Here's a couple of articles by one of most vocal supporters of FGM in West Africa:

* https://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/hurray-for-bondo-women-...

* http://www.fuambaisiaahmadu.com/blogs/my-response-to-fuambai...

And some skeptical but engaging discussions about her views:

* https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/TMR/article/...

* https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.14318/hau6.3.011

The second link of the four is a response to the last.

I was sloppy in being too specific in saying removing the clitoral hood was sometimes justified as enhancing oral sex. Now that I think about it, that might be one of the views regarding labial extension, which is often lumped in with FGM but obviously quite different from cutting the clitoral hood. The claims about enhancing sexual pleasure I think largely came from more polemical literature, as well as some English-language African feminist blogs and bulletin boards, and I would suspect those views may be, at least to some extent and in their specificity, recent revisionist justifications. In African discourse there's a reactionary vein that pushes against Western criticisms of traditional African practices, and one of the ways to do that would be to subvert the paternalistic disgust about FGM by explicitly arguing the practice promotes one of the West's other ideals, sex positivity.

To be clear, I'm not trying to defend any of this. Just trying to point out that the West's exceedingly simplistic and categorical perspective hides a very strong cultural prejudice, as well other problematic assumptions about how and why these practices persist.

Negative connotations and actual negativity are two separate things. Alcohol tends not to have negative connotations whereas things that are better for your health and less addictive, cannabis, magic mushrooms, have negative connotations.