Throughout the world, throughout what we know of history, something called “God” has been used to support the denial

 Throughout the world, throughout what we know of history, something called “God” has been used to support the denial

, the condemnation, and the mutilation of female sexuality. Of the female sex, ourselves. Today, in parts of Africa – predominantly among African Muslims, but also among African Christians and Jews4, and some tribal beliefs – young girls are still subjected to clitoridectomy. This surgery, often performed by older women with broken glass or knives, excises the clitoris, severing the nerves of orgasm; the operation is intended to force the girl to concentrate on her vagina as a reproductive vessel. 

Infibulation, a more thorough operation, removes the labia minora and much of the labia majora; the girl is then closed up with thorns or required to lie with her legs tied together until her entire vaginal orifice is fused shut, with a straw inserted to allow passage of urine and menstrual blood. 

On the wedding night the young woman is slit open by a midwife or her husband; further cutting and reclosing is performed before and after childbirth. Complications from these surgeries are numerous, including death from infection, hemorrhage, inability to urinate, scar tissue preventing dilation during labor, painful coitus, and infertility due to chronic pelvic infection. In 1976 an estimated 10 million women were involved with this operation.5 And something called “God” justified it; a “God” who supposedly created young girls as filthy sex maniacs who must then be mutilated to turn them into docile breeders.

THE FIRST SEX: IN THE BEGINNING, WE WERE ALL CREATED FEMALE

Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor

Anthology Editor’s Introduction: This opening chapter is re-published from Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, from 1975.

Female Erasure edited by Ruth Barrett

Art by Tine Poppe