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Female Genital Mutilation Essay

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Female Genital Mutilation Essay
Today alone 6000 girls around the world are being held down screaming, crying, and blacking out from the pain pleading for their elders to stop. Their voices fall on deaf ears as their right to sexual pleasure is sliced, chopped, pricked, scraped and burnt away. Female genital mutilation also known as female circumcision is the focus of my speech today. By the time I finish speaking, you will agree that this has got to stop! Today I will explain what FGM is; what are the effects of the procedure and why it is still being performed today. So going back.... What is female Genital Mutilation? FGM is a procedure of partial or total removal of the external female genitalia and/or injury to the female genital organs. There are four grades of FGM with the worst grade which can involve pricking, piercing or incising. Stretching, burning of the clitoris, scraping of the tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice, cutting of the vagina, introduction of corrosive substances or herbs to cause bleeding or tightening. I have just finished reading a book called ‘Desert Flower’ by Waris Dirie. In it she described her encounter with FGM. She was 5 years old when she had it preformed. Her and her family were living as nomads in the African desert. One morning her mother woke her up so no-one else would know. She took her far enough away so that when the procedure was being done the rest of her family wouldn’t hear her screams. An elderly lady sat down next to her, rummaged in her knapsack, pulled out a blunt razor which still had the blood of the last victim on it. She then spat on it, gave it a wipe on her grubby clothes and proceeded to begin. Waris described her excruciating pain in the book and told of how she would black out because of the intense hurt. So what??? They had their vaginas sown up, it doesn’t really matter. In actual fact it does. The effects of this procedure can more than often be fatal. Girls can experience Haemorrhaging
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