If "women's matters" make you go queasy, look away now

I had the dog "done" on Saturday - my beautiful dog girl, the wonder Ms Dogot. Watching her convalesce with a cone on her head and an overhanging bewildered depression has not left me feeling all that well disposed towards man as a species, with our weird way of feeling entitled to decide such matters for members of other species, and, in particular, towards myself.

This state of affairs has led me to take a trip down Imaginy Lane and think about how it would be if it was me instead of her. This is what I see: myself, tricked, utilising my love and trust, into an involuntary hysterectomy, now with a great big long wound down my lower tummy. So I wouldn't fiddle with the stitches, I'd have to wear a cone, too, but obviously, since I'm more likely to use my hands for this, my cone would have to be much bigger, at least past my elbows so I can't bend my arms to scratch where it itches. But for a cone to disable my arms, it would have to be attached not round my neck, like hers, but under my arms, across my breasts (squashed ridiculously, laughably, either inside the cone or just below it). I'd have to wear a harness, too, for the cone to be attached onto, and obviously both would be fixed at the back so I couldn't unfasten them.

The more I think of this, the more it sounds like a butoh performance.

From these thoughts, my mind now makes an associative leap into a documentary I watched the other day - since Ms Dogot's operation, I've been watching more telly than I've watched in the previous eight years put together, as I spend my spare time mostly lying on the floor with her and this seems to invite television. So, one of the things I've watched to lift my spirits was a documentary I'd recorded a few days before on female genital mutilation in West Africa. A jolly old topic, no? So they interviewed various people, and then got to interviewing a - mutilator? A woman of unguessable age, anything between thirty and seventy, I'd say, she's first asked to display her instruments. She brings out a razor blade. She explains her trade.
You snap it in half, lengthwise, to make it more accurate. Then you remove the sharper corners to make the operation easier.
The viewer - me - yelps. Her fingers are chubby and work the blade expertly.
Women in my mother's family have always been circumcisors. My mother was one, my grandmother was one, and so I became one, too. I was my mother's assistant. People pay money for this, so I did it.
Yes yes yes. I'm finding it very easy to think about hating this woman.
Then when I was married off, at eight, I continued to do it in my new tribe.

Oh. Oh. Oh God. I, um, see, I think, or rather, I don't see, I can't.

Anyway, as documentaries on this unspeakability go, it was rather an optimistic one, focusing on the work of Tostan, a grass-roots organisation working towards changing attitudes and practices. I don't generally go for charities in a big way - forgive me for this, but I worry about bureaucrats in Europe lining their pockets with money intended to go to the starving or whatever (although weirdly, Red Cross I find more trustworthy than the others, for no proper reason except maybe the documentary on Rwanda I watched on youtube where the Red Cross guy spoke very highly about his organisation, how they never left him alone when the UN turned their backs blatantly on their guy, with, shall we say, unfortunate results). But this particular charity - the name means "Breakthrough" in wuluf - might be one which I might support.