Tuesday, April 8, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- When she was 13 years old and growing up in Somalia, Soraya Mire was held down "like a goat" while a doctor mutilated her genitals.
"You're going to make a man very happy," Mire's doctor told her, as her mother, who underwent the same crude "rite of passage," looked on.
In more than 40 African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries, the centuries-old ritual is practiced on girls averaging 7 years of age to diminish sexual desire. The theory is that men want to marry virgins and keep their wives from being promiscuous, she said.
Mire, a 35-year-old filmmaker living in Brentwood, Calif., hopes to end female genital mutilation, or FGM. She spoke Monday at a legislative hearing on Senate Bill 192, which would make it a felony in Nevada punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
"Your mind is forever damaged," Mire told a joint hearing of the Senate Human Resources and Facilities and Assembly Health and Human Services committees. "Something shuts off in your soul, your body, your mind."
After wrangling over specifics in the proposed law, Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, likened the practice to black men being castrated "in the South."
"Maybe we can get around to hearing those same concerns, when it comes to black men," said Neal.
Mire said after the meeting that Neal's remark made her mad.
"It was very insensitive," Mire said. She said his comment took away from the focus on a contemporary problem affecting millions of women. By some estimates, 6,000 women are mutilated each day.
Neal was not the only committee member to offer a remark that received criticism.
Assemblyman Mark Manendo, D-Las Vegas, said he heard from a constituent who wanted to know whether those in the audience would react as negatively toward FGM as some people feel about abortion.
Assembly Chairwoman Vivian Freeman, D-Reno, shot back that FGM is done "without consent."
"To ask people to connect the two doesn't make one bit of sense," Freeman said.
Sandra Jolley of Las Vegas said FGM is a form of child abuse that persists in some countries because of social acceptance.
The practice ranges from removing the clitoris to stitching the vaginal opening.
"It is about power, about control, about the domination of the female anatomy," she said. "The clitoris represents a challenge to male authority."
The committees watched portions of an award-winning documentary Mire produced, entitled "Fire Eyes."
In the film, a man says he supports the ritual because wives can be closed "like a door."
"You trust a women more when she's stitched," he said.
A woman in the film said, "What kind of man is he comparing us to doors. This shows the insecurity of men."
The film had Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
Jolley also read a letter from a 34-year-old UNLV student who underwent the procedure in Nigeria and is fighting her grandmother's efforts to have it done to her 10-year-old daughter.
Mire said after the hearing that no proof exists that the practice has occurred in Nevada, although anecdotal evidence indicates it has. Jolley said 537 people from African nations where FGM is practiced moved to Nevada from 1983 to 1995.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., co-sponsored a bill last fall that recently went into effect outlawing the practice nationally. Proponents of the Nevada bill say it goes one step further by punishing parents and those who take girls out of the state for the procedure.
The committee took no action on the bill, but its sponsor, Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, said he expects it to pass.
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