Answer to Question 1
Female circumcision, or more accurately, female genital mutilation (FGM), is commonplace in more than half of the African countries and in parts of the Middle East. The details of FGM vary somewhat from culture to culture and from region to region, but the basics are the same. Shannon Brownlee and Jennifer Seter describe FGM as follows: Sometime between infancy and adulthood, all or part of a girl's external genitalia is cut away with a knife or razor blade, usually with no anesthetic. In most cases, the clitoris and the labia minora are removed. In the most extreme form, known as infibulation, the external labia are also scraped and stitched together with thread or long thorns, leaving only a tiny opening for urine and menstrual blood. The opening must be widened on the woman's wedding night. The pain lasts far longer than the operation. Many of the 85 million to 110 million women who have endured FGM suffer ill effects ranging from reduced or lost sexual sensation to infections, persistent pain, painful intercourse, infertility, and dangerous childbirth. The purpose is to diminish sexual appetite, in order to maintain a girl's virginity-and thus her marriage ability.
Anthropologists believe that the first clitoridectomies, like chastity belts, were a means for husbands to ensure that their children were truly their own; FGM reduces a woman's interest in sex and thus in extramarital affairs. Today, young women in many African countries who have not undergone the procedure are shunned as oversexed, unmarriageable, and unclean. Currently FGMs are usually performed by chosen older women, who are held in high esteem in their societies. Feminist organizations in the United States tend to view FGM as the gender oppression to end all oppressions. Yet most international human rights organizations have been slow to condemn the practice, arguing that it is inappropriate to interfere with other people's cultural practices.
Answer to Question 2
B
