Argumentative Essay: Is Television a Bad Influence on Children?

Peck 1 Deserae Peck Paola Brown ENG 102 3 March 2008 Female circumcision is also known, more accurately, as female genital mutilation and female genital cutting (FGC.) There are three forms of FGC. The first is a clitoridectomy, the cutting and/or removal of the hood of the clitoris and all or part of the clitoris. The second is an excision which removes the clitoris, the hood, and the labia minor (the inner folds of the vulva that is responsible for producing lubrication.) The infibulation is the third and most radical which also removes everything in the excision along with the labia majora, the outer folds of the vulva. Once removed the sides of the vulva are sewn together leaving a small hole (about pencil size) for the flow of menstruation and urine. The tradition of FGC dates back more than 1000 years and is practiced in parts of Asia, the Far East, Europe, Asia, South America, and even amongst certain ethnic groups in the United States. Aisha Abdel Majid tells of her experience in an interview with Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, an anthropologist born in Sudan, in her article “Unmasking the Tradition of Female Circumcision.” Majid describes her cutting is when she was only 6 years old. She recalls being taken by her mother and two aunts to the midwife in the neighborhood known for performing circumcisions. She is told that she is going to be purified. Upon this realization Aisha tries to break free but is forced down and ordered onto a bed of ropes with a hole in the middle. She accounts,

Peck 2 “They held me tight while the midwife started to cut my flesh without anesthetics. I screamed till I lost my voice. The midwife was saying to me, ‘Do you want me to be taken into police custody?’ After the job was done I could not eat, drink or even pass urine for three days. I remember one of my uncles who discovered what they did to me threatened to press charges against his sisters. They were afraid of him and they decided to bring me back to the midwife. In her