THE DESCENDANTS OF SLAVES
AGAINST SEXUAL MUTILATION

Blacks from both Americas bring an historical proof of the cogency of the fight against sexual mutilation. Indeed, when Césaire affirms that no man may have a right of property on another man, he obviously includes children and women. And when he quotes the odious colonial saying:

"Beating a nigger is feeding him”,

he stands against all colour enslavers who dispose of the body of children, women and men to assault them affirming:

“It’s for your own sake.”

He does not seem claiming African tradition:

"The umbilical chord has been cut.”

At all events, he never made sexual mutilation a “value of niggerism”.

Like the Marrano Jews forcibly converted to Christianity by the Inquisition, the descendants of the slaves profited by the prohibition of excision and circumcision. For a slave costs a lot. When they noticed the number of deaths through haemorrhages and infections, without speaking of botched operations (slaughtered vulvas, amputated glans, etc.) provoked by sexual mutilation, the enslavers forbade it. It was the great benefit of slavery. It eased the life of the deportees. So, at the time of the abolition, the ancient slaves did not come back to sexual mutilation. They had realized the number of saved lives, avoided infirmities, days of forced immobilisation during healing and the considerable time spoilt in festivities during which the laughter of some fed in the pain and tears of others. But foremost, their excised and circumcised ancestors had been able to notice the benefit in sexual pleasure and blooming of their intact children, without them becoming profligate for all that.

Custom is one of the sources of law. The example of the American slaves shows that it is for customs as for laws; those that should never have existed must abolished.