Using purity as a means to control women through Christianity and female genital cutting

a marriage was fine, but admitting to having sexual urges was considered not godly (i.e., Christian). Leaders and parents exhibited different attitudes in the way a boy versus a girl would be treated when admitting to participating in sexual acts or...

UnChained At Last: The United States’ Child Marriage Problem webinar reflection

of child marriage, many are unable to understand the multi-layered harms of this practice, and many survivors say their parents forced them into marriages to avoid communal shame from pregnancy or rape. These notions of shame and cultural...

Sahiyo’s Book Club to hold second event in February

of Panchgani, India. Her memoir, A Fractured Life, explores her life growing up in 1960s India after being abandoned by her parents. In her own words, Shabnam says; “We come from a Culture of Silence. A culture that along the way has shrouded us with...

Reflecting on the 'How to Stop The Rising Trend of Medicalising Female Genital Cutting in Asia' webinar

the power of culture and tradition can make individuals think and act collectively. Therefore, changing the attitudes of parents and doctors is integral in the campaign to eradicate FGC. How can we stop this rising trend? FGC is notonly happening in...

Volunteer spotlight: Programs intern Trisha Kini

others who may be interested in supporting Sahiyo and the movement against FGC? Start a conversation about FGC with your parents, friends, and peers. Listen to survivors, learn, and get involved whether it is through sharing social media posts, making...

Sahiyo’s Book Club Holds Second Event In February 

of Panchgani, India. Her memoir, A Fractured Life, explores her life growing up in 1960s India after being abandoned by her parents. In her own words, Shabnam says; “We come from a Culture of Silence. A culture that along the way has shrouded us with...

Conversation with a Bhaiyo: Advising a concerned father

with Aarefa etc., and we decided that he would speak with his wife first and convince her not to give in to what her parents wanted to be done to the daughters. I suggested this because in my experience, most elderly members (age 60+) of the community...

My first encounter of female genital cutting

to use ‘FGC’ over female genital mutilation (FGM) because mutilation means harming a person on purpose. I believe if my parents were aware enough about the practice being so much more than ‘in the name of God’, they wouldn’t have made me go through it....

Boston Jammaat Sends Letter Against Khatna/FGC to Members

'I am not traumatized or damaged, but I still want Khatna to stop'

Volunteer spotlight: Jessica Ladi Ibrahim Puri

African country was. Then I realized it was written by scholars from the state I grew up in. Further conversations with my parents, aunts, and uncles confirmed that I had friends who experienced FGC. They were just too ashamed to talk about it on the...

Volunteer spotlight: Umme Kulsoom Arif

a few years later. I was a sophomore in college and just coming to terms with my sexuality, leading to me coming out to my parents as asexual. That was when my mother told me that my fear of intimacy was intentionally done, and suddenly more than a few...

Deen and Duniya (Religion and the World) a film by Alisha Bhagat

is to start a conversation about why we observe certain practices. I’m proud that it can continue to do that. For years my parents used to show the film to every bohra guest that came over to our house (and I can assure you, that’s a lot). In the film...

My inner healing at Sahiyo's Activist Retreat in the U.S.

FGM/khatna with friends and work colleagues. I still haven’t been able to openly talk about it, for I fear the backlash my parents will face in the community in India, but I’m confident that that will also change someday. I am now helping coordinate...

CWCSEO issues press release on International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM/C

is the first step in eliminating this practice. I look forward to strong support of the bill to end FGM/C and protect parents and their daughters from the pressure to cut and be cut." Zehra Patwa, FGM/C Activist/Survivor and Co-founder of WeSpeakOut and...

Let’s Talk FGC: A fireside chat with Mariya Taher and Farzana Esmail

Mariya: I wasn’t aware of that term, but it can be more complicated than that, too. In my circumstance, it wasn’t that my parents took me to India to have it done, specifically. It was that we went to India to visit relatives and it was the summer that...

From Saving Safa to Seven: How authors use writing to shed light on FGC

issue of female genital cutting (FGC). Up until then what I knew about FGC I knew from overheard conversations between my parents and their colleagues, from snippets of news briefs and CNN articles that flashed across my computer screen. If you’d asked...

Reflections on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting & Intergenerational Trauma

though I was shielded from FGM/C, I know loved ones who have undergone the procedure. One of those survivors is my mom. My parents are from Somaliland, which lies on the northwestern part of Somalia, but we now live in the United States. FGM/C has...

A mother's side of the story on female genital cutting

rings true, especially since much of the responsibility for a child’s development rests solely on the parental system. The parents significantly influence a child’s development, since the social connection formed with them serves as the prototype for...

My decision as a mother to not cut my daughters

a criminal offence here, it was an easy argument to assure a few of our noisy family members back in India. Because we as parents were strong, nobody really questioned or bothered to enforce this. It was simply about standing up for what we thought to...