According to this research, FGM serves as a type of birth control and a form of encouragement for the man who is the most powerful member of the family, also known as the family system patriarchal. FGM also serves as a symbol for the transition from girl to woman, making girls believe that FGM is necessary to become real women. FGM is synonymous with purity and high social status, as only families with good incomes can afford to have their daughters cut. All of this leaves enormous mental pressure on women. As part of the research, 500 Nigerian women were asked different reasons why they should undergo FGM. What I found very disturbing about this result was that 11% of women believed that FGM prevents the death of newborn males (Utz-Billing & Kentenich, 2008). What was so disturbing is that not only is their belief the opposite of reality, but it focuses on male newborns. Mutilated women live in a society where men are the dominant sex and women want to give birth to only sons. Indeed, men are mainly the only ones able to educate themselves and work, which allows them to have an income. More importantly, the family with a son will receive money from another family if he marries his daughter. This shows how discriminatory and prejudiced these societies are towards women. This research also examines the mental and social consequences of FGM, which I find very important in this study. According to the study, FGM leaves women feeling incomplete, fearful, inferior and repressed. Many women lose faith in humanity because they were never informed about the FGM procedure before it was performed. Factors like these make women very susceptible to depression, psychosis, neurosis and psychosomatic disorders... middle of document ...... what needs to be considered is that FGM can be very traumatic and the human brain functions in a way where it voluntarily forgets traumatic events to protect the person's mental health. This is also called motivated forgetting (Deprince, Brown, Cheit & Freud). The only reason I could accept these complicated numbers as true is that most of the women had undergone Type I FGM, which is the least invasive type of FGM reducing the risk of complications. What really upset me about this research was that approximately 35 percent of women in the sample planned to mutilate their daughters (Yasin, Al-Tawil, Shabila & Al-Hadithi, 2013). I understand that they fear bringing shame to the family if they don't, and that they want to make sure they can find their daughter a good husband. My problem is that girls don't have a choice.