Nigeria's facial scars: The last generation (Cutting the face of a child is wrong but apparently not their genitals if they're Male)
bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-61229617
bbc.co.ukPosted May 21, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC
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bbc.co.ukAwful practice. Not as disgusting as infant genital mutilation, though.
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The last line “"I love the marks but they belong to a different time and age," he says.”
If only we could get that thinking amongst the circumcising community’s.
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Easy to stop a practice of child abuse in one generation, if you call it what it is and pass a law to end it. We ended foot binding and head binding and face scarring. Too bad no country yet in the world has the balls to do the same with MGM - time to step up Iceland, Denmark or somewhere??? Want to be a beacon of human rights?!? Show us how it's done.
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Nigerian and Yoruba here, we stopped doing it fortunately. Unlike MGM, which seems fine to the English chaps since they also still do it.
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Nigerian here.
Facial scarification became a thing because of the slave trade. People started doing it because so many kids were being kidnapped, often when they were still too young to remember where they were from. The tribal marks were to help anyone who escaped find their way home, and also to make sure that they'd be accepted by their tribe.
It's not mentioned in the article because the British were heavily involved in the slave trade and the BBC is a propaganda outlet.
Circumcision was also practiced on slaves. Slavery’s echoes still haunt us to this day
Castration as well.
The Bible talks about how the Jews were slaves in Egypt. I wonder if this is the true origin for circumcision for the Jewish people. Because it was inflicted on them as slaves. I’m not a historian though.
Modern archeological evidence doesn't actually support the biblical story of Exodus.
None of that has any bearing whatsoever these days.
Once people get into certain behaviours, it's hard to stop. It becomes a cultural thing, and people internalize it as part of their identity. Plus you have these people who make a living off of it and have strong incentives to keep the practice going. You can see the exact same thing happening with circumcision today.
My point is that the practice would never have become widespread if so many people hadn't been terrified of having their kids taken by slavers.
And also that the BBC is propaganda bullshit and they're always misleading you in some way or the other. They're the world's most accomplished propaganda outlet and they've gotten very good at it.
Yeah, sadly, people start to invent reasons to continue something when the old reasons are either debunked, or no longer relevant.
A lot of the early slave trade was of boys.
Do you have a source for this statement?Because it seems wrong, if you look at ancient statues and masks, a lot of them bear these facial scarifications that are seen as ornaments just like tattoos are in other parts of the world. They also perform very extensive ornamental scarifications on the back, belly, etc...
I know several people who have these scars ( late 20s - early 30s), this is just what their people ("Peul") do, they are not from Nigeria but from Guinea Bissau .
Also black people sold other black peple into slavery and the arab slave trade was even bigger than the transatlantic one but they did not leave many descendants because the men were usually castrated.
Yet activists never mention these facts, because it goes against the POC vs Hwhite narrative.
I kind of hate this resentful rhetoric that has become so trendy these days, the hatred the UK gets is fucking insane, and let's not even mention how people lose their marbles every time the Queen is mentioned .
Slavery is still happening TODAY in African and gulf countries. But can't lose an occasion to talk shit about the British Empire.