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| Girls in Senegal 2016 |
Tragic Lack of
Knowledge
While most Africans throughout the 54 countries on this vast
continent are either devout Muslim or Christian, the majority are also deeply Animist,
with a belief in the ever-present spirit world; believing that bad spirits
cause sickness, death, natural disasters and social calamities.
The human mind seeks out the cause of problems. Across
cultures, all people try to understand why bad stuff happens. We all want
someone or something to blame when tragedy strikes. However without scientific knowledge
explained in their own language, African cultures attribute all kinds of misfortune
to malevolent spirits.
When a little girl dies after being cut by an old razor
blade, the grief-stricken family and the whole community blame bad spirits, seeing
no connection between the ‘practice’ and her death. They do not know about germ
transmission and infection, the danger of excessive blood loss and the impact
of shock and trauma.
The Shocking
Statistics
As many as 8000 girls a day, that’s three million girls a
year, are subjected to the harmful practice of FGC. In the next 10 years, 30
million girls will be cut if the practice is not stopped. Shockingly 200
million women around the world are living with FGC.
Many girls die from the horrendous ordeal and those who
survive are condemned to a lifetime of needless health problems. Every time
they urinate and menstruate is painful, while intercourse and childbirth is
agony and fraught with complications.
An Act of Horror
Motivated by Love
While the act of cutting girls' genitals is horrifying to
outsiders, to communities throughout Africa, the practice is performed by women
and encouraged by mothers as “an act of love”.
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| Pioneering educator, Molly Melching 2016 |
This loving motivation by mothers was the profound discovery
made by American-born community educator, Molly
Melching during her many years of living closely with villagers throughout
Senegal.
Molly was able to see the practice of genital cutting
through the eyes of understanding and compassion, rather than outrage and
condemnation.
And Molly’s compassionate approach to educating villagers
about the dangers of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) has been phenomenally successful
in stopping the harmful practice throughout West Africa.
Molly's internationally acclaimed charity, Tostan has
succeeded in reaching 2000 African communities and saving many thousands of
girls from the trauma and lifelong damage of FGC over 28 years since 1991.
The UK charity Orchid
Project is a staunch supporter of Tostan’s great work.
I did a training course with Tostan in Senegal in July
2016 and learned about FGC and how to protect and empower girls and women.
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| Tostan training in Senegal 2016 |
How Do We Challenge
False Beliefs and Social Norms?
Mothers believe they are ensuring their beloved daughters
will be clean, chaste, virginal, marriageable, faithful to her husband and
accepted within the community. An uncut girl risks being shunned, ostracised
and unmarried, which is a shameful and life-threatening fate.
Beliefs become embedded and unquestioned and passed down the
generations as “social norms”. In
the same way, in our Western culture we are conditioned to believe that eating animals and drinking cows' milk is necessary and normal and non-conformists can be treated as misfits.
In our Tostan training, we learned that social norms are
prescribed behaviours practised by a group and they continue when they go
unquestioned and are held in place by positive and negative sanctions. When someone conforms to a collective
behaviour, they are rewarded and if they do not conform they are socially
punished with disapproval and rejection.
The intricacies of social norms perpetuate the harmful practice
of Female Genital Cutting (Tostan uses the term ‘cutting’ rather than
‘mutilation’).
As Molly Melching discovered in her extensive research in
villages throughout Senegal, the only way to stop the harmful practice is by
breaking the social norm through education of local people, in their own
languages, taught by facilitators from their own communities, in a respectful,
non-judgemental way.
She explains that people will not stop this harmful practice
that’s been passed down through the generations for over 2000 years by being
bullied or threatened by outsiders or even the law.
Molly understands that remote communities need access to
information about health and human rights and the stimulus and freedom to
question the logic of beliefs for themselves in safe, trusting discussion
groups and make their own connections, discoveries and insights. I agree. From
my years of experience in therapy groups, I know that this is how we all learn,
grow and change.
Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP) comprises classes
of 25-30 participants, held twice a week, covering three comprehensive modules on
health and human rights, spread over three years. In these dynamic classes women,
men and youth in remote rural villages sit in circles and explore and question deeply
held beliefs.
Disputing the False
Beliefs that Drive this Harmful Practice
The Belief that cutting a girl’s genitals makes her ‘Marriageable’
In a culture where a woman and her children are financially dependent
on her husband for survival, a girl’s family must ensure she is deemed
marriageable and suitable to gain a Bride
Price from the groom’s family.
Mothers claim that the scar tissue from cutting the labia
makes the vagina look ‘smooth and neat’. This subjective, aesthetic preference can
be disputed so the natural vagina is seen as clean, neat and correct.
The idea that a ‘cut girl’ is attractive and desirable to a
potential husband is a distorted belief. She is beautiful when she is intact,
the way her body was designed to be.
A woman does not need to marry to be valuable. She can be
educated, skilled and employed and independent and single if she chooses.
However most African girls want to get married because
family is cherished however they’re learning they don't have to marry young;
they can get an education and aspire to more in life.
Increasingly an African wife is no longer financially dependent on a husband.
Women in African villages generate income through small businesses, grow food and manage sustainable projects.
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| Successful business woman in Dakar, Senega |
Marrying off young daughters is not essential for a family’s
income. It is far better for the girl’s future to stay at school and gain an
education and qualifications, than marry young and immature.
The Belief that Cutting makes a Girl and Woman ‘Clean’
Ironically with the health and hygiene problems FGC creates,
the opposite is true. Cutting causes problems with urination, periods,
intercourse and childbirth, chronic infections and the risk of obstetric
fistula during a protracted labour, which damages the vaginal wall causing
leakage from the rectum or bladder.
Tragically, a woman suffering obstetric fistula is condemned
as ‘unclean’ and shunned and ostracised by her community.
When women talk about these health issues, they realise
these problems are not normal, but the result of being cut. They start to claim
the right to health and wellbeing for their daughters.
FGC is meant to guarantee a girl’s Virginity at her wedding and Faithfulness
throughout marriage
A girl with knowledge about sex is empowered to say ‘No’ to
boys and can choose to keep herself chaste through her own values. A wife can
choose to be faithful when she is loved and respected by her husband.
Why is virginity and fidelity important to a husband? It
seems to me that men want to protect themselves from the pain and shame of a
wife’s infidelity (and ensure the children are his). Men deflect pain and shame
onto women; in fact a much greater degree of physical and emotional pain and
suffering.
These male attitudes are loaded with hypocrisy, in my
opinion, as the Muslim religion allows a man to have up to four wives. A man
can have several sexual partners and his wives are forced to endure jealousy,
rivalry and being displaced, as they get older by younger wives.
When these relationship issues come under scrutiny, women
and men understand how nonsensical and unfair the old beliefs are.
FGC prevents women from experiencing Sexual Pleasure
Many Africans believe that unless her clitoris is cut out, a
woman can’t control her sexual urges and would become wild and promiscuous. I
think this belief is a projection of male lack of self-control, a way of
blaming women for their own intense sexual feelings they don't understand.
The female libido is not dangerous and evil. Such false
beliefs must be challenged and a healthy attitude to sex discussed in a factual
way amongst adolescent girls and boys.
FGC robs a woman of sexual pleasure and orgasm. This is a
terrible loss and violation of a woman’s right to a beautiful experience.
Instead of pleasure, she experiences pain during intercourse
and in all her reproductive functions. Women subjected to Type Three
infibulation are sewn up to leave just a tiny hole and must be cut open on their
wedding night, making first-time sex agonising.
The fact that sex is painful for women supports polygamy, as
a wife can be relieved of her duty on some nights by other wives.
Women have a right to enjoy sexual pleasure, sensuality and
romance in their relationships.
When women are not subjected to FGC, they discover that
sexual desires are positive in a committed, caring marriage. Sexual pleasure is
good for both husband and wife. Sexual enjoyment enhances attachment and
emotional bonding, which leads to loyalty and devotion and a happy marriage and
happy life for both a man and woman.
A man benefits from having woman who enjoys sex, rather than
suffers pain during intercourse.
The idea that sex can be pleasurable for both husband and
wife and that his wife’s pleasure is a benefit for the man as much as her is a radical
new concept for villagers.
When adolescent boys and men learn about the pain and
suffering inflicted on girls and women through FGC they usually become
committed to stopping the practice.
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| Discussion group in a village in Senegal 2016 |
During my time in Kenya, watching local TV on Sunday morning,
I was surprised to see that some channels have church services and gospel
singing while other channels have music shows with explicit, soft porn music
and dance videos representing the two conflicting forces in African psyche.
The British missionaries last century introduced prudish
attitudes and Christian prohibitions on sex outside marriage. Puritanical views
now co-exist with the African hearty sexual appetite.
Universally men and women
need to embrace healthy sexuality, without confusion, shame and fear.
Education in villages is helping communities understand that
a loving – not forced - marriage can be good, a true blessing and foundation
for a happy family and life together.
Marriage needs to be the right time, at the right stage of
life – when a girl has grown into a mature woman, not when she is a child, as
this is a form of abuse.
A young woman needs to be able to marry a man of her choice;
a loving, caring, compatible man of a similar age, not an old man.
And the couple can learn how to have an equal, respectful,
loving marriage and enjoy sexual intimacy and affection.
Girls and women must be protected from the trauma, agony and
tyranny of genital cutting. They have a human right to be whole and healthy and
enjoy loving sexuality.
Stopping female genital cutting is essential to the empowerment
for girls and women around the world.
The Girl Generation is an Africa-led global collective of members and partners
brought together by a shared vision that FGM can – and must – end in this
generation.
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| Me in Dakar, Senegal 2016 |
I share this commitment. My Kenyan soul sister, Millicent
Garama and I share a dream
to bring the Tostan Community Empowerment Program to Kenya and East Africa.
We plan to train facilitators to take the program into
remote villages where female genital cutting of girls is still happening,
despite being illegal in Kenya.
You can join the movement to stop FGC by supporting the UN Global Goal of Gender Equality to
stop this abuse by 2030.
