Cultural Views
There's a saying, da dan gari ake cin gari, roughly meaning "you conquer a town with the help of its citizen". Before we yell out patriarchy, it is important to note that women also enforce this practice. For the Shuwas it is partly for aesthetic reasons, which comes with a price of inability to feel stimulated. It is like a rite of passage and young girls take pride in being "fixed" down there to appear appealing. It is similar mentality to labiaplasty in western society. In addition to looking better, the removed bits are dried and ground for future use to make a control concoction that is secretly served to husbands.
In other sub-Saharan cultures (mainly Sudan and Ethiopia), the entire clitoris and vulvas are cut out. And some go as far as to stitching up the major labia (if that's not also removed) to keep the woman a virgin until marriage. Where then the husband gets to open her up (with pride I guess) when married. So before then, with the stitches, they are left with a small opening for urination and menstruation. This method is called infibulation. A Sudanese friend told me that it takes them forever to empty their bladder and it takes longer for menstrual blood to flow out. Some ethnic groups go as far as re-stitching the wife when her husband will travel to ensure that she'll remain loyal.
And I hope that I am recollecting stories that once were and are practiced no more.
Ironically, while some are being cut, others have their labia minoras elongated. For what reason? You guessed it - for the man. My mother told me a Congolese friend told her about their form of genital deformation. In southern parts of Africa (Zambia, Congo, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda area) young girls are encouraged to continuously pull their labia minora until it gets long and flaps loosely. Again, the elderly ladies enforce this practice. Girls engage in the elongation from a young age because they are told that it is more pleasurable to men. The women believe in it so much they are convinced they will not get married if the labia is not long enough.
Again, before we point fingers at those Africans, let me point out that the obsession with lady parts has always been a global threat since time immemorial. Several cultures have found ways to control women by tampering with their nether regions. The word infibulation is from "fibulae", a metal piece used by ancient Romans to pierce through the labia of slaves to prevent pregnancy. Not far off, the Greeks circumcised females with "large" clitoris to prevent promiscuity. Recent theories about Chinese feet binding suggest that the way women were forced to walk tones the vaginal muscles, and having bound feet makes them less likely to wander off and be frisky. Until bans centuries to decades ago, some countries in Europe and the United States used to perform clitoridectomies to cure illnesses such as depression, masturbation, and nymphomania. For some ridiculous reason they linked psychological issues with having an inflamed genitalia.
