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.