THE WOUND REVEALS THE CURE:
A UTAH MODEL FOR ENDING
THE CYCLE OF SEXUAL MUTILATION

Jeannine Parvati Baker

Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 9-11, 1996.

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This presentation will explore the sequelae of human genital mutilation on women and men and the role that a dominator society takes towards infants and children.

Central to this discussion is the role played within the confines of a dominator society by activists against genital mutilation. The deconstruction of the notions of victimhood, victims, activists, the wounded, and healers will provide a more dynamic perspective and will enable us to better understand the primal causes of sexual abuse and genital mutilation and the deeper issues these practices represent.

The core values of any culture are imprinted through its practices and rituals, especially those practices that are rarely questioned. With the paired associative conditioning of pain to the most pleasurable tissues of the body, the victim of genital mutilation is bonded to the destructive tendencies of the group. Without mitigating the real effects of genital mutilation upon both genders, it is suggested that whether the individual is intact or mutilated, he is a victim of the dominator society's abusive anti-sexual blood rituals.

[The complete paper is published in Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy, New York: Plenum Press, 1997 (ISBN 0-306-45589-7).]

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Jeannine Parvati Baker is an author and educator. Her publications include Conscious Conception, Hygieia: A Woman's Herbal, and Prenatal Yoga & Natural Birth. She regularly speaks at perinatal conferences and has been published in the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Journal. She is co-founder of Six Directions, a non-profit educational organization devoted family health and environmental issues.

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