Abstract EN:

One of the principle reasons that female genital mutilation is performed is to create women : therefore, the socialisation of females and the construction of gender identity are at the heart of this research. This socialised obligation stems from a universal misogyny, and the male domination that accompanies it. It is a question of bringing to the forefront how the processes of interiorising one’s surrounding culture, and integrating into a group, are put into place. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous line « One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman » has serious meaning here : nature is not enough – we must recreate it and give it meaning. Therefore, the surrounding culture takes women’s bodies, uses them as a vehicle of socialisation, marking them physically and symbolically. This cultural control strives to remove all masculinity from women, and then pushes their feminine « ingredients » to an extreme. In fact, bisexuality and androgyny – as neither masculine nor feminine – are unacceptable and represent chaos. One’s identity will come from the separation and exclusion of the other sex within oneself, or there will be no identity.