Interrogating Harmful Cultural Practices gender, Culture and Coercion: Transcending Female Circumcision: A Call for Collective Unmasking

Abstract

I speak for the circumcised – my classmates, my friends, my neighbours and my relatives. All those despite the loss of the clitoris, wonder why the fuss. I speak for those who feel ashamed to say they have been cut. I speak for those that willingly, chose and choose the cut. Those that tell the rest of us, that the pain of circumcision is not necessarily a bad phenomenon, not evil. I speak for those who despite their conscience being clear about the practice, may be serving in jail for supporting the practice in one way or the other. As I theorize this chapter, my spirit dwells in the communities that upheld/uphold female circumcision as a rite of passage. In that place, the spirit finds itself in a deep valley, a dichotomous place. From the left I hear the voices of the cut and from the right, that of the uncut. Both sides are aching because the discourses on harmful cultural practices touch their already bruised nerves.