Mutilation by Any Other Name (Female Genital Mutilation‪)‬

IN AN AGE of PSAs and the Vagina Monologues, many of us consider ourselves informed and educated about institutionalized female violence. "It happens over there" we tell ourselves, pointing to remote locations on a map, barely envisioning what "it" might entail. But some forms of violence against women are disguised as customs, some of those customs have crossed oceans to arrive here, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recently created a loophole that would keep those customs alive. Ritual genital cutting (RGC), more commonly known as female genital mutilation (FGM), is a practice whereby either the clitoris or the entire visible outer genitalia are cut away and the hole sewn up, a practice that continues to be performed on young girls in parts of Africa and Asia. While activists and educators are doing their best to subdue this practice overseas, some immigrants carry on the custom within their families in the United States or send their daughters outside the country for the procedure. Federal law prohibiting FGM was enacted in 1996 and an amendment has been introduced to prohibit the removal of a girl from the United States in order to perform it. However, because the painful, dangerous, and life-threatening custom is strongly grounded in tradition, some believe it will be carried out regardless, and by any means necessary. Stigmatizing and banning related procedures will only send these families to more severe alternatives.