A case has made against the practice of Female Genital Mutilation and the harmful effects it has against the Female Child.
Melony Ishola and anti Female Genital Mutilation advocate made the case against the practice while speaking to TVC News on the 16 days of activism on the practice.
She added that the practice has a major effect on the day to day lives of the average female who has had her genitals mutilated.
She said issues such as Menstrual Pain, their ability to have sex without pain and their Health.
She disclosed that She was not aware of being Mutilated until She was 33 years old adding that She is having to dal with the effect of it all her life.
She described the practice of Medicalisation of Female Genital Mutilation as an unfortunate situation which was spurred by the belief that people doing the cutting of Female genitals Other than medical experts are the ones mutilating them.
She disclosed that Female Genital Mutilation has no known medical benefits for the female child or woman.
According to her, Female Genital Mutilation should be added to the list of Gender Based Violence against Women or the Female child in Nigeria.
“Yes, very well. Thank you for having me. And largely these 16 days are days against sexual and gender based violence. And for a very long while, focus has not been on FGM as being a part of sexual and gender based violence that are almost all of the time rated against women in the society.
Now, you look at FGM in particular, if you leave, supposedly the obvious rape, sexual assaults and harassment and what have you, and you’re looking at a very traditional belief. FGM, like harmful widowed practices, like child marriage, belong to a group in the GBV category that is called harmful traditional practices. And with FGM in particular, it is a lot more interesting, especially because this is done to you by the people in your life whom you love and trust the most.
And I look at myself, for example, looking at the significance of FGM and how that I didn’t even come to the term of the fact that I was mutilated until I was 33 years old. So this definitely must have been done on me at the time when I was too young to comprehend or even feel the pain of what was done.
However, I continued to live with the aftermath of what has been done 35, 36 years ago today. And you look at the impacts almost in your everyday life. And science has proven and has led or linked this with things like menstrual pain in women, of course, in ability to have sexual ecstasy, also in women, which invariably affects women’s relationships and invariably their health.
And then you look at an issue very crucial, like childbirth, and then you’re looking at how a woman literally has issues with the crowning of the baby’s head, which the clitoris is supposed to function in helping when the baby is about to digest it.
So there are a lot of impacts of this and that’s on a day to day basis, which then informs why we must, almost every day, not just for 16 days, continue to advocate against female genital Mutilation and other forms of the campaign has been on, is not the first time people like us in the media have been hearing about it.
No, it isn’t. And the interesting fact is today a lot more people who are mutilated are in the urban areas, not in the rural areas. Why is it so? It is so because the large majority of those who are mutilated in the world, or let me take Nigeria for example today were done it said that a large proportion of women who have been mutilated now live as a result of migration in urban centers.
It does because there is what we call medicalization of FGM in which case where people believe that female genital mutilation is only unsafe because it’s in the hands of local Excisers or traditional cutters in street parlance but that if you won’t allow a medical person.
But who has made it so clear that female genital mutilation has no known health benefits to the woman at all. No, it’s a myth to say it could lead to prosecution. All those are myths and there are few other myths in relation to that.
One very obvious one is what you’ve said they say you’re unmutilated, then you can as well become promised course which is why, quote unquote we have lots of prostitutes on the streets and a sign found that in fact it is the fact that a girl is mutilated that is likely to lead such a girl into prostitution”.
