May May, and perciles,
The simple fact is that no prosecutions have taken place in Australia in relation to FGM. Some persons have been charged but no court cases have been heard and most have been dropped. The NSW case has been adjourned numberous times and is now due sometime next year. The WA case was dropped. No one has yet had a hearing.

You can try and spin it anyway you like but that is the fact. There is another, more recent, pending prosecution but not sure when that is due.

May May is lying when she claims there have been prosecutions, none has occurred to date.

Contrast this to France where about 100 convictions have occurred. It will certainly be a milestone when one case is heard here.

You cannot see that you are contradicting yourself, Banjo, within a single sentence.

>>May May, and perciles, the simple fact is that no prosecutions have taken place in Australia in relation to FGM. Some persons have been charged<<

What you do mean, of course, is that there have been no convictions, that we are aware of.

But you still cannot escape the fact that you don't seem at all interested in addressing any of the pragmatic difficulties associated with the crime. The Perth case was dropped, for example, because the act itself had not occurred, and there was no way to prove intent. You prefer to selectively intrude on lives of a specific cohort of Australians, simply in order to further your whack-a-mozzie campaign.

Transparent as.

Some of the other Female Mutilations want looking at as well, particularly the ones done to girl children,

We could start with ear piercing for starters which is often done to children who are not old enough to give informed consent.

Then there is the practice of introducing children to make-up so that their skin acquires enlarged pores so that they then feel the need for make-up for the rest of their lives.

One wonders weather treatment for foot/leg/back deformities caused by 'fashionable' footwear, in particular high heels should be covered by Medicare.
Why should the rest of the population have their hard-earned go to treat these avoidable conditions?

The same goes for men who poke extra holes in their bodies.

Pericles,
No, a prosecution occurs when the crown presents its case to the court, of alleged offences, after which defendant has his say. This has not occurred in Aus. Only some allegations have been made and the majority of those have been withdrawn. The few remaining are yet to get a hearing. This is over a 20 year period. In fact only in NSW and WA have some charges been made. Not even any charges made in any other state. I find that amazing, especially when Vic has the Royal Womens Hospital which treats more women for post FGM matters than any other hospital.

Yet the antidotal evidence mounts that FGM is occurring, like the comments from the Family Planning Queensland worker on ABC TV.

Which ever way it is looked at, the politicians and bureaucrats are covering up and turning a blind eye to the plight of these little girls. The legislation is in place to stop FGM, it is a matter of acting on it.

France is a good example that prosecutions do reduce FGM and we should follow that lead.

Pericles,
In reference to your whack-a-mozzie claim.

Below is a facebook post and reply from No FGM Australia, to which I belong. No FGM Australia had posted an event they are hosting on the Sunshine Coast this month.

Geoffrey Smith Another horrific, barbaric feature of Islam being perpetrated on our society with supposed immunity,..where does it stop?

Like · Reply · October 4 at 4:23pm
..

No FGM Australia Hello Geoffrey. Although there are some schools of Islam which claim FGM is islamic requirement, the majority of muslim scholars reject this and state that it is an unislamic practice which predates Islam. In fact both women who are survivors of FGM in the article are non-muslims, one is an orthodox Christian from Eritrea and the other was initiated into "Bondo" which is a rite of passage practiced in Sierra Leone and Liberia using FGM as the brutal ritual initiation. However everyone must stand against FGM as a form of violence. There is no excuse for violence whether it is religious, cultural or traditional.

Dear Banjo,

FGM is illegal in Australia - and of course it
must be stopped. However, we need to look at
the bigger picture.

We need to try to influence attitudes towards
women in general. A lot of these countries that
practice FGM women are widely viewed as being
in some sense the sexual property of men, and so
are expected to be suitably submissive and deferential.

A striking illustration of this submission is the
way women learn to hide, reveal, or distort their
bodies in accordance with the prevailing male notions of
how women should appear.

In traditional China, men admired tiny female feet -
so girls' feet were permanently deformed through
footbinding, a painful practice that left them barely able
to walk. In some West African tribes where men admire
very plump women, young girls deliberately fatten
themselves into obesity in order to attract a husband.

Among some North African people women have for generations
submitted to brutal surgery to remove their clitoris -
supposedly to reduce their sexual appetites and thus keep
them faithful to their husbands.

In North America, where large, firm breasts have been admired
for most of this century, millions of women have had their
breasts surgically reshaped or enlarged.

Now that men's ideal for womanhood is shifting to a leaner,
more athletic look, dieting has become a female obsession,
with over a third of American women considering themselves
too fat. Every year in fact, millions of
young American women starve themselves to the point of
anorexia, no less compulsively than some of their West
African counterparts who gorge themselves to plumpness.

So the point that I am trying to make here is - we have
to get the message across in our society of basically
changing attitudes and mindsets of both men and women from
the prevailing stereotypes - which shape the way they
relate to one another. Not an easy task - especially when
dealing with different cultures. But of course we have to
try.