I will represent today on BBC Radio and TV!!!

7/22/2014

Be a part of the conversation Tuesday, July 22nd "BBC World Have Your Say" Programme on UK Girls' Empowerment Summit....I will!!! Watch it live on Friday, July 25th!! Check my website for more details later this week (www.fuambaisiaahmadu.com).

4 Comments

Mike

7/23/2014 08:50:34 am

Desperately disappointed and disgusted at your treatment by the BBC, which totally failed in its duty to report impartially. The presenter did not even take the trouble to state your name correctly, allowed other participants to shout you down before you had even made your first point, and then cut you off from any further contribution. A truly tragic demonstration of the irrational, hysterical, "group think" which characterises the anti-FGM activists and makes them immediately try to suppress any alternative views which they do not wish to hear. It is seriously concerning that such an extremist group of activists should be dominating the media, national and international policies, while the silent majority of circumcised women feel unable to challenge the exaggerations and lies for fear of criminal prosecution if they express their contrasting views and experience. A similar phenomenon led to the atrocities of Nazi Germany, we have seen it in many other situations, and it persists today in the domination of some Muslim societies by extremist terrorists. It is truly dangerous, and can only be prevented by the silent majority standing up and forcefully expressing its views.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and maybe the only way to argue with such fanatics is to avoid any detailed discussion which requires an ability for rational thought, and to attack them directly and crudely, e.g. "I am a circumcised member of Bondo at my own choice. I found the experience empowering, as did most of my circumcised friends. I enjoy the aesthetic and hygienic benefits, which have improved my body image and self-confidence. I have an active and very satisfying sex life, and I have much more important concerns than whether I can quickly masturbate to orgasm. How dare you, as an uncircumcised woman from another country, say 'we must do something about Sierra Leone' ".

chile

9/26/2015 05:18:33 am

But the guests on the BBC program weren't extremists. They were mostly women who had been hurt and traumatised by their own FGM. How come so many women are willing to say FGM hurt me, but not many are willing to say it helped them?

You say that Bondo culture teaches women to be empowered and strong: if these women are empowered and strong enough that they are not dominated by patriarchy, how could they be dominated by the dominant western anti-FGM discourse?

Fuambai Ahmadu link

9/28/2015 11:24:18 am

Hi Chile,

The vast majority of affected women who have taken part in studies of all sorts uphold their support for female circumcision. For the most part, the views and experiences of these women are dismissed by those who compile and interpret these studies as well as the global mainstream media. However, those women who talk about being hurt and traumatized are given a global platform to represent the majority of affected women. The fact is (as with male circumcision) not all women and girls experience circumcision in the same way.

In answer to your second question, patriarchy in the traditional political structures of countries like Sierra Leone is counterbalanced by matriarchy, which is what Bondo represents. To the extent that dominant western anti-FGM discourse is primarily promulgated by better resourced and economically powerful women from western countries, African women who practice female circumcision are definitely at a disadvantage when it comes to asserting their rights and their own perspectives.

Henry

3/24/2018 07:16:08 am

The ancient Abrahamic "circum-cision" is not an "around-cut" that removes the entire prepuce (foreskin and inner membrane). It is, as the Hebrew (Semitic) word signifies, a "clip" or shortening of the very tip of the flaccid prepuce. If "circumcision" had been restricted to this little opposition would have arisen.
If female "circumcision" had been restricted to the removal of only the clitoral glans and shaft, likewise the opposition would be minimal. It is the gross extremes, the removal of all visible external genital parts and sewing-shut, that is used to stir up such opposition to even a pinprick of the prepuce (hood).

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I will represent today on BBC Radio and TV!!!

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