Female genital mutilation across culture, sexuality and destructiveness

Abstract

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a widespread medical problem: in the world there are between 100 and 140 million female individuals suffering at present the clinical consequences of such procedures (WHO, 2009). Besides, this is also a remarkable case to criminological investigation. In Europe a specific law about FGM has been issued in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and Italy. As a matter of fact, in our Country this custom counts as a real crime, condemned and punished as an autonomous offence by Italian law 09/01/2006, n. 7 (named Consolo’s Law), which establishes repressive-sanctioning measures, expressed by 2 new articles in the current Penal Code (583-bis and 583-ter), and which also implies a series of information and preventing  initiatives to safeguard  victims. On the other hand, the matter of FGM requires a criminological examination, not only because it is considered a new criminal case, but also because it reveals a behaviour which is objectively and strongly harmful to the psychophysical integrity of the individual, and to women’s right to healthcare (as underlined during the III World Day for elimination of FGM, held in Rome on February 6th, 2009). World Health Organization (2009) included FGM among the “sex based violence”, in the same way as girls trafficking, sexual abuse and forced marriage. The Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry for Equal Opportunities (2009) qualified this custom as “ancient, cruel, inhuman, unjustified, not suggested by any religion, condemned in every Country of the world”. These problems require an approach coming from criminology investigating violent offences, not only because studying, preventing and treating old and new crimes is up to criminology, but also because this kind of crime necessarily involves cultural dimensions, besides the spheres of aggressivity and of human sexuality, and their complex interrelations. In regards to this, we are here  considering those  elements relating culture to sexuality and to destructiveness, in which FGM is rooted. We then refer to the contribution of the sociology of the body (which studies the role given to the human body by a certain kind of culture and the influence of the social structure on women’s body), of etnopsychiatry (according to which the disorder is necessarily related to intercultural meeting, where the stranger’s body on one side is to convey different cultural codes, while on the other side is to embody the cultural values of the social structure to which it belongs, though these values haven’t always been chosen by the individual), and of those scientific disciplines, such as psychoanalysis and anthropophenomenology, which investigated the possible links between aggressivity and sexuality, acted either in and upon the human body. In fact, to psychoanalysis the human body is a sort of theatre, where life and death instincts take shape, either in the same individual and in different generations, while to anthropophenomenology bodiness is a condition of possibility for human existence itself, bodiness expressed by the body-object / body-subject (or lived body) dialectic (Körper/Leib dialectic). Our remarks, although fully grounded at an epistemic level, are just  preliminary to a  future criminological field work, which is necessary in order to clarify both genesis and dynamics of this behaviour and in order to prevent it at a social and cultural level, and which is  also strongly needed, given that Consolo’s Law came into force 3 years ago and that to this day there have been neither penal procedures, nor sentences concerning this kind of crime.