Stolen womanhood... Femminilità rubata

Desidero riportare qui alcuni brani tratti da una biografia bellissima, scritta dalla modella somala Waris Dirie... Una grande ferita aperta: la circoncisione che ha subito quando aveva 5 anni (infibulazione). Pratica che, in modo diverso e più leggero (chiamata clitoridectomia), viene praticata anche qui nel nord del Kenya. Qui a Marsabit il 100% delle donne sono passate attraverso questa pratica. E tutte le bambine e le ragazze ci passeranno...

Vi risparmio il suo racconto nei dettagli, davvero agghiacciante, piuttosto riporto le sue rilessioni...

Buona lettura...

After much thought, I realized I needed to talk about my circumcision for two reasons. First of all, it’s something that bothers me deeply. Besides the health problems that I still struggle with, I will never know the pleasures of sex that have been denied me. I feel incomplete, crippled, and knowing that there’s nothing I can do to change that is the most hopeless feeling of all. When I met Dana, I finally fell in love and wanted to experience the joys of sex with a man. But if you ask me today, “Do you enjoy sex?”, I would say not in the traditional way. I simply enjoy being physically close to Dana because I love him.
All my life I’ve tried to think of a reason for my circumcision. Maybe if I could have thought of a good reason, I could accept what they’d done to me. But I could think of none. The longer I tried to think of a reason without finding one, the angrier I became. I needed to talk about my secret, because I dept it bottled up inside me all my life.
(…)
With great pride, I accepted the UN’s offer to become a Special Ambassador and join its fight. One of the highest honours of my position will be working with women like Dr. Nafis Sadik, the executive director of the UN’s Population Fund. She is one of the first women who took up the fight against FGM, raising the issue at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. I will travel back to Africa again soon to tell my story, and lend support to the UN.
For over 4000 years African cultures have mutilated their women. Many believe the Koran demands this, as the practice is nearly universal in Moslem countries. However, this is not the case; neither the Koran nor the Bible makes any mention of cutting women to please God. The practice is simply promoted and demanded by men - ignorant, selfish men – who want to assure their ownership of their woman’s sexual favors. They demand their wives be circumcised. The mothers comply bu circumcising their daughters, for fear their daughters will have no husbands. An uncircumcised woman is regarded as dirty, oversexed and unmarriageable. In a nomadic culture like the one I was raised in, there I no place for an unmarried woman, so mothers feel it is their duty to make sure their daughters have the best possible opportunity – much as a western family might feel it’s their duty to send their daughter to good schools. There is no reason for the mutilation of millions of girls to occur every year except ignorance and superstition. And the legacy of pain, suffering, and death that results from it is more than enough reason for it to stop.
(…)
Many friends have expressed concern that a religious fanatic will try to kill me when I go to Africa. After all, I’ll be speaking out against a crime many fundamentalists consider a holy practise. I’m sure my work will be dangerous, and I admit to being scared; I’m especially worried now that I have a little boy to take care of. But my faith tells me to be strong, that God led me down this path for a reason. He has work for me to do. This is my mission. I might as well take a chance, because that’s what I’ve done all my life.

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In spite of my anger over what has been done to me, I don’t blame my parents. I love my mother and father. My mother had no say-so in my circumcision, because as a woman she is powerless to make decisions. She was simply doing to me what had been done to her, and what had been done to her mother, and her mother’s mother. And my father was completely ignorant of the suffering he wa inflicting on me; he knew that in our Somalian society, if he wanted his daughter to marry, she must be circumcised or no man would have her. My parents were both victims of their own upbringing, cultural practices that have continued unchanged for thousands of years. But just as we know today that we can avoid disease and death by vaccinations, we know that women are not animals in heat, and their loyality has to be earned with trust and affection rather that barbaric rituals. The time has come to leave the old ways of suffering behind.
I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born. Then man robbed me, took away my power, and left me a cripple. My womanhood was stolen. If God had wanted those body parts missing, why did he create them?
I just pray that one day no woman will have to experience this pain. It will become a thing of the past. People will say, “Did you hear, female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Somalia?”. Then the next country, and the next and so on, until the world is safe for all women. What a happy day that will be, and that’s what I’m working toward.

(From “Desert flower”, by Waris Dirie)
For further information: http://www.waris-dirie-foundation.com/;

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/