This is the beginning

I’m going on a journey into the unknown and I want you to join me as I face challenges and miracles.

I’m not climbing Kilimanjaro or hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. My journey is not as physically gruelling as those heroic feats. Mine is a journey of the mind and heart; a journey with a goal, not for personal achievement, but to make a contribution to others.   

I am documenting my journey in this blog called Humanity Matters. Throughout my career as a journalist I’ve written about what matters; Family Matters, Relationship Matters, Health Matters, Travel Matters, Midlife Matters. And all these subjects really did matter at different stages of my life.

However as I approach 60, I’ve arrived at a vantage point where one subject concerns me deeply and urgently: the suffering of humanity. I am gripped by a passionate desire to work to reduce suffering and increase joy.

I want to live a life of purpose and meaning and I want to Make a Difference - a positive one – to the lives of others. When this desire took hold five years ago, I lacked focus. I did some volunteer work in Ghana in 2012. My efforts were well intentioned but generalised and undirected. There are so many worthy causes and charities to work for, I wanted to embrace them all.

Then two years later I started asking myself the question, ‘If I could pick one worthy cause to champion, what would it be?’ And ‘Bingo’ I got the answer.    

I’ve long been horrified by the shocking human rights violation, the vicious crime against the innocent, the ultimate form of child abuse – the deliberate maiming of millions of little girls through the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM).

I researched and wrote about the subject for over two years to understand the complex issues and to discover the most effective way to put an end to an entrenched custom that dates back 2000 years that condemns little girls to an unimaginable trauma and a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Can you imagine 8000 girls a day, that’s three million girls a year, are subjected to FGM around the world. Tragically 30 million girls in the next 10 years will be maimed if we do not stop this crime. Already 200 million women are living with the horrendous health consequences of being cut as a child.

That’s when I discovered the work of pioneering American educator Molly Melching, who while living in Senegal for many years developed an innovative program of empowerment for girls and women.

Her work, through the charity Tostan, is so successful; I want to join her team to introduce the life-changing program across Africa. 

“Tostan” is a Wolof word meaning the hatching of an egg, the precise moment the chick emerges from the shell. The evocative word expresses the essence of ‘break through’ and ‘new life’.

And I am inspired. I want to stop FGM – not just from a safe distance – but on the ground – in the country where a rusty razor blade is used on tender flesh on a daily basis.

And so I am setting off on a journey next week – a slightly courageous one - to Senegal in West Africa to be trained in Molly’s method with the big dream of taking the Tostan program to remote villages throughout East Africa.

This is a heavy, disturbing issue and it would be easy to feel outraged with anger and bitterness that fuel a fire in the belly against this child abuse and the old women who inflict it, the mothers who allow it and the patriarchal social system that demands that ‘brides be clean’.

However I would rather be motivated by conviction; to be inspired by what I stand for, which promotes value (while anger devalues). And what I stand for is empowering women in Africa; human rights and social justice; protecting children; humanitarian work and compassion and kindness.

Do you stand for these values? Will you join me on my journey of discovery and read my posts because Humanity Matters; it really does.

The Ultimate Feminist Issue

The mother of feminism, the provocative author of the 1970 classic, The Female Eunuch, the eternally controversial Germaine Greer has missed the most important feminist issue of our times.

Victims of Female Genital Mutilation have suffered actual, not figurative, castration. The 200 million women around the world who have been subjected to this horrific abuse are the real Female Eunuchs.

The word ‘eunuch’ refers to men who have been castrated by having their testicles cut off. It was a cruel practice first inflicted by rulers in ancient civilisations to create impotent, docile servants and has continued for centuries as a means of subjugation.

Castration means removal of the testicles, where the male sex hormone, testosterone, is produced. Male cattle, horses, dogs and other domesticated animals are castrated to make them infertile.

Boys have also been castrated in Italian operatic circles, to keep their singing voices in the upper register. These castrated boys are often called eunuchs or ‘castrati’.

Castration can occur by accident such as war injuries, pelvic crushing from car crashes or severe burns. The cruel practice can be inflicted as a form of torture, punishment, or self-mutilation. Or sadly, the loss of testicles can happen through surgery for medical conditions such as testicular cancer or prostate cancer.

Clever Germaine Greer hijacked the word ‘eunuch’ for the title of her iconoclastic book to refer to docile, disempowered women in the Western world; socially conditioned females who are pale imitations of men.

In typical Greer style she used the term ‘female eunuch’ for maximum shock value for complacent readers in rich countries.

However did our revered feminist scholar miss the tragic irony?

The widespread practice of cutting off the clitoris and labia of little girls throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia and many other countries is a reality, not a literary device.

Shockingly 8000 girls are cut every day, totally three million a year, resulting in death from shock, blood loss and infection and the girls who suffer are sentenced to a lifetime of suffering and health problems. Urination, menstruation, sexual intercourse and childbirth are a source of pain.

These real-life Female Eunuchs have had their womanhood and sexuality damaged so they experience no sexual pleasure or orgasm.

They live with the memory of the trauma. They are permanently maimed and truly disempowered. 

These ‘cut’ women require feminists’ passionate attention; the perpetrators require feminists’ outrage and the 8000 innocent girls at risk of FGM every day require feminists’ fierce protection.

While feminists in the developed world debate issues of bras, make-up and high heels, equal pay, workplace harassment, the glass ceiling and female CEOs in the boardroom, women across Africa, Asia, the Middle East not only face each day without the basics of enough food, clean water, sanitation, education and jobs, they suffer continual pain from having their genitals mutilated as children.

Stopping FGM is a feminist issue worth fighting for. There are many other real feminist issues in poor countries such as sex slavery where young girls are forced into prostitution and used and abused by creepy sex tourists; child marriage where young girls are forced to marry and have sex with old men, child labour, slave labour and exploited labour producing all those shiny consumer goods so cheaply available in the US, UK, Europe and Australia, the privileged part of the world. These human rights abuses are built on abject poverty and deprivation made possible through inequality and social injustice.

Other human rights abuses inflicted on women deny women freedom of speech, movement, dress, sexuality, ownership, education and employment.

This kind of oppression and control by men in certain cultures is based on a sinister power over women. Subjugation.

And then there is the ultimate abuse against humanity – war - another invention by the powerful to kill and harm the innocent for profit. Weapons of war are big business.

The brilliant book Half the Sky is the new feminist manifesto. Authors, Nicholas D Kristof and Scheryl Wudunn explore in depth how men in power exploit, control and abuse the impoverished women and children of the world.

After extensive research, the authors claim: “In the 19^th century the central moral challenge we faced was slavery. In the 20^th it was the battle against totalitarianism. In the 21^st century it is the struggle for equality for women and their daughters around the world.”

Half the Sky reveals some mind-boggling statistics: “More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the 20^th century. 

More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20^th century.”

The authors identify three main abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence such as honour killing and mass rape and the crime of FGM and maternal mortality which claims the life of one woman every minute.

“One million children are forced into prostitution every year and the total number of prostituted children could be as high as 10 million. They are held captive and used by vicious pimps as sex slaves. 

Gender-based violence is ubiquitous in the developing world, inflicting more casualties than war, cancer, malaria and other diseases combined. Rape of teenage girls is a tradition in Africa, used to shame, humiliate and control.

It is common in Asia for men to throw sulphuric acid in the face of girls or women who spurn them. The acid melts the skin and bones and if it hits the eyes will blind her. This is the depth of misogyny that keeps women living in fear and oppression.

Violating a daughter by gang rape is used to punish a whole family in the Middle East. “Or sometimes it takes the form of honour killing, in which a family kills one of its own girls because she has behaved immodestly or fallen in love with a man…the paradox of honour killings is that societies with the most rigid moral codes end up sanctioning behaviour that is supremely immoral: murder.”   

Obstetric fistula is another widespread affliction for women across Africa. “No one can fathom the sadistic cruelty of soldiers who use sticks to tear apart a woman’s insides.

“But there is a milder, more diffuse cruelty of indifference, and it is global indifference that leaves some three million women suffering fistulas due to rape and obstructed labour and lack of medical care during childbirth.”

Half the Sky is a catalogue of horrors inflicted on women and it makes tough reading however the book is infused with hope and optimism outlining inspiring success stories of women saved through humanitarian medical care and empowered through education, and freed from poverty and misogyny, cruelty and oppression.

Right at the outset of this astonishing book, the authors are transparent, writing this plea: “We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts.”

I’m signing up to join the “fight” against these horrendous issues. And I will start with the ultimate feminist issue, the one the Mother of Feminism missed, stopping the crime of female eunuchs. When we stop FGM we will empower women and empowered women will change the world.

This is personal

I was a happy little girl, brimming with joy (coz that was my middle name), curiosity (how did those daffodils suddenly appear out of the ground?) and trust (I could rely on grown-ups to look after me).

At seven in Grade Two, I could cover my own exercise books; first the brown paper, neat corners, sticky tape, then a cheerful picture from an old greeting card stuck on with clag and finally a layer of smooth plastic. I was so good at this, my friend Leonie wanted me to cover her books too. That made me incredibly pleased with myself.

I could hardly wait for Old Miss McConky to read another chapter of The Magic Faraway Tree every afternoon. One sunny day after school Cheryl asked me to go to her house because she had some nail polish. We could paint our nails. I’d never done that before!

Giggling with excitement we raced across the park. But my secure little life was about to change. I was about to lose my innocence. There was a man in a car driving really slowly and smiling at me. At ME! Not Cheryl! It was ME he liked and I smiled back, blonde fringe and dimples and pretty dress.

That was the day I was molested by a stranger; the day I started to believe I was dirty and there was something wrong with me. It was my secret. I was a good girl on the outside but I was bad inside, full of guilt, full of shame. It was my fault because I was so silly to get in his car. And then there were the nightmares. He was coming through the window to kill me with a knife, or a gun. I would scream and climb into bed with mum, sobbing and trembling.

This is why I understand and empathise, with every fibre of my being, what it’s like to be a happy little girl skipping along enjoying childhood innocence and then suddenly one act, just one single trauma, changes you, shames you, forever. 

The little girl in Africa, dark skin, tight curls, beautiful smile, big brown eyes, is dancing through the desert dust to class to learn and sing and laugh. After school she helps her mummy make family meals and she plays with her pet goat. One day this sweet child is taken to a terrifying secret place, held down, her tiny legs are forced apart and her tender parts sliced off with a razor blade, blood gushing, the wound sealed with thorns, the pain swamps her body and crushes her heart, destroying her trust forever.

In this troubled world, there are so many problems to solve, so much cruelty to stop, so many worthy causes to champion. Which one will I choose? The issue of female genital mutilation breaks my heart and outrages my mind because I was once an innocent little girl who suffered a life-changing trauma too.

My experience of being molested was traumatic but doesn’t compare in magnitude to the extreme trauma of being mutilated. If the little African girl survives the shock, the blood loss and infection, she will suffer for the rest of her life; every time she wees it hurts, and later, every time she menstruates is agony. Having sex with her husband will be excruciating, not pleasure. And childbirth; a horrendous, life-threatened ordeal.

8000 girls a day are subjected to FGM; three million girls a year globally. 200 million women around the world live with the post traumatic emotional and physical damage of being mutilated as children. Yes this is a cause that demands attention. Our genitals are a source of power. Female empowerment depends on stopping this violent crime.

There’s another reason I can relate to this disturbing issue, even though I’m a pale-faced, mature-aged woman who grew up in suburban Australia and is now living in rural England, not a remote village in Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan or Kenya.

For 12 years, after giving birth to my second child, I suffered undiagnosed endometriosis. Every month I was incapacitated with overwhelming menstrual pain until a hysterectomy at 44 ended my roller coaster of suffering.

Now I want to join the fight to stop the needless suffering of other women because a lifetime of pain is preventable. Empowerment is possible. The empowerment of future generations of women all over the world begins with the end of this widespread, disempowering abuse.

Of all the worthy causes in this troubled world, stopping FGM is a cause worth fighting for. Will you join the fight to protect innocent little girls from the worst form of child abuse?              

Dispelling the Myths

 The white businessman joked: “The campaign to stop Female Genital Mutilation is a fight to Save the Clitoris!”

I was horrified and struck dumb! I wanted to retort: “Well it’s not really about saving a body part. We are fighting to save little girls from the horrendous trauma of being deliberately maimed which causes them to suffer for the rest of their lives.”

Girls who are “circumcised” at a young age – they can be defenceless babies or toddlers or sweet fun-loving kids of seven or eight – suffer shock, massive blood loss and infection that can kill them. If they survive the assault they suffer on a daily basis - every time they wee is painful and later they suffer agony with every menstrual period.

When a girl is married off, the husband forces himself on his “pure, virginal bride” and sex is an agonising ordeal for her. Pain during intercourse continues for life. 

Normal childbirth is painful enough, but for a circumcised woman childbirth is excruciating and risks multiple complications for the baby and mother; one being the appalling condition of obstetric fistula when the vaginal wall is torn and the woman is forced to live with leakage, causing shame and ostracism. 

In her latest book, Saving Safa, leading anti-FGM activist, Waris Dirie writes about her meeting with paediatrician Dr Emma Acina who treats countless victims of FGM in her clinic in Djibouti.

Dr Acina says: “You can’t imagine the awful injuries I see here every day: little girls with chronic inflammation of the vagina, bladder and kidneys; girls with tumours the size of tennis balls growing on scar tissue that just keeps spreading; young women unable to pass urine and others whose mutilation has made them incontinent; young children who can’t get a wink of sleep because of the pain.“

The white woman quipped: “If you go to Africa to try to stop FGM you won’t be popular with the men!”

Again I was shocked and struck dumb and floundered in my response. I wanted to express my indignation. “Don’t you know anything about FGM! How could you trivialise this outrageous crime against innocent children! My motivation to campaign against FGM is not about my popularity!

However her uninformed comment got me thinking about the male perspective. Wouldn’t a husband want a healthy, happy wife – a woman who had not had her vagina mutilated – who could enjoy making love and experiencing orgasm and sharing the pleasure of sex as part of a loving, equal, respectful relationship? Aren’t there benefits for men too in saving women from this atrocity? Loving sex should not be enmeshed with pain, female submission and male dominance.

Some white academics theorise, ensconced in their ivory towers, that white “outsiders” should not meddle with the customs of other cultures.

This attitude makes me so furious I can barely speak. I want to say to these academics: “What if a culture had the custom to cut off a child’s arm – to deliberately maim the child for life? Would we standby and accept it as their right to practise a custom? Or we would consider cutting off children’s arms a shocking crime to be stopped at all costs?

The passive attitude of acceptance is the stance of the Enabler on the Abuse Triangle; turning a blind eye to the Perpetrator’s abuse of the Victim. 

Slicing off girls’ genitals against their will is not some eccentric custom like ear piercing or body tattoos, which are personal choices and mostly harmless.

FGM is a violent crime, extreme child abuse and a human rights violation that goes beyond a cultural custom. This atrocity is a global issue that demands “outside” intervention to protect innocent children in the same way international charities intervene in suffering countries with humanitarian aid.

The point is, the international community should not tolerate the harmful practices of insular cultures. When anyone breaks the law and commits what widespread humanity considers a crime (doing harm to another human being) we need Zero Tolerance.

We need top-down legislation that views FGM as a crime and condemns the custom, with legal consequences for perpetrators; the old women welding rusty razor blades and their accomplices who drag little girls from their beds into secret places to hold them down while 'the cutter' hacks away at tender flesh and then closes the wound with thorns.

To stop these acts of unimaginable cruelty, we also need a dynamic “bottom-up” widespread education movement that works in villages at the grassroots level to challenge and change the “social norms” that keep the practice going from one generation to the next.

We need intervention to break the generational cycle so that the trauma inflicted on the grandmother and mother is not inflicted on the daughter because cutting has been “normalised” as something we have always done (as if tradition imbues abuse with dignity and merit.)

However the way “outside help” is given is important; not in a patronising, superior, forceful way but in an equal, respectful collaborative partnership, where white women join with their black sisters, united as women (regardless of colour) and as human beings (regardless of nationalities and cultures) offering the benefits of the knowledge, skills and resources we have to share to empower girls and women.

“Outsiders” from the developed world need to work alongside women in other cultures, in a respectful collaboration as equal partners in the cause, not in a rescuing and patronising way, to create deep and lasting cultural change. We need to change a collective mind set, not easy but possible.

Superstitions such as the belief that circumcision makes a girl clean, chaste and marriageable need to be challenged by rationality and education about female anatomy and the permanent damage to physical and mental health caused by FGM. We need to educate about human rights and gender politics so families and communities learn to trust and respect their womenfolk and not attempt to control them out of shame of sexuality and fear of female empowerment.

Outsiders like me who are passionate about this cause want to empower women and men and children in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and other countries where this atrocity is carried out against 8000 innocent girls every day; that’s three million a year; 30 million victims in the next ten years if we do not intervene to break the generational cycle.

According to UNICEF 150 million girls and women worldwide are living with the terrible effects of FGM. We want to stop this shocking statistic from increasing. We want to end FGM and consign it to the horrors of history.

The atrocity is embedded in the concrete of poverty. Charities, NGOs and governments must assist communities to break free from the injustice of poverty – to partner in food growing, supplying clean water and sanitation, decent housing, school for kids, jobs for men and women and medical facilities – the basics of life we all deserve – for villages across Africa and other countries.

It can never be acceptable to maim little girls so they are considered “clean” to fetch a good “bride price” from husbands. The enticement of a bride payment for their daughters should never be the way to ease the burden of crushing poverty.

What really enrages me is that this lifelong disability is caused deliberately.

Parents everywhere experience a heart breaking tragedy when their baby is born with an illness or disability and can blame the unfairness of fate.

However when a child is deliberately maimed for life how can we comfort ourselves? Such a disability can be prevented. And it’s up to you and me to be outraged and fired up to save innocent children from such indefensible cruelty.

Today I sponsored one little girl and her family through the Desert Flower Foundation to save her from FGM and transform her life. That’s one less victim, a drop in the ocean of suffering. However if we all saved one little girl...well...imagine…we could dry up that blood red ocean of suffering forever.

Read Waris Dirie’s heart-wrenching books, Desert Flower, Desert Dawn, Desert Children and Saving Safa and see her triumphant film, Desert Flower.