Not all damages are physical. Not everyone religious is morally ethical
Name: Xenobia (name changed) Age: 27Country: India Today, social media is raging with thoughts and opinions on empowering women, being pro-choice, violating someone’s privacy and their body, and the role of consent, among others. Some say rapists must undoubtedly be hung to death, while some talk about punishing molesters and eve-teasers as well, so that the right patterns are set at the grassroots level and so that they think twice before taking advantage of girls again. But what happens when the people taking advantage of a helpless 7-year-old girl are none other than her own family and community? Who, then, takes accountability for that? I’m not going to cry about my personal story here, but present some basic facts for you to consider. I am a Bohra Muslim raised in India. While the world sees us as a non-confrontational, peace-loving, business-thriving community, we have a secret tradition of circumcising 6-7-year-old girl children that we call khatna. There are plenty of arguments about how this is “needed” from a health point of view for males and how it helps them in their sex life eventually, but the most educated and civilised people agree that this practice is harmful to a woman’s physical, psychological and emotional health, especially since it is not supervised or is often performed by untrained aunties in basements. This practice is officially termed as “Female Genital Mutilation” (FGM) everywhere else in the world and it is increasingly treated as a crime committed on helpless female children. Why? What’s the reason? Some say purity, some say patriarchy. Some do it because it’s a mandatory tradition and if the priest says so, who dares to refuse? Some do it out of peer pressure, some do it to avoid being blacklisted or labelled rebellious. The popular conclusion for those seeking out answers has been, to moderate or curb a woman’s sexual desires. Sure, this might have worked well in an era when we lived in deserts and tribes were always on the lookout for stealing another’s woman. Irrespective of the reason today, does it even matter? However good your reasons may be, you still don’t have the right to decide what to do to a woman’s body without her consent. Whoever you may be. No matter what your intentions, the damage is done and you are still no different from a criminal. So what does this mean for the victims? The custom practiced by us is allegedly ‘Type 1’ and is different from that practiced by some African communities – Type 2 and Type 3 (based on levels of severity). As recognised by the World Health Organization, Type 1 FGC is described as the cutting of the clitoral hood and/or the clitoris, which poses a range of physical and emotional consequences such as infections, excessive bleeding, burning sensations while urinating, etc. The practice can adversely affect mental health as well since many young girls feel personally betrayed, helpless and confused. The child can also experience fear of sexual intimacy and mistrust of community members later in life as a result of the trauma. Sounds familiar? But aren’t there thousands of other women who have gone through the same thing, and claim they are not facing sexual problems? Just like most people don’t talk to others about what happens in their bedrooms, there are FGM survivors who don’t talk about their sex lives in public either. Some of them scream in pain through the night or are unable to have a healthy “bedroom life”. Plenty of these women are regular patients of doctors, sexologists, counsellors, and therapists. Yes, they manage to get pregnant (which is not very hard to do, with or without a man) but is the process peaceful and pain-free? No. Everyone talks about divorce rates going up but nobody realises why. They don’t see that in general, women are subject to a lot of curbing throughout their upbringing. Things have always been decided for them and whatever the gender might be, it’s not like we are brought up in a community that breeds leaders or independent decision makers. We are a herd of brainwashed followers. And with the recent #metoo revolution, women have just started discovering their voice. My personal take Yes, I was ‘cut’ too. I don’t remember the details, but I remember flashes. I was taken to meet “some aunty” and I remember not having a very good feeling about it, but you do what you’re asked to do anyway. We went to her gloomy house in Calcutta and she asked me to stand over an Indian-style toilet with my legs apart and I remember seeing blood fall. That’s all. I definitely remember having a hard time peeing for a week after that. Since this clearly does not qualify as a regular dinner conversation, it was just never spoken of after that. At age 16, I came across this ‘Muslim practice’ in Jean Sasson’s book – Princess. Among other terrible things done to women in Saudi Arabia, this was described in detail and that awoke something in my memory. At first, I was scared and terrified because I didn’t know what to do with that information. It didn’t make any sense. Why would something that awful be done to me? What was the purpose? Was this religious? Was this medical? Gradually, I started asking other people of my age about it. Thanks to the internet, I started understanding a lot more of this ‘barbaric’ practice and how it is just another side effect of our patriarchal world, where random men decide how we must lead our lives and what is good for us. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was how parents would let that happen to their own kids. When your daughter is at the peak of her innocence and brimming with nothing but pure love for you, you violate that basic trust. And then you actually hand her over to the monster who does that to her? So your religion asks you to
Looking from the Outside-In: Initial Perceptions of Female Genital Cutting
By Batoul Saleh A campaign event for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and former Michigan rep. Rashida Tlaib was disrupted on August 11 by Laura Loomer, a conservative media personality. Invading the event, Loomer claimed that Omar, a Somali-American, supported Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation (FGC/M), along with other accusations about her African culture and background, essentially questioning her ability to successfully fulfill political office because of her origins. Laura Loomer is an “investigative Journalist [and] Former Project Veritas operative” and according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, she has also been “investigating Muslim candidates” across America prior to the August 11 incident. She later rationalized her unannounced and uninvited appearance at Omar’s event saying that she was “helping Minnesotans “break free from Sharia”. However, Loomer’s assertion that “[Omar] voted against legislation that would have made Female genital mutilation a felony in Minnesota” because “she didn’t want to offend the Somalian community” while saying that she is “ Somalian first” and “Anti-American” goes no farther than being a rash, racist comment made to instill fear in Minnesotan voters. In reality, the bill that Loomer was referring to, H.F. NO. 2621, which looks to “expand the crime of female genital mutilation; updating requirements for education and outreach; expanding the definition of egregious harm; [and] expanding the definition of a child in need of protection or services to include a victim of female genital mutilation” only had four representatives vote against the bill: David Bly, Rena Moran, Susan Allen, and Tina Liebling — Ilhan Omar, in fact, voted in favor of the legislation. This is just a single incident of bigotry; however, for those who have not experienced it themselves or were not raised in a community where FGC is prominent, uninformed and insensitive judgments about FGC/M can be passed on as fact, leaving those who are from those communities stereotyped, ridiculed, and shamed for where it is they come from. After this incident, many Americans, without knowing the truth about Ilhan Omar’s position on the FGC/M case, replied with intense anger and racism against her. With false information coming from alt-right politicians and journalists, the truth is easily distorted, and those individuals can spread those initial misconceptions about Female Genital Cutting just as easily as journalists like Laura Loomer did to encourage division and xenophobia, as shown in the tweets above. (See Sahiyo’s Media Toolkit on effective and sensitive reporting on FGC) The accusation that Loomer created and spread publicly stems from her failing to separate the values of a person’s country and that country’s political and social beliefs from the personal beliefs of the individual. Just as a considerable amount of Americans now do not align themselves to the US government’s values and decisions, women of African, Middle Eastern, and South East Asian origins are just as much, if not more, unbounded by the uncontrollable beliefs of their government and community. In fact, a US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health study concluded that “prevalence of supporting the continuation of FGM among adolescent girls in Kenya is only 16%, Niger 3%, Senegal 23%”. It has also been recorded by Sahiyo that 81% of the female Bohra community disagreed with the continuation of FGC. Though the prevalence of FGC in the respective countries is high, adolescents girls in these countries are in opposition to its practices. Thus, there is a clear distinction between someone’s cultural norms and the attitudes they hold, and from an outsider’s perspective, it is vital that the media coverage and education they receive about Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation should be just as nuanced and integrated as the reality of FGC/M.
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Donate Now and Protect the Next Generation of Women from Female Genital Cutting. By supporting our U.S. storytelling initiatives, you ensure that survivors’ voices are heard. And that we continue to work towards the abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC) for future generations of girls. For every $50 donated, we can support and train another activist in their advocacy efforts to end FGC in their communities. For every $75 donated, we can host an educational webinar to train advocates, educators, healthcare professionals, and other front-line professionals on how to work and provide care for survivors. For every $100 donated, we can support another survivor to attend our digital storytelling workshops where they can share their story and heal in a supportive group setting. Make a one-time donation Your contribution is appreciated. Donate Make a monthly donation Your contribution is appreciated. Donate monthly Make a yearly donation Your contribution is appreciated. Donate yearly With every donation you make, we come one step closer to changing social norms within FGC practicing communities and ensuring future generations of girls are spared from the harms of female genital cutting. [youtube url=”https://youtu.be/KnPykF1-Wg0″] Sahiyo U.S. is a project of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Empowerment Works, Inc. All donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.