Is reddit still hostile towards women's issues? Or "what happens if you make the front page on reddit"

I love, love love love your post. Thank you.

My sister recently got home from a work-study program in Nigeria. She spent two months working with a tiny, poorly-funded clinic, in the middle of nowhere, which was founded to help girls who had been FGM'd.

Here's what happens to these girls - usually, when they are infants, though not always (sometimes anywhere from babyhood up to early puberty): They are taken to a hut, laid on the ground, and have their legs spread wide and held down. An older woman of the community removes their labia (both sets) and clitoris with a knife, piece of glass, or rock. Cutting and scraping.

If the baby/little girl doesn't die from infection (some do, of course) the wound is dressed on purpose to heal so that the vaginal opening is blocked by the mass of the scars, with a small hole left for urination/menstrual flow.

When she's "old enough" to marry (my sister met two girls who were 'married' at 11), her husband cuts her open. (BTW, this is the ritual in this particular part of Nigeria, for this tribe and culture; the amount of cutting and process afterwards varies).

Infection is apparently the biggest problem. The girls this clinic helps developed such horrific infection, doing so much damage internally AND externally, that giving birth (especially when as young as age 12, when your pelvis has not yet fully grown) rips them up again, so badly that it causes them to become incontinent. And here comes the really fun fact:

Incontinence is taboo in this culture. So, when a girl can't stop herself from peeing all over the place because she has been mutilated and has given birth so young, she is kicked out of the community - shunned. If the husband wishes, he can take a new wife, and keep whichever of the kids he had with his now-incontinent first wife. She must take the kids he doesn't want, and go out into the bush to try to survive on her own. There are small groups of these girls who live together and try to support each other and their kids, but for the most part, these girls are simply kicked out and left to die.

This clinic gives them surgery to try to cure their incontinence, so they can go back home and live near their friends and family again.

So thank you very much for pointing out the difference in scale. I am not saying that men don't suffer from circumcision - my dad had to have surgery for it in his 20s and said it was the most painful thing he ever endured. But even leaving the motivation (which I thought you explained very well) out, I think FGM might suck hard enough that comparing it to circumcision as performed on most circumcised men is disingenuous. Again, not saying MGM isn't awful - but seriously, which would you rather have to go through? If you had to pick one option?

So thanks.

/r/TwoXChromosomes Thread Parent Link - chutterbuild.com