Feminism and infantile sexual mutilation - Sigismond

From Peaceful Beginnings

Extremist feminist circles, hostile to inclusive feminism, amalgamate violence against children with violence against women. Too much wanting to pull – it is tempting in a sexist struggle against “men” – on the argument of a hastily said feminine mutilation, numerous Occidental feminists pervert the conceptualization of sexual mutilation to make it an affair of adults, whereas often, sexual mutilation precisely marks the entrance into adulthood. This interpretation bends the deep meaning of a violence exerted against both sex children. On must say and repeat that sexual mutilation is infantile before being feminine or masculine; it aims at infantile sexuality much more than at adult sexuality. To be convinced with it, it is enough to report that in Africa, in front of the reaction of authorities who forbid feminine sexual mutilation, the latter strikes younger and younger little girls, because they begin to defend themselves, with the support of the police.

Secondly, circumcision of boys is an obvious threat of castration by slices and when the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of Circumcision on the 1st of January, one could wonder what would remain on the 31st of December! Since feminists rightly claim that excision, sexually speaking, is equivalent to castration, they should admit that even when only circumcision is practised, it threatens girls just as well, with the entire related trauma.

Next, the feminist interpretation grants men the responsibility of a mutilation that is the most often accomplished by women. As a matter of fact, adults, women and men, are accomplices. But they are not only accomplices in the execution; they are foremost accomplices regarding the intended aim: forbidding and making guilty infantile and youthful sexuality.

In their blindness, feminists accuse opponents of infantile sexual mutilation who refuse gender distinction without, of course, denying the self-evident seriousness of the damage provoked by excision, of “suspiciously amalgamating” excision and circumcision. They do not hesitate to wantonly affirm that both mutilations would have nothing in common, that circumcision would not be mutilation and even that it would be done for the sake of the child. Introducing sexist discrimination into the fundamental right of the human person to physical integrity, they ignore the reality and seriousness of the loss and accidents of male mutilation and make excision a pure expression of masculine domination. As if the excisers – mostly women – agents of the crime, did not even connive in it and as if circumcision was not also an expression of maternal domination and of secret revenge against men. Following them, Awa Gréou, sentenced in Paris to seven years imprisonment without remission for earning her life through mutilating little girls, would be a martyr of masculine domination. The worst of those possible mothers refuse involving themselves in a fight that, according to them, would concern males only.

The feminist interpretation finds its power of seduction on one hand in the tremendous ravages provoked by excision, on the other hand in the strength of love towards the mother, of which it both uses and protects the pure and holy image through unburdening her of all responsibility. With the unconscious aim of leaving her image intact, the sexist feminist thesis charges “men” with the responsibility of adults' crime upon children.

But with reason do they condemn as a whole all kind of feminine sexual mutilation: infibulations, excision of the clitoris, of its hood, of the lips as well as – insisted Khadi Koïta – the mutilation by simple prick, so-called symbolic but nonetheless traumatizing and assaulting the dignity of the human person:

“And some think that the symbolic must be saved by making a small incision so as to pour a little blood, all this in the name of this famous respect of cultures. But we would want to tell physicians of the whole world that we, women, are against all act of medicalization, whatever its form, that a physician must treat, heal, repair, save a life and not destroy, and foremost not mutilate in the name of the respect of disastrous for health customs or traditions.”

Bravo for a for once wholly warranted amalgam! But excluding the excision of the feminine part of man's sex of it is not suspect but really guilty of denial – upon a background of raving androphobia – of the reality of the psychological and physical harm of masculine mutilation. Shame on those who rise up for a drop of blood of little girls and forget the serious haemorrhage provoked to their little boys! If excision is particularly sexist, it is not because of its aim: dominating the child through putting them under unconscious terror, but because of its odious unconsciousness of the havoc it provokes. But today, the latter is lessened by “clean” excision practised on a large scale in African hospitals. For we are reaching the point where the repressive reducers of so-called infantile sexuality try to pass excision off as a merely cosmetic operation, symmetric of that of the foreskin of which one totally ignores the erogenous value, without taking into account the loss of a considered as without object erectility. However, chirurgical genius today succeeds in restoring the clitoris, the nervous endings of which subsist, buried under a terrible scar. Their bringing to light enables to stop the pain and recover some use of the eradicated organ. No surgery will ever render the sexually mutilated their erogenous ring.

In summary, sexist feminists commit two mistakes. One on the side of agents: amalgamating the generation and social conflict with the war of sexes, as much in the aim of absolving women as in that of using the mutilation of girls, practised by mothers, as an argument against men. The second on the side of victims: excluding boys as if they were adversaries. All this conceals the real aim of infantile sexual mutilation and other attacks against the human body: dominating the population, more particularly youth and women, in order to exploit it. Those who struggle with no ulterior motive against all forms of undermining the dignity and physical integrity of the child do not linger in counter-productive comparison. As Marilyn Milos likes saying: “The shrieks of children undergoing the knife are indistinguishable.”

An anonymous feminist sorts things out in an African forum  :

“Occidental women hijack African women's struggle against excision and make it a discriminative practice of African men against their wives. Against this politic of division, black women have risen by protesting against “white women's maternalism” and creating their own concept of struggle that takes into account women first in what constitutes their essence and their complementarities with men. This is “Africana Womanism”, invented by an African-American, which is different of the European concept of feminism that has a posture of fight and opposition between men and women...

Yes, excision is harmful to the health or our women. It must be eradicated. We contrive to do it as fast as possible but in the spirit of preservation of peace and social cohesion and not in the spirit of opposition between men and women by insinuating that it is a discriminative practice against our women. There where it appears so, it is due to the exterior contribution of Islamic religion that grants woman a subordinate position.”

Rosemary Romberg-Weiner, an American feminist and activist against circumcision, professes the same views of “inclusive security”:

“Much has been expounded on feminism. Men's rights are also gaining in recognition. But the time has come to grow beyond that. In an arena with one gender pitted against the other, no battles will ever be won. Instead we must recognize that we are all humans together on this planet. We must strive for human liberation in this. Allowing wholeness and completeness for our own children's bodies, and acknowledging and healing from our own wounds is but one step along the way.”

Susan Peer's sharpness of observation seems the best means of rekindling the flame of reason. Stressing out a till now unnoticed biological symmetry between feminine and masculine exterior sexual apparatus, she takes the defence of young boys with acute shrewdness (cf. Annex II).

The weakness of the feminist interpretation is confirmed by foot-binding in imperial China, which seems to be the height of cruelty to children. Though this is impossible to prove in the absence of written testimonies, we assume that it was, like excision, intended to give merchant value to young girls through rendering infantile sexuality (autosexuality) impossible to them. Frigidity was achieved by impeding clitoral erection through terror. The disgust for clitoral erection was indeed the great fantasy of the emperor who fell in love with his concubine having naturally very small feet. As soon as this news spread into the country, mothers and fathers eager to gain a high social position (like African excisers) imagined to impede the natural growth of girl's feet. One detail compels us to think that the whole thing, with the passing years, was deliberately for the shrewd and aristocratic chosen few (in families of aristocracy, competition for power upon children between men and women passes through a war based on physical, economical and political force by men, seduction by women): impeding erection of the clitoris was achieved through terror of a threat of castration symbolically operated from a distance, through breaking from infancy the articulations of the toes by wringing them under the foot and forced walking after this.

To conclude, in the same way as is unfair the hypocrisy of fathers who finance the excision of their daughters while denying all responsibility in this crime through asserting that “it is women's business”, mums who would affirm, like the French alleged “Guard She-Dogs”, that circumcision would be men's business in order to refuse rebelling against it, forget their mothering responsibility.

The fundamental motive of infantile sexual mutilation is, for leaders the subjection of their subjects, for parents that of children, by the terror inspired as well by an atrocious torture as by an implicit threat of castration and death. Imagining that, in those crimes, mothers would be dupes of fathers, issues from gullibility or hypocrisy. Infantile sexual mutilation is above all an instrument of the war of generations and only very secondarily that of the war of sexes. Through embezzling the first at the profit of the second, sexist feminists bury their head in the sand. To such a point that, as reformist rabbis taught us (cf. Chapter V), they do not realize that circumcision is also a practice of exclusion of women. For apart from the physical trauma, excision and circumcision aim at dominating boys and girls through a dreadful psychological trauma. The latter is intended to impart a morality against nature, thrust forward by means of a threatening affective blackmail: “If you do that (autosexuality), you are no longer my child!”. It is a matter of threat of exclusion and thus of death. In other words, infantile sexual mutilation forbids autosexuality through terror, in the aim of making use of the individual and their sexual life. Obviously, adults also suffer from it, and particularly terribly women, but it is not the first aim which is domination of children (and future adults) by terror.

If one does not see that, one passes by the essential of the phenomenon of alienation through infantile trauma, physical or mental (here both). The advantage of this analysis is to gather sexes against the perverse hold, the physico-ideological domination settled by both sex exploiters who promoted sexual mutilation in an aim of social domination. The principal enemy: the ruling classes, should not be mingled with “men”, just as victims as women. Like ragging, circumcision is intended to comfort the power of the eldest over the younger. Ragging is nowadays forbidden by law. It is abnormal that circumcision should not be yet.

Sigismond
oldsigismund@hotmail.com - http://groups.mns.com/circabolition

(1) 10 June 2004 colloquium in the French Academy of medicine in Paris: "Feminine sexual mutilation, another crime against humanity. Knowing, preventing, acting."
http://www.equipop.org/index.php?rel=10&typ=2&art=375

(2) http://www.grioo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=45371 (message 129, 25.3.4)

(3) Romberg-Weiner R. Male circumcision as a feminist issue.
http://peacefulbeginnings.org/malecircumcisionasafeministissue

CLITORIS AND FORESKIN
By Susan Peer

One woman's way to educate others about male genital mutilation

By Susan Peer

One woman's view

If I talk to women about circumcision and they don't seem to get it, then I make it personal. Sometimes I tell a story. (This probably works best woman to woman.) I'll tell them to:

Imagine that you are admitted to a hospital for some minor surgery. On waking up from the anesthesia, you realize that your inner labia and the hood over your clitoris have been cut off.

When you confront your doctor, he explains that the tissue that was removed was "redundant" and not necessary for sexual functioning.

He goes on to say that you will be much easier to clean and have less odor, there will be less chance of infection, and he felt that you would look "better", more aesthetic.

He says that when he told all of the "risks" and "benefits" to your family, they gave informed consent for the procedure.

How would you feel?

Now imagine that you were awake and resisting, but they did it anyway.

If they don't get it right away, they usually will later, when they are alone.

Susan Peer

Parents of Intact Sons. Information about the advantages of keeping your sons intact and support group for parents of intact boys.
Susan Peer, RR 1, Box 1324- A, East Stroudsburg, PA 18301. Tel: 717-223-1337.