This article from The Guardian is just about the most awful thing I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s a story about British families who are using their summer vacation to take their kids to foreign shores for the purposes of having their genitals mutilated. And there’s a video that is horrible to watch.

There is nothing that can really be done to stop this practice. Superstitious people will go to great lengths to perform their remarkable rituals, and nobody answers “what is the purpose of your visit” with “destroying my daughter’s sexuality”. As well, I doubt there could be a charge of child abuse involved since the crime took place in a foreign (and presumably non-extradition) country. But I’m by no means an expert on international law, so that might be a mistake on my behalf.

If it’s happening in Britain, it’s happening everywhere. All I can really say about the topic is that it’s sick, and I hope really terrible things happen to the parents who arranged this and the monsters who make it their career to mutilate girls.

Female circumcision is just a polite way of saying genital mutilation. A circumcision, while not a pleasant process, is a million miles better than what is being done to women. And yes, there are a myriad of acts that lump under the female genital mutilation banner, but none are necessary, none are safe, and all result in a physically and emotionally destroyed woman. That’s not me sitting in my ivory tower of western culture and imagining that my world view is better than others; the act of disfiguring a child is despicable, and the total pre-scientific way that this ritual is performed is intrinsically dangerous and abhorrent.

Jim