FGM – Can Female Genital Mutilation Be Surgically Undone?

 

A French urologist claims to have discovered a
way to reconstruct the clitoris after female genital mutilation. And
hundreds of women seem to swear by it.

 

By William Lloyd George /
Paris | September 20, 2012

 

Jim Goldberg /
Magnum

Two girls during a female circumcision
ritual in Liberia, 2008.

As a young
child Aïssa could not understand how she could conjure up such horrific images.
No one had ever explained to Aïssa what her parents had allowed to take place.
“All I could remember was being in a bath full of blood,” she says grimacing.
“I thought I had made it all up in my head”. Like millions of women all over
the world, Aïssa was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) – her clitoris
was cut off, and her labia sewn up, all before she could even talk. For years,
Aïssa, who was born in France
but whose family is originally from Mauritania, says she denied what had happened and suffered as a
result. “Even when it made me feel empty, or it made me to lose my confidence,
and even when I had relationship problems, I still did not accept what had
happened to me.” Up until May this year, like so many other women, in America, in Europe, and around the world,  Aïssa suffered in silence.
Then she met another woman who said the effects of genital mutilation could be
reversed. After doing research,  Aïssa contacted Dr. Pierre Foldes, the
French urologist and surgeon who invented a technique which she says has not
only given her back a clitoris but also a voice and identity.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates between 130
– 140 million women have undergone FGM in the last 10 years.  As well as
significant psychological effects, it is estimated that one third of females
who undergo FGM are at risk of death. It was in Africa, working as a doctor on a humanitarian mission, that
Foldes first learned of the damaging effects it had on women. “They would come
in flocks complaining of pain and difficulties,” he told TIME half way through
an operation at his clinic on the outskirts of Paris. “For hundreds of years we have known about the penis but
we never knew anything about the clitoris. So that was the first step, to
return to Paris and study the clitoris like the organ it is.” In the
beginning the doctor simply conducted cosmetic reconstructions to reduce the
pain, but soon discovered it was possible to also reconstruct the nerve network
and allow the clitoris to regain sexual functions. “It took years to study the
best method, to make it simple, and easily reproducible.”

Speaking outside the operating room, Aïssa, now 25 and
married with one child, says the surgery completely changed her life.  “I
now feel like a confident, happy and whole woman.” Testimonies like Aïssa’s, of
women suffering no more, have spread across the world. Already this year, Dr.
Foldes has operated on over 600 women. As blues music quietly played away in
the background, he says, “Women are coming from all over the world. Not only
have women come, but also doctors are coming to France to learn the technique
and take it back to the U.S., Africa, U.K., or wherever they are from.”

He performs the surgeries like clockwork. Most of the
operations are finished in under 30 minutes and by lunch time of the day of our
interview, he has already finished procedures on six women. “The advantages of
this technique are that it has very low costs, is reproducible and there are
very few complications.” The innovation, the doctor says, was the realization
that, like the penis, the clitoris has a root that is not taken out during
mutilation. When the scar tissue is removed, in most cases, the clitoris can be
found again.

In June this year, a study of the technique was published
in Lancet, a highly respected medical journal, making it “officially
recognized” says Dr. Foldes. The study examined the impact the procedure had
after one year for 866 patients he operated on between 1998 and 2009. Of these
patients 821 reported a decrease in pain, 815 an increase in clitoral pleasure,
and 430 reported experiencing orgasms. After the year no patient had
experienced complications. Since the study, Foldes says 85% of women now make a
full recovery. While the surgery does make huge changes, Dr Foldes stresses it
is only the beginning of recovery and most of the work is done in the weeks and
months that follow – with the help of sexologists and psychiatrists. “The women
have to learn to have something they never had.”

It should be noted that the measurements of pain and
sensation were self-reported based on a scale devised by the researcher
himself. The placebo effect, therefore cannot be eliminated. The mere act of
traveling a long way for a potentially life-changing surgery after such a
traumatic experience has to have some effect. Many of the women could be
willing themselves to feel less pain.

Foldes believes the surgery is a huge pillar in the fight
against FGM, which he considers a crime primarily perpetrated by men against
women. “Since the beginning men have been scared of women’s sexuality, and
mutilation is just a way for men to control women.” Once healed, Dr. Foldes
says the women are given a voice, and are able to speak out against it. “The
women can then discuss the mutilation in medical terms, when they discuss it
like this, this is the way to free the problem, they are no longer silent.”

While the results of the technique must be further
validated, the surgery is already having a significant impact on the women who
receive it. “I have recovered my identity and feel I can now speak out, I want
to tell all the women in my community how it can improve their lives,”
says  Aïssa, sitting in a square outside the hospital. “This technique
will change women’s mentality to mutilation, and give them the confidence to
build a united path to stop this culturally accepted violence towards women.”

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