By Umme

I play a lot of video games. I watch even more video essays about video games. Written and recorded by people who’ve made careers out of literary analysis, these videos feel a bit like a virtual book club, joining with thousands of other viewers and commenters to play, analyze, and discuss our favorite stories, characters, and recurring motifs in the games we love.

That’s how I discovered SOMA, a sci-fi horror masterpiece by Frictional Games. A game that begged the question: who are you, really?

In SOMA,  one’s consciousness can be digitized, simulated, copied, pasted, downloaded, archived, and re-activated. All possible even after the original host has long since died and decayed away. What happens to the original consciousness when a copy is made? Which one of them is the real one? Are you still you if there’s a copy of you wandering around, living a life separate from your own, even if it emerged from you and your mind, your experiences, your hopes and dreams?

Who are you, really?

I’m fascinated by those branching paths, the idea that my consciousness is broken and split apart, a thousand bubble universes containing a thousand versions of myself, all bursting forth from the same source — me. In the universe I know — the one where I call myself me — there was a five-year-old girl whose parents made a choice. A choice I live with every day. In another universe, the one where she probably still calls herself she, there was a five-year-old girl who was spared the bloodier consequences of that choice, a branching path that leads to her being blissfully unaware of the physical consequences of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

I wonder what that person is like. Is she still me? Does she even understand how narrow her escape was, how close she came to losing her autonomy, to living with chronic pain? 

Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe there’s something else, something more that afflicts her. Maybe the pain, the fear, the coldness of that metal room is something shared among every  version of us. Maybe that’s the root.

And then there’s the other branching path. The one that isn’t really a path, the version who doesn’t get to become anything. The version who didn’t wake up as anything, left in a metal room, on a metal gurney bed, her last memory that of a gloved hand wiping away her tears and the cold fire of a metal needle pouring unwanted sleep into her tiny veins. The girl who will always, forever, eternally be a girl.

Do I deserve this body, deserve to occupy this mass of animated meat subject to the great misfortune of sapience, or is it a stolen trophy from my need to survive, won through pure chance?

In SOMA, consciousness is almost a coin toss. It’s an act of copy and paste, until there are two of you occupying the same universe. It’s a choice — one version of you moves forward to the end of the game, and the other stays behind… or dies. All of them are you, but the story only moves forward through one of you.

Sometimes, I wonder if my reality is the same way. Is anesthesia an act of copy and paste, a dark void and a branching path, where one story ends and the other keeps going? A little girl too young to understand why she needs to sleep like this, left behind, and the other permitted to grow, change, become.

So, I wrote about it. And just like my blood was spilled all those years ago, in that cold metal room, on that cold metal gurney, I spilled ink. Writer’s Blood. I filled my pen with it. I wrote. 

I still write.

I craft stories about people who look like me, who get to live in fantastical universes with fantastical beings. Who get superpowers, who save themselves. To me, those stories are hope — hope that some branching version of me doesn’t live in a universe where FGM/C exists. Hope that there’s a version of me out there who has it all — autonomy, ability, and freedom from the trauma.

My experience with FGM/C was not the last time I “died,” nor the last time I felt that endless darkness of anesthesia and then woke up in a body slightly different from the one I’d had before I went to sleep. But I hope it will be the last time someone else makes that choice for me.

Disclaimer

This blog was produced by Sahiyo under 15POVC-21-GG-00988-NONF, awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this guide are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

BBy Lakshmi Anantnarayan

I recently attended Sahiyo and Story Center’s Voices to End FGM/C Digital Storytelling workshop to share my experience as an anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) advocate. I certainly did not expect the process to be so enlightening and personally fulfilling! Though my work to end FGM goes back more than 20 years in the U.S., Africa, and India, in all that time I never really examined why FGM moved me personally; until this workshop. 

I have found that women’s rights advocates are often putting out fires and responding to crises in our work. There is hardly ever  any time for the kind of introspection and self-reflection that this workshop gently nudges you towards. I believe that professionalizing advocacy and human rights work also lays down certain expectations of ‘professionalism’, whichi demarcates the ‘activist’ from the ‘survivor’ for people who started out as ‘activists’. And many like myself who started out as ‘activists’ have a difficult time both with  connecting the personal aspects of our life to our work, and going public with our truths.

As a communications specialist, I have worked with many survivors to tell their stories. I have always felt that the story-teller/interviewer has a lot of power in framing the story and in drawing out details of the survivor’s experience. Therefore, with that power, one needs to be sensitive and responsible. During the FGM/C research project in India, we spoke with many survivors who were  willing to share intimate experiences of their pain. I was in awe of their strength and  ability to face their truth. The survivors in the Voices workshop once again reminded me of how incredibly brave it is to publicly acknowledge one’s own pain and move towards healing. I drew strength from their courage.  

It was by a stroke of serendipity that  the story of a woman with endometriosis was shared within the context of FGM/C on the first day of the Voices workshop. It helped me begin my journey to acknowledge my own pain and see how it informs my feminist activism. I believe connecting the political to the personal grounds one’s activism in a lived reality that is relatable and human. 

Lakshmi Anantnarayan is an international women’s rights activist and multimedia professional, with a background in social work and international development. Lakshmi has worked on domestic violence, reproductive rights, sexual violence, and female genital mutilation (FGM) in the US, India and parts of Africa. In 2018, Lakshmi co-authored "The Clitoral Hood A Contested Site: Khafd or FGM/C in India," a field-research study on FGM/C in India. Lakshmi currently works with the Frontline Women's Fund in New York.

Disclaimer
This blog was produced by Sahiyo under 15POVC-21-GG-00988-NONF, awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this guide are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

By Derrick Simiyu

After attending the webinar Investing in Girls and Women: Unleashing the Power of Philanthropy to End FGM/C, I learned about challenges related to funding programs for those affected by FGC; in particular, the fact that little funding is allocated to FGC because it is not prioritized as an urgent problem.

Speakers introduced the ‘funding gap’ of $2.1 billion between what is needed to end the practice globally ($2.4 billion) and what is currently being provided ($275 million). They also highlighted a campaign dedicated to the need for investing in ending FGC.

Asenath Mwithigah, Chief Executive Officer at Orchid Project, elaborated on how to reduce the funding gap, pointing to the need for organizations to be held  accountable; she believes accountability would ensure there is no misuse of the funds invested in FGC. Accountability would also help in avoiding the diversion of funds away from their original intention. For example, when the Covid-19 Pandemic arose, funds meant for FGC were diverted into fighting the crisis.

Learning about these funding challenges made me realize that FGC is not addressed with the urgency that it demands. One challenge is that most donors want quick fixes when deciding what programs to invest in, and hence fail to invest in the long-term, multi-year solutions that are really needed to create behavior change to end FGC. Donors may also find it difficult to gauge impact in regard to whether FGC is being prevented for future generations and/or if a community is moving towards abandoning FGC because this harmful social norm is a taboo subject for communities to talk about openly. Most often, programs working on FGC provide evidence of their effectiveness in qualitative terms (e.g. stories) versus quantitative terms (e.g. numerical data), which I was surprised to learn most donors seek. Especially because Sahiyo uses storytelling as such an important tool, I think it doesn’t make sense that most donors would prioritize numbers rather than personal experiences.

I thought anothering intriguing part of the webinar was learning about the challenges in addressing FGC through policy. Every time a new government comes into power in a country, political priorities in terms of governance and policy-making can change. For example, in Tanzania, the government's stance on FGC has shifted over time. Although Julius Nyerere, the nation's first president, spoke out against the practice in the 1960s, succeeding governments were less aggressive in their efforts to curtail it. Once the next government takes office, most of the policies that were in place before become difficult to uphold. Policies and actions designed to prevent FGC may then be ignored and may not be given utmost importance. 

What’s next? 

I couldn't help but think of this question throughout the webinar as I listened to the speakers. The argument for donor cooperation was made distinctly: if donors pooled their resources to stop FGC, the Sustainable Development Goal #5 of ending FGC by 2030 would quickly be realized. With the pooled funds, community-based organizations like Sahiyo would have increased programming to help end FGC. 

My takeaway from the meeting was that in order to close the funding gap, we must channel more resources into ending FGC, but at the same time we must ensure accountability of the funds usage to avoid any wastage. After the meeting, I felt inspired to commit to closing the funding gap by contributing my resources (time, skill-sets, and finances) to ending FGC.

ARP Support for Survivors Program supports culturally-specific, community-based projects supporting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault from Asian and Pacific Islander Communities in the United States and the Pacific.

Sahiyo U.S. will be joining over 40 organizations, both nationally and locally, in an effort to provide culturally-specific, community-based support for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault from Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the U.S. and Pacific. The $13.2 million dollar initiative from the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) under the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) will be will be the first time API-GBV will be distributing two years of funding to culturally specific organizations that serve sexual assault and domestic violence survivors in AAPI communities; this includes survivors of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), marking huge progress that this harmful practice is being recognized as a form of sexual assault. 

Under the ARP Support for Survivors Program, subgrants will be distributed through the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Capacity Building Fund to assist organizations like Sahiyo U.S. to provide services for survivors of gender-based violence in Asian/Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander (AANHPI), and Middle Eastern (ME) communities in the United States and U.S. territories.

“Sahiyo U.S. is honored to be included as one of the 40+ organizations awarded this grant. For too long the issue of female genital cutting has been viewed as a cultural issue, this grant helps to affirm that FGM/C is a form of gender-based violence and is a form of sexual assault that impacts individuals from AAPI communities as well. For years, Sahiyo has heard stories from FGM/C survivors from these communities and we have sought to support them in sharing their experiences and connecting with one another to collectively heal, and band together to prevent the next generation from undergoing this form of harm.”

~ Mariya Taher, Sahiyo Co-Founder & U.S. Executive Director

The ARP Support for Survivors Program will address the emergent needs of survivors, and the programs that serve them, resulting from the COVID-19 public health emergency. The work will also promote strategic partnership development and collaboration in responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency on survivors of gender-based violence.

“API-GBV is honored and proud to welcome organizations like Sahiyo U.S. who are at the forefront of sexual assault and dometic violence work amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It is essential to have this kind of funding distributed to communities with organizations deeply rooted in their environmental and cultural awareness and expertise in supporting survivors. The AAPI community is often left out of the public narrative on sexual assault and domestic violence and through this important work we will have the opportunity to support organizations who directly support survivors in our communities.”

~ Monica Khant, Executive Director of API-GBV

Sahiyo U.S. was selected by a committee of peer reviewers with extensive experience in the domestic violence and sexual assault fields, and working in AANHPI and ME communities in the U.S. Funding provided under the ARP Support for Survivors grant will advance our survivor and community-based Activists Retreat program. The expanded program will help to further strengthen relationships and networks among survivors and impacted community members who need a supportive structure, but who are often geographically distant from one another. The program will also allow for best practices and tools to be shared not only during the workshops, but throughout the year. As a result, FGM/C survivors and impacted community members are able to enhance their own well-being and enhance skills to more effectively raise awareness in their respective communities about the need to end this harmful form of sexual assault.

Sahiyo U.S. is among 15 organizations serving AANHPI communities and 14 organizations serving ME communities, including projects focused on prevention, culturally specific services for Queer and Trans survivors, virtual services and data security, culturally rooted practices in healing and resiliency, and engaging men and youth. For a complete list of grantees, visit this link.

On April 28th, Karen McDonnell, Associate Professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health partnered with Sahiyo Cofounder Mariya Taher to provide a training for nearly 70 health care providers at the Prince George County Health Department on female genital cutting (FGC) and the role of health care professionals in prevention and patient support. Health care providers are important first-responders when it comes to servicing those impacted by FGC, and there is an ever demanding need for culturally cognizant and sensitive training for health care providers in the U.S. This training provided information on the impact of FGC in the U.S. along with practical guidance on how to work with survivors. Resources such as GWU’s Educational FGM/C toolkits for providers were also shared.

On April 14th, Sahiyo U.S.'s Mariya Taher was invited to speak at a panel discussion on female genital cutting (FGC) by Women in International Relations (WIIR), an organization that is part of Tufts’ Institute for Global Leadership at Tisch College. WIIR hosted a panel on FGC as part of a broader conference on the topic of public health and women’s healthcare. Other panelist included Aminata Bah, Copresident of the End FGM European Network, and Dr. Salma Abdalla. 

WIIR aims to explore opportunities for women studying international relations at Tufts, as well as to create a space of dialogue and empowerment through mentorship, networking, and academic discussions and events on women’s rights issues.