Casablanca - An Egyptian member of the parliament resisted a bill to toughen punishment of people caught practicing female genital mutilation, saying that it solves the problem of ‘sexual weakness’ among Egyptian men.
Casablanca – An Egyptian member of the parliament resisted a bill to toughen punishment of people caught practicing female genital mutilation, saying that it solves the problem of ‘sexual weakness’ among Egyptian men.
According to a 2015 Egyptian Health Issues Survey, 92 percent of married women aged between 15 and 45 have undergone female genital mutilation in Egypt. This rate dropped to 61 percent among young girls between 15 and 17 years old.
Elhamy Ajina, the Egyptian MP whose statement stirred controversy in Egypt, said that the practice of FGM is a personal choice and only families should decide whether to practice it or not, noting that the bill should not pass.
“We are a population whose men suffer from sexual weakness, which is evident because Egypt is among the biggest consumers of sexual stimulants that only the weak will consume,” said the Egyptian MP quoted in The Independent.
As a solution, the MP said that the practice female genital mutilation should continue to balance the level of sexual potency between genders:
“If we stop [female genital mutilation], we will need strong men and we don’t have men of that sort.”
Medical science does not account for the benefits of female genital mutilation, while it confirms that it is the cause of a number of long-term sexual problems among women.
FGM is an African problem that spreads in Muslim and Christian countries alike. Despite the criminalization of the practice in Egypt, it remains a widely ubiquitous phenomenon that claimed the life of a young girl last May.
