Dressing up as a clitoris to help www.clitoriaid.org - an organisation that offers surgery to help rebuild the clitoris. Apparently this operation is more successful if the girl is cut later in life and if the severing of the clitoris is not too deep....
Incidentally, there is a discussion at the moment, following on from the BBCs coverage of warnings about labioplasty here in the UK. The general gist on twitter (which I'm losing faith with) is that labioplasty is the western form of FGM.
There is a simple reason why they're not comparable: choice. If women choose any type of surgery, that is their prerogative - they may be subliminally manipulated by the cultural hegemony in place, but at the end of the day, they undergo surgery and the risks to improve their own body image. As far as I can see it, labioplasty does not contravene a single Universal Human Right.
FGM on the other hand.... I'm not sure I even need to go any further. We can start with the age of the girl (anywhere from 9 days to beyond puberty), the absolute lack of choice, the horrific health impacts, the psychological impacts, the fact that it is not an anesthetized (sp?) operation.
In terms of human rights, FGM certainly contravenes the right to life and the right not to be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way. It spans health rights, child rights and human rights.
So in short, a comparator of the two is not helpful - in my opinion, it actually undermines the severity of the issues that FGM raises.
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