Roj Bash Kurdistan

Mail Online

'When you're cut you won't be a slut looking for men like a prostitute': An utterly horrifying encounter with the FGM cutter women who butcher young girls' genitals with a razor blade
By Nick Fagge In Kisi, Kenya

MailOnline visited two female cutters in Kenya ahead of the 'cutting season' when girls are sent from the West to undergo the brutal operation
Tribal leader claims girls who aren't mutilated can't 'control their emotions'
Some 700,000 victims live in Europe – 140,000 in the UK and 100,000 in France. 500,000 women in the US have suffered or are in danger of FGM
The practice is illegal in many parts of Africa but campaigners told MailOnline there is little hope of western leaders stopping it
Supermodel campaigner bravely described the lifelong effects of having her vagina sewn up and calls the 'sexist' practice 'child abuse'

Standing barefoot with a viciously sharp blade in her hand this is a cutter woman who performs female genital mutilation (FGM) on young girls as part of a misguided belief it prevents promiscuity and maintains family status in the traditional community.

Half-blind and with just a couple of teeth left in her mouth, Anna-Moora Ndege started cutting girls' sexual organs over 70 years ago.

At first she used a six-inch nail, sharpened on stone to create a crude flat blade. Now she uses a razor blade - bought at the little shop at the end of the dirt track leading from her mud hut in rural Africa.

Ndege, 86, along with Agnes Kerubo, are two of the cutters that can be found in villages, towns and cities in Kenya and across Africa and parts of the Middle East where communities cling on to this barbaric tradition.



Cutting season: Some 700,000 victims live in Europe – 140,000 in the UK and 100,000 in France. A further 500,000 women in the USA have undergone the brutal operation in the name of tradition. The summer school holidays is the peak time when families send their daughters to Africa from the West to undergo FGM

Link to Full Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... blade.html

My quarrel with a proud FGM cutter

More than 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) or cutting. The practice has now been outlawed in some African countries, but not in Sierra Leone, where some cutters are still proud of their profession.

"I have initiated hundreds of girls," Memunatu Turay proclaims proudly. "But I can't tell you exactly how I undertake this ancient tradition, unless you join our secret society."

A big grin spreads across Memunatu's face, as she no doubt sees the pure horror unfold on mine. "Come with me," she says. "I can cut you and only then can I tell you what you want to know."

Memunatu is clearly enjoying this exchange, eventually bursting into fits of laughter. I politely decline her offer.

We're sitting in her home in a slum area of western Freetown. A photo of her daughter in her college robes hangs in pride of place on a bright yellow wall. "She's been cut and look, she's fine - she's getting an education," Memunatu says, her large round face lighting up.

This 56-year-old is simultaneously warm and fierce. She boasts that she is one of the most trusted and prolific cutters - or soweis as they're called in Sierra Leone - in all of Freetown. "It's a great and ancient tradition," she insists.

"We don't hurt girls, I would never hurt them.

"And it's not just about circumcising. We teach them how to be wives, how to cook and clean.

"We have big parties for the initiations where we dance and sing, and feel good."

My mind goes back to July when I was in Kenya investigating efforts to end FGM there. The practice was outlawed in the country in 2011. My experience in a village there is something that has stayed with me. One former cutter agreed to demonstrate what she used to do to young girls.

Her friend grabbed hold of my wrists, crossed them tight against my chest, and pulled me down to the floor outside her hut. I sat between her strong legs as she tightened them around my hips making it impossible for me to move. She was an older lady and I couldn't figure out where all that strength had come from.

Then, the former cutter opened my legs and showed me - using an oval shape she made with her thumb and index finger - how she'd scoop out the inside of the girl's vaginal lips with a blade, and cut out the clitoris, discarding it all on the ground. I felt sick to my stomach.

After that strange and terrifying experience, hearing girls' stories of how they were cut became even more distressing. Three words repeatedly came up when they described their experiences: fear, agony and betrayal.

It was their own mothers, their grandmothers, their aunts - the women in their families - who had led them into their painful and degrading initiations. And here I was in Sierra Leone, a country where the majority of women have been cut, sharing pleasantries with a professional and proud cutter.

It wasn't long before we got onto the finances of Memanatu's profession. She tells me she receives around one million Leones - that's about £140 ($180) - for every girl she cuts. She is also given palm oil, goats, and bags of rice. In a country where two-thirds of people live in poverty, being a cutter is quite the money-maker.

What about the pain and trauma caused by cutting? And the deaths? Memunatu isn't having any of it. "It's all lies," she tells me. "It's good for the woman. One man is not enough for a woman who has not been circumcised," she continues. "But when she is initiated, she becomes sexually contented and sticks to just one man."

I have to admit, I felt anger.

"You and I are both women," I protest. "I have not been circumcised and I am not promiscuous. Having a clitoris doesn't mean you feel compelled to have sex with lots of men."

She laughs and grabs my arm, pressing it against hers. "You are different to us," she tells me. "Look, you are yellow in colour, I am black. We are both women but we are not the same. You will never understand."

I ask Memunatu what she would do if the government banned the practice. "We would storm the offices of the president," she bellows. "They know this is an important tradition. Many of them are in our secret society."

After ranting about the injustice of it all she takes a deep breath. "If they want us to stop," she says, "they will have to find something else for us to do. If you want to wean your baby off breast milk you provide alternatives, don't you?"

I put to her that if this is her logic, then initiations for her are more about cold hard cash than ancient traditions. "It's about both," she says.

Link to Article - Video - Photos:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38016161

There was a huge practice of FGM in Southern Kurdistan (not in Turkey and not in Syria and I think in Bahdinan-Duhok area, it is quite unknown. Now after a campaign of KRG and NGO the practice is decreasing, though it should persist in rural areas.

A precision : it is not a MUSLIM practice. In Africa and Egypt, christians also do it. Their belief is that if a woman is not mutilated she will seek for pleasure with everybody.

In a certain way, if a woman has no pleasure at all, she won't look for adultery, but she has no pleasure with her husband as well. So it is like fucking a dead fish.

Piling wrote:There was a huge practice of FGM in Southern Kurdistan (not in Turkey and not in Syria and I think in Bahdinan-Duhok area, it is quite unknown. Now after a campaign of KRG and NGO the practice is decreasing, though it should persist in rural areas.

A precision : it is not a MUSLIM practice. In Africa and Egypt, christians also do it. Their belief is that if a woman is not mutilated she will seek for pleasure with everybody.

In a certain way, if a woman has no pleasure at all, she won't look for adultery, but she has no pleasure with her husband as well. So it is like fucking a dead fish.

I blame the men

Even where FGM has become illegal - many men refuse to marry a woman who has not been circumcised - but not in order to prevent their wives from enjoying sex - but because they are such useless lovers they are totally unable to make their wives happy even when they have not been circumcised

Many Kurdish women have told me that their husbands make love like donkeys without showing any affection at all for their wives - also they are expected to have sex without any foreplay whenever the man gets the urge - I have never actually met a Kurdish woman who instigates the sex act

So bad is sex in most Kurdish marriages that if the husband leaves his wife or dies - Kurdish women will just sigh with relief and NEVER remarry

The women find it difficult to believe me when I tell them that sex is fun

Mothers are to blame : they insist on circumcise their daughters. Most of Kurdish men do not even know what is really FGM. They would be even ashamed to learn what is a clitoris

But their mothers insist to have a "clean" daughter-in-law.

Concerning the ability to make love for men I don't see how they could learn : ignorant until they married a ignorant one. If a woman can not explain to a man how to have pleasure they can not guess.

In all cases, conservative and religious un-education to erotism is the trouble. Now mentality is changing in Kurdistan and some young men think that having a circumcised wife won't be good for their own sexual life.

I think about the poor girls learning that they are mutilated for nothing. Fuck the mothers

Piling wrote:But their mothers insist to have a "clean" daughter-in-law

I had no idea

How can any mother put their daughter through such a thing

I feel sorry for the girls - mothers who allow them to be maimed and mutilated - husbands who bully them and make love like donkeys

I think Dyaoko should give us the man's point of view

Most of Kurds are not even aware that FGM exists in Kurdistan. It is located in specific areas (South).

Tanzania's FGM safe house
for girls in danger of cutting

Every December is the "cutting season" in Tanzania, where thousands of young girls are forced to undergo the illegal practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). This involves removing all or part of a girl or woman's external genitalia, including the clitoris, an ordeal that could cost them their lives.

In fear of her being "cut" by her own family, 12-year-old Rosie Makore made the difficult choice of running away to a safe house. Ultimately she is taken back to her village to confront her mother about whether or not she will be returning home.

Defying The Cutting Season follows the brave and courageous girls fighting against a tradition that goes back thousands of years and reveals the one safe place they can escape to.

Fathers sell their daughters for 10-20 cows for a cut girl 6 cows or less for an uncut girl

Most men prefer to buy a cut girl - bloody savages

Link to Article - Video:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-4 ... of-cutting