In a calm voice, Ann relates how, at the age of 12, she was drugged, blindfolded, stripped naked and held down by a singing and chanting group of women, who then used a surgical blade “to hack off my clitoris like it was a piece of meat”.

This criminal act is being repeated the globe over, for religious and superstitious (proximally) — but for ultimately maladaptive selfish power and jealousy reasons (distally).
What I find stunning, is that it seems that it is predominantly delusional theist and similarly assaulted female relatives who are organising these appallingly barbarous violations.

“Then they hacked at me like a piece of meat until it was off,” she recalls. “They said that cutting would make my vagina flat and beautiful and not dirty or smell bad and would not itch. They said that if it didn’t happen then no man would touch you, and they also told me not to tell anyone.”

Ann tried to blot out the trauma, but finally went to a counsellor at school, who referred her to hospital. When she confronted her father, his response was: “I did what was best for you. If I did not, you would not be respected as a woman.”

But on a good note to an otherwise genocidal (and literally) misogynist tragedy is this brave doctor’s effort:

She says of her work: “People are happy that [the reversal procedure] is done professionally, rather than by someone in the family or the husband via penetration. Patients see me on the street and smile and show me their babies. They are happy.”

Hang on a mo’! “Reversal by penetration”? Perhaps she is not quite the doctor that I thought she was.

I sure hope that someone can enlighten me before I explode with rage.

Read the full BBC story here, if you can stomach the ire that this religious bullshit will raise.