ABSTRACT
Because excisers have been too infrequently examined in FGM studies, this chapter looks at perpetrators and foregrounds the vicious cycle in which they are caught, as, on the surface, they have firsthand experience of the pain and debility they inflict, and yet they are rarely condemned, even by anti-FGM campaigners. Human rights discourse, now dominant in conversations about cutting, cannot label these (mainly) women as malicious or, worse, sadistic. For instance, if popular memoirists like Waris Dirie, Soraya Miré, and others dramatize fraught relationships with their mothers, who authorized infibulation, these writers end by confirming that love endures. So the conundrum remains whereby victims become survivors and, in some cases, cutters. Exploring what motivates this paradox can reveal more effective arguments for ending the abuse. Thus, looking at cultures where genital ablation is taken for granted as a social norm, Ifill a knowledge gap left by feminist theorists’ tendency to shy away from this complicity and complexity.
