– I’ve written on this sort of thing before. I like to think I’m an open-minded liberal but this kind of cultural practice completely crosses the line with me. No amount of hand-wringling over cultural relativism is going to make me accept that women are not the equal of men and that they do not deserve every right and freedom men have across the board. Women are not cows or goats to be sexually altered to please the whims and insecurities of men.
– Previous posts on closely related topics are here: ➡ & ➡ & ➡ & ➡ & ➡.
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The Metropolitan Police is offering a £20,000 reward for information which would bring to justice anyone involved in female genital mutilation.
The campaign is being launched at the start of the summer holidays, during which young girls – mainly from African communities – are thought most at risk.
Mutilation involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for cultural reasons.
Up to 7,000 girls in the UK are seen as at risk of this form of circumcision.
The long summer holiday is seen as the most likely time for parents to seek the procedure for their daughter as she has time to recover from what is usually a brutal ordeal before returning to school.
She can be sent abroad for the treatment, but police say they know it is also being carried out within the UK itself.
A new law was introduced in 2003, which not only repeated 1985 legislation banning the procedure, but also criminalised those who took a child outside the country for mutilation to be performed.
No-one has been prosecuted under the new legislation.
“It’s a hidden act,” said Alastair Jeffrey, head of the Child Abuse Investigation Command, as he announced the reward. “And that’s why it’s so hard to uncover.
“This is child abuse. It is not an attack on anyone’s culture, it is an attack on anyone who commits this horrendous abuse of children.”
More… ➡