“I wonder how I would have looked at my body if I wasn’t cut.”
My mother doesn’t remember what age I was cut. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about it, because of guilt, or regret, or because she watched her baby girl go through such barbaric torture.
But this is not about what my mother remembers or what she feels. This is about how I feel and how I look at myself now. And how I would have looked at myself as a “complete” woman.
FGM took something from me. It wasn’t just a piece
of flesh. It was my autonomy, my freedom, my choice. Parts of me have been taken forever. And I still look at myself as an incomplete woman, a product of patriarchal violence.
So what if I wasn’t cut? What if I had been allowed to be a child who grew up free from violence? What if I had been allowed to grow up complete, without being molded into a “good woman”?
They say cutting keeps girls pure. It keeps them safe. It makes them good. It did none of that for me.
Being subjected to FGM didn’t stop men from preying on me. It didn’t stop my uncle from abusing me. It didn’t stop my teacher from abusing me. It didn’t stop my colleague at work from abusing me. It didn’t stop them from touching me!
So what if my mother had protected me in other ways? What if she had been more honest with me about sex? What if she had told me who to trust and who not to? What if she had taught me about consent? What if she had taught me about choice? What if she had given me a safer space to use my voice?
FGM was sexual assault against me. My mother doesn’t have the right to allow someone to touch and tamper with my genitalia. No one does.
And the sexual assault didn’t stop in the circumcision hut when I was 3 or 4 or maybe 5… it continued when I was 7, 8, and then 20… until I stopped listening to the old woman’s voice, who told me to be quieter, tame, softer.
I can’t get back what was taken. But I can name it for what it was. And I can fight so that the girls who come after me are protected the way I should have been: with honesty, with knowledge, with the right to say no, and with a safe space to use their voices.
