Men...

 

‘Do you know why FGM is so hard to fight?’

‘Is it because the people who practice it are still rooted to their culture?’

‘Yes generally for all traditional practices, but why is this specific one still around despite all the efforts to kill it?’

‘I have no idea, why is it so?’

‘Because of the men!’

Honestly, that was not the answer we were waiting to hear. You should have seen our faces. What do you mean men? Aren’t they on the forefront to fight it? We had a million and one questions and our guest was more than willing to answer them. His answer had a perspective we had never heard of leave alone imagine.

‘FGM was practiced in order to please men. It was the honour of a man to marry a virgin and the biggest sign for this was one who had gone through the knife. Yes the vice has been fought from all ends but it still goes on. Doesn’t that tell you that there is a deeper meaning? Something more to it than meets the eye? The young men of today learned from their fathers and as much as they will not go shouting about it, it is still demanded of them to marry a woman who has been cut. The poor girls, despite knowing the dangers of circumcision, still insist on going through the gruesome ordeal (some behind their mothers’ backs) because they want to get married - it is the price they have to pay. They. Do. It. For. The. Men!!!'

Men are the biggest inhibitors to the success of this noble campaign to end FGM. They will religiously attend the seminars, receive the money that comes with, condemn the 'doctors' and even ask for their arrest but when they go home, they will insist on wanting, for a wife, a girl who has undergone the full process of initiation. They are like what Paul describes in Titus 1.16 'they profess to know God but deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.'

I am not fighting patriarchy but we can all agree that a lot can be achieved if the men changed. We will not hate them because at the end of the day they are our fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, cousins and neighbours, but we will pray for them, that God will change their hearts and consequently redeem our sisters from some of these archaic traditions still being practiced today.