Introducing The New SiA Magazine

2/6/2014

Most Sierra Leoneans and Africans in general probably are unaware that today, February 6th, was years ago declared "International Zero-Tolerance For Female Genital Mutilation Day".

On this day, February 6th 2014, we are delighted to announce the New SiA Magazine - now called SiA and the Shabaka Stone. The New SiA Magazine is the first of its kind to boldly celebrate Bondo or Sande, our traditional women's associations in Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa. The New SiA Magazine is the first of its kind to boldly defend the rights and dignity of our mothers and grandmothers, our female ancestors and our powerful African spirit.

The New SiA Magazine is the first to focus on raising awareness about the traumatic psychosexual impact of anti-FGM campaigns, racist images and dubious youtube videos that graphically parade, shame and demonize circumcised African girls and women.

The New SiA Magazine is the first of its kind to challenge the racist singling out of circumcised African girls and women as "coerced" and "mutilated" while white European, American, Canadian, Australian and other western girls and women "freely" request and undergo so-called female genital "cosmetic" surgeries. We challenge the sexist hypocrisy that male infants and children can undergo "circumcision" for religious, cultural or hygienic reasons but the tiniest cut on an African girl is condemned as barbaric "mutilation" and child abuse.

In our promo video attached, The New SiA Magazine confronts these vile images of circumcised African women and labels them for the sexualized, voyeuristic, racist and colonialist propaganda they represent. We counter these backward images with positive representations of the resilience of African people, circumcised and uncircumcised, when we are oppressed.

The New SiA Magazine is a declaration to radical anti-FGM activists that there is no battle waged yet that can defeat the African Spirit.

Enjoy the promo, be troubled by it, but above all have the courage to "like" it and "share".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E-e8fik0tg

9 Comments

Mike

2/6/2014 08:21:08 am

It is a delight and a relief to see some new material on this excellent website after such a long time – and clearly the time has been well spent. Congratulations, Fuambai, on this courageous, highly significant, and long overdue initiative. May it mark a turning point by bringing an element of balance into a public discourse dominated by biased and misinformed media presentations and pronouncements from police and prosecution services which are more reminiscent of a medieval witch-hunt than of a supposedly tolerant multi-cultural society.
But Ladies, Fuambai can lead but she cannot do this alone. She needs the support of the “silent majority” of circumcised women who share her views but are prevented from expressing them by the fear and repression generated by Western anti-FGM campaigners and lawmakers. She needs and deserves support not only from the African “modern Bondo woman”, but also from women in other cultures with similar experience. And most of all, taking a global perspective rather than a primarily African one, she needs the support of Western women who have adopted and been accepted into circumcising cultures and therefore, like Fuambai herself, can relate true “before and after” experiences.
Please let us know when Sia Magazine will appear, and how we can subscribe to it.

Fuambai Ahmadu

2/7/2014 06:15:57 am

Thanks for the kind words Mike and encouragement. It does feel like a Medieval witch-hunt and many circumcised women and girls are living in fear of this persecution in England, France and many other western countries.

We have a long way to go and many friends to make in this struggle - SiA magazine is just one of many steps we will make to advance our basic human rights to equality, dignity and self-determination.

Tatania Packer

2/7/2014 06:18:06 am

Asking people, and especially women around the world to "support" and tolerate the cultural practice of FGM is akin to asking us to accept Sati, the Hindu practice of burning Indian widows in funeral pyres, or the proliferation of prepubescent Dancing Boys among male-only gatherings in Afghanistan, or the age-old torturous binding of Chinese women's feet that occurred for centuries (and done willingly at that), which Christian colonists also lobbied to ban at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Chinese eventually outlawed in 1911. And just because something has been ritualistically practiced for hundreds of years doesn't necessarily make it ethical, or humane, or, more importantly, justifiable. The Jewish and Islamic practice of male infant circumcision is also barbaric, and while no written documentation of it exists requiring it to be performed on either male or female infants in their ancient texts, we're supposed to believe that the male foreskin is some ritualistic offering or sacrifice, or as this Israeli judge recently decreed: “Removal of the foreskin prepares the soul [of the baby] to accept the yoke of Heaven and study God’s Torah and commandments.” Wow!!!!! [The mother is still being fined $140.00 for refusing to force her infant to undergo the circumcision while all the so-called experts profess her son will suffer a lifetime of personal shame for having his penis intact: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php... ] I did read your article, by the way, and thank you for providing well-researched historical and factual information and context [ in particular: "One thing that western feminists need to understand is that the original ideology that supports these practices among peoples of Mande or Nubian descent is profoundly matriarchal and not patriarchal, in contrast with the Abrahamic traditions." Excellent point there. ] Education on a global scale is key.

Fuambai Ahmadu

2/7/2014 07:13:07 am

Hi again Tatania, as I mentioned to you on facebook, the message and video I posted was aimed at circumcised women and girls who contest the label FGM as an ethnocentric, racist and sexist concept imposed on us - whether as an outsider you "support" or tolerate what you call FGM is up to you.

Also I stated that FGM, as WHO defines it, is happening right here in the US, Britain and other western countries mainly among educated, well-to-do white women and underage white girls. Only these are called "designer vaginas", "female genital cosmetic surgeries", clitoroplasty, clitoroplexy, labiaplasty and any number of more aesthetic or clinical sounding names. In Britain and Australia so-called labiaplasties are even paid for by the NHS with some in the medical community only now making recommendations to end this.
And when you do click on the link please note how polite, respectful and restrained the article is when talking about operations on the vaginas of white girls in contrast to the imagery of "coercion" and "mutilation" used to describe non-white girls by the British media.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24942981

What our movement is against is the racism and denial of basic human rights of circumcised women to equality, dignity and self-determination - rights that you enjoy and take for granted everyday.

Western feminists - and if you include yourself here this applies to you - would be far more convincing and less hypocritical if they would bring the anti-FGM battle to their own doorsteps. How is it okay for the NHS in the UK to pay for underage girls getting "labiaplasties" and for gynecologists and plastic surgeons to perform clitoral reductions on British women - both procedures are performed by our traditional excisers in Sierra Leone - but then criminalize and demonize the customary circumcision of African girls and women?

As for "Christian colonists" being the righteous judges and civilizers of the rest of the world...as both a Christian and a descendant of the colonized I just have to say you're on own with that one.

Thanks for your reply and having the courage to speak your mind.

Hannah link

3/1/2014 04:22:15 am

There needs to be an important differention: If an adult woman decides out of her free will and without societal pressure to have a genital cosmetic surgery or a circumcision, this should be her own business. But in Anti-FGM campaigns we are not talking about adult women, we are talking about children, sometimes babies. This is child abuse and must be fought just as child labor, child pornography etc. Would it be racist if a European woman campaigns against child pornography in Thailand? Or wouldn't it be much more racist if she says: Oh, that's their culture.

Fuambai Ahmadu link

3/1/2014 08:41:57 am

Hi Hannah and thanks very much for your response. This gives me an opportunity to make clear to you and others why I say anti-FGM campaigns are racist and sexist. The WHO definition of FGM "comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". As it is now this definition only applies to African or non-western women and girls. Western women and girls - mainly white - undergo "procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia" and these are even covered by the national health systems in Europe, Australia and Canada to name a few.

These procedures include what is popularly referred to as labiaplasty, but also procedures the media does not report on, such as clitoroplexy (clitoral hood removal or reduction) and clitoroplasty (clitoral reduction) as well as combinations of these procedures, which are anatomically equivalent to the procedures African or non-white women undergo as part of our cultural traditions. These procedures for white women and girls (as young as 10 and 11) are referred to as "female genital cosmetic surgeries" or FGCS and are perfectly legal even if some question the ethical basis of such practices. Like white women and girls who undergo so-called FGCS, most African women and girls view their genital modifications as aesthetic improvements and not "injury".

The WHO definition of FGM must by definition also apply to so-called FGCS, however, there continues to be a legal and ethical differentiation between these similar practices. Defenders of the distinction usually stress that FGM is "dangerous" or involves "non-consenting" minors, as you have just described Hannah. However, the highest quality medical and empirical evidence does not support either assertion. We know through controlled studies that there is very little variation in reproductive and sexual health outcomes between circumcised and uncircumcised women and there is ample documentation that white adolescent and pre-adolescent girls in Britain and other western countries undergo external genital surgeries for non-medical reasons. So, if the health consequences of FGM are exaggerated and FGCS also includes minor girls, why is there a continued distinction between these practices?

One might argue that FGCS takes place in clinical, medicalized settings and that this is less dangerous or more humane. Even if this were true (and there is no medical evidence yet to suggest that female genital surgeries performed in clinics are safer than those performed in traditional or non-clinical settings), the WHO definition of FGM does not discriminate between where and how a procedure on the external female genitalia is performed. Further, in most western countries, adult African or non-white women are denied any form of genital surgeries for aesthetic or other cultural reasons. And, in all cases medicalization of so-called traditional surgeries preferred by African or non-white women is prohibited by WHO.

One might argue also that FGM involves coercion while FGCS is freely chosen. However, the WHO definition makes no reference to agency (or lack thereof) with respect to "the partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia". We know (and so does WHO) from survey after survey in country after country that the vast majority of African or non-white women and girls the global media has come to define as "mutilated" are in favor of the continuation of customary female genital surgeries. We also know that white women and girls freely choose genital surgeries to improve the appearance and structure of their external genitalia.

Therefore, there is no reason to automatically presume that African or non-white women and girls are lying or brainwashed - that they are actually coerced - while white women and girls exercise free choice. Unless, of course, African or non-white women and girls are seen as inherently incapable of exercising free choice or coming from societies that prevent them from doing so. In both cases we would be making assumptions based on race, ethnic, religious, socio-economic, cultural and geographic differences, which is problematic and also has no relevance to the WHO definition of FGM that clearly focuses on physical descriptions only.

For these reasons - that FGM applies to and criminalizes only African or non-white women and girls while FGCS legitimizes very similar procedures for white or "western" women and girls - anti-FGM campaigns are racist and ethnocentric.

As for the sexism in the term FGM, this too is obvious. Genital surgeries on males - adults and children - are perfectly legal and not officially referred to as "mutilations" even though there is a growing number of detractors and campaigners against these practices. Let me add that there is no medical evidence that supports the idea that male circumcision is less harmful, less painful, l

Fuambai Ahmadu link

3/1/2014 08:44:04 am

As for the sexism in the term FGM, this too is obvious. Genital surgeries on males - adults and children - are perfectly legal and not officially referred to as "mutilations" even though there is a growing number of detractors and campaigners against these practices. Let me add that there is no medical evidence that supports the idea that male circumcision is less harmful, less painful, less traumatic etc. than female circumcision practices. Also, there are no distinctions made between traditional or customary male circumcision versus those procedures that are hospital based.

In terms of your analogy with child pornography in Thailand - the answer should also be obvious. The definition of what constitutes child pornography (whether one agrees with it or not) is applied globally without regard to cultural, racial or gender differences. What we are against and African Women are Free to Choose is organizing to contest is the racism and sexism that underlies anti-FGM campaigns. We stand for the equality of African women and girls with western or white women and girls as well as men and boys globally. We resist the singling out of African women and girls as "mutilated" as well as the criminalizing and policing of only our bodies with respect to non-medical genital surgeries. The notion of FGM is a discriminatory one - an outright breach of our basic human rights to equality, dignity and self-determination. Ours is not an argument about child rights versus parental prerogatives or cultural rights versus human rights but an insistence that universal human rights must be in fact and practice, universal.

Mike

3/2/2014 07:53:13 am

There certainly needs to be differentiation in several dimensions, considering adult versus child, medical versus traditional, and the wide variation in types of circumcision and their very different effects. It seems eminently reasonable that an adult woman should be free to request genital surgery exactly as she can request cosmetic or other elective surgery on many other parts of her body, however in many Western countries this is almost impossible unless she is able to pay extortionate fees for very simple and limited operations. Lawmakers and the medical profession have been so terrorised by the Anti-FGM campaigns, based largely on gross generalisations, exaggerations, and some direct untruths, that female genitals have become regarded as sacrosanct compared with other body parts.

What is not needed in any intelligent discourse is the standard technique of Anti-FGM activists of asserting personal, culturally determined opinions as if they were absolute facts, with no consideration or respect for others who hold different opinions based on different cultural and social values. Every society includes some criminals and child abusers, who should not be tolerated, however the vast majority of parents in all societies love their children and act in what they genuinely believe to be their best interests. It is a gross insult to this overwhelming majority to label them as abusers of their own children.

Hannah

3/1/2014 10:59:17 pm

It should certainly be prohibited for underage girls to undergo cosmetic surgery - any cosmetic surgery. In Germany this is the case - such surgeries can only be done if several expert opinions come to the conclusion that without the surgery psychological damage can be done: This could be argued in rare cases for a facial operation but certainly not genitalia. But if this is not the case in other Western countries this should be a focus of campaigns in these countries.

What you are saying about African women's consent to their circumcision is definitely not true for the countries I work in: In the Middle East and Asia girls are cut usually between three and seven - in some countries newborns are cut. These babies are certainly not able to consent. What's more: In several cases, we have accounts of parents not consenting but their baby was circumcised secretly by aunts or grandmothers. In other cases parents lied to relatives that they had circumcised their daughter to protect her. I call this coercion.

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Introducing The New SiA Magazine

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