Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence

Sexual Violence: Mutilation of Female Sex Organs: Justifications 3

Hygiene
Some arguments for the mutilation of female sex organs simply reveal the medical ignorance of their proponents. For example, in some communities people believe that the operation increases fertility or that the clitoral glans is an obstruction to the birth of a baby and therefore must be removed well in advance. Others are convinced that the operation protects the girls from vaginal abscesses and many other health problems.
Such ignorance can be overcome only by education.

Beauty
In many communities, unmutilated female sex organs are considered ugly and disgusting, and the prevailing ideal of female beauty requires that they should be altered in some traditional way. Some of these communities have also persuaded themselves that an “uncircumcized” vulva has a bad odor, and that the operation will remove it.
These deep-seated convictions are hard to change.