Surgery Restores Sexual Function In Women Whose Family Mutilated Their Genitals.
indianmuslimobserver.com
Female genital mutilation is still remarkably common — mainly in Africa, but also in some countries in Asia and the Middle East and in immigrant communities in Europe and the U.S.
The procedure, which involves removing or cutting all or some of young girls’ outer genitalia, is a painful and traumatic experience for the up to 3 million girls and teens who get it every year. It’s also dangerous, according to public health groups that adamantly denounce the practice. But it’s still regularly performed because of the cultural or religious belief that women should not be allowed to experience sexual pleasure.
Now, French researchers report in a new paper that a reconstructive surgery they used to try to repair the clitorises of 2,938 women in France between 1998 and 2009 has helped many of them experience sexual pleasure. The researchers say that one-third of the women they interviewed a year after their surgery said they could achieve a full or “restricted” orgasm with their new clitorises. None of those women had had an orgasm before the surgery. Half the women who said they’d had a “restricted” orgasm before the surgery reported experiencing a regular orgasm after it.
To evaluate the long-term effects of the surgery, the researchers relied on the responses of 866 women who went to St. Germain Poissy Hospital in St. Germain en Laye, France, for follow-up about their pain and sexual function a year after the surgery. Of those women, most reported an improvement, or at least no worsening, of pain and clitoral pleasure. The results appeared Tuesday online in The Lancet.
Most of the women who had the surgery in the French hospital were from French-speaking countries in Africa, though 564 had had their genitals mutilated while living in France. Reconstructive surgery has been available in France since 2004 and is covered by national health insurance. At least one U.S. doctor also does the surgery, but few patients are able to get their insurance companies to pay for it, according to this story in Newsweek.
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It’s not only ”because of the cultural or religious belief that women should not be allowed to experience sexual pleasure.” It’s first and foremost that women should not be allowed to have sex at all at free will and to control their sexuality and keep them in order. To make sure the man gets a virgin and the mutilated woman does not run around sleeping with anyone else. She will not. She will be just hoping to survive giving birth to her children. Men have been scared of women’s sexuality from day one, someone more wise than me can answer why. This must be the most barbaric, horrible way of torture and it makes me sick that it is still done to this day! Happy to hear about reconstructive surgery!! Although It’s not only sexual pleasure they have been deprived of, but so much more as ”most women said they wanted to get it to “restore female identity and completeness.” I wish they all had access to it.