In the recent years Sahiyo has come across many dissenting views while engaging with followers on the internet on the topic of ending Female Genital Cutting. The dissenting views have come in the form of tweets, comments, emails, people personally dissuading us from our work, and more. And every time someone has tried to tell us that Female Genital Cutting is beneficial for the woman, we have tried to present a reasoned argument against it.

It is our mission to create a counter-narrative on Female Genital Cutting in the communities practicing it, through dialogue and education.

That said, we recently observed a phenomenon of ‘organized trolling’, a spate of attacks online. A few days ago, Sahiyo’s Facebook page was attacked with negative reviews from different people. It happened in a quick span of a few minutes and oddly enough every review had almost the same things to say.

The trolls gave Sahiyo one-star ratings and called us a ‘sham organization’. In some reviews, co-founders were named individually and discredited for bringing shame to the community. Furthermore, these reviews stated that Sahiyo co-founders are creating a fake narrative against Female Genital Cutting prevalent in the community for their personal gains. This kind of behaviour qualifies as online harassment, because it is an intentional attempt to attack and discredit a group and its individual members in manner that is not civil.

In 2015, Sahiyo conducted an anonymous survey with 385 respondents out of which 81% people responded that they didn’t want the practice to continue. Since its inception, the number of people supporting Sahiyo’s mission has increased manifold, as men and women from the community have come out against the practice.

Yet there is a significant number of people who fear openly coming out with their views against the practice. Online harassment through organised trolling is one among the many reason why people fear voicing their opinions publicly.

Through Sahiyo, we want to create a safe space where opinions on the practice could be heard and tolerated, not trolled and shunned. By attacking online and publicly shaming, the pro-khatna supporters have displayed their intolerance against any view that counters or challenges the practice.

FGC is illegal in many parts of the world including United States and Australia, where people from the Bohra community have faced legal action for practising Female Genital Cutting. Furthermore, the jamaats (congregations) in US, UK and Australia came up with notices asking members not to practice FGC because it is against the law of land.

Yet pro-khatna supporters continue to defend the practice, and in doing so, some of them resort to  trolling or online harassment through foul language and personal attacks of those why they disagree with. While claiming that they have personally not had negative experiences with FGC, they attack, discredit and dismiss the personal experiences of others who have had negative experiences with FGC and have taken the courage to share their stories.

While we disagree with pro-khatna rhetoric which has been passed down since generations within the community, we — and the FGC survivors who share their stories with us — want to create room to have a dialogue and debate around it without being personally attacked.

Many women who have undergone FGC already have a challenging time talking about their experience openly. There is a fear and shame associated with sharing their stories — shame that it happened to them and perhaps feelings of not wanting to be viewed as victims. There is also a very real fear of backlash and of not being believed, and online trolling validates these fears. Trolling makes it more difficult and dangerous for people to come forward, and for community members to feel supported because of something they feel.

Furthermore, it is only a clear exhibition of intolerance prevalent in the community, which quells voices of the people who don’t agree with their mandate.

Sahiyo strongly condemns online trolling of those who have voiced their views against the practice. Online harassment or trolling leaves no room for debate or dialogue.

On April 12-13th, the Dickinson Law’s FGM Legislation Project hosted a conference, “Crafting Legislative and Medical Solutions to Address Female Genital Mutilation Locally and Internationally,” at Dickinson Law. This conference aimed to educate the public, lawyers and medical professionals about the legal, social, psychological and medical consequences of FGC. Experts and practitioners gathered to address the medical implications for women who have undergone it, the need for legislative action, and cultural competencies and prevention. Sahiyo Cofounder, Mariya Taher participated in a panel session, “Effective FGM Prevention and Survivor Advocacy.” A live stream of the event can be found here. On April 13th, a working group gathered to create and discuss an optional protocol to the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women that focuses primarily on Female Genital Cutting.

(This article is Part 3 of a seven-part series on trauma related to Female Genital Cutting. To read the complete series, click here. These articles should NOT be used in lieu of seeking professional mental health and counseling services when needed.)

By Joanna Vergoth, LCSW, NCPsyA

Trauma overwhelms us and disrupts our normal functioning, impacting both the brain and body, both of which interact with one another to regulate our biological states of arousal. When traumatized, we lose access to our social communication skills and displace our ability to relate/connect/interact with three basic defensive reactions: namely, we react by fighting, fleeing, or freezing (this numbing response happens when death feels imminent or escape seems impossible).   

In order to understand and appreciate our survival responses, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how our brain functions during a traumatic experience, such as undergoing Female Genital Cutting or FGC.

Our brains are structured into three main parts:

The human brain, which focused on survival in its primitive stages, has evolved over the millennia to develop three main parts, which all continue to function today. The earliest brain to develop was the reptilian brain, responsible for survival instincts. This was followed by the mammalian brain (Limbic system), with instincts for feelings and memory. The Cortex, the thinking part of our brain, was the final addition.

The Reptilian brain:

The reptilian brain, which includes the brain stem, is concerned with physical survival and maintenance of the body. It controls our movement and automatic functions, breathing, heart rate, circulation, hunger, reproduction and social dominance— “Will it eat me or can I eat it?” In addition to real threats, stress can also result from the fact that this ancient brain cannot differentiate between reality and imagination. Reactions of the reptilian brain are largely unconscious, automatic, and highly resistant to change.  Can you remember waking up from a nightmare, sweating and fearful—this is an example of the body reacting to an imagined threat as if it were a real one.

The Limbic System:

Also referred to as the mammalian brain, this is the second brain that evolved and is the center for emotional responsiveness, memory formation and integration, and the mechanisms to keep ourselves safe (flight, fight or freeze). It is also involved with controlling hormones and temperature. Like the reptilian brain, it operates primarily on a subconscious level and without a sense of time.

The basic structures of Limbic system include:  thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus  

The Neocortex:

The neocortex is that part of the cerebral cortex that is the modern, most newly (“neo”) evolved part. It enables executive decision-making, thinking, planning, speech and writing and is responsible for voluntary movement.

But…

Almost all of the brain’s work activity is conducted at the unconscious level, completely without our knowledge. While we like to think that we are thinking, functioning people, making logical choices, in fact our neocortex is only responsible for 5-15 % of our choices.  When the processing is done and there is a decision to make or a physical act to perform, that very small job is executed by the conscious mind.

How the brain responds to Trauma

The fight or flight response system — also known as the acute stress response — is an automatic reaction to something frightening, either physically or mentally. 

This response is facilitated by the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) called the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) which work in harmony with each other, connecting the brain with various organs and muscle groups, in order to coordinate the response.

Following the perception of threat, received from the thalamus, the amygdala immediately responds to the signal of danger and the sympathetic nervous system  (SNS) is activated by the release of stress hormones that prepare the body to fight or escape.

It is the SNS which tells the heart to beat faster, the muscles to tense, the eyes to dilate and the mucous membranes to dry up—all so you can fight harder, run faster, see better and breathe easier under stressful circumstances.  As we prepare to fight for our lives, depending on our nature and the situation we are in, we may have an overwhelming need to “get out of here” or become very angry and aggressive (See ‘I underwent female genital cutting in a hospital in Rajasthan’ on Sahiyo’s blog). Usually, the effects of these hormones wear off only minutes after the threat is withdrawn or successfully dealt with.

However, when we’re terrified and feel like there is no chance for our survival or escape, the “freeze” response, activated via the parasympathetic nervous system, can occur. The same  hormones or naturally occurring pain killers that the body produces to help it relax (endorphins are the ‘feel good’ hormones) are also released into the bloodstream, in enormous amounts, when the freeze response is triggered. This can happen to people in car accidents, to sexual assault survivors and to people who are robbed at gunpoint. Sometimes these individuals pass out, or mentally remove themselves from their bodies and don’t feel the pain of the attack, and sometimes have no conscious or explicit memory of the incident afterwards. Many survivors of female genital cutting have reported fainting after being cut. Other survivors have reported blocking out their experiences of being cut (See ‘I don’t remember my khatna. But it feels like a violation’). Our bodies can also hold on to these past traumas which may be reflected not only in our body language and posture but can be the source of vague somatic complaints (headaches, back pain, abdominal discomfort, etc.) that have no organic source. FGC survivors who were cut at very young ages can be plagued with ambiguous symptoms such as these.

Neuroscientists have identified two different types of memory: explicit and implicit. The hippocampus, the seat of explicit memory, is not developed until 18 months. However, the implicit memory system, involving limbic processes, is available from birth. Many of our emotional memories are laid down before we have words or explicit recall, yet they influence our lives without our awareness. Although a traumatized person may not explicitly remember the traumatic event(s), the memory is held in the body: ‘‘What the mind forgets, the body remembers in the form of fear, pain, or physical illness’’ (Cozolino, 2006, p. 131; Van der Kolk, 1994).

The brain and PTSD

For those affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — especially those who had no chance to fight back successfully or escape — the body and the brain have been blocked from responding normally and the trauma does not end.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (2001), a major clinician and researcher in the field of trauma notes that individuals with PTSD ‘‘are very sensitively tuned to pick up threat and respond to minor stimuli as if their life were in danger”.

What Dr Bessel is referring to is the fact that for those with PTSD, the trauma has not been able to come to a conclusion and remains unfinished. When stressors are present or familiar triggers (such as a person, place, or scent) are activated, the person can feel threatened and those fight-or-flight reactions stay turned-on, prompting the amygdala to be in a state of perpetual overactivation — in effect, hijacking the thinking process. Some FGC survivors in the Bohra community have experienced versions of such responses. For example, one young woman interviewed in the documentary A Pinch of Skin mentioned that her traumatic memories of being cut are triggered when she sees her cutter in the neighbourhood, and she ‘never wants to see that lady again’.  

When the amygdala is overactive and in control it registers only emotional and sensory information so that when the hippocampus tries to record the event sequentially it is compromised by these hormonal releases and only fragmented flashes of memory and emotional distress are remembered. This, too, is common in the way many FGC survivors remember their experience of being cut.

Why this happens

Trauma impairs the integrative functioning in the brain and neural networks get stuck in paths related to processing and encoding fear. The limbic system stores our emotional memories and replicates the response we had to the earliest time we experienced a similar situation: if we are in a state of distress we will revisit a memory of distress and that will cause more somatic sensations of distress.

PTSD reflects a condition in which the body’s natural mechanisms for recovery have failed, resulting in a prolonged state of negative stress arousal—causing increased heart rate and blood pressure, restricted flow of blood to the genitals and digestive systems—in effect making it hard to process information, eat, sleep, salivate or be sexually aroused.

For more information about the Psychosexual Consequences of trauma, see Trauma and Female Genital Cutting, Part 4: Psychosexual Consequences.

About Joanna Vergoth:

Joanna is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in trauma. Throughout the past 15 years she has become a committed activist in the cause of FGC, first as Coordinator of the Midwest Network on Female Genital Cutting, and most recently with the creation of forma, a charity organization dedicated to providing comprehensive, culturally-sensitive clinical services to women affected by FGC, and also offering psychoeducational outreach, advocacy and awareness training to hospitals, social service agencies, universities and the community at large.

By Priya Ahluwalia

Priya is a 22-year-old clinical psychology student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences – Mumbai. She is passionate about mental health, photography and writing. She is currently conducting a research on the individual experience of Khatna and its effects. To read Priya’s first blog in this series, visit ‘How I found out Khatna exists and why I choose to speak out’.

The first time I heard the statement,“Well it could have been you! It could have been anyone! But it happened to me,” by a woman who had gone through khatna, I felt its weight immensely on me.

I do not yet have the answers for why this statement affected me so intensely, but it has strengthened my resolve to understand and generate more awareness about Khatna, because it has affected women for so long and has the capacity to affect many more.

The first step in my research journey is to talk to women who have been directly affected by Khatna. While deciding upon the questions to ask my participants, my number one concern was to not sound insensitive or biased when asking them about Khatna. More importantly, I wondered how to ask questions about something this personal without sounding intrusive. The sensitivity of the questions depends on the context in which you ask the question rather than how you frame it, whereas the intrusiveness of it depends on the reactions from the women.

It was interesting for me to observe that none of the women found the questions to be intrusive or uncomfortable, rather there was a normalized, patterned response given from them, as if these were routine questions. My early hypothesis was that women would feel overwhelmed while responding to these questions, but that is not what I found. There are two possible reasons for this: one, they have been asked these questions before and thus have already reflected on the questions and know the answers for themselves; two, by choosing to speak about Khatna, they have already begun their healing process and by normalizing speaking about the incident they perhaps have taken back a sense of control that they had lost when they underwent it. Future interactions with more women will allow me to formulate a definite conclusion.

It was fascinating to observe that although each woman had an individual experience of Khatna, their stories were eerily similar and the trajectory of growing up and figuring out the significance of it was uncannily alike. A lot of the women I interviewed had repressed their memory of the day of their Khatna, and they grew up without any conscious knowledge of what had happened or what it meant, only to discover its significance much later in life. However, perhaps their discovery of Khatna later in life comes due to the ripple effect created by one woman speaking out. The women I have spoken with have talked about how hearing how other women were speaking about their experiences helped them to remember their own experience of Khatna.  

While interviewing women, some common traits I found among the respondents were curiosity, a fierce need for answers and an extraordinary amount of courage. All the women I interviewed had an aura of strength around them which was empowering. It crushed the fear and hesitancy I had in asking the questions, and it empowered me to not only raise more questions about Khatna. Through reflection, I found that change happens through empowering conversations.

While doing this research, always at the back of my mind, has been the questions of “Who are the changemakers?”  

I recognized that change-makers are those who have the courage to question the law of the land, who show resilience in the face of daunting challenges and who empower others to fuel the fire of change.

These women have empowered me to continue the change, and I request you to join me in further promoting this change. If we do not speak out, then who will?  

To participate in Priya’s research, contact her on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By Mariya Taher, MSW, MFA

Last week, many Dawoodi Bohras around the world received the link to an online “research” survey with questions about Khatna/Khafz practiced in the community. Khafz refers to cutting a portion of a girl’s clitoral hood – a type of Female Genital Cutting – and this new online survey by Dr. Tasneem Saify, Dr. Munira Radhanpurwala T and Dr. Rakhee K claims that it aims to get feedback from Dawoodi Bohra women and men about the practice. (Link to survey is here).

As someone who has gone through the process of designing multiple research studies, I can confidently say that this latest survey on Khatna/Khafz in the Bohra community is neither a safe nor an unbiased tool for conducting proper research on female genital cutting. Other academic researchers who reviewed the Khafz survey have also pointed this out. For example, Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D., an associate Professor in the Department of Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College, states:

“The questions are strangely worded, and implicitly and explicitly suggest that the practice is not mutilation or traumatic. There are also no questions related to girls’ or women’s experiences of the practice. We can’t really know much about the definition of khatna/khafz without asking about the experience and its effects over time.”

While Karen A. McDonnell, an Associate Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, states:

“Overall this survey presents itself as a feedback mechanism from Dawoodi Bohras about female circumcision. Taking the perspective of someone trained in objective survey development in psychology and public health, the survey actually reads in its entirety, not as a feedback, but rather as a tool for marketing a perspective. As the survey proceeds, the tenor of the questions increase in a lack of objectivity and a central cause/message is quite clear and the respondent is made to feel manipulated.” 

While all research has its limitations, the design of this questionnaire suggests that it clearly was NOT created and sent out into the world to collect empirical unbiased research on the practice FGC/Khatna/Khafz. Instead, the bias and manner of wording of this survey tool express that the authors (Dr. Tasneem Saify, Dr. Munira Radhanpurwala T & Dr. Rakhee K) are seeking responses that will justify their motives to prove that Female Genital Cutting (FGC) does not harm girls.

Which makes me wonder, was this research tool (the survey) even vetted before the study’s implementation?

In 2008, because of my increasing passion to end violence against women, I choose to craft and carry out research for my Master of Social Work thesis on “Understanding the Continuation of Female Genital Cutting Amongst the Dawoodi Bohras in the United States.” The issue had been in the recesses of my mind for years and I wanted to learn how a practice that involves cutting the sexual organs of a young girl could ever have been deemed a religious or cultural practice. I wanted to understand how the issue of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) could continue generation after generation without question, because if I could understand this reasoning, then I could better understand why FGC had been done to me at the age of seven.

As a graduate student, my thesis advisors walked me through every step of the research process, from consulting references and existing studies, to contacting other academics and experts who had studied FGC. In the end, I carried out an exploratory study and crafted questions that could be used to conduct ethnographic interviews. Ethnographic interviewing is a type of qualitative research that combines immersive observation and directed one-on-one interviews. In order to draft the questions, I consulted questions used in previous studies by other researchers. My thesis advisors reviewed the questions, and the San Francisco State University’s Institutional Review Board examined my question to ensure there was no hidden bias in the wording of my questions that could lead participants to answer one way or the other.

Having been through the process once, and understanding the importance of having multiple individuals review your questions for hidden biases, years later, I went through a similar process when Sahiyo designed its study on Khatna among Dawoodi Bohra women. Prior to engaging Bohra women for the study, our research tool (the survey) was vetted by many NGOs and expert researchers.  

If this newest Khafz questionnaire by Dr. Tasneem Saify, Dr. Munira Radhanpurwala T & Dr. Rakhee K had been vetted by other individuals and institutions, it would have recognized the following problems well before releasing the study to the public.

1) Participant consent

Prior to filling out a study, it is important that participants are informed of the study’s intention and are able to sign a consent form acknowledging that they understand the study’s purpose and are giving their permission for the findings to be used in a study’s report. The new Khafz -survey does not have a consent form that does such. [See Screenshot to the left]. In fact, the purpose of this survey is misleading to the reader. There is no mention of how the respondents are being recruited and if their responses will be anonymous or even held in confidence and in essence violates a respondents rights as a participant.

2) Confidentiality

The new Khafz survey form requires participants to provide information that will NOT allow their information to remain private. The study requires that participants add their Community ID (ITS52/Ejamaat) Number. As reported in Mumbai Mirror, the ITS number keeps track of a Dawoodi Bohra’s personal details, including the number of times a person visits the mosque. By requiring an individual to enter this information, already the researchers have directly violated a person’s right to privacy. The question also limits respondents to only those who have signed up for such an ITS number. This, therefore, rules out the participation of many individuals born into the Bohra community or to a Bohra parent who may not have signed up for the ITS card for a variety of reasons, but who have had to undergo FGC as children because of a decision made by a family member or community member.

The mandatory requirement of disclosing one’s ITS number can also discourage an individual from filling out the survey for fear of backlash from the religious community for disagreeing with the practice of Khafz Such backlash occurs on a regular basis against advocates speaking against FGC as can be viewed on Sahiyo’s social media accounts. (See Sahiyo Activist Needs Assessment to learn more about the challenges individuals face when they speak in opposition to FGC).

3) Biased questions

Besides the problematic ITS number, the wording of subsequent questions on the new Khafz survey is biased and considered to be leading questions that prompt survey respondents to answer in a specific manner.

 For instance, Questions 2, 5, 9, and 10 make assumptions about religious freedom, media, and activists, rather than posing the questions and response choices in a more neutral, open-ended form.

Questions 12 and 13 are perfect examples of problematic, leading questions: Question 12 offers a definition of the word “mutilation” without any context to why the word is being asked. Question #13 then frames the question in a manner that can minimize or under report a participant’s level of distress associated with khatna/khafz, and also automatically suggests to the participant that the practice is not mutilation. 

Question 14 is confusing for another reason. The introductory paragraph by the researchers suggests that male participants can take part in the study, however, Question 14 is written and geared towards female participants who undergo Khatna/khafz.

Yet, because of the asterisk (*), the question is mandatory for all respondents, meaning men would have to submit a response to Question #14. This inclusion of information would automatically invalidate the data collected as men have NOT gone through khafz. The wording of the question also infers that all Dawoodi Bohra women have undergone khatna/khafz, which, from anecdotal reports and previous research on FGC in the Bohra community, we recognize is not the case. In fact, we do see a trend in the Bohra community of people wanting to give up the practice on future generations of girls. Yet, the survey makes no mention of this trend or suggests that it is even an option amongst survey respondents.

Overall, the Khafz/Khatna study is problematic for an entire milieu of reasons, not only the ones I have listed here. However, as a researcher, a social worker, and a woman who has undergone FGC because I was born into the Bohra community, what saddens me the most about this survey is that it is yet another attempt to discredit and disbelieve the numerous women and girls who have spoken up and stated that FGC was harmful to them. These women have spoken up for no other reason than to be believed, and instead of comforting them, the researchers of this new Khfaz/Khatna questionnaire are trying to silence them.