Mother Nature and then paired with a masculine deity) and/or deity(ies) are given credit for “making gender,” while deity is further represented as requiring the surveillance of proper gender, sexuality, and reproduction. The turning over of gender to nature and/or deity(ies) obfuscates the power relations that infuse and demarcate our social relations.
Inscribing Gender in the Flesh: Making the “Female” and “Male” in the Ancient World
As the imagined and material, genitalia are the site where gender is produced. As the site of the production of gender, genitalia often come under censure. The word genitalia comes from both Latin and French and means “bodily organs of reproduction.” From the outset, then, reproduction inflects the meaning of the anglo word genitalia. The same fleshy bits are named the kpota (vulva) in Mende, and mbulo (penis) in Mende (Schon, 1884: 64, 88 respectively). We can see by the different terms that there is nothing in particular about the words kpota or vulva and mbulo or penis that speak to any kind of essences or truth.
In a number of social locations past and present, these fleshy bits are reshaped through the rite of circumcision, which across the centuries has been used to mark the bodies of males and females. The English term circumcision (Hei‐biliya in Mende) comes from Middle English and is derived from the Latin circumcis, which means to cut around. In the cutting of genitalia, flesh is removed; the hood of, and/or the clitoris is (are) excised, while the foreskin is cut around the circumference of the head of penis. There is contention around calling the cutting of female genitals circumcision and likening it to male circumcision (Shear, Hart, and Diekema, 2012). That said, it seems to me that arguing that female circumcision is worse than male circumcision does not lead to the conclusion that female genital cutting cannot be termed circumcision, as many languages, such as Greek, both draw on the same root word, meaning “cut.”
The cutting of the genitalia as a rite of passage to gendered adulthood has deep roots and was most likely practiced in the prehistorical period (Wyatt, 2009). The earliest recorded cutting of the head of the penis dates from the Old Kingdom period of Egypt (2575–2150 BCE) where reference is made to the practice of cutting skin from the head of the penis. Whether this was for a specific group such as priests or for young men in general it is difficult to say, but the practice is visually represented on a tomb dated to c. 2400 BCE, while reference to the ritual is also made on a tomb stela dated to 2300 BCE. Written on the stela was the claim by the deceased to have been circumcised along with 120 males during which he did not “scratch or hit” someone and nor was he scratched or hit (Gollaher, 2000; Sparks, 2005; Theisen, 2011). It is difficult to say with certainty how the practice was used, but in the instance of priests, the tendency has been to see the practice as a rite of purification (Zucconi, 2007: 28), while in the instances of the 121 males circumcised, the sense is to understand it as a rite of passage and likely linked to the cult of the Egyptian deity Hathor (Roth, 1991: 70).
The cutting of the vagina is not explicitly referenced in Egypt until the Roman geographer Strabo of the first century CE who wrote: “They [Egyptians] circumcise the males, and [excise]2 the females, as is the custom also among the Jews, who are of Egyptian origin, as I said when I was treating of them” (Jones, Jones, and Sterrett 1917–1933: 17.2.5). Peritemnō (περιτέμνω) is the Greek for “cut around” and was used by Strabo to reference the circumcision of the male, while ektemnō (ἐκτέμνω) is the ancient Greek for “cut out” and was the word he used to indicate the circumcision of the female. Other ancient textual references to the Egyptian practice of female circumcision are the Greek physician Soranus (first to second centuries CE) and Galen (130–210 CE), although his text is no longer extant and reference to it is found in Aetios, the Greek physician of the sixth century CE who attended Emperor Justinian. It is in Aetios’s text that a description of the procedure is provided. In this text it appears that the excising of the clitoris is linked to issues of excessive sexual desire in the female/feminine. Aetios describes the Egyptian practice in his sixteenth book:
The so‐called nymphe [clitoris] is a sort of muscular or skin‐like structure that lies above the juncture of the labia minora; below it the urinary outlet is positioned. [This structure] grows in size and is increased to excess in certain women, becoming a deformity and a source of shame. Furthermore, its continual rubbing against the clothes irritates it, and that stimulates the appetite for sexual intercourse. On this account, it seemed proper to the Egyptians to remove it before it became greatly enlarged, especially at that time when the girls were about to be married [as with the Sande sodality, discussed below in the section “Circumcision and the Sande and Poro of the Mende of Sierra Leone”]. Surgery is performed in this way: Have the girl sit on a chair while a muscled young man standing behind her places his arms below the girl's thighs. Have him separate and steady her legs and whole body. Standing in front and taking hold of the clitoris with a broad‐mouthed forceps in his left hand, the surgeon stretches it outward, while with the right hand, he cuts off at the point next to the pincers of the forceps. It is proper to let a length remain from cut off, about the size of the membrane that’s between the nostrils, so as to take away excess material only; as I have said, the part to be removed is at that point just above of the forceps. Because the clitoris is a skin‐like structure and stretches out excessively, do [not] cut off too much, as a urinary fistula (ῥoιάς) may result from cutting such large growths deeply. After the surgery, it is recommended to treat the wound with wine or cold water, wiping it clean with a sponge to sprinkle frankincense powder on it. Absorbent linen bandages dipped in vinegar should be secured in place, and a sponge in turn dipped in vinegar placed above.
(Aetios in Knight, 2001: 327–328)
From Aetios’s discussion, however, there is no suggestion that the cutting is a rite of passage; rather, the ektemnō is medically used for “certain” women, although how those women are determined is unclear. Strabo directly links male (peritemnō) and female (ektemnō) circumcision and uses terms that draw on the same root word temnō – “to cut” – for both of these, with peri meaning around, so to cut around, in the case of male circumcision and ek meaning to cut out in the instance of female circumcision. By contrast, Aetios seems to treat female cutting as a medical procedure engaged in by Egyptian physicians in circumstances where the “nymphe” is taken to have grown to excess, the outcome of which is not seen to be good. This was also the logic of nineteenth‐century Euro‐Western doctors who performed cliterodectomies to help women suffering from similar problems, particularly what was then termed nymphomania or the repeated excitation of the nymphe or clitoris brought on by masturbation, a nineteenth‐century so‐called disease (Rodriguez, 2007). Still, that Aetios locates this surgery as occurring “especially at times the girls were about to be married” does suggest a rite of passage.
Earlier Egyptian references to female circumcision are found in two other ancient texts: one dated to the second century BCE wherein a young woman, Tathemis, is said to have reached her time of circumcision which required money to perform, and the other, a magical spell, comes from a Middle Kingdom tomb (1991–1786 BCE) (Knight, 2001: 329–30) wherein a spell required a substance called b3d from an uncircumcised girl as part of its ingredients. This spell, as Knight argues in her text, assumes female genital circumcision when identifying a group of females as uncircumcised.
Regardless if engaged in for ritual or medical reasons, the cutting of the genitals marks the body and in so doing creates and/or maintains gender and in this gender identity. The ritual circumcision of boys appears to have been practiced in the Old Kingdom period of Egypt, while female circumcision’s earliest certain reference is the first century BCE and first century CE, two millennia later. Male circumcision thus appears to have a deeper history than female circumcision, and also appears to have emerged as a rite of passage for boys transiting toward adult status and/or a rite of passage for priests. Although it is unclear if female circumcision was also a rite of a passage for young girls transiting toward adult status, the story of Tathemis and Aetios’s comments are
