By Alisha Bhagat

I first found out about female genital cutting, or khatna, in my community in my twenties; my mother told me it had been done to her. At the time I was shocked. I thought this was something that happened to other people in far off places, not to my mom or Nani or Masi. It was only after talking to other Bohra women that I realized that I was not unusual in knowing a survivor. Every woman in our community is a survivor or knows a survivor.

As I began talking to people about khatna, I started to receive some pushback. Even people who admitted the practice was outdated and unnecessary were uncomfortable speaking about it. In the grand scheme of things, I was told, this is so small. It’s such a small pinch of skin. It’s just a moment in a girl’s life. It’s not indicative of who we are and all the good things we have done and built.

But I believe the opposite, it is precisely in small moments that we show what we value and who we are. Khatna is more than a cut, it is the manifestation of so many other underlying problems.

As activists we focus on khatna for a few reasons. First we believe this practice itself is traumatic, unnecessary, and has long lasting implications for women’s health and sexuality. It is a straightforward violation of bodily autonomy. Second, the culture surrounding it speaks to the way in which we are shamed, silenced, diminished, threatened, and put in our places.

Earlier this year I attended the Sahiyo Activist Retreat. This retreat help me see how khatna is part of a large system. Just as there are many factors that perpetuate this practice (culture of shame, silence, and devaluation of female sexual experience) there are also many ways in which we have leverage to act.

The retreat highlighted different areas in which we can act to both support survivors and end this practice through the legal system, the medical establishment, in our places of worship, our homes, and our families. At the foundation of all of this is storytelling. Without survivors and allies sharing their stories, the topic remains shrouded in silence.

My hope is that the retreat will help grow our community of activists. And that there will be other safe spaces for people to talk, share stories, and connect. Most importantly, for us to create new models of being in the world, creating new spaces and communities.

Download Press Release as PDF

JOINT PRESS RELEASE: 

 ENDING FGM/C BY 2030: Uniting forces to make FGM/C a practice of the past

 2nd June 2019, Vancouver (Canada) 

 3.9 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) every year. On the 2nd June 2019, for the first time ever, NGOs, grassroots and survivor-led organizations from around the world came together at the Women Deliver conference around a common goal: to end FGM/C by 2030 and to support survivors of the practice. This is our Call to Action.

 Further Women Deliver blog posts:

• Multiple events on FGC hosted at Women Deliver in Vancouver 

• Global Call to Action From “Uniting forces to make female genital mutilation/cutting a practice of the past: A gathering for global civil society actors”

Photo Courtesy Of luizclas on Pexels.com 

By Anonymous

Country of Residence: India

Age: 31

Many communities across the world continue to practice female genital mutilation (FGM). In India, it’s mainly the Bohras, a sub-sect of Shias who practice FGM, also known as khatna. The clitoris and/or labia of little girls is cut or mutilated with the belief that it would curb their sexual desires and stop premarital sex. Many of the women performing khatna have no medical qualifications and are typically women who have learned to perform the cutting from their ancestors. Many midwives perform this in the name of salwaat (or blessings). But they hardly know why they are doing this.

When you are a child, your parents and grandparents are people you trust the most. They tell you about not interacting with strangers or not allowing any stranger to touch you in your private areas. Still it’s your close family who takes you for khatna, allowing a complete stranger to touch you inappropriately and cut your clitoris. It’s like being betrayed by the people you believe in and trust the most.

I am writing this to share my experience. At the age of six, I was taken out by my mom like any normal day, although most of my childhood memories haven’t made as strong of an impact as this one. We reached a stranger’s place. I went inside the house with my mom. My trousers were removed and then I was told to lie down. I felt extreme pain in my private area. I could feel, although I was instructed to look at the ceiling. I was doing that, and within a few minutes, my mom said, let’s leave. I was still experiencing the pain. The pain was terrible when I urinated.

I never really understood why my mom took me there. I still don’t get it. Why do something terrible to a girl which can leave a psychological scar in their mind which never heals?  In fact, when I became a teenager, I asked my mom why she allowed this khatna to happen to me. The answer I got was tradition, and that it prevents cancer. Then the other question which immediately popped up for me was, “Why only us?” Later I found out it’s mostly done to curb the sexual desire of girls. This practice ultimately leads the girls to mistrust the people they are supposed to trust the most.                                               

It’s not in that instant you realize what happened, but gradually the memory becomes too vivid. Just because something is practiced for generations doesn’t mean it should go on without questioning its existence. People have to change their thinking about existing rules and guidelines to follow in the name of customs. The problem is that if you come out of the shadows and rebel, you may be thought of as an outcast. It’s not us we are afraid of but people we know. Family and friends will be treated differently as well. I believe in taking small steps of at least opening up about what you feel will help you to let go of that which you are suppressing. That will ultimately will give you the confidence of coming out of the shadows and facing the light.

By Zahra Qaiyumi

Female genital cutting (FGC) is prevalent among Muslim women in rural Malaysia, and many of them believe the practice is a religious obligation. Ironically, several religious leaders in the country insist that female genital cutting is not an Islamic requirement at all.

These are some of the major findings of a new research study on FGC in Malaysia, conducted by Abdul Rashid and Yufu Iguchi in 2018.

The study was conducted in two rural majority Muslim areas of Kedah and Penang in the Northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. The study consisted of survey data collected from 605 participants, focus groups held with a smaller subset of the participants, and interviews with 8 traditional practitioners who perform or performed FGC. Additionally, 2 interviews were conducted with Muftis, who are religious scholars or jurists qualified to issue Islamic legal opinions in Malaysia.

The major findings of the study are below.

Prevalence and type of FGC:

1. Almost all participants (99.3%) had undergone FGC at an early age and wanted FGC to continue.
2. The predominant form of FGC practiced in Malaysia is type IV. The paper defines this as the tip of the clitoris being nicked using a pen-knife or razor.

Age at which FGC was conducted:

1. The median age of the participants at the time of FGC was 6 years old, which is also the median age the participants felt was the suitable age FGC should be performed. However, the authors suggest that children as young as 2 months old undergo FGC in Malaysia.

Medicalization of the practice:

1. In general, older participants had FGC performed on them by traditional practitioners as compared with younger participants.
2. Younger participants were of the opinion that doctors should conduct FGC as compared with older participants who preferred traditional practitioners.
3. More participants from the younger group would permit doctors to perform FGC on their children as compared with the older group.
4. More of the practice is being conducted in clinics by physicians because of the scarcity of traditional practitioners.

Reasons for the practice and its continuation:

1. The most common reasons for FGC among the participants surveyed are hygiene (25.0%), health (24.0%) and religious obligation (23.0%).
2. A majority of the participants believe FGC is a requirement in religion (wajib), whereas the traditional practitioners and Mufti’s who are responsible for issuing edicts related to religious matters say it is not a religious requirement.

Future directions:

It is encouraging that traditional practitioners and Mufti’s believe FGC is not a religious requirement. Perhaps this can be used as a tool to better educate the community about the practice of FGC and ultimately bring an end to the practice.

Read the complete study on FGC in Malaysia here.

by Jenny Cordle

[This is Part 2 in a series of posts about Jenny’s experience of learning about female genital cutting happening within the Malian community in which she lived. Part 1 details her stumbling upon the aftermath of a cutting in Konza.]

As the editorial intern at Sahiyo, I’ve been reading the stories of women who’ve been sharing their experiences with female genital cutting with the world. Each story is so important, and reminds me of the stories of girls and women who shared their experiences with me during my time in Mali, West Africa. I lived in Mali from 2006-2009, but I went back in 2014 to work on a project about FGC within my community.

Five years after my Peace Corps service, my old mud brick house in Konza was occupied and Mali was hotter than I remembered. I flew back to visit friends, but I also wanted to explore the impact female genital cutting (FGC) had on community members. Cutting in Mali is as ingrained in society as pounding millet for dinner. The Sikasso region of Mali in which I lived maintains a 90.9% prevalence rate of FGC.

I had Kodak prints with me taken on the day of the cutting in Konza that I’d been privy to years prior. There were 21 girls of varying heights who gathered under a tree for a photo — all barefoot, and all wearing long fabric over their heads with colorful patterns of stripes, leaves, acorns and sunbursts. The girls in the group photo were adorned in head wraps, a symbol of their new status in the community as having been cut. They stood in a crescent shape in front of a mango tree. Only one adult woman out of the four present was wearing a long piece of solid white fabric covering her head. There was a lone silver tea kettle sitting in the dirt in front of them. Even though I can hardly look at the prints because of the emotion that’s palpable on their faces, it doesn’t occur to me that showing them to others during my search girls may be triggering for the girls in the photos.

I remembered a meeting I held with the community elders in a round mud brick structure near the end of my time in Konza during Peace Corps. Women hardly ever attend these meetings, let alone call them and set the agenda. About ten men sat on the floor ready for my monologue. I’d worked for a year with Binta, the midwife and the only health practitioner in the community. She hadn’t been paid in six months. The community had given her grain for sustenance, but didn’t give her monetary compensation. Binta was in Sanso, a mining town with her husband, and wasn’t present for the meeting.

I began by telling them that she works all hours of the day birthing their babies and burying placentas, as well as taking care of other ailments and injuries outside of her purview. They understood but expressed that they simply did not have the money to pay her. Paying her would involve pooling a small amount of money from every household in the community monthly. I paused. And then I let the words roll off my tongue in Bambara. “When cutting season comes, you find the money to pay the cutter to cut your girls, but you won’t find the money to pay the midwife.” The chief of the village, nearing 100 years old, had been lying on a cot. I was sitting on the edge. He bolted upright next to me and said, “Crazy woman!” to the men in the room. I laughed. I told them if they didn’t pay her they would not be receiving another volunteer. A few weeks later, they paid Binta for the full six months.

They welcomed me into their community and I threatened them by conjuring one of their most sacred traditions. I felt powerless that young girls in the community were being violated and no one was doing anything about it to my knowledge. I also could not understand how you could avoid paying the midwife for birthing your children. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is that the community members live in one of the poorest countries on Earth. But my reasoning was simple: if you can pay a person to inflict pain in the name of tradition, then you can pay a midwife to ensure your wife and children have access to safe delivery.

I had brought the printed portraits of the girls I photographed the day of the cutting in 2007, in hopes that I could interview them about their experiences with FGC. None of my friends could identify the girls. My translator suggested we try to interview the girls I photographed in a different series I also had with me called The Chair Portraits. Since the girls in that series lived in close proximity to me, my friends knew who they were and and where they could be found. Most of these girls were now teenagers who worked in the field all day. They too had all been cut years before.

One had moved to another community to work in a gold mine. Another, Yaya Kone had gotten married and moved to a nearby village. Jemani Kone moved five kilometers away to Kouale, a nearby community on the main road to Sikasso. Several were still in Konza.

Jenebou Kone was the first to agree to talk about how and where the cutting took place, and how it affected her. We walked to the northern part of the village for privacy and sat under a tree. I pulled out my RCA digital voice recorder and after she gave me her consent, I pressed record.

(This blog is the second in a series of blogs meant to inspire a larger, global conversation about girls’ and women’s health and rights, cutting as a practice, and ideas for positive change. The third blog will unpack my conversation with Jenebou and other community members in Mali. A series of conversations about cutting in my community in Mali led me to advocacy work at Sahiyo. My hope is that collectively we can gain understanding of the practice, and in doing so, encourage abandonment.)

On May 11, Sahiyo India hosted a special Thaal Pe Charcha “Iftar” dinner in Mumbai during the holy month of Ramzan. The event was attended by 24 women and men from the Bohra community, who came together to break their Ramzan fasts and also mark two years since Sahiyo launched its flagship programme of Thaal Pe Charcha. 
Loosely translated as “discussions over food”, Thaal Pe Charcha provides community members with a safe and intimate platform to share their stories, experiences, and feelings about the practice of Female Genital Cutting, while bonding over traditional Bohra food. At least 50 community members have participated in Thaal Pe Charcha events over the past two years, and the Iftar dinner on May 11 saw five new participants join in, with several questions about the nature of the practice of FGC in the community, the arguments for and against it, and the work done by the movement against the practice. 
Two of the participants also brought their children for the event, including the seven-year-old daughter of Zohra, an FGC survivor. Girls in the Bohra community are typically cut at age seven, and Zohra expressed pride in the fact that she would not be continuing the practice on her daughter. 

The first Thaal Pe Charcha in Pune city
Earlier, in April, a Bohra FGC survivor and activist from Pune city hosted a small Thaal Pe Charcha lunch at her own home. The survivor, who identifies herself with the pseudonym Xenobia, had participated in Sahiyo India’s 2019 Activists’ Retreat in January. One of the workshops at the retreat was about hosting one’s own Thaal Pe Charcha in order to expand the conversations about FGC to more people. Xenobia was one of the first participants to volunteer to host her own Thaal Pe Charcha after the workshop, and the lunch she hosted at her house had 7 participants. 
Read about Xenobia’s experience of hosting the lunch in her own words, by clicking here.

By Renee Bergstrom, EdD

On January 30, 2019, I presented the workshop: Patient Engagement through Brief Focused Videos featuring the Sahiyo Stories at the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH) Winter Course in Scottsdale, Arizona. ACH endeavors to promote empathy and better communication among health care providers, patients and families.

I prepared throughout my adult life to someday share my story to advocate to end female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). This groundwork included learning through formal education, plus strengthening the emotional, social and spiritual foundation of my being. The purpose in showing the Sahiyo videos was two-fold: to promote deeper understanding of female genital mutilation’s impact on survivors, and to discuss the storytelling process and the feasibility of ACH engaging patients’ trauma stories through focused videos.

Three women attended the workshop I hosted, including the president of the organization who is a nurse midwife. After the workshop, their evaluations were positive.

“I think this was a powerful video that was personal to Renee,” a participant said after watching my video. “It provided an example of what might be possible to create for patients through ACH. That would be an entire different brainstorm session. This video was so impactful that it was hard to move on in this session.”

“Pre-work (writing story) was very helpful and heightened my receptivity/engagement.”

I found it crucial to share Sahiyo’s work with the very caring doctors and nurses who are fellow faculty members and have placed the link to the Sahiyo stories on the ACH library page.

Renee Bergstrom, EdD, is an educator who advocates for relationship-centered medical care. She and her husband, Gene, have been married 53 years. They have three children, ten grandchildren and one great-grandson. They live in a dynamic art town in midwest America where they are very involved in the community. Renee has been an advocate for women’s justice throughout her life.

By Amy Vaya

Country of Residence: Bahrain

The first time I ever heard about female genital mutilation (FGM), I was 20 years old. A friend told me about a book she had read called ‘Desert Flower,’ by former model Waris Dirie, who had undergone the procedure as a girl.

Even as she described it, I found myself utterly unable to comprehend such cruelty. Why on earth, I thought, would someone need to do that to another human being, much less a three-year-old child? I hunted down the book and raced through it in a matter of days, learning about her story with a growing sense of horror.

Dirie thought it was normal to feel pain every time she urinated, because she had never known anything else. She never even realised she was missing body parts until, as a young woman, she saw her female roommate’s naked body. Both women wept. I wept.

All these years later I still remember that book because it was so shocking to me that such a thing is practiced anywhere in the world. And then I put it out of my mind.

It wasn’t until quite recently that the subject resurfaced in my life. A dear friend, who was just a passing acquaintance at the time, had posted online about how she had suffered FGM as a child. My mind raced back to this book and I was thunderstruck. It was one thing for it to happen to Waris Dirie in the 1960s in Somalia. It is quite another for it to happen in the 1990s, in the country where I live!

I became extremely upset. Even though I did not know her that well, this became personal. She had been raised exactly as I had been, gone to similar schools, had mutual friends, and had similar interests. Our lives overlapped so much except for this one glaring fact—her bodily integrity had not been respected. She had been violated in the worst possible way.

I watched videos about the Bohra community in which they discuss khatna with pride and I was disgusted. I thought of the other Bohra friends I’d had through my life and suddenly couldn’t see them the same way anymore. I felt like the women had been mutilated, whether they saw themselves that way or not. I was surprised at the men’s position. Perhaps they were ignorant of the fact this was even happening. The alternative–that they were deliberately inflicting this cruelty on their women–was just too much for me to stomach.

I was so upset I spoke to my mother about it. And would you believe it, at her age, that was the first time she was ever hearing about FGM? That should tell you how little this subject is spoken about among communities.

If we don’t talk about it, we can’t know it’s happening. And if we don’t know it’s happening, we can’t possibly stop it.

FGM should never have begun, and it certainly has no place in the 21st century. Let’s be clear–the aim of FGM in my opinion was never ‘cleanliness’ or any medical benefit–it is purely to reduce or remove a woman’s sexual pleasure, and I fail to see how that benefits anyone.

To the parents: If you think it will help you control your teenage daughter’s raging hormones better, think again. She is going to be a sexually mature adult for a lot longer than she is going to be an unmarried teenager under your roof. Do you really have the right to alter the rest of her life? Is ‘tradition’ even meaningful or important if it adversely affects the quality of life so much?

To the men: I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps you don’t know this is going on among your womenfolk. If that is the case, then learn about it, and protest it. And protest it you must, because this does not benefit you. Do you really want to marry a woman who may never enjoy sex with you? Do you really want to be in a marriage where your wife never initiates sex because it doesn’t feel good or is downright painful for her?

To the women: Keep going and be strong. You deserve to not have body parts removed without your consent. It is such a basic human right; it should go without saying. Your body is inviolable and you deserve for it to be respected as such.