Asha

Random assortment of thoughts

So why haven’t I been writing more regularly?

1) I’m always thinking…oh I should write that on my blog….but then when it actually comes time to write I don’t feel like I have much to say.

2) Exams….All you folks who get reading period…..believe me bow down to God and thank Her (I’ve decided the female pronoun is more apt for the Almighty). Seriously, I never knew fully realized what a blessing it was. It is HORRIBLE having to write term papers, go to class, do regular homework and study for tests and then exams…all at the same time. We don’t even get one day as reading period. Last day of class and boom the very next day finals start. So basically I’ve been slaving away to academia (or atleast pretending to).

3) Sometimes I come across things that I want the whole world to know but often I’m so frustrated by all of it that my articulation goes down the drain. It is at times like these that I send e-mails to some friends who can put up with me sending them a long e-mail filled with frustration and expletives.

As for why aren’t there any pics from spring break? Because internet at home is not very fast and it takes me ages to download pics.

I’ll talk to you about what I’ve been reading quite a bit about outside the realm of class reading. …. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). I attended a lecture about it a few weeks ago and since then I was moved to read about it more and more. And the more I read the more frustrated and disgusted and helpless I feel. I had always known that the concept existed and that it goes on but it had never hit me in the face as much as now. Anywhere between 50 to 97 % of women in Egypt undergo FGM. It is practiced in 28 countries over the world including countires in Western Europe and North America (mainly due to immigration patterns). However, 18 of the 28 countries where FGM is practiced are in Africa. An estimated 135 million of the world's girls and women have undergone genital mutilation, and two million girls a year are at risk of mutilation - approximately 6,000 per day.

The most sever form of FGM is infibulation, also known as pharaonic circumcision. An estimated 15% of all mutilations in Africa are infibulations. The procedure consists of clitoridectomy (where all, or part of, the clitoris is removed), excision (removal of all, or part of, the labia minora), and cutting of the labia majora to create raw surfaces, which are then stitched or held together in order to form a cover over the vagina when they heal. A small hole is left to allow urine and menstrual blood to escape.

At the lecture, the lecturer started his presentation with showing us a video of a girl undergoing FGM. And I couldn’t watch it at all…..and had to go throw up after. This was when the girl was undergoing FGM under local anesthesia and hygienic medical conditions. I couldn’t even imagine women undergoing it without any anesthesia. On a rock behind a bush with the cutting actually taking place with pieces of glass, knife, razor blades or even biting off some pieces. Can you imagine the pain? I certainly can’t.

I read of this case in NY where a father turned up the stereo and then cut her girl’s genitals with a steak knife.

This is what women are….a piece of meat?

A book I read which is the autobiography of Waris Dirie, a Somail nomad becoming a super model…talks about her experience with FGM. She wrote that it would take her 10 minutes to pee just because the hole was only big enough for one drop to be let out at a time. Many women who have undergone FGM experience extreme pain during their period and you can imagine the complications during child birth.

Now I don’t want to portray that all women undergo this under force. Young girls in many parts of the world pester their mothers about undergoing this procedure because they want to be considered grown women and clean and obviously to be considered marriageable. They boast about how small their hole is.

And all this for what? To keep a woman chaste? For man’s pleasure?

Can you imagine the pain the woman goes through the first time she has sex? Isn’t that violence? A man is likely to cut her with a sharp object and then penetrate right after……this makes me want to castrate men.

Issues like these are rampant when among refugees in this part of the world and this is by no means the only thing refugee women have to face, and also this isn’t only a refugee issue….

posted by mir @ 5:24 AM