male and Female Circumcision in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Communities: Religious Debate" by Sami Aldeeb.

Introduction to Sam Aldeeb's book

Prisoners of Ritual: Some Contemporary Developments in the History of FGM - Hanny Lightfoot-Klein

This paper was presented at the Second International Symposium on Circumcision in San Francisco, April-30 - May 3, 1991

The Sexual Experience and Marital Adjustment of Genitally Circumcised and Infibulated Females in The Sudan - Hanny Lightfoot-Klein

In a study conducted over a 5-year period, the author interviewed over 300 Sudanese women and 100 Sudanese men on the sexual experience of circumcised and infibulated women. Sudanese circumcision involves excision of the clitoris, the labia minora and the inner layers of the labia majora, and fusion or infibulation of the bilateral wound. The findings of this study indicate that sexual desire, pleasure, and orgasm are experienced by the majority of women who have been subjected to this extreme sexual mutilation, in spite of their also being culturally hound to hide these experiences. These findings also seriously question the importance of the clitoris as an organ that must be stimulated in order to produce female orgasm, as is often maintained in Western sexological literature.

To Mutilate in the Name of Jehovah or Allah: Legitimization of Male and FemaleCircumcision. - Sami Al-Deeb

Analysis of male and female circumcision in the context of Judaism and Islam

Waris Dirie's Story

The moving story of Waris Dirie, a supermodel from Somalia is here written in her own words. In it, she tells the tale of her circumcision, escaping her home at the age of 13, arriving in London, and..... well, you must read her story.

A Way to End Female Genital Cutting - Gerry Mackie

"The social processes that create, sustain, & potentially end practices such as female footbinding in China & female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa are examined, with particular focus on the self-enforcing convention theory developed by Thomas Schelling (1960). The convention hypothesis predicts that FGM can be terminated through mechanisms similar to those used to end footbinding."