Breaking the Cycle

“Once you understand the amount of real pain, you become an activist looking at the aftermath of crime and begin to transcend the purely academic viewpoint”

–Dr. Pierre Foldes

A series of events has led me to my passion: fighting for human rights, particularly fighting against female genital mutilation (FGM). I would like to relive these events with you in the hopes that you might feel the chill of empathy, the instinct to help. The germ of this passion remained dormant in my gut until about five years ago.

The Cycle

When I was fifteen-years old, I learned that girls my age were being genitally mutilated worldwide in a high school class I took, Holocaust and Genocide. I remember my teacher, Mr. Murray, arbitrarily mentioning an alarming statistic about FGM and moving on to the next part of the lesson, as though it was nothing. The words echoed in my ears: “girls legs are pried apart and rusty knives and razors are used for circumcision.” I looked around the room, searching for expressions of shock, fear, anger, confusion that matched my own. There were none. After class, I asked my peers why they were not horrified. They explained that this malicious practice was so far away from us that there was no point in worrying. After all, we were not old enough to do anything to help and, in the meantime, we would not be affected by the practice, they said. These words blew my mind. I thought about just how vicious this cycle was; people constantly excuse themselves so that they don’t have to notice anything outside of their own lives. When we are young, we say, “We’re too young to do anything,” and as we age, we say, “It’s none of our business.”

This constant cycle of ignorance is unjust on the face of human rights. We tend to see ourselves as individuals. We are all humans, and if a fellow human is harmed in Africa, we can and should speak up in America. There is no here and there. There is simply a ‘we.’ When I was fifteen, I knew that it would be my goal to change mindsets, but I was unsure how. I wanted people to feel the pain and adrenaline that pumped through my body when I pictured a knife touching a woman’s genitals. Certainly, I would want someone in the world to care if I was being tortured. That day, I decided that, somehow, I wanted to break this cycle. Unsure of how I would do so, I continued my high school education and the impact of Mr. Murray’s words faded. I still felt an urge to do go out and do something good in the world, but that would be put on hold until four years later.

When I was nineteen-years old, my Cultural Anthropology professor at Ohio Wesleyan University mentioned FGM in his lesson. Once again, the topic was mentioned that day and forgotten by the following class time. The horror of the words hit me harder the second time, and I decided that if no one would share more than a three-minute long description with me, I would research the topic myself. I found that FGM was most commonly referred to as female circumcision, and I remembered this term. Strangely, female circumcision never sounded quite so bad. It actually sounded like men’s circumcision, something generally accepted, and that’s what I had understood it to be all these years. I was sorely mistaken. I learned that FGM is a sexist crime, a violation of human rights, and leads to nothing more than complications in a woman’s body. In 2015, I wrote a research paper called “Cutting the Silence.”

"In many societies, men support FGM because their daughters will be desirable for marriage, and she will be considered a woman. A girl’s father can collect dowry in many cultures from his daughter’s marriage. Before receiving FGM, a girl is seen as young and immature, and too curious about her sexuality. With FGM, she will not have sexual desires and she will be loyal to her husband. To stop rebellious attitudes against the practice, many cultures perform FGM on girls when they are between infancy and fifteen-years old. (“Female Genital Mutilation,” 2014.) In some cultures, the practice is carried out on women. Ironically, women organize and execute the procedure. Most often, a girl’s mother and grandmother organize the procedure. (IRIN). They can decide what age the girl should be, who will perform the procedure, and where it will take place. The biggest dilemma for girls and women practicing this tradition are the harmful consequences."

(Kaillie Winston, Cutting the Silence).

When I read these facts about FGM online, in books, and in print, the warped mindset did not occur to me. Since this was considered a tradition, could you stop it? Who am I to tell another that his or her tradition is wrong? However, I learned that this is possible if a tradition violates human rights.

Making Connections

I became interested in gender roles. I loved watching the roles women and men played in different households, in different countries. During the summer of 2013, I had been an au pair in France and seen the woman stay home and cook from morning until night. I had also been in my own household, where my mother and father shared equal responsibility with the cooking. I was interested in the modern-day element of domesticity involved in a woman’s life. When I told a friend about my interests, he asked if I had heard of a woman named Dr. Tobe Levin.

Dr. Levin is a renowned journalist and editor, also known as co-founder of FORWARD Germany, a woman’s rights publication dedicated to the fight against FGM. She is also known for her translation of various French novels, her publications of authors like Alice Walker, and her new organization Un/Cut Voices Press, which is also dedicated to the fight against FGM. On a whim, I e-mailed Dr. Levin, giving her a brief bio. She wrote back immediately, and gave me one of the best opportunities I could have imagined.

For two months, Dr. Levin would tell me which city she was in – one day Tokyo, another Paris, Amsterdam, etc. But we had things in common: like me, she was a French and English Literature major. We spoke about our love for language and our passion for human rights. One day, she asked if I could come to Paris for an internship to fight FGM. This experience would be enlightening, breath taking, and inspiring; I had to take the chance. Entering my sophomore year of college, I applied for a Theory-to-Practice grant from OWU. I found myself with $6,910 to go to Paris for the summer to work on the Clitoris Restoration Fund. Dr. Levin told me I would intern amongst lawyers, journalists, sociologists, and a surgeon. Our goal on the Clitoris Restoration Fund would be to provide money to victims of FGM to be transported from their country of origin to the clinic in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where Dr. Pierre Foldes performs clitoris restoration surgery.

Breaking the Cycle

This summer, The journey began in a coffee shop, where I met the attorney with whom I would work, Lorraine Farahmand Koonce Esq. She told me that we would publicize the Clitoris Restoration Fund; we would send out emails to various organizations about the fund and organize a site for the fund. Our goal is to gather donations to fund FGM victims to receive clitoris restoration surgery. Our first stop would be Oxford, England, to meet with Dr. Tobe Levin Von Gleichen in order to establish the foundation for the fund. Next, we would go to Geneva, for the United Nations Human Rights Council Session 29 where Ms. Koonce and others would speak on the panel about the processes and challenges in ending FGM. “Oh,” she said, “and read this.” Lorraine handed me the book Undoing FGM. It was in this book that I first truly learned about my comrade on the fund, the surgeon who repairs FGM victims.

My first impression of urologist Dr. Pierre Foldes’s work was that it was ‘good.’ I understood that women undergo this torturous crime and I understood that they want what has been torn away from them. However, I failed to see Dr. Foldes’s true motivation for performing this surgery until I read about him in the book. The sole motive behind Dr. Foldes’s work is derived from empathy. There is no pressure from the urologist to go forward and perform. In fact, Dr. Foldes refuses to perform surgery until the woman has stated why she would like to have it done. Suddenly, while reading about him, I realized that Dr. Foldes is not simply doing something ‘good’ for women; he allows them to do something good for themselves.

Reading about Dr. Foldes, I discovered that he had the best possible motives of human rights advocates out there: “Once you understand the amount of real pain, you become an activist looking at the aftermath of crime and begin to transcend the purely academic viewpoint” (Foldes, Undoing FGM). This summer, I have learned that in this line of work – fighting against FGM – our goal is to change mindsets over time. Dr. Foldes patiently sits in his office and waits. When a group of excisers enter his office ready to fight, he asks why. When an African man enters holding a knife, he asks why. Then, once he has listened to them, he explains calmly why excision is bad and why he performs this surgery – to help these women feel whole again – and they listen. I realize now that I am certainly not alone in this fight against FGM, but qualified individuals surround me, individuals who will take action with the fund.

Moreover, I realized that five years ago I had a purely academic viewpoint. I did not think anything more of FGM than what I heard in class or read about online. I did not associate this practice with my neighbor, or even a character in a book. FGM did not affect me, and it was not my problem. Although it may be endearing that I cared, I still disassociated myself from the practice. This summer, I transcended the academic viewpoint by taking action through my writing for Un/Cut Voices Press and through my presence at the United Nations in Geneva. Because I have taken action, action that I will never cease to take. Consequently, I have become an activist. FGM does affect me. FGM affects the world at large because it is a global human rights issue.

This activism has taught me that my goal is changing mindsets, but I now know that I must change the mindsets of those who are not affected by FGM just as much as those who are. This is an enormous endeavor. Realistically, it is going to take much longer than my own lifetime. That day five years ago, when my peers told me there was nothing I could or should do to stop FGM is what keeps me going. It is up to individuals like me to break the cycle.

#write4good #iam4