For 3-year-old Amira, a law banning female genital mutilation in Eritrea came too late.
Wrapped in an orange traditional dress, Amira’s mother, who gives her name only as Gerejet, says she circumcised the child to please her future husband.
“It was the culture that we have taken from our grandmothers, but we also do it for the pleasure of the men,” the 30-year-old told Reuters in a small village 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
When people say there is zero comparison between cutting the genitals of males and females, they are blind to the obvious. Change the pronouns in that excerpt and it would be eerily familiar to the unspoken thought process of several thousand surgeries carried out every day in America. There are complexities within the comparison that should not be shoved aside, of course, but the justifications for cutting are too similar to ignore.