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A young girl hesitates as she is prepared to be cut in Bandung, Indonesia, where each spring,
parents bring their girls to an emptied-out school for a mass circumcision. Studies have shown
that in some parts of Indonesia, female circumcision is more ritualistic — a rite of passage meant to purify the genitals and bestow gender identity on a female child — with a practitioner rubbing turmeric on the genitals or pricking the clitoris once with a needle to draw a symbolic drop of
blood.

