Zambia: Labia stretching is not mutilation

Manena discusses the Zambian tradition of elongating the labia minora, which is often classified as a type of female genital mutilation. She explains why she thinks this classification is wrong.

2 comments

  • Laurie Milner

    There has recently been a TV programme in England giving the impresion that long inner labia are abnormal and require Labiaplasty which means cutting them to make them smaller. This programme has given a lot of English girls the idea that there is something wrong with the way they are made and that they require surgery to put them right. Can you believe that!

    I’m involved in a charity that helps both men and women to resolve FGM and MGM problems and I was searching the internet looking for photographs showing that inner labia vary considerably and that in some cases they are naturally quite long because something has to be done to stop surgeons making money out of ill-informed young girls.

    Your way of looking at things seems healthier than in England.

  • Ashlee

    I did labiaplasty because I saw some ads for it that suggested my labia was not average! They didn’t tell me how common it is to have large labia and they didn’t tell me there is no standard size since every single person has a different size.
    Now that I have done it I look disfigured and I have agonizing pain after 7 month and sex is impossible!

    all I needed was some assurance that I was normal and looked like 50% of women.

    Until when do we have to Butcher our bodies because of brainwashing of media?

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