Feminists Fatales

Here's how "Type III" female genital mutilation works: First you cut off the clitoris with a pair of shearers. The sound, according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was subjected to this ritual at the age of five, in Saudi Arabia, is like a butcher's scissor snipped through fat. Next, you take a sharp stone and proceed the scrape away at the wound and the surrounding labia, the fleshy remains of which are then stitched together with twine. The girl's legs must be tied together for two to six weeks to prevent her from rupturing the stitches. If she survives the ordeal — and she may not due to poor hygenic conditions and the chance of developing a lethal infection — she'll have a raw carapace where her vagina used to be.  The inferior part of the vulva will then be perforated with a pencil-sized hole to allow for the passage of urine and, when she's ready, menstrual fluid.

No anathesia is administered at any point during the procedure and the subsequent period of convalescence.

Type III female genital mutilation is known as "infibulation." 

[Eve] Ensler has firsthand knowledge of the unique horrors of Islamic gender fascism. But her "feminist theory" obliterates distinctions between what goes on in Afghanistan and what goes on in Beverly Hills:

I went from Beverly Hills where women were getting vaginal laser rejuvenation surgery–paying four thousand dollars to get their labias trimmed to make them symmetrical because they didn't like the imbalance. And I flew to Kenya where [women were working to stop] the practice of female genital mutilation. And I said to myself, "What is wrong with this picture?"

A better question is: What is wrong with Eve Ensler? These two surgical phenomena are completely different in both scale and purpose. The number of American women who undergo "vaginal labial rejuvenation" is minuscule: There were 793 such procedures in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. By contrast, a World Health Organization 2000 fact sheet reports: "Today, the number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM."

Just a taste of the poverty of American feminism when it comes to showing solidarity — or even just demonstrating a grave moral concern — for the blighted women of the Islamic third world. Christina Hoff Sommers has a devastating cover story in the Weekly Standard. Read it.