NCJ Number
73277
Journal
Criminologie Volume: 13 Issue: 1 Dated: (1980) Pages: 80-93
Date Published
1980
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Genital mutilations as social customs or ritual practices and Chinese footbinding are cited as examples of the victimization of females throughout history.
Abstract
Genital mutilations inflicted on females range from a partial circumcision of the clitoris to the radical clitoridectomy. Clitoridectomy, which is still practiced as a social custom in Egypt, Nubia, Sudan, and especially Somalia, is celebrated as a festivity although it inflicts excruciating pain, the danger of infection, as well as severe and lasting psychological and physical aftereffects on the girls. Numerous black African tribes perform a clitoridectomy as a ritual initiation to adulthood when girls reach the age of puberty. As the tribes came in contact with Western civilization and Christianity, female circumcision was sometimes replaced by a symbolic incision on arm or face, but the new black leaders (in particular Kenyatta) advocated a return to the original custom as a form of communion with ancestral spirits and a sign of Africa's fight for independence. No definite explanation for female mutilation practices, which date back to biblical times, has been found, but the article argues that such acts represent the climax of collective male aggressiveness inflicted on female victims. In this context, the Chinese custom of binding women's feet to keep them small can also be interpreted in sexual terms. Originated in the harem of a Chinese emperor, the painful and crippling procedure underlines the Chinese custom of considering the female foot as a highly erotic object. The article includes biographical footnotes. --in French.