Football in front, infibulation behind

I’m watching Manchester City being taken to the cleaners by Barcelona on the telly, while at the table behind me my Parisian feminist intellectual hostess Natalie is discussing female genital mutilation with her Malian girlfriend Fatou. Football in front, infibulation behind.

Fatou: ‘It goes without saying: how can you say that female genital mutilation is not a disgusting and barbaric practice? How, in this day and age, can a woman allow herself to be oppressed in this medieval fashion? The practice is pure evil. The suffering of those little girls is impossible to imagine: infections, gangrene, septicaemia, cysts, fistulae, perpetual bleeding. And in the name of what? It is not a Koranic law. But you know what? I don’t care if it isn’t or if it is. I don’t care. J’ai envie de chier. Female genital mutilation is male oppression and domination of the woman, point finale. Each time the old man wants to screw his little 12-year-old wife he has to take his little knife to bed and cut the parcel strings. How is this right? The unhappiness in the eyes of the country girls when they come to Bamako and realise how they’ve been tricked by their so-called culture is something I see all the time. And the charities? What are they doing? Nothing. They are obsessed with latrines and wells and all the time the little girls are getting their vaginas sliced off with rusty razor blades and bleeding to death. It disgusts me. How can we let such a thing continue to happen?

Me: ‘Sorry to interrupt, ladies (cough), but does either of you (cough) want any of this (cough)?’

Natalie: ‘What is this? Look, Fatou! The Englishman has made us a pretty little decoration for Christmas. OK. Give it to me. This is maybe an example of the famous English sense of humour.