Female Genital Mutilation: Why some women are still forced to live a culture of silence
"The curtains were drawn. She said lie down. Like an obedient child, I lay. My grandmother was holding my hands. An oldish woman pulled down my pants… I started crying. Grandma said don’t worry, it will be over in a jiffy. I shrieked in pain… I experienced a sharp, shooting pain and she put some black powder there… I came home and cried and cried and cried...”- Masooma, 49 from Maharashtra, India. "Then a sharp blade cuts my genitalia, removing all my labia and clitoris.....i was only seven that time and not properly understand what is going on with me...midwife stitch up my vagina, leaving me with a small hole....it's all going on in a dark curtained room."- Layla, 39 from Syria. “I was only 10 or 11 years old, when my father decided to circumcise me....i cried and cried when a sharp blade cut my clitoral... no one was there to hear my blood-curdling scream... in fact my family was celebrating it as a festival.. after all, I had to become the fifth wife to a 70-year-old man"- Nigerian woman Kafla, 35. "They held me down and she cut this part of my body. I didn't know what I had done wrong to these old people - whom I loved - for them to be on top of me and opening my legs to hurt me. It was psychologically like a nervous breakdown for me."- Sabia, 25, Somalia. "I was only 9...my mother brought a midwife and some neighbours home. She prepared everything and left me alone with them in the room... they took off my shorts, and each of them held one of my legs. The midwife had a small blade which she used to cut this part of me.. I bled out...and that was it"..... Bishara, Kenya. This pain is not only of two or four women, there are millions of such women all over the world, who endured the pain of Female genital mutilation (FGM) as a child for the sake of culture or rituals and all this happens behind the closed doors. Most women don't share their stories because they are afraid of what will happen to them, what will happen to their parents. The shame runs so deep that girls are taught to never look at or touch their genitals, and most of them have never been to a gynecologist. Female genital mutilation is a chronic global problem, it is not just confined to tribal societies or remote villages; Girls and women are being mutilated on every continent, in over 3o countries from small communities in Somalia to large cities in the United States of America..... https://the-social-truth.blogspot.com/2023/05/female-genital-mutilation-why-some.html
