Editing Female genital mutilation (section)

===Support from women===
{{anchor|Pulitzer}}
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|title=1996 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography
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|quote=[https://web.archive.org/web/20151007101527/http://www.pulitzer.org/works/1996-Feature-Photography Kenyan FGM ceremony]|qalign=center
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|source= &nbsp;— Stephanie Welsh, Newhouse News Service<ref>{{cite web |title=Stephanie Welsh. The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Feature Photography |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/works/1996-Feature-Photography |publisher=The Pulitzer Prizes|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151007101527/http://www.pulitzer.org/works/1996-Feature-Photography |archive-date=7 October 2015 |date=1996|url-status=live}}</ref>}}
Dahabo Musa, a Somali woman, described infibulation in a 1988 poem as the "three feminine sorrows": the procedure itself, the wedding night when the woman is cut open, then childbirth when she is cut again.{{sfn|Abdalla|2007|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=8VQxt634pfcC&pg=PA187 187]}} Despite the evident suffering, it is women who organize all forms of FGM.{{sfn|El Guindi|2007|loc=35, 42, 46}}{{efn|[[Gerry Mackie]] (1996): "Virtually every ethnography and report states that FGM is defended and transmitted by the women."{{sfn|Mackie|1996|loc=1003}}{{pb}}
[[Fadwa El Guindi]] (2007): "Female circumcision belongs to the women's world, and ordinarily men know little about it or how it is performed—a fact that is widely confirmed in ethnographic studies."{{sfn|El Guindi|2007|loc=35}}{{pb}}
Bettina Shell-Duncan (2008): "[T]he fact that the decision to perform FGC is often firmly in the control of women weakens the claim of gender discrimination."{{sfn|Shell-Duncan|2008|loc=228}}{{pb}}
Bettina Shell-Duncan (2015): "[W]hen you talk to people on the ground, you also hear people talking about the idea that it's women's business. As in, it's for women to decide this. If we look at the data across Africa, the support for the practice is stronger among women than among men."{{sfn|Khazan|2015}}}} Anthropologist [[Rose Oldfield Hayes]] wrote in 1975 that educated Sudanese men who did not want their daughters to be infibulated (preferring clitoridectomy) would find the girls had been sewn up after the grandmothers arranged a visit to relatives.{{sfn|Hayes|1975|loc=620, 624}} [[Gerry Mackie]] has compared the practice to [[footbinding]]. Like FGM, footbinding was carried out on young girls, nearly universal where practised, tied to ideas about honour, chastity, and appropriate marriage, and "supported and transmitted" by women.{{efn|[[Gerry Mackie]], 1996: "Footbinding and infibulation correspond as follows. Both customs are nearly universal where practised; they are persistent and are practised even by those who oppose them. Both control sexual access to females and ensure female chastity and fidelity. Both are necessary for proper marriage and family honor. Both are believed to be sanctioned by tradition. Both are said to be ethnic markers, and distinct ethnic minorities may lack the practices. Both seem to have a past of contagious diffusion. Both are exaggerated over time and both increase with status. Both are supported and transmitted by women, are performed on girls about six to eight years old, and are generally not initiation rites. Both are believed to promote health and fertility. Both are defined as aesthetically pleasing compared with the natural alternative. Both are said to properly exaggerate the complementarity of the sexes, and both are claimed to make intercourse more pleasurable for the male."{{sfn|Mackie|1996|loc=999–1000}}}}

[[File:Fuambai Sia Ahmadu (1).jpg|left|thumb|upright|alt=photograph|[[Fuambai Ahmadu]] chose to undergo clitoridectomy as an adult.<ref name=Ahmadu2000/>]]
FGM practitioners see the procedures as marking not only ethnic boundaries but also gender differences. According to this view, male circumcision defeminizes men while FGM demasculinizes women.<ref>{{harvnb|Abusharaf|2007|loc=8}}; {{harvnb|El Guindi|2007|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=8VQxt634pfcC&pg=PA36 36–37]}}.</ref> [[Fuambai Ahmadu]], an anthropologist and member of the [[Kono people]] of [[Sierra Leone]], who in 1992 underwent clitoridectomy as an adult during a [[Sande society]] initiation, argued in 2000 that it is a male-centred assumption that the clitoris is important to female sexuality. African female symbolism revolves instead around the concept of the womb.<ref name="Ahmadu2000">{{harvnb|Ahmadu|2000|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=rhhRXiJIGEcC&pg=PA284 284–285]}}.</ref> Infibulation draws on that idea of enclosure and fertility. "[G]enital cutting completes the social definition of a child's sex by eliminating external traces of androgyny," [[Janice Boddy]] wrote in 2007. "The female body is then covered, closed, and its productive blood bound within; the male body is unveiled, opened, and exposed."<ref>{{harvnb|Boddy|2007|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=T77ui7IPNwkC&pg=PA112 112]}}; also see {{harvnb|Boddy|1989|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TK6NIp5uVwsC&pg=PA52 52–61]}}.</ref>

In communities where infibulation is common, there is a preference for women's genitals to be smooth, dry and without odour, and both women and men may find the natural vulva repulsive.{{sfn|Gruenbaum|2005|loc=435–436}} Some men seem to enjoy the effort of penetrating an infibulation.<ref>{{harvnb|Gruenbaum|2005|loc=437}}; {{harvnb|Gruenbaum|2001|loc=140}}.</ref> The local preference for [[dry sex]] causes women to introduce substances into the vagina to reduce lubrication, including leaves, tree bark, toothpaste and [[Vicks VapoRub|Vicks menthol rub]].{{sfn|Bagnol|Mariano|2011|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=xSqIrrswbG0C&pg=PA277 277–281]}} The WHO includes this practice within Type IV FGM, because the added friction during intercourse can cause lacerations and increase the risk of infection.<ref>[[#WHO2008|WHO 2008]], 27–28.</ref> Because of the smooth appearance of an infibulated vulva, there is also a belief that infibulation increases hygiene.{{sfn|Gruenbaum|2005|loc=437}}

Common reasons for FGM cited by women in surveys are social acceptance, religion, hygiene, preservation of virginity, marriageability and enhancement of male sexual pleasure.<ref>[[#UNICEF2013|UNICEF 2013]], 67.</ref> In a study in northern Sudan, published in 1983, only 17.4 percent of women opposed FGM (558 out of 3,210), and most preferred excision and infibulation over clitoridectomy.{{sfn|El Dareer|1983|loc=140}} Attitudes are changing slowly. In Sudan in 2010, 42 percent of women who had heard of FGM said the practice should continue.<ref>[[#UNICEF2013|UNICEF 2013]], 178.</ref> In several surveys since 2006, over 50 percent of women in Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Gambia, and Egypt supported FGM's continuance, while elsewhere in Africa, Iraq, and Yemen most said it should end, although in several countries only by a narrow margin.<ref>[[#UNICEF2013|UNICEF 2013]], 52. Also see figure 6.1, 54, and figures 8.1A&nbsp;– 8.1D, 90–91.</ref>