Female Genital Mutilation in the US

Some time ago I was banned from Alas A Blog, by people whose politics define the current feminist movement. Cultists who march in lockstep with the Democratic party and with the lefter than thou boys. These women asked the question, "Aren't bikinis just as oppressive as burkas?" And then they argued about cultural relativism and the racism of US white women who object to burkas.

I tried to say they were off topic and the question was a stupid one - that for women the issue was CHOICE. The issue is who decides what a woman wears, herself or some male or family member or the religious police. And what is the consequence of her decision?

But my anger at the way they fiddle while other women burn exploded. Years of trying to speak civilly to self absorbed intellectuals who really do not care how the status of women everywhere is connected to the status of women here, erupted into me telling them what I really think of their arguments.

Of course they reacted with the left's usual fascism which is to shout down the opposition. It is silencing and we are all doing it now, including me. Hatred and anger.

Only the new left women never acknowledge their part in it. They want no threat to their absolute comfort. Phyllis Chesler has experienced this and writes about it in her book "The Death of Feminism" which should be read and discussed in women's study classes. But it won't be so discussed because the academics are to busy with the false distinction between burka and bikini.

Cult feminists of the (gag) third wave never acknowledge that they have made the feminist movement into a cult rather than a movement. They talked about how I wanted to "rescue" women I saw as" inferior" just as I wanted to "rescue" animals who cannot talk back (while they just wanted to ignore oppression by Muslim theocracy because it interfered with the Democratic left's position on the war). These statements exposed their own ignorance about Muslim women and their own arrogant attitude toward them. They would not know the names and fates of those women who spoke truth to power. Such bravery is beyond the puny reality of cult feminism.

I wondered how they imagine that institutional change was made in the second wave if not by women working together, victims and non-victims. But the cult feminists are so divorced from the idea of institutional change that I bet it never comes up. They leave institutional change to George Soros and movie stars.

They said Women Against Fundamentalism cannot possibly represent women because they organize from Britain. Then they held up RAWA as a model . RAWA who organized from the U.S. and opposed the invasion of Afghanistan because the invasion assisted a rival tribe. They reserved their special scorn for republican women in the State Dept. who are working with women in Afghanistan to create some economic independence. They ignored the fact that these efforts are inadequate because the feminist movement here boycotted and ignored the entire effort.

In this same vein, several years ago, I contacted WIN about female genital mutilation in the US. Women's International Network (WIN). WIN was started by Fran P Hosken and used to be an excellent organization concerned with female genital mutilation. They used to put out a newsletter called WIN NEWS.

I had read reports that women immigrants from Somalia were being mutilated in this country and foreign doctors were being flown in by the Muslim parents to do the job. A women who said she was Fran answered the phone at the WIN office. I do not believe she was Fran Hosken. She reacted to my question about US genital mutilation research I had seen on their website with anger refusing to acknowledge that it had ever been there. She said that no such operations were taking place in the US. She said I was a racist to make such an accusation. This is when I realized the cult feminists had taken over WIN.

FOX, the media that is oh so biased, the media that the liberal and leftist's sneer at with their Kerry intelligence denigrating sneers, (the opposition is stupid, I went to Harvard, case closed); that FOX published the below information. But FOX quotes the cult feminists who in order to be ever so politically correct state that the practice is not connected to any religion. That is a lie. It is a Muslim practice. They cannot name any other sect that practices it. It is MUSLIM and they are protecting the theocratic patriarchy by their lies. If I had the money I would sue them for slander.

Let WIN continue to deny reality. Let the academics deny the connection between the status of women here and abroad, deny our caste status. Let the cult feminist deny the truth of saving your sister saves yourself. Let the democrat front women say it is not Muslim fascism. The conservatives will tell the story in the context of their reality.

And thus what goes around, will come around. For instance, the democrats, seeing feminists would abandon Muslim women for a piece of the pie are now running anti-abortion candidates for congress. After all, they have nothing to fear from a non existent independent women's movement which believes that an attack on one should be answered by all. Their girls will support them and their candidates whose ads are filmed in churches.

And speaking of churches, ala catholic church, let us watch the democrats run candidates who oppose securing the southern border and who oppose sanctions for employers who use illegal immigrants to bust unions. Let us watch democrats vote to subsidize the education and medical care of illegals who keep their corporate bosses happy. And let us watch the dems encourage overpopulation by these policies and the one that grants citizenship to every child born in the US even if their parents are not citizens and are here illegally.

After all it is not their money the damn dems and their repub brothers are spending. Oh there is money to subsidize a corrupt Mexican government, but not for US social security and universal US medical care. We are too bankrupt for that. But not too bankrupt to forbid importing drugs from Canada or negotiating with the pharmaceuticals to lower their drug prices. That was forbidden in Bush's senior drug plan which the Democrats voted for happily. But then, they are not paying for the drugs, only taxpayers do that.

All the democrats voted to call animal rights activists "terrorists" at the request of their corporate masters including Kohl and Finegold from Wisconsin.

I support this war but not torture. How many democrats voted approval of torture so as not to appear "soft". I thought this was the war that would expose the uselessness of our full employment for sadists CIA but no such luck. Because the democrats are soft - soft on torture and polishing their image with the screams of the unpopular.

But the people don't need independent unions - mass movements - no - we can just keep supporting the Democrats until we live in a theocracy and don't have to worry about our civil rights or the health of the earth anymore.

From FOX : LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia —

The trial of an Atlanta-area father accused of circumcising his 2-year-old daughter with scissors is focusing attention on an ancient African practice that experts say is slowly becoming more common in the U.S. as immigrant communities grow.
Khalid Adem, a 31-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, is charged with aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Human rights observers said they believe this is the first criminal case in the U.S. involving the 5,000-year-old practice.
Prosecutors say Adem used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in their apartment in 2001. The child's mother said she did not discover it until more than a year later.

"He said he wanted to preserve her virginity," Fortunate Adem, the girl's mother, testified this week. "He said it was the will of God. I became angry in my mind. I thought he was crazy."
The girl, now 7, also testified, clutching a teddy bear and saying that Adem "cut me on my private part." Adem cried loudly as his daughter left the courtroom.
Testifying on his own behalf Friday, Adem said he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. He said he grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and considers the practice more prevalent in rural areas.
Adem, who removed a handkerchief from his pocket and cried at one point during his testimony, was asked what he thought of someone who believes in the practice. He replied: "The word I can say is 'mind in the gutter.' He is a moron."
His lawyer, Mark Hill, acknowledged that Adem's daughter had been cut. But he implied that the family of Fortunate Adem, who immigrated from South Africa when she was 6, may have had the procedure done.
The Adems divorced in 2003, and Hill suggested that the couple's daughter was encouraged to testify against her father by her mother, who has full custody.
If convicted, Adem, a clerk at a suburban Atlanta gas station, could get up to 40 years in prison.
The U.S. State Department estimates that up to 130 million women had undergone circumcision worldwide as of 2001. Knives, razors or even sharp stones are usually used, according to a 2001 department report. The tools often are not sterilized, and often, many girls are circumcised in the same ceremony, leading to infection.
It is unknown how many girls have died from the procedure, either during the cutting or from infections, or years later in childbirth.
Nightmares, depression, shock and feelings of betrayal are common psychological side effects, according to the federal report.

Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now, an international human rights group, said female circumcision is most widely practiced in a 28-country swath of Africa. More than 90 percent of women in Ethiopia are believed to have been subjected to the practice, she said, and even more in places like Egypt and Somalia.

"It is a preparation for marriage," Bien-Aime said. "If the girl is not circumcised, her chances of being married are very slim."

The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say the practice is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.

"I had maybe read about it in Reader's Digest or some other journal, but not really considered it a possibility here," said Dr. Rose Badaruddin, the pediatrician for the Adems' daughter.
Many refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia come to Georgia through a federal refugee resettlement program.

"With immigration, the immigrants travel with their traditions," Bien-Aime said. "Female genital mutilation is not an exception."
Federal law specifically bans the practice, but many states do not have a law addressing it. Georgia lawmakers, with the support of Fortunate Adem, passed an anti-mutilation law last year. However, Khalid Adem is not being tried under that law, since it did not exist when his daughter's cutting allegedly happened.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — An Ethiopian immigrant was convicted Wednesday November 01, 2006, of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.