Thursday, June 29, 2006

Breast ironing in Cameroon

Jessica at Feministing discusses another horror story in the same vein as female genital mutilation:

Pounding on girls' breasts with heated stones to make them disappear.

Seems that this is something the girls' mothers do, to discourage pre-marital sex by the girls (nobody mutilates boys to prevent premarital sex -- that tells you something, although I'm not exactly sure what) and as such can't really be blamed on male patriarchy.

I'm not commenting further, apart from a big "ouch", because this is a very complicated subject, mixing women's self-loathing, religious fear of personal freedom and disgust at the sex act, and evolutionary psychology.

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