The Subjugation of Women

by Richard Kovac

In parts of Africa and in some Arab countries, both predominantly Moslem, women are subject to clitorectomy before puberty. This is mutilation or removal of the clit or clitoris. It is sometimes called female 'circumcision', although it serves absolutely no religious function. It is based - I'm informed by a missionary to East Africa - on the superstition that if the clitoris of a young girl isn't mutilated or removed, she will not be able to bear children. Often nowadays at least in some places medical doctors or registered nurses will oversee the procedure. People should be educated instead, to abolish the practice altogether instead of trying to make it 'safe and hygienic'.

I mention the above because I know that women have been mistreated by society for millennia, and this procedure is one horrendous instance. It is estimated that one hundred million have had this procedure done. The woman, as a consequence, would experience little or no pleasure in sex. It is kind of quaint Victorian carried out to a savage degree.

We do not, here, have to go back to prudery. It is not true that "a bare elbow is like a bare buttocks," and the reason women are beautiful is to attract men. This mostly they still do in our society. Women have equal rights of inheritance and equal educational opportunities. Not so where the Taliban rules. In exporting our (Christian based) culture, we are breaking (sometimes too much?) the shackles that once reduced women to slavery or made them chattel.

Women are equals.
Beautiful equals.
Live and let live.
Make love not war.



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