Matrimonial matters
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photo: curtesy of MCCM
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For years divorce rates have been on the rise; and among the factors contriving to this tendency is sexual dissatisfaction among married couples. This, in turn, is thought to result largely from female genital mutilation (FGM) -- with specialists emphasising its effect on the attitude of women, the more frequent initiators of divorce, to sex. Particularly since the ambitious nationwide campaign under the auspices of Mrs Suzanne Mubarak has been launched, there is a growing tendency to discuss such questions openly in media and educational contexts. This has enabled a more direct confrontation of the issue of FGM, breaking the silence of many victims. The campaign is part of an Arab-Afro scheme that began in Cairo in 2003 by Mrs Mubarak as part of Al-Bent Masria (The Girl is Egyptian), a campaign that aims to spare Egyptian girls from many forms of physical and social abuse. This month, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) is celebrating the official declaration of Aswan governorate village of Binban as free of FGM.
"According to statistics," Hatem Salah, Ain Shams University psychiatry professor, elaborated, "about 72 per cent of divorce cases in the Arab world are due to sexual problems -- an increasingly frequent and somewhat surprising tendency, since it used to be extremely uncommon in Arab societies. Government figures point to 290,000 cases of divorce each year, with 15,000 women filing for divorce annually in Cairo alone." Naima, a recently divorced 27-year-old, has never liked sex, she says: she finds it not only un-fulfilling but positively painful. Circumcised at the age of eight and married at 19, she describes leaving her husband as a relief -- "the best thing that ever happened to me". On almost every occasion, she recalls, she would bleed; she remembers her eyes filling up with tears at the mere prospect of sex.
Wahid Hassan, gynecologist at Al-Galaa Teaching Hospital, lists the adverse health effects of female circumcision as including "hemorrhage, inflammation, deformation -- even death". It is a criminal act, he says, that must be legally prohibited. And that is not to mention the long-term psychological damage. Naima, for one party who suffered the latter, twice tried to take her own life. "My husband," she recounts, "would accuse me of being cold. But then he would proceed to abuse me." For her part Heba Kotb, forensic medicine professor as well as sexuality and marital consultations specialist at Cairo University, believes that the reason behind the breakup of many marriages lies in ignorance of the intimate dimensions of husband-wife relations. Many Egyptian men, for example, refuse to admit that there exists a connection between sexual excitement and fulfilment on the one hand and emotional compassion as well as amorous playfulness on the other. To Salah, however, Naima is rather more the exception than the rule: most women put up with what she had suffered without speaking out; they prioritise the marriage, or the children; or else they fear the unknown. "This state of affairs represents a serious problem; it affects not just the quality of individual lives, but productivity and social interaction..."
"It's a living nightmare," Sabah Mahmoud -- a woman who, though in her early 30s, looks positively 50 -- testifies. Her voice is hardly audible, so ashamed is she of the mere mention of the subject. Sabah was circumcised at the age of 12 and married some 10 years later; she has been subject to much suffering in the last eight years. Dissatisfied with his sex life with her, Sabah's husband has abandoned her for some five years, after marrying another woman. Yet she never filed for divorce: "I had to protect my children and to avoid gossip." For sexual well-being, according to Salah, at least, remains a two-way track. Besides, a troubled sex life complicates both other aspects of domestic life and professional life as well: "False beliefs and the negative aspects of tradition have forced couples to hide their emotions, never admitting to their needs, which eventually leads to depression."
Still, many couples categorically refuse to discuss this side of their life together; cultural misconceptions and the tendency to keep a pledge of silence leave the issue largely in the dark. "Emotional divorce," in which partners cease to exchange emotions, generating a silence that eventually leads to a point of no return. Laila (not her real name) is a 39-year-old, middle-class woman who occupies a prominent public post and has been suffering from severe depression for the last two years. FGM, to which she was subjected at the age of 10, has given her a peculiar self image -- and sense of self: "It totally convinced me that I am imperfect, as a woman." The result was suppressed anger, distress, miscommunication, especially with men. FGM negatively impacted her relationship with her mother, too: "Deep inside, I stayed angry with both my mother and my husband. I couldn't forgive her for not sparing me such pain -- with no purpose in mind apart from the guarantee that I would find a husband. And I hated my husband for never giving me those sensations of which my friends would speak, reporting on their love making. Unlike them, it made me more depressed than ever..."
But in the midst of all this suffering, it is reassuring to remember that feeling is the key to matrimonial bliss. "Feelings account for over 80 per cent of the whole sexual issue," Kotb insists. "In most cases, everyday life is unhealthy, and this hampers gratification." She adds that, unlike men, women do not manifest sexual desire independently of feeling; foreplay, she asserts, is a necessary aspect of most female sexual experience; and most Egyptian men are too egotistical to bother with it. To Samiha Shaaban, a 52-year-old woman and one of five to divulge to Al- Ahram Weekly the negative effect of FGM on their sex life, "a woman's life is nothing but a long string of sufferings. Women are either mutilated by circumcision or forced open on the wedding night -- then they suffer even more when they give birth." Samiha was circumcised at nine and has only known sex as a form of pain or fear, or a sense of duty towards her husband: "I don't recall ever feeling satisfied with love-making. I find it painful and repulsive. The only joy in my life is my children, to whom I've given all my attention and emotion." Likewise her relations with her husband have come to a standstill: there is neither warmth nor intimacy in their interaction, and their communications have been restricted to the needs of their children.
"This is a sign that everyday occupations and the hassle of living it are absorbing the couple and depriving them of a private life," Kotb contends. "And it doesn't help to concentrate on the functional aspect of sex, children, rather than on the sensual, which is the source of real pleasure." Though opposed to FGM, Kotb points out that, from a purely medical viewpoint, stimulation and gratification are located in the central nervous system; the absence of a clitoris should therefore, at least theoretically, have little effect on them: "At my clinic I used to have both circumcised and uncircumcised women complaining of the same problem. Believe it or not, I've even had males complaining of excessive libido on the part of circumcised wives."
Yet such is not the story of Sayeda Abdel-Mohsen, 32, another victim of FGM: "I've such terrible feelings towards sex since that day at the midwife's; I was only 11 when it happened..." With the help of another woman, she was held down and a sharp pair of scissors used on her. "I kept on screaming and bleeding, and couldn't walk for two days." Since she perceives this as an attempt to reduce her libidinal drive, she has come to hate both sex and marriage. The issue is complicated further by the fact that, in conservative societies, sex is still an embarrassing if not shameful topic of discussion. "My real problem," Sayeda says, "is that I don't even have the nerve to discuss it with my mother." Kotb concedes so much, at least: "Girls who are brought up in a conservative, religious environment have this problem. They are taught not to ask about sex. Today, however, thanks to media attention, at least the issue is out in the open; people can talk about it when they will..."
Official campaigns
The Egyptian government has been committed to eradicating the practise since the mid-1990s, launching several information and education campaigns to this end. FGM has been incorporated into school curricula, and the country's leading Muslim and Coptic authorities have declared it harmful and unnecessary. Projects have since been implemented in six Upper Egypt governorates. The NCCM, the Donor Assistance Group (DAG) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) launched a joint initiative which aims at putting an end to a practice "that affects the plight of millions of women". Around 120 villages, mostly in Upper Egypt where the practice takes epidemic proportions, have benefited from these coordinated efforts. Several villages have already been declared "FGM-free villages".
Egypt's efforts to eliminate this form of bodily abuse has been gaining ground at the regional and international levels. Only recently, a Euro-Med Child Award for best health practices was given to the NCCM-led project "FGM-free-Village Model". The NCCM says it was encouraged by this acknowledgement but added that it still has a long way to go before Egypt could be -- if ever -- declared an FGM-free country.
Egyptian human rights activists estimate that five to six per cent of all circumcised girls suffer some kind of health complication as a result. They assess that close to 90 per cent of Egyptian girls aging between seven and 13 are subjected to this traumatic abuse.
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