Ritual Nicks

The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians will next month discuss backing "ritual nicks", a modified form of genital mutilation.

I'm horrified, but here is no time for that. We need to put our collective heads together and get some sense into this and stop mutilating women and stop abusing children. If we cut any other body part off for no good reason we'd understand we were being inhuman. This is not going to be a logical post, I can tell. Man's inhumanity to man. Can't believe it.  The article clarifies the situation quite well and explains the rationale behind us considering legal, hospital based genital mutilation. The prime reason is the same as our reasoning behind legalising abortions. Many girls and women were mutilated and /or died from hideous backyard abortions in the 60s. To prevent that we shifted them into a medical situation because we couldn't stop women having abortions. That puts it simply. This transference of genital mutilation from another country and cultural practice to our shores is something we are really going to have to face up to. Hundreds of us have supported causes to help the women in Africa who are trying to rid their country of this practice. It is something we have cared about. So what are we going to do to stop it happening  here? Abusing children is illegal here , abusing women is illegal here. There are many of us who would say we are not feminists but...well, it is time to kick that butt and take action but the sort of action we take is going to have to ensure we do not drive it underground as happened with abortions. For a start there are plenty of African people in this country. Do they support it? Can they mediate? Secondly, we shall abandon this notion now of making it sound better because it is done medically and called a "ritual nick". We will not hide behind convenient turns of phrase. We have laws. Are we going to enforce them? People who live here need to live by our laws. Shall we pull that one out of the bag? Do we get political and contact our MPs? Do we run adverts? Do we have an awareness raising campaign? We had it for domestic violence. We need to start right now this minute.