-Caveat Lector- The Scars of a Crude Custom Africa News Service 07-APR-99 Accra (The Independent, April 6, 1999) - The Culture of a people is a cherished national heritage and also serves as our means of identity and no one can argue against the need to uphold it. But where the culture and traditions of a people, rather than contributing to progress and development bring about retardation and oppression, then they do not merit protection. There is the story of a 15 year old girl who had to live with eight years of physical emotional and psychological torment and agony as a result of a crude operation carried out on her when she was a tender seven-year old child. She was circumcised at her hometown in the Northern Region some eight years ago. Today the girl cannot menstruate, pass urine or stool as a result of complications from that crude operation. Hers is not the only sad story of victims of female circumcision practised in parts of Africa, Asia and Southern America. In Ghana, the practice is prevalent in some parts of the Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Brong Ahafo regions among certain ethnic groups. Temale circumcision is an issue that arouses very strong feelings in many women. Some Western feminists decry it because they feel that the principal objective of female circumcision is to suppress a woman's sexuality and make her docile and faithful to her husband - a clear example of how society ensures the subordination of women to men. Others including African women from societies in which the practice does not exist, get horrified at the details of how the operation is performed. It involves a partial or total removal of the external genitalia for cultural moral religious or other than non-therapeutic reason. The aim basically is to reduce sexual desire in women and ensure fidelity during marriage. Notwithstanding, the moral religious and cultural argument female circumcision has been realised to leave serious physical emotional and psychological scars on victims. Some of the women who have been through the operation speak of how traumatic the whole experience was for them. Victims are said to suffer pain excessive bleeding from a section of the clitoris, urine retention and Tetanus. The long-term effects include menstrual problems, infertility, and frigidity. It is for these reasons that governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) have mounted a serious campaign against it. In Ghana, the criminal Code (Amendment ) Act of 1994 (Act 484 ) makes the practice a second degree felony punishable with a term of imprisonment of not less than three years. In societies that practise female circumcision, there are stories and beliefs that provide the rationale behind the practice. A little girl growing up in a village or in a suburb of an urban centre is bound to hear about circumcision so many times that by the time she is of age she knows that the operation is for her own good, and that this is what she has to do to be accepted as a woman of her society, for the operation is usually meant to transform a girl into a woman. Some women still take pride in the practice. They maintain that it is an honour to the family for a daughter to be circumcised because it' is mostly virgins who are circumcised. Most African Societies have procedures- initiation rites, puberty rites that are meant to usher young boys and girls into adulthood. These rites confer full social accptability on the initiates, in traditional society, parents will ensure that their children participate in such initiation rites for fear of their being ostracised. Whatever the arguments in favour of puberty rites, there is the need for education on the risks that operation poses for a girl both at the time of the operation and in later life. In order to ensure that proposals for a viable alternative to female circumcision as an initiation rite are accepted, it would be necessary to have sustained discussion with and education of traditional rulers and heads of village communities as well as women's groups to make them see the need for a change in order to save our children from further agonies. Copyright 1999 The Independent. Distributed via Africa News Online. ================================= Robert F. Tatman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remove "nospam" from the address to reply. NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. 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