Pleasure And Orgasm In Women With Female Genital Mutilation

Female Genital Mutilations (FGM) violate human rights and physico- psychological integrity. All over the world information, education and specific laws act for banning it. FGM women’s sexuality isn’t well known and often it is neglected by gynaecologists, urologists and sexologists, while anthropolists and sociologists have discussed about that, but sometimes their conclusion was not based on scientific evidence. The basis of female sexuality, Embriology, Anatomy and Physiology in the specialistic medical textbooks are neglected.The trigger of the female orgasm is not the vagina but the erectile tissue wich forms clitoris, vestibular bulbs, corpus spongiosum, labia minora and vestibule, corpus spongiosum of urethra. In FGM women, some of these structures are not excissed and part or the whole clitoris has been found under the scar of the mutilation. Desire, arousal, orgasm are the phases of the female sexuality. All the women (intact, disabled, with FGM) have the right to sexual health and pleasure for a full psycho-physical wellbeing of the person. FGM women who have some sexual disfunctions can and must be cured troughout the defibulation and the clitorolabioplasty and, if it is necessary, they have the right to have an appropriate sexual therapy. In addition, we do not have to neglect the sexual education of these women’s partner. Last research report that also these women can have the orgasm. Research (Catania et al.) in 3 groups of FGM women showed: I group of 137 women with different types of FGM reported orgasm in 85.40% during intercourse (instrument: semistructured interview); II group of 54 infibulated (FGM type III) women investigated with FSFI questionnaire reported high score in the domain of the orgasm (13.22±3.72) with t Student -2.08 and p value 0.04; III group of 15 infibulated women who have been defibulated reported the orgasm in 93.33% (instruments: semistructured interview and FSFI).


Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: None disclosed
Recorded: Sydney, Australia, April 2007