Sneak Peek at SiA Magazine - Fall 2016

I am very excited!  Finally, since the launch of the  promotional issue nearly two years ago, the New SiA Magazine kickstarts regular quarterly production in just a few weeks in Freetown, Sierra Leone.  

We are eternally grateful to the everyday women and men from all over the world who believe in our message. Thanks so much for your generous donations $20, $50, $100 to thousands of dollars from those who could afford it. To these big sponsors who will remain nameless and faceless...thanks for believing in us. I hope we do not disappoint!

The Fall 2016 issue promises to be controversial - we are after all breaking taboos, challenging stereotypes, and laying it all bare for the world to see and judge!  

WHO defines Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as "complete or partial removal of external female genitalia...for non-medical reasons."  This very broad definition is used by anti-FGM activists to describe only the bodily practices of African and other non-western females entirely while the same practices affecting white, western women and girls are classified as Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery (FGCS).

Well, in this Fall 2016 issue we challenge hidden presumptions about white privilege that underlie distinctions between FGCS and FGM.  For our donor partners in Sierra Leone who want to spend millions of pounds to eliminate so-called FGM and impose criminal legislation against practitioners, we ask them to show us the moral and aesthetic difference between labiaplasty, clitoropexy or clitoroplasty and WHO Type II Excision performed within Bondo. For those individuals in Sierra Leone who insist that Bondo women must report the benefits of their procedures, this special issue provides more than ample pictorial evidence of the aesthetic, health and hygiene benefits enjoyed by affluent, educated white women and adolescent girls themselves who undergo identical operations.  For those who say the difference is about consent, we're happy to have that conversation too.  For the many who still believe that somehow white, western women are more autonomous and inherently more capable of making choices about their own bodies, I don't have much to say. I was brought up by my African father and mother to believe that I am equal to any man or woman that breathes the same air I breathe. 

On behalf of our editorial team, 

Fuambai Sia Ahmadu, PhD
Editor in-Chief, SiA Magazine