Female Genital Mutilation : Is Orgasm still possible?

Is Female Circumcision still practiced in Nigeria? Despite cries and agitations for it to be abolished, it is practiced by some communities in Nigeria.

Female Circumcision also known as Female Genital Cutting (FGC) or Female Genital Mutilation is the partial or total cutting away of the external female genitalia or the removal of the clitoris which is the most sensitive part of a woman's orifice. Female circumcision has been practiced for centuries in parts of Africa generally as one of the element of a rite or passage preparing young girls for womanhood and often marriage.

There are so many superstitions surrounding the need for young girls to be circumcised, mainly to arrest the interest and arousal for sex by the women folk, some say an uncircumcised girl is not fertile and won’t produce children, others say the clitoris will continue to grow as a girl gets older and so it has to be removed, other views are that the external genitalia are unclean and can actually cause the death of an infant during delivery. While some communities carry out this act just because they have gone through the same rite.

Female Circumcision causes a range of health problem. In most countries, female circumcision is performed in unclean conditions by mainly traditional practitioners who may use scissors, razor blades or knives on all of the available girls. Almost every woman or girl who gets circumcised experience bleeding with a lot of health complications.

- Bleeding if the cut is severe it can lead to death. 

- Infection. Transmission of STIs and HIV because one tool may be used for several procedures without sterilization. 

- Urinary and reproductive tract infection caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood.

- Trauma: The procedure can be physically and psychologically traumatic because girls are held down during the procedure.

Can you still have orgasms if your clitoris has been cut off? Certainly, say European researchers at the World Congress for Sexual Health, after studying African women who’ve been ‘circumcised’.

FGM facts

Two million girls a year have their genitals cut, most of them in Africa.
There are three types of cutting:
Type 1: clitoris or hood of clitoris removed
Type 2: inner labia also removed
Type 3: vagina also sewn up

Doctors who perform it call it female circumcision. Campaigners have dubbed it Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Others say the term Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is less stigmatizing. FGM/C is the compromise term.
Worldwide an estimated 135 million women have been cut.

Doubting critics say the research only encourages female genital mutilation. But you don’t help women by telling them they’re ‘mutilated’, the researchers argue. Sexual pleasure
When Professor Sara Johnsdotter started studying Somali women living in Sweden, she didn’t think sex would be one of their favourite topics. After all, they had no clitoris.
They’d all experienced the most severe form of female genital cutting – or mutilation, as some prefer to call it.
But to her surprise she found they had a very positive view of sex. They had lots of sexual pleasure, including orgasms.
Clitoris
Her study squares with the findings of Italian researcher Lucrezia Catania, also presented at  the world sexual health congress, WAS.
After all, the little bump we think of as the clitoris is actually only the tip, she points out. In fact the clitoris carries on deep inside the body. So even if the tip is cut off, there’s plenty left for stimulation.
Soft approach
Egyptian sexology professor Hussein Ghanem is sceptical. Remember that the clitoris is the female equivalent of the penis, he says. His answer to men who argue about the effects of female circumcision: “Let’s cut off your penis and see how well you do!”
Hussein Ghanem says that in his home country around 80 percent of women have experienced what he firmly describes as mutilation.
“I think this soft approach against FGM is the wrong way,” he complains. “I think we must be very firm and clear that it is harmful. And that the majority of Egyptian and African women do not experience orgasm.”
Loss
There’s a problem with this tough line though, says Sara Johnsdotter. In Sweden she found that some circumcised women were more negative about sex. They were the ones who were more integrated into Swedish society, and more aware of campaigns stressing that genital cutting ruins women’s sex lives.
“You have women saying, ‘I thought I was normal, I enjoyed sex with my husband, but coming here I realise that I’ve lost so much,” she says.
Well-meaning
Hussein Ghanem argues that the Swedish and Italian research is playing right into the hands of people who defend genital cutting. He’s heard a colleague of his – a member of the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood – arguing that the Italian findings show the practice isn’t so bad after all. Even though, as he’s quick to point out, top Muslim clerics say it has no place in Islam.
Hussein Ghanem and Sara Johnsdotter each accuse the other of being well-meaning but unscientific. And of muddling medicine with politics. Yet there’s one thing they firmly agree on: they want to see an end to the practice of cutting – or mutilating – girls' genitals.
Human rights
“Help the victims, but condemn the practice,” says Hussein Ghanem.
“You have real victims, women who suffer all their lives,” says Sara Johnsdotter. “But you also have many women who live very well with it. A respectful treatment would talk to both kinds of women, with all kinds of experiences.”
“Don’t start by telling people they’re barbarous and that they torture their own daughters,” she argues. Focus on “bodily integrity and human rights”. A woman’s right to keep her genitals in one piece.

What is your stand on female circumcision?