The Case of FGM

FGM stands as the most prominent example of a masculine society’s measures to control women’s lustful bodies and mitigating their threat. To conceal this primary goal, narratives of purity, cleanliness, and chastity—concepts rooted in disciplining the woman’s body and, by extension, her morals—are promoted. This supposedly serves to ‘suppress the fitna’ and safeguard the social order. As Kholoud al-Siba‘i notes, “These widespread beliefs about female sexuality—as a source of disruption, chaos, and disorder—have resulted in practices that ‘erode’ the female body through a set of obligations and constraints. A woman has been deemed a source of fitna—whether she intends it or not—and her mere existence as a ‘woman’ is enough to constitute a threat to men and the entire social system. Thus, it was decreed that she must remain ‘pure’ to preserve the purity of men.” (9)

FMG indicates ‘purity.’ A body that is desirable and safe according to religious teachings and social codes must be pure and chaste, and these two qualities have standards that must be upheld. Purity means “freedom from filth, impurity, and every shameful quality. A menstruating or postpartum woman is pure when she ceases bleeding or cleanses herself with water or other means to purify herself. Cleanliness for boys means to circumcise them. Purifying a canal or waterway means to clear away silts and deposits…” (10) The Arabic word tahara (purity) encompasses every act that cleanses impurity, dirt, and harm, as in tat-hir (purifying) cuts and the mouth. This pertains to the physical body, but physical purity is a prerequisite for purity of the soul. As for the notions of ‘iffa (chastity) and ‘afaf (integrity), they mean “abstaining from that which is forbidden, be it in speech or deed. Someone has ‘afaf when, if they are poor, they do not ask for help, nor take that which is not theirs. And ‘iffa is restraining desire and safeguarding one’s body from unlawful penetration.” (11) As widely known, the link between women and purity in certain cultures rises to the level of an obsession. In those cultures, women are always accused of being dirty, and purity is linked to cleanliness. An impure body is an unclean one. As we will see later, an uncircumcised girl is considered unclean.

Genital mutilation is also sometimes called khifad in Arabic, literally “lowering.” It is derived from the root khafd, which means “calm ground.” Therefore, the link between genital mutilation, which lessens and lowers women’s sexual desire—if not completely eradicates it—and khafd (calm ground) is evident here. Khafd calms the ground (society) and alleviates society’s fears of women, whose body has lost its libido and desire which lead to fitna.” (12)

Temptation is the disease, and purity, its cure. To be pure is not only the result of removing filth and dirt through washing rituals. Women’s reproductive organs must be cut and mutilated to purify her body, soul, and society. FGM represents a sacred violence that is necessary to safeguard society, preserve men’s superiority, and even protect women from their evil—or at least unsettled— selves. A study sponsored by the Anti-FGM Task Force in the nineties, following the International Conference on Population and Development, concluded that “Men’s anxiety springs from an exaggerated perception of women’s sexual abilities. The potential of suffering from sexual impotence is another deeply concerning issue for men. They thus experience anxiety about their inability to fulfil women’s sexual needs due to their impotence. As a result, FGM weakens a woman’s sexual ability and power, allowing men to fulfil their needs. All men’s statements about their masculinity, identity, and perception of women sought to justify their supportive attitude towards FGM.” (13)

Men’s fear, or rather anxiety, is self-centered. They are anxious about their image as socially and sexually superior, or as the study indicates, they are anxious over the lack of acknowledgement of their virility, an acknowledgement that must come from their female partners. This acknowledgement is crucial, as masculinity, just like femininity, is not self-referential, but needs to be acknowledged. In fact, the said acknowledgement is subject to social standards and perceptions of the meanings of masculinity and femininity. This non-negotiable requirement compels men to enact socially desirable masculinity, while women play roles that render them socially desirable, and importantly, socially ‘non-threatening.’

Men’s anxiety is often rooted in a subjective concern regarding the recognition of their virility. In contrast, women’s fears are multifaceted. They encompass the apprehension of exclusion, particularly the prospect of remaining unmarried, as well as the anxiety associated with deviating from established sexual norms and their responsibilities in upholding the social order. It is evident that women are active agents in constructing, nurturing, and protecting the power of masculinity. Conditioning the female body to conform to the rules of modesty, purity, and honor is entrusted to women themselves. According to Maha Muhammad Hussein, based on a sample of women’s opinions, girls who were subjected to FGM in the collective mind are seen as “girls with a degree of purity, cleanliness, and moral integrity, ones who do not engage in any act of which society disapproves. They can maintain themselves and follow social codes at the same time, and do not do anything that changes that. They are the ideal, well-behaved girls, of good character and conduct, and have a calm temperament.” Hussein quotes some of the women participants in this study whose statements reflect their stances toward girls who were subjected to FGM. They said, “People always say they are respectable girls, decent, clean, their bodies are pure and will do nothing wrong.” Others said, “They are respectable girls who will not do anything wrong, and if they are made to watch pornography they will not get aroused, and if they were left alone in a room full of men, they will never be tempted.” (14)

In contrast, Hussein also cites the women participants’ perceptions of girls who were not subjected to FGM, stating, “Popular perceptions about uncircumcised girls carry a hidden social stigma, ‘they are immoral’, and are “like a ticking time bomb… ready to explode at any moment’. Those girls would use any chance to show off their bodies. They are impure, unclean, deviant, mimic men, and engage in forbidden relationships in public and in private. According to these perceptions, an uncircumcised girl is seen as capable of losing her honor and cannot protect her and her family’s honor.” Similarly, Hussein quotes some of the participants, who said, “Uncircumcised girls are horny and loose, they have no self-control and can be easily aroused. Poor things can’t resist arousal or young men approaching them.” They also stated that “Girls who were not circumcised do immoral things with men, they do things to themselves like masturbation,” and that “they do a lot of forbidden things, like shudhudh with uncircumcised girls like themselves, and you can tell who the uncircumcised girls are.” (15) The collective mind never looks at FGM as a crime against girls. On the contrary, it is girls retaining their normal bodies that is considered a crime against society and girls. We may not have heard such opinions from a sample of women in past traditional societies, but it is noticeable that the women’s statements include contemporary terms such as: porn, being among men, and shudhudh (sexual deviance), terms that were not known in the past. Perhaps we can say that, in the past, FGM was taken for granted, not subject to discussion or justification. But now, it requires a series of justifications that do not often refer to religious sources, which indicates that violence and its justifications reflect their historical and social reality. FGM is losing many of its supporters. However, it is not clear to what extent this decline correlates with the fear of women’s sexuality.

Contemporary Fear

Change has undoubtedly occurred. The men of today are different from those of yesterday. It is true that contemporary men still defend masculine superiority, but they do so in a different context, for different reasons, and using different strategies. Some have changed, some are changing, and some are more aware of women’s rights than some women who are still slaves to conservative ideas. Amal Qarami states, “A sense of self-confidence has grown among some women, and simultaneously, feelings of pride and strength have seen a relative decline among certain groups of men who have taken on a different view of masculinity. These men have distanced themselves from aggression, instead leaning toward peacefulness and building reciprocal relationships based on equality.” Qarami adds, “Additionally, we observe instances today where strict adherence to gender stereotypes that justify gender discrimination is decreasing. There are cases where we see a shift away from traditionally masculine values and a tendency toward femininity, including caring for one’s appearance, using cosmetics, choosing clothing that reflects femininity, or imitating women in aspects such as use of language, way of speaking and expressing oneself, posture, using perfumes, and other semiotic markers that traditional culture typically assigns to women.” (16)

But I cannot generalize and say that this is some sweeping social change. Ultra conservative views exist, and so do open-minded ones, and in the middle, we find overlap and we see confusion. Perhaps a critical issue that gives contemporary violence its special nature is the gap between ideas and reality. In past traditional societies, ideas largely aligned with their reality to a large extent. In our contemporary societies, however, there is a gap, and there is confusion characterizing ideals of womanhood (largely traditional) and the reality thereof. Women’s reality is different; they are agents in the public sphere now and are competing with men in fields that were once exclusive to them. It can be said that much of the contemporary violence can be attributed to this gap between what men (and society) believe and what the new reality dictates. Fear is no longer the mere anxiety about protecting sexual dominance, but it is now a fear of losing control and social superiority. As Aziz Al-Azmeh states,

Literary, religious, and everyday discourse has stripped women of their humanity, agency, personhood, and independence, reducing them to their femininity, perceived as excessive emotionality, casting their reality to the realm of the unnatural. It has become difficult to place women in their reality, or deal with them based on it. Instead, [society] is labeling this position as a deviation from femininity—enhancing men’s insecurities of losing dominance—and renders the real woman a curse, a temptation, or a demon, all of which are causes for anxiety and hatred. (17)

Here we see the importance of discovering the dialectic of the perceived and the reality as complex and multi-layered. That which is perceived carries a lot of old, traditional ideas. Reality is nothing but the contemporary status quo. I agree with Amal Qarami, who said that men’s stances toward women have changed, and that this is linked to the said men’s perceptions of rights and freedoms in general. However, this open-minded and liberal view is not the majority’s. In fact, some consider it the exception, not the rule. Most men (and even women) are still lingering in the tenuous zone between that which is perceived and reality. Rejecting women’s work in the public sphere is not only a reality but is the fruit of a persistent mindset. This rejection may turn into institutionalized discrimination, as in when male judges gatekeep the job from women. On the more popular level, a man may benefit from his wife’s labor and may be dependent on her. Even with that, he may still believe that women belong in the home and may even be violent toward her if she does not support him financially or because she does not do domestic work.

While traditional violence, represented in FGM, declines, thanks to increasing awareness, expressions of masculinity have become violent, especially in the public sphere. Perhaps that explains the decline in FGM and the rise in sexual harassment. It is true that both are linked to proving masculine superiority and achieving victory over the female body. Harassment, however, remains an individual act, performed in the context of courtship and self-imposition, causing intentional harm to women, or fantasies of power and ownership. If FGM is an old collective strategy organized mainly by women in order to reshape the female body and remove its inherent threat to men, family and the social system; sexual harassment is a purely masculine act that women disapprove of and do not play a part in, perhaps only in some women’s relative tendency to blame other women for the harassment they were subjected to.

Traditionally, harassment is considered a disruption of the social order because it is seen as an assault on the community’s honor carried by the woman who was harassed. Therefore, it is difficult to consider it a legacy of traditional culture. It seems like the distorted shift from traditional community cultures to today’s urban society has led to masculinity breaking free from some restraints that it imposed on traditional relationship dynamics, ones which considered assaulting women an assault on the boundaries or property of other men or other communities. However, in urban societies, and with the unraveling of traditional relationship dynamics, women now exist in environments free of the constraints imposed by tradition. They, however, still lack the protection of modern laws and codes of the civilized society. In this void, sexual harassment has become a phenomenon, one that aims at asserting a lost masculinity that wants to prove itself through the delusion of ownership and the desire to assert dominance through causing harm.

It is indeed paradoxical that rates of sexual harassment are highest in societies that emphasize excessive morality, chastity, and modesty. This emphasis implicitly places the responsibility on women, framing harassment as a consequence of violating the standards of modesty and chastity- standards that primarily concern women. It is not seen as a violation of rights and freedoms that concern everyone equally. While some argue that sexual harassers do not distinguish between women wearing the hijab, niqab, or women who do not wear either, the notion persists in the collective mindset, pushing most women to accept specific limitations on their clothing, movement, and speech. Women’s compliance to modesty and chastity manipulations and impositions explains why hijab is widespread; it is a form of compliance with the demands of masculinity. However, modern fashion remains a territory for women to play in, as hijab (a symbol of modesty and religiosity) can be compatible with clothing that is fashionable and feminine. This is not a combination of the old and the modern, but a response to a cultural status quo. Even in extreme forms of dress, like the niqab and excessively revealing clothes, both are forms of reducing women to nothing but their bodies.

In short, it can be said that the masculine culture continues to revive the old narrative: the story of the superior male and the submissive female, the myths of chastity, purity, and honor, and the illusions of the cunning, lustful woman. It is true that some men and women have freed themselves from the shackles of this narrative, but the overall culture, parenting methods, and religious and moral teachings continue to reproduce the narrative in new forms. It seems that modern societies have not solved the dilemma of anxiety and fear, and perhaps have even exacerbated it. The mental image of ‘masculine virility’ and ‘feminine lust’ has taken a new turn, as it has become a fertile ground for consumer culture. The beauty industry, which employs stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity, is a vast industry that includes cosmetics companies, medical specialties, and media institutions.

Conclusion: The Story of the Genie and the Maiden

The One Thousand and One Nights recounts the tragic tale of Shahryar and his brother Shah Zaman. When they both discover their wives’ infidelity, they decide to leave: “Let us go hence and fare forth to seek our destiny upon the road of Allah; for we have no right in royalty, nor shall have, until we have found someone who has met a fate like ours: without that, in truth, death would be better than our lives.”(18)

Their journey begins with the tale of “The Genie and the Maiden,” where a storm leads a dark column to rise from the sea to the sky which frightened the brothers. They climbed a tree to investigate and saw a genie, tall in stature, broad in forehead, and wide in chest, with a box on his head. He came to the shore and went to the tree they were on, sat down beneath it, and opened the box. He took out a small container, out of which a beautiful, radiant maiden emerged who was like the shining sun. The genie had kidnapped this maiden on her wedding night and locked her in the container within the box. When he let her out, he lay down and slept on her knees. She looked up and saw Shahriyar and his brother, so she asked them to come down, or she would wake the genie up. They got scared and went down, and she got up and started seducing them and threatened them that she would alert the genie and incite him against them if they did not obey her. She took a bag out of her pocket which had a necklace adorned with 570 rings and said, “The owners of all these rings did what I commanded them in the genie’s absence.” And she asked them to give her their rings, which they did. She continued, “This genie kidnapped me on my wedding night, and then he put me in a container inside a box, and sealed the box with seven locks, and threw me into the depths of the tumultuous sea. He did not know that when a woman sets her mind to something, nothing can stop her.” When they heard this, they were astonished and said to each other, ‘If this genie went through something even worse than what happened to us, then it entertains us.’ Shahriyar and his brother returned home, and the latter began his journey of violence and revenge. After he killed his wife, concubines, and servants, he married a virgin every night and then killed her, until Shehrazade came along, beginning the tales of The One Thousand and One Nights. Only then Shahriyar became imprisoned by a tale, as per the Fairouz song.

The ‘man’ of the modern masculine culture is still imprisoned by the tale of “The Genie and the Maiden,” which sums up many of the reasons women are subjected to violence: temptation, cunning, and demonization. The tale has changed, however, and the mythical genie has become a real one: The genie of historical change, the one who does not care for traditional values, the genie of the change in women’s relationship to their bodies, that body which is now able to reshape itself, thanks to advances in modern medicine (such as hymen rejuvenation procedures). Also, the maiden is no longer the maiden of the past who has nothing but her cunning. She has become the maiden who has more opportunities for independence, saying yes or no, basically the maiden who cannot be owned. We are living in an age where all roads lead to reinterpreting and adapting that which is traditional, just so it remains without losing its legitimacy. Notions that used to be stable are now vulnerable to deconstruction, doubt, and questioning. It is no wonder for questions like “What is the meaning of qiwama?” “Is it acceptable to beat and discipline wives?,” and “Is FGM religiously permissible or not?” to abound.

Masculinity tries to maintain its legitimacy through violence, without a doubt, but also through adaptation, to justify its existence and distance itself from some forms of violence that were once considered natural and acceptable. The modern Shahriyar is imprisoned in a new tale: how does he maintain his traditional control while being modern and civilized? It is a real crisis.

Notes

1. Moustafa, Yousry. (2014). “al-Abawiyya fi al-khitab al-mu‘asir: hawl naqd Hisham Sharabi li-l-nidham al-abawi al-mustahdath” [Masculinity in Contemporary Intellectual Discourse: About Hisham Sharabi’s Critique of the Newfound Patriarchy], in Khitab al-naw‘ al-igtima‘i [Gender Discourse], edited by Yousry Moustafa. Network for Women’s Rights Associations, GIZ, 1st edition.
2. Qarami, Amal. Tasaddu‘ binyat ‘al-dhukura al-muhaymina wa-muhawalat inqadhuha [Collapse of the Hegemonic Masculinity Structure and Attempts at Saving It], women researchers, 12th book (2006–2007), al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-‘Arabi, Beirut, 100–125.
3. Eghlan, Hassan. (2018). al-Jins wa-l-siyasa: al-tadbir al-siyasi li-l-jasad fi al-Islam [Sex and Politics: Political Control of the Body in Islam], al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-‘Arabi, Casablanca/ Beirut, 1st edition, 104.
4. Bin Hataira, Sufiya al-Sahiri. (2008). al-Jasad wa-l-mujtama‘: dirasa anthrupulujiyya li-ba‘d al-i‘tiqadat wa-l-tasawwurat hawla al-jasad [The Body and the Society: An Anthropological Study of Selected Beliefs and Perceptions of the Body], al-Intishar al-‘Arabi, 1st edition, 46.
5. André, Jacques. (2009). al-Nuzu‘ al-jinsi al-unthawi [Female Sexual Tendency], translated by Iskandar Mus‘ab, al-Mu’asasa al-Jami‘iya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, Beirut, 1st edition, 28.
   
6. Marzano, Michela. (2012). Mu‘jam al-jasad [Dictionary of the Body], volume 1, translated by Habib Nasrallah Nasr Allah, Mu’asasa al-Jami‘iya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, Beirut, 663.
7. Al-Siba‘i, Kholoud. (2011). al-Jasad al-unthawi wa-huwiyyat al-gender [The Female Body and Gender Identity], al-Jadawil, Beirut, 1st edition, 166.
8. Bin Hataira, Sufiya al-Sahiri. al-Jasad wa-l-mujtama‘ [The Body and Society], 65.
9. Al-Siba‘i, Kholoud. al-Jasad al-unthawi wa-huwiyyat al-gender, 258.
10. Al-Sayyid, Amin Ali. al-‘Ami al-fasih fi al-mu‘jam al-wasit [The Formal Colloquial in the Wasit Mu‘jam], the Academy of the Arabic Language, Arab Republic of Egypt, 1st edition, 2005–2006, 108.
11. Ibid, 127.
12. Bin Hataira, Sufiya al-Sahiri, al-Jasad wa-l-mujtama‘, 62.
13. Wasif, Nadia and Mansur, Abd Allah. (1999). al-Bahth fi anmat al-dhukura wa-khitan al- inath fi Misr [Research on the Patterns of Masculinity and FGM in Egypt], translated by Nawala Darwish, The National NGOs Center for Population and Development, 222.
14. Hussein, Maha Muhammad. (2010). al-‘Udhriyya wa-l-thaqafa: dirasa fi athrupulujiya al- jasad [Virginity and Culture: A Study in the Anthropology of the Body], Daal for Publishing and Distributing, Syria, 1st edition, 200.
15. Ibid. 201.
16. Qarami,  Amal. Tasaddu‘ binyat ‘al-dhukura al-muhaymina wa-muhawalat inqadhuha [Collapse of the Construct of Hegemonic Masculinity and Attempts to Save It], 100–125
17. Al-Azmeh, Aziz. (2017). al-‘Unf li-l-rajul wa-l-shabaq li-l-untha [Violence for Men, Libido for Women], al-Jadid Magazine, issue 32, 25–42. 
18. The Thousand Nights and One Nights, rendered into English from the literal and complete French translation of Dr. J.C. Mardrus. By Powys M., Volume I, 2nd edition, 1964. by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.