Abstract
Ritual stretching, classified among the female genital mutilations by the WHO in 1996, has been studied for the first time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by the Padua Working Group on FGM in 2006. Data gathering took place indirectly from Italy by means of Italian and Congolese local referents, through structured interviews with traditional operators as well as a focus group of about ten intellectuals (in Kasai) and Italian health workers (in Kiwu). The data have been completed, with answers from two questionnaires sent to affected women and health workers of the Mbuji-Mayi Hospital in Kasai. The results enabled us to outline cultural and naturalistic traits, social meanings, countrywide diffusion, and time evolution of the ritual of labial elongation as it takes place in the two above-mentioned regions of the DRC. Other forms of expansive genital modifications have been identified, such as ritual defloration and the widening of the vaginal canal, among very isolated populations in the Kiwu region.
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Gallo, P.G., Mbuyi, N.T., Bertoletti, A. (2010). Stretching of the Labia Minora and Other Expansive Interventions of Female Genitals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In: Denniston, G., Hodges, F., Milos, M. (eds) Genital Autonomy:. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9446-9_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9446-9_13
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