CSA&GCSA&G

My Body and Me: Personal Reflections on the Idea of “Violence” From a Queer[1] South African Woman

/in /by

by GS Pinheiro

*Please note, this essay contains descriptions of sexual violence

In this short piece, I offer some personal thoughts and reflections around the notion of “violence”. The writing centres on my own associations with the word, and some personal instances of normative and bodily violences that I have experienced, with particular focus on my identification as a queer woman. Throughout the reflection, experiential knowledge is connected to broader ideas around gendered and sexual identities, as I contemplate some of the ways in which my personal narrative might speak to wider gender arrangements in South Africa and beyond.

Furthermore, whilst this piece is not strictly theoretical in nature, I have drawn from, and been inspired by, several feminist theories throughout the process of self-reflection, including that of intersectionality (e.g. Crenshaw, 1991) and feminist theories of the body (e.g. Cleary, 2016). Intersectionality theory offered a useful lens through which to think about my own experiences in relation to those of other queer, South African women. Within feminist circles, there is substantial debate around the notion of “experience” and, in particular, the tendency to represent all women’s experiences as homogenous is critiqued (e.g. Bachmann & Proust, 2020).

In order to problematise and address these issues, intersectionality theory takes into account different identity vectors (such as race, class, occupation, age, sexual orientation, etc.) and considers how they might relate to a person’s gender identity. Moreover, the theory recognises the situatedness of people’s identities within particular socio-political contexts, and embraces the fluidity and plurality of people’s (especially women’s) identities and realities. It thus provides a sophisticated and complex theoretical perspective on the notion of “experience”.

As I was reflecting and writing, therefore, intersectional principles encouraged a mindfulness around the idea that, whilst many queer women will be able to relate to the subject matter of my personal narration, people’s realities and identities are complex, nuanced, dynamic and unique. Especially as I am an academic who writes and works in South Africa, where people’s identities and circumstances vary widely, and where particular positions offer and/or constrain one’s access to space and other resources quite explicitly (particularly where race and class are taken into consideration), I felt it was important to acknowledge this at the outset.

The occasional reference to these, and other theories in the piece serves as a guiding framework through which to make sense of my personal reflections and self-narration. These personal modes of writing can be considered, in themselves, transformative and healing acts that have the potential to establish alternative meaning systems and voices in spaces that have traditionally been dominated by patriarchal perspectives (such as in academia, for example).

One of the core principles of feminist work is to establish spaces and opportunities for women’s experiences and voices to be prioritised, and there is thus an overt disruption of the traditional dichotomy between “academic” versus “personal” writing and research methodologies (e.g. Kiguwa, 2019). The process of self-reflection and narration that the writing of this piece entailed thus allowed me, in many ways, to hear my own voice, and my intention in sharing my experiences is not only to take up space, but to create spaces for other people to reflect on their own ideas and experiences around the theme.

I suppose it is unsurprising (but no less disconcerting) that, when asked to reflect about my personal thoughts and experiences around “violence”, some of the first ideas that come to mind are violences with which I have been confronted at normative and bodily levels. I am a queer woman, and (especially in South Africa, where I grew up and where I now live and work) physical violence – and sexual violence, in particular – features saliently in the realities of many people who identify (and/or who might be read) in this way (Clarke, Ellis, Peel, & Riggs, 2010).

When I speak of “normative” violence, I refer to gendered expectations and norms that are naturalised in many societies – evident particularly in patriarchal settings – and that have been a central feature in my experience as a queer woman.

When I mention “bodily” violence, I am referring to physical forms of violence that I have experienced, mainly in connection with the normative strands of violence that code for a society’s given gender order.

Throughout my twenty-six years in South Africa, I have found that the two strands are interwoven and connected in intimate and intricate ways. There is rigidity and embeddedness in the rules and regulations that govern our experiences of growing up and living in bodies that are gendered even before the moment of our births.

My personal gendered beginnings happened around the time of my own birth, which initiated a process that Judith Butler (1990) terms “girling”. For me, the girling process was replete with violences and traumas – some rather big, and lots of smaller ones, too. The now-trendy ‘Gender Reveal Party’ (which imposes its own kind of violence to unborn people and is deeply reflective of naturalised gender rules in our world) had not yet been popularized in those days. At my birth my parents were delighted that I was a girl and I was promptly bundled into a pink blanket and taken home after a few days, where I would stay blissfully unaware of my “girlness” for the first few years of my life.

One of the first (and most vivid) memories that I have of seeing my body as gendered can be traced back to when I was about three-years-old. I had received a plastic kitchen set (complete with miniature utensils, stovetop and oven) as a Christmas gift from some of our extended family. On Christmas Day, I remember feeling a keen desire to play on the bikes that the boys had been gifted, but I also remember the sharp sting of disappointment that followed after my Aunt prevented this, saying: Girls mustn’t get their clothes dirty; come let’s go and make something in your new kitchen!

As I grew up I began to realise that not only where there “boy things” and “girl things”, but there were also “bad” men and “good” men. A bad man was the one who masturbated in a cinema whilst staring at me (fortunately I was with my mother who took me away swiftly), good men were found in my home. There I had largely been exposed to much softer kinds of masculinities where my father and uncles (perhaps as a result of their Portuguese upbringings) shared in domestic responsibilities and showed tenderness and love – not only towards the women and children in their lives – but towards one another, too. It was not uncommon for the men in our home to kiss one another on the cheeks in greeting, and my father painted pictures and played Barbies with us as much as he played rough-and-tumble in the garden. At that point, I had little clarity as to what and where “bad men” were, but I had internalised ideas that I was not always safe and men were not always trustworthy.

After several childhood years of dresses, hair bows, fake muffins, plastic stovetops, being afraid of my friends’ fathers at sleepovers, worrying when I used public bathrooms, and trying to keep my clothes in pristine condition, I started to develop breasts at the age of ten. I “developed early” (my mother put it down to my “Mediterranean roots”) and became even more confused when these bodily changes meant that people (girls and boys) began treating me differently. I had never been kissed before, and yet the boys in my Grade Four class would tell me that I was a slut (I had to ask my mother what the word meant) and rumours circulated that I had probably kissed three boys each weekend since the beginning of the school year. To younger girls and boys, I was dangerous, but to older men in societal circles, I was desirable: once, at the age of twelve and walking around a shopping mall, I felt the eyes of two men on my chest:

        • Jesus, look at those tits…
        • And that face!
        • Bro, she still reads Baa Baa Black Sheep…
        • Don’t lie, you’d still tap.

To this day, I have deeply conflicting feelings about my body. These experiences speak to the subtle, but cumulative, normative violence that I, and many other women, encounter in our everyday realities. The implicit and explicit transgressions of personal and bodily boundaries that are inflicted by misogynistic patterns, discourses and hierarchies have profound effects on the psyches and experiences of those who are targeted, and trauma is often held in the body long after the event(s) (Cleary, 2016).

When I was thirteen-years-old, my first period arrived and my mother, trying to relay the news to my father, said through the phone: Your daughter became a woman today. Even at that young age, I remember having questions, and confusing thoughts, about whether this was what made me a woman, and/or whether one’s capacity to menstruate delineated who could (and could not) be considered a “real” woman.

In later years, my hair would become a source of trauma, like the time a man came up behind me in the queue at a coffee shop, and ran his hands through my long hair without my consent: Now this is real woman’s hair, he whispered. Or the time a different man spat in my face and called me a lesbian (I had a short pixie haircut) when I refused his advances at a bar. Today, I’ve come closer to seeing my head and body hair as tools for self-expression, self-acceptance and resistance. However, there continue to be remnants of past trauma there, and I still experience moments of dysphoria with my follicular friends (Synnott, 1987).

As an Undergraduate student at university, I was exposed, for the first time, to critical Gender Studies, and to terms such as “gender-based violence”, “consent” and “hate crime”. When I took my first Gender Studies Honours Course in 2016, I felt as if it was the first time that I had the necessary tools, and a language, to put a face to the problems and uncomfortable feelings that I had been experiencing as a young woman. I also realised that, having often felt constrained and unsettled in my own body for so many years, and having encountered several issues around power (my own and that in relation to others – especially men), it was no surprise that I wanted to learn more about “gender” and even to make a career out of its study and exploration. Simultaneously, I was grappling more intensely with issues and questions around my gendered and sexual identities, and feeling as if I had, for many years, presented in ways that had conformed to standards and expectations that I had not set for myself, but that had been imposed. I mourned what I felt were lost years of free expression, autonomy and play.

In the June of my Honours year, an extension of that bodily mourning ensued after I was raped at a party by a man that I knew reasonably well. I found myself believing all kinds of myths that I had heard circulated about sexual violence, and questioning every aspect of my experience. Months later, I developed severe depression, and my anxiety and dissociative symptoms became more acute. Eventually, I sought the guidance of a professional therapist who helped me to come to terms with what had happened to me.

While my body still holds onto the pain (physical, emotional, psychological) that resulted from that experience, I am now able to challenge rape myths and to call others out when I see “rape culture” in action. I am also no longer in a position where I feel I need to remain silent about what happened to me, and have found significant healing in the telling of my story, especially to other women who share similar experiences.

Along with speaking out, one of the most helpful tools in my healing process has been to read, and read again, a book by Dr Pumla Dineo Gqola (2016), which is titled Rape: A South African Nightmare. In Chapter Seven, she writes:

Rethinking and debunking rape myths is an important part of the conversation of how to bring down the rape statistics and how to create a world without rape. Addressing them allows us to move closer to a world in which rape is taken seriously, where survivors can be supported and recover and where rape is dissuaded rather than excused.

However, it has been, and continues to be, at certain moments, immensely challenging to grapple with the pervasiveness of gender-based violence in the world, but in my home country, especially. At times, it has been difficult and painful to think that the possibility of feeling completely safe and comfortable in this body – and in the spaces through which it moves – may not be realised in my lifetime.

When I hear the word violence, I think instinctively of my own body, and I see alongside it the bodies of other women and gender non-conforming people in our country, many of whom share the same, reflexive associations of violence with their gendered identities and physical forms. In South Africa, and in the context of global gender configurations, many of these bodies continue to exist as sites of contestation and violence.

The most recent revival of masculinist politics – especially in capitalist powerhouses such as the United States of America – means that normative and bodily violences against women (and gender non-conforming people) are naturalised as acceptable parts of our lived realities. Sometimes, it feels as though ours are bodies that must police themselves in order to avoid violence; bodies that have remain hyper-vigilant; bodies that must always be ready to run, to fight, to resist; bodies that are shaped by norm and expectation; bodies that are told to make themselves smaller; bodies that are rarely seen as whole, but that are split into parts for objectification and consumption; bodies that are (de)valued according to their appearance; bodies that are taught to be alienated from pleasure and sex; bodies that are commodifiable and expendable; bodies whose rage and resistance are not tolerable.

However, I also don’t want to see or experience my body as associated (solely, inevitably or automatically) with violence. My body, and my identity, are complex, fluid, evolving, multi-faceted and multidimensional. In this body, I have experienced painful trauma, and violence has been inflicted against me because my body is gendered in certain ways. However, I have also experienced – and continue to experience – pleasure, joy, playfulness, vulnerability, strength, intimacy, curiosity, fascination, love and power with and in this body.

Part of my daily resistance against violence, then, is to recognise and accept the ambivalence and conflict that continues to (and likely will, always) characterise my relationship with my body, and to find even a small moment of lightness and presence with it.

When I think about violence, I try to train my attention, energy and focus towards its roots: towards problematic and oppressive histories, enduring structural inequalities and gendered patterns and hierarchies and how these might be challenged. All the while, my body continues to serve as a physical enactment and representation of my own history, and of the ways in which I explore my identity as I continue to embody this body in a gendered world.

References

Bachmann, I., & Proust, V. (2020). Old concerns, renewed focus and novel problems: feminist communication theory and the Global South, Annals of the International Communication Association, 44(1), 67-80, DOI: 10.1080/23808985.2019.1647445

Butler, J. P. (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge

Clarke, V., Ellis, S. J., Peel, E., & Riggs, D. W. (2010). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans & queer psychology: An introduction. London, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press

Cleary, K. (2016). Feminist theories of the body. In N.A. Naples., R.C. Hoogland., M. Wickramasinghe., W. Ching., & A. Wong (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell encyclopaedia of gender and sexuality studies. Wiley-Blackwell

Crenshaw, K.W. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299

Gqola, P. D. (2016). Rape: A South African Nightmare. Jacanda Media.

Kiguwa, P. (2019). Feminist approaches: An exploration of women’s gendered experiences. In S. Laher, A. Fynn., & S. Kramer (Eds.), Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Case Studies from South Africa (pp.220-235). Wits University Press

Synnott, A. (1987). Shame and Glory: A Sociology of Hair. The British Journal of Sociology, 38(3), 381. https://doi.org/10.2307/590695.

Footnotes

[1] Queer does not only mean that an individual may inhabit a counter-normative identity, often around sexual orientation or gender identity, but it includes an identification with (citing Nadia Cho): resistance to structural rigidity; challenging the privilege of the “normal”; confronting all forms of oppression; understanding the intersectionality between race, nationality, gender, sexuality and class; searching for alternative ways of being and living; bringing unheard, minority experiences and stories to light; learning to appreciate and celebrate difference; and striving for constructive, fair and happy ways to coexist with each other. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nadia-cho/being-queer-means_b_3510828.html

Just LeadersCSA&G

Am I eligible to be a refugee?

/in /by

by Hulisani Khorombi 

The United Nations Refugee Agency defines a refugee as someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries[1].

Amnesty international further expands on this and says that there are many reasons why it might be too difficult or dangerous for people to stay in their own countries. For example, children, women and men flee from violence, war, hunger, extreme poverty, because of their sexual or gender orientation, or from the consequences of climate change or other natural disasters. Often people will face a combination of these difficult circumstances[2].

People fleeing persecution and conflict have been granted asylum in foreign lands for thousands of years and this is nothing new.

This is where my predicament starts.

The South African government has declared gender-based violence (GBV) a national crisis. According to a new government report, a woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa, and many are assaulted and raped before their death [3].

President Ramaphosa of South Africa has described GBV in the country as a second pandemic next to Covid-19.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that I stand before the women and girls of South Africa this evening to talk about another pandemic that is raging in our country—the killing of women and children by the men of our country,[4]”

To summarise this phenomenon we often use the term femicide, which describes the killing of a woman by an intimate partner and the death of a woman as a result of a practice that is harmful to women. Intimate partner is understood as a former or current spouse or partner, whether or not the perpetrator shares or has shared the same residence with the victim[5].

Just last year, President Ramaphosa, at an emergency sitting of Parliament said the figures for violence against women and children were similar to those of a country at war[6]. Further describing South Africa as one of “the most unsafe places in world to be a woman”.

Solutions still seem a long way off. In 2018, the National Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Summit, which aimed to highlight the plight of women and girls in the country, was hosted by the government, NGOs, and civil society groups in an effort to find a solution to femicide and GBV in South Africa. The President signed and launched Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Declaration in 2019: the intention is a multi-sectoral structure and national strategy to respond to violence toward women and girls. Activists say the declaration is a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done[7]. Yet almost every day we wake up to news that another woman has been raped or murdered.

The heightened reality that women of South Africa are continuously being traumatised was evident to me in two instances. The first being a holiday that I took last year to visit a friend in Tanzania. When she suggested that we go shopping at a local market in the evening my first reaction was a “no” because I would not, under normal circumstances, do that in South Africa. Only after her reassurance of safety did I brave myself for such an outing, which turned out to be harmless.

Second was my solo trip that I took recently for my birthday. I sent my live location to a trusted contact every 8 hours in order to ensure that if something happened the police would know where to possibly start looking for my remains.

Having have thought all of these things through and seeing no end in sight it seems that as a woman I am a refugee of violence in my own country. If a refugee is a person who is forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence, where do I go?

Footnotes

[1] https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/what-is-a-refugee/

[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants/

[3] https://www.voanews.com/africa/south-africa-declares-femicide-national-crisis

[4] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/30/coronavirus-lockdown-femicide-rises-south-africa/

[5] https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1128

[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49739977

[7] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/30/coronavirus-lockdown-femicide-rises-south-africa/

Just LeadersCSA&G

Female Genital Mutilation: sacred cultural practice or human rights violation?

/in /by

By Hulisani Khorombi

Background

The World Health Organisation estimates that 3 million girls, residing in only 30 countries, mainly in Africa, as well as in the Middle East and Asia, are at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) every year[1].

Historically, an estimated 120 million girls and women have undergone FGM, and approximately 2 million procedures are performed annually on girls under the age of 11[2]. Most commonly performed in Africa, FGM is also practised in parts of Southeast Asia, the Middle East and in Central and South America. In countries such as Somalia, an estimated 70% to 90% of women have undergone FGM[3].

It is unknown when this practice first developed, but evidence exists that it dates back to the fifth century B.C. preceding Christianity and Islam[4]. In addition to citing religious requirements, proponents of the practice cite several other reasons, one of them being that the procedure aids in preserving cultural identity – just as body piercings, body painting or tattooing are used to identify individuals as members of a particular social group[5].

Regardless of its origins, FGM is practiced as a cultural rite of passage as are virginity testing and male circumcision in some traditional settings. It has been defined as follows.

Female genital mutilation includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women[6].

The practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcisers, who often play other central roles in communities, such as attending childbirths. However, more than 18% of all FGM is performed by health care providers, and this trend is increasing[7].

FGM has four major forms:[8]

  • Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
  • Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are “the lips” that surround the vagina).
  • Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
  • Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

There is no record that South Africa has ever practiced FGM and so in this essay there is only a focus on the harm caused by the practice on an international level.

Justifications for FGM

As mentioned above, FGM is not a small or insignificant procedure: it is the removal of all or parts of the clitoris, labia majora and labia minora, sometimes combined with the narrowing of the entrance to the vagina[9].

Apart from denoting belonging in cultural and religious contexts, the removal of external female genitalia has been part of a celebrated ritual in the lives of girls and women as an effective and acceptable method of shaping their attitudes toward sex and sexuality and as a way of ensuring their virginity and suitability for marriage.  This despite a growing international campaign to abolish FGM, endorsed by both the World Medical Association[10] and the World Health Organization[11]..

Some proponents of the practice claim that FGM helps maintain good hygiene in girls and women and promotes good health. For example, some believe that the clitoris is poisonous and can not only harm man during sexual intercourse, but that it can also kill children during the birthing process[12].

Although the medical community is generally divided as to the health benefits that come with the procedure of male circumcision they are agreed on the fact that FGM has no medical benefits whatsoever[13].

Some advocates of FGM believe that the procedure increases the sexual pleasure of the husband and this therefore enriches the marriage. It is believed that the smaller the opening into the vagina the greater the pleasure that the male receives during sexual intercourse[14]. However this is contradicted by evidence that many men experience pain and frustration while attempting to penetrate a tightly circumcised female[15].

Risks

The manner in which the procedures are typically performed contributes greatly to the medical risks that may be encountered. Even under the most sterile of conditions, the procedures can cause serious medical consequences, including death. In many instances the procedure is performed on young girls any time between infancy and puberty. The age varies depending on the reason for the procedure being conducted[16].

For example in Senegal the procedure is viewed as a rite of passage into adulthood for the young woman therefore targeting girls reaching puberty[17]. In other area such as Nigeria and Burkina Faso, the procedure is performed to prevent a new-born child from touching the mother’s clitoris during the birth process.

Regardless of age, the procedure generally is performed by midwives or older village women who perform the cutting without anaesthesia, using instruments such as razor blades, knives, scissors, pieces of glass or sharp stones[18].

Apart from physical complications that are associated with this extreme procedure, there are also extreme psychological effects as well.

Among girls who live in communities where FGM carries social value, the desire to gain social status, please parents and comply with peer pressure is in conflict with fear, trauma and the after effects of the operation[19].

Furthermore, pregnant infibulated women who enter a medical facility for the birthing process typically need to undergo de-infibulation. After the birth many of these women want to be re-infibulated and go through the process of having their wounds re-stitched[20]. This act of performing such a surgery that is medically harmful raises ethical questions about the health professionals who perform it[21].

Responses

In recent years FGM has come under the international spotlight. Various international organisations have continuously advocated against FGM, believing that the medical risks associated with the cutting make them human rights violations and acts of child abuse.

Some authors suggest that FGM should be considered a violation of the right to life from the perspective of reproduction.

When the very organs that allow human beings to reproduce and to give life to future generations are mutilated, there has been a violation of one of the fundamental human rights[22]

In 1959 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child and stated that States party to it should take effective and appropriate measures to abolish traditional practices that are prejudicial to the health of children.

Only much later in 1982 did the United Nations Human Rights Sub commission of the World Health Organisation condemn the practice.

African countries have attempted to curb the practice of FGM but legislative efforts have not been as successful as in European countries. In 1983 Nigeria ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child[23]. This charter contains several articles that can be interpreted to condemn female circumcision.

Apart from international legislative efforts there have been a number of interesting cases dealing with FGM in the United States of America.

Firstly, in 1994 a Nigerian woman by the name of Lydia Oluloro was living illegally in Oregon but asked the courts for political asylum[24]. She feared that her return to her homeland would mean that her two daughters would be forced to undergo the procedure. A federal immigration judge annulled her expulsion order but she was not granted refugee status. The order was merely a mechanism through which her deportation was stayed[25].

The following year two women from Sierra Leone requested political asylum after their genitals had been partly cut off[26]. They claimed that they would be prosecuted in their native land if they opposed the procedure. The woman living in Virginia was granted her request. The judge in that case believed that the woman had suffered an “atrocious form of persecution”[27]. However the second woman living in Maryland was denied her request for political asylum. The judge in her case suggested to the woman that she could “choose to support the practice to maintain tribal unity”[28].

Surprisingly, woman have not been the only ones to seek asylum on the basis of fear of FGM. In the case of Imohi v Immigration and Naturalization Serv[29], Azeez Jimmy Imohi was a male native of Nigeria who sought asylum in the United States on the basis that his home country practiced FGM. He claimed that his return to the country would infringe on his reproductive rights by jeopardizing any female offspring he may have in the future. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the application should be denied and it was confirmed in the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

FGM has been illegal in the United Kingdom since 1985. In November of 1993 a medical practitioner was brought before the General Medical Council, charged with performing multiple female circumcisions, knowing the operation to be against the law. He was struck off[30]. Despite this case, 2019 was the first time that there was a successful prosecution in the case of R v N[31] where a woman who mutilated her three-year-old daughter became the first person in the United Kingdom to be found guilty of FGM.

The United Nations General Assembly in December of 1948 adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the articles included in the Declaration is that of Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.” Article 5 reads “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” And Article 15 states that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself.”

FGM pertains to all of these articles.

Similar articles are included in the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, unanimously adopted in 1981 by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Organization of Unity (OAU), coming into force on 21 October 1986.

The articles or portions that are relevant to FGM include Article 4: “Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of this right”; Article 5: “All forms of exploitation and degradation of man, particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment shall be prohibited”; Article 16: “Every individual shall have the right to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health . . .”; and finally Article 18: “The State shall ensure the elimination of every discrimination against women and also ensure the protection of the rights of the woman and the child as stipulated in international declarations and conventions”.

Impact

As seen by the above laws and cases, the countries that have effectively enacted preventative methods to abolish practices of FGM are Western. However, for the most part legislation has been ineffective. Laws that prohibit a behaviour that is deeply embedded in a culture are most likely not going to find support amongst the people it aims to protect. This leaves little room for change.

The phrase “female genital mutilation” elicits mixed emotions across the globe in medical communities, as well as in small villages. Yet, despite the apprehension many feel about openly communicating about FGM, communication and education are the keys to eradicating this tradition that plagues millions of women throughout the world. By understanding what FGM is, the historical background behind the practice, and the medical risks associated with such procedures, African countries can follow the lead of the Western countries that have for the most part effectively banned FGM[32].

A comforting thought is that year on year, the conversation surrounding FGM has been amplified. Recently, there has been a ban on FGM in Sudan where it is estimated that 9 in 10 women have undergone the life-changing practice[33] .

Looking into the future

It is important to note that this practice is deeply entrenched in culture and as a result, despite countless laws that may outlaw it, there needs to be more activism on the ground level. There is a necessity for “collective abandonment”, in which an entire community chooses to no longer engage in FGM. This has proven to be an effective way to end the practice. It ensures that no single girl or family will be disadvantaged by the decision[34].

In 2008, UNFPA and UNICEF established the Joint Programme on FGM, the largest global programme to accelerate abandonment of FGM and to provide care for girls and women living with its consequences. To date, the programme has helped more than 3 million girls and women receive FGM-related protection and care services. More than 30 million individuals in over 20,000 communities have made public declarations to abandon the practice[35].

The most common motivation is the strong association with marriageability of a young woman and so there is an expectancy to conform to your community in order to marry[36]. Perhaps the discussion surrounding FGM should then be moved to the social requirement of marriage and the status that it affords women.

In the end abandonment of the practice must be rooted in the communities which practice it.

“The people who practice Female Genital Cutting [FGM] are honourable, upright, moral people who love their children and want the best for them. That is why they practice [FGM] and that is why they will decide to stop practicing it once a way of stopping is found…” (Mackie, 2000: 280)[37]

Footnotes

[1] World Health Organisation https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/prevalence/en/ (accessed on 14 May 2020)

[2] Federal Interdepartmental Working Group on Female Genital Mutilation “Female genital mutilation and health care” (1999) Health Canada

[3]   Federal Interdepartmental Working Group on Female Genital Mutilation “Female genital mutilation and health care” (1999) Health Canada

[4] Morgan in “Female Genital Mutilation” (2009) 94 Southern Illinois University School of Law

[5] As above

[6] World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation (accessed on 15 May 2020

[7] As above

[8] As above

[9] Clayman (ed) (1989) The American Association Encyclopaedia of Medicine 282

[10] Richards in “Female genital mutilation condemned by WMA” (1993) 307 BMJ

[11] WHO in “A traditional practice that threatens health — female circumcision” (1986) 33 WHO Chronicle

[12] Etru in “What’s culture got to do with it? Excising the harmful traditional of female circumcision,” (1993) 106 Harv.L.Rev (Belief that the child will die if it touches the clitoris during the birthing process originated in the 15th century in the Bini village of the Bendel state, when it was decreed by a king following ‘consultation with an oracle regarding his wives’ stillbirths and infant deaths’)

[13] Burstyn (1995) 30

[14] Bashir (1996) 427

[15] Bashir (1996) 415 and 427

[16] Morgan (1997) 100

[17] Kopelman (1994) 58

[18] Morgan (1997) 101

[19] Toubia, Female Circumcision as Public Health issue. 331 New England. J. med. 712 (1994)

[20] Above: Morgan

[21] Above: Toubia at 715

[22] Female Circumcision: a critical Appraisal, Alison t slack: human rights quarterly volume 10 number 4 (November 1988) page 31

[23] 20 November 1989

[24] Rev in “Female Genital Mutilation and Refugee Status in the United States, A Step in the Right Direction” (1996) 353 B.C. INT’L & COMPL

[25] As mentioned above

[26] Rev (1996) 354

[27] As mentioned above

[28] Rev (1996) 356

[29] No. 94-70705, 1996 WL 297612 (9TH Circ. June5, 1996)

[30] Hartley in “Female Genital Mutilation: a dilemma in child protection” (1994) 443 Archives of diseases in childhood Bryan Hartley, archives of disease in childhood . 1994: 70: 443

[31] https://perma.cc/6BFR-PX4H

[32] Above: Morgan

[33] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/world/africa/sudan-outlaws-female-genital-mutilation-.html (accessed on 25 May 2020)

[34] https://www.unfpa.org/news/top-5-things-you-didnt-know-about-female-genital-mutilation

[35] https://www.unfpa.org/news/top-5-things-you-didnt-know-about-female-genital-mutilation

[36] https://www.hart-uk.org/blog/fgm-story-worlds-oldest-patriarchy/

[37] https://www.hart-uk.org/blog/fgm-story-worlds-oldest-patriarchy/

CSA&GCSA&G

A bitter makoti

/in /by

by Belinda Pakati

A large body of women simply abandoned the notion of sisterhood. Individual women who had once critiqued and challenged patriarchy re-aligned with sexist men. Radical women who felt betrayed by the negative competition between women often simply retreated. And at this point, feminist movement which was aimed at positively transforming the lives of all females, became more stratified. The vision of sisterhood that had been the rallying cry of the movement seemed to many women to no longer matter.

Feminism Is For Everybody, Passionate Politics. bell hooks (2000)

A woman supporting another woman should be natural, but very few women support other women, instead they exacerbate violence and shame towards other women.

It was on a Saturday morning when I entered the house of a friend’s mother. The mother did not even pretend to be happy about what was about to happen that day. Her face was unpleasant and unfriendly. I noticed from the ash tray that she had smoked more than ten draws to maintain composure.

My friend had arranged for his Uncle and Aunt to negotiate for him to pay lobola[1] for his girlfriend. They had one child and had been together for three and half years. But my friend’s mother had never accepted their relationship, even though there was a child. She did not seem to like the fact that her son had made his own choice for a partner.

It has become clear that the mother will never accept the girlfriend as her makoti[2].

The girlfriend and her parents had come over to the boyfriend’s house to announce that she was pregnant and to request that the boyfriend acknowledged the pregnancy. But before the boyfriend could say anything, his mother told the girlfriend’s family that she could not accept and acknowledge the matter they came to address. She said her son already had a partner and she would never accept anyone else.

An altercation ensued and the girlfriend got very angry, burst into tears, and accused her boyfriend’s mother of ill treatment, telling her that it was not up to her to acknowledge the relationship. She also mentioned that the alleged “other woman” was no longer a part of the son’s life and that he had told this woman he had found someone else.

Seeing how angry his girlfriend was, the boyfriend eventually intervened and told his girlfriend’s family that he was indeed responsible for her pregnancy.

I was perplexed by the time it took for my friend to respond to his mother. I found it annoying that he just sat there and said nothing while his mother rejected the partner he had chosen for himself and, in a way, the baby too. It took the woman’s tears and pain for him to speak up.

I also felt helpless because I was not allowed to say anything, even though I could see that the mother was being unfair. It takes two people to make a baby, and the focus was on the girlfriend, not the boyfriend who had impregnated someone unknown to his family.

My helplessness surfaced because I knew the truth, I knew how their relationship started and I could see how attached they were to one another.

And I had also seen the mother would never accept the younger woman as the daughter-in-law of the family.

I recalled how my friend’s mother and siblings (especially the female sibling to be precise) used to say that the new girlfriend had given my friend some sort of a manipulative potion. They even took my friend to an umfundisi[3]to pray for him to leave the new girlfriend. “She comes from a poor family and her mother is a drunkard, her mother needs money”, they said.

A year passed, the lobola was paid and my friend and his now wife were blessed with their second child. Then my friend lost his job and soon after his wife discovered that she was expecting another child. The mother-in-law was not pleased to hear there was a third child coming.

My friend’s mother again said bad things about the makoti, that she was irresponsible, filthy and lazy, that what she knew best was to make babies, that if she thought she would get anything from her son, she would get it over her dead body.

As a woman it pained me to hear what was said about my friend’s wife by another woman. I felt she should help and guide her as her own child, especially as she was married to her son. She should have given her an opportunity to grow into the family, to feel confident to speak for herself, to get along with everyone.

It was difficult to hear her being judged because of her poor family background, to watch her having to defend herself during the process of announcing the pregnancy, because culturally she was expected to keep quiet.

The way my friend acted felt like it was not right. Sometimes he would side with his wife but because he could not provide for both families, he would get stressed. Then he would be angry at his children and swear at his wife, telling her how uneducated she was, that she would not inherit the house. She would also be reminded her about her drunkard mother who failed to find a home for her. I saw how he repeated his mother’s abuse of his wife.

The situation now, five years and three children later, is that my friend’s mother still does not acknowledge the makoti. And the makoti has grown into the habit of being emotionally, verbally and physically abused. She does not seem to care anymore. She has lost respect for her husband and has no respect for her in-laws. She does not conform to cultural norms. If her mother-in-law says something that does not sit well with her, she will not hesitate to answer back, she will look directly into her eyes to make it clear to her that she means what she is saying. She is now a disrespectful and bitter makoti.

At some point the mother-in-law tried to mend ways but the makoti did not want anything to do with her. “Mestige a tshollogile a tshollogileokase a olle, Lentswegeletswile le tswile gale bowe go tshwane le seatla”, she said. What is said cannot be erased or reversed, when water has been spilled it cannot be fetched.

Reflecting on this story I have some questions.

Do parents turn their children (like the son in this story) into perpetrators, thinking they are protecting them from women who want to use them?

Do elders misuse culture to oppress others?

Do some woman perpetuate violence against other woman?

Instead of working together in solidarity do women sometimes create the conditions for gender-based violence to thrive?

Are we all part of the system that creates a bitter makoti?

 

Shalate Belinda Pakati is a senior project manager who coordinates student outreach and community engagement programmes within CSA&G. She is also responsible for the HIV testing and counselling work and ongoing student support. She has a background in Human Resource Management. She is passionate about working with and giving back to the community

Footnotes

[1]the practice of paying a bride price

[2] a term which can mean a bride, a newly-wed woman, a daughter-in-law, often used by a woman’s husband’s family to refer to her

[3] A priest