My Meeting with The Girl With Three Legs
Soraya Miré is a beautiful and talented Somali feminist, a filmmaker, and the author of a new and daring memoir titled The Girl With Three Legs. Soraya lives in Los Angeles and she has the Hollywood-speak down pat. Everyone is “darling,” and “honey,” things are “awesome.” But, through it all, one can still see the Somali African in her. She greets people on the street, café waiters—mere strangers—with warmth and humor, with an easy familiarity, just as if they were clan or tribal members. “What a funny dog! And how are you today?” She wears a strong Biblical fragrance: Frank Incense, a “spiritual body oil,” which I imagine the Queen of Sheba might have worn on her visit with King Solomon. She keeps her main stash in a jeweled, French-African perfume bottle.
Soraya is in the midst of a fifteen city book tour in both the United States and Canada. At a time when travel is far from easy, she cheerfully rises before dawn to catch one early morning flight after another. Soraya patiently sits on the tarmac for hours. A storm delayed her flight to NYC but still, she came, even after she missed her bookstore reading. Soraya flew clear across the country for only two days just to spend some time with me. And, when she left, she flew clear across the country again, this time to Seattle.
Soraya and I first met in Los Angeles many years ago. When her publisher (who is my publisher, too) sent me her manuscript, I literally could not put the book down. And trust me: I have read most of the books on this subject beginning with Fran Hosken’s 1979 The Hosken Report, Nawal al-Sadawi’s work from 1960 right on through the 21stcentury, Alice Walker’s Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women (1996), Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, etc.
Still, Miré’s is a uniquely riveting read. She is a woman who has turned her own suffering into a brave campaign to help other women who have also been genitally mutilated in the Arab, Muslim, and African worlds. Miré is unstoppable. She does not spare anyone: not herself, not her family, not her culture, which persists in traumatizing and torturing its girls in the name of family purity. Miré carefully, personally, exposes how girls are genitally mutilated, usually without anesthesia, always at the insistence of their mothers and/or grandmothers. And she describes exactly how this mutilation leads to lifelong suffering.
Unlike male circumcision, such female genital mutilation means that girls often cannot urinate or menstruate properly. Scar tissue and the sewn-shut vagina lead to agony and serious medical problems. Then, their wedding night becomes a veritable torture chamber as do all subsequent childbirths. (Unbelievably, the post-partum mothers are sewn right back up.) Many develop horrendous fistulas (they lose control of both urination and defecation) and are therefore rejected by the very families who caused this great misery. Miré writes about her own experience of all this—and about her arranged marriage to her first cousin which she fled. (“Today? The man is a drug addict. He has never found a life. And, he never remarried.”)
Miré refuses to give up on—or to stop loving her–family and her people. She tries hard to visualize how her mother was also mutilated before her and also forced into arranged marriages. She shows us how “crazy” women become (hysterical, depressed, anxious, “wild”); and that such torture, especially at the hands of other women, beginning with one’s own mother, can make someone mistrust the universe forever after. But Miré also shows us that suffering can also lead to strength and to truth-telling.
Miré finally has had her mutilation surgically reversed and embarks on a fearless course of sex therapy and psychotherapy. In all innocence, she asks questions that would make the proverbial sailor blush. And she writes about it all.
Next: “The Somali women attacked me more than the men did…”
You lost me at “Somali feminist”. I realize Somali feminists are fighting for things like not being chopped up, and not abortion on demand like ours are, but still.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a feminist. It simply means that woman is on her own side, on her sister’s side, on her daughter’s and her mother’s and her female friend’s side. Women who respect themselves need to reclaim that word. I consider myself to be a feminist. However, I believe abortion is the brutal murder of a human being. You need to rethink your stance on feminism, especially if you have any females in your life who you love and respect.
That’s the trouble with “-isms.” Who gets to decide who is really an “-ist” and who isn’t? It’s the Big Umbrella vs. the True Scotsman Fallacy. Look how many “Marxisms” there are and how they’ve been at each other’s throats for a hundred and fifty years. Feminism? Yeah, you’ve got traditional, head-covering middle-eastern Muslim wives and mothers who are feminists and you’ve got university-dwelling, orange-haired, pierced and tattooed radical communist bull dykes who are feminists. What principles and beliefs do they have in common?
I grew up with “feminism”. It’s more a “lesbian or female superiority movement”, highly sexist, chauvenist, and full of hatred and contempt for men.
Many women I know, successful and independent women, absolutely reject “feminism”.
On top of this, groups like NOW refuse to support women with valid complaints, if those complaints are against someone favored by the “left” or “liberals” (they are actually neither). Recall the rape claims against Bill Clinton, his use of State Troopers to drag in women for him, “put ice on that”. Recall OJ Simpson.
Heartless, thoughtless comment. What is the problem? This is a courageous woman, regardless of titles.
God bless her and her efforts. She is a beautiful woman and what she has endured is enough to make one weep.
Kudos for the courage to write the truth without prettying it up, and stand up for what you have said so that others may be spared. This is true Honor!
I’ve personally seen the results of female genital mutilation (it should never be called “female circumcision” , what a euphemism THAT is). When I was in my training at the Big University Hospital back in the day we had several college athletes come in for a “repair” of FGM- which of course can never really be done. The fact that they were college athletes shows just how far up the social ladder this horrifying practice goes. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be that now that those backward practices had seen the light of day, they would surely stop.
That was twenty-five years ago. It’s heartbreaking to think of all the girls who have suffered since then. God bless Ms. Mire and Dr. Chesler for continuing to keep this issue in the spotlight. Maybe someday it really will be an historic act of barbarism, and not a routine procedure in parts of the world.
It’s a routine procedure in most western countries these days. That’s what we are fighting now on behalf of women in cultures that require this as a rite of passage and to make the girls ready for marriage.
Dr. Marci Bowers uses her expertise in gender reassignment surgery to do FGM reversals/repairs for free. Of course what’s gone can’t be replaced, but Dr. Bowers has done much to ease these women’s pain and improve their health. Regardless of what anyone thinks of changing one’s sex, Dr. Bowers is doing a wonderful thing to help these women. God bless her.
One of the things I find absolutely abhorrent about this story is that American feminists would not help Ms. Mire with her fight. American academic feminists will chant about “reproductive rights,” and yet will not stand by women who are fighting for the most basic reproductive right- the right not to have your sexual organs mutilated, the right not to view your vagina as disgraceful, and the right not to be brainwashed into perpetrating this on your own daughters and to think that cleansing them of their “disgrace” by mutilating them is an act of love. It only highlights how shallow and meaningless academic feminism in America has become, and how little it does to uplift women with real struggles.
Well said, Llama!
Western feminists can’t really speak out about the plight of women in the Muslim world. To do so would be to highlight how little they have to complain about as women in the west. Compared to having your clitoris sliced off with a rusty blade, a lack of socialized day care doesn’t really sound that bad, does it?
It goes further than that–the FGM mentioned here is the type III kind–where they do far more than just cut off the clit. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Type_III
Beware–I’ve never gotten chills from reading /anything/. This was the exception, and this horrifies me.
This is ultimately a cultural fight. It can only be won by education and work from the inside of Somali culture.
Given the instability and thuggery present in this society, this is indeed one of the more difficult fights. No one can ever say that Ms. Soraya Miré has chosen the easy way out.
To fight this fight, we will need to use the tool of shame and humor. While there is nothing funny about FGM, we have to use good nature and humor to convey the point. Yes, Humor. The Islamic Fundamentalists have no sense of humor regarding much of anything. Humor cuts at them like no knife ever could. Just ask the Charlie Hebdo editors.
That might be true, but doesn’t explain why FGM is performed in the United States, Canada, and the EU, and why there are now calls in at least some countries to make it not just legal but payable out of government funds (remember Florida earlier this year? That one was shot down I think, but more are sure to follow, likely sponsored by “women’s rights” and other feminist groups as well as muhammedan groups and “anti-discrimination” groups).
this is a very disturbing (albeit enlightening) piece….I’m speechless
I’d read about both the ship hijackings and FGM, and truly didn’t connect the two. Somalia should be turned into glass to rid the world of this pocket of pus.
Skimmed the first few pages. Raw courage is to be applauded.
It’s not difficult to understand why the “Vagina Monologues” feminists are shying away from supporting this woman; it’s because, like the brilliant Ayan Hirsi Ali, she refuses to accept their tripe that all cultures are equally wicked when it comes to women’s rights.
The Vagina Monologues is a piece of garbage anyway; I recommend reading Christina Hoff Sommers’ expose of it.
I admire this woman’s courage but think her continued attachment to her people and their sick broken culture is to her detriment. 98 percent of Somali women and girls are still being tortured and mutilated in the most horrible way imaginable; if we think most of the Somali immigrants to the Western world aren’t continuing the practice to the same extent with their own baby daughters we are fooling ourselves. Think of that every time you see these little girls with their beautiful innocent faces tightly framed all the way down to their eyebrows and up to their chins by their hijabs.
This is a culture that sees something dangerously erotic about a 5-year-old’s hair. This is a culture in which a girl can count herself lucky if she doesn’t bleed to death or die from shock on her wedding night and beating his wife is how a husband is expected to express his “love” for her. What in the name of God were Western governments thinking of allowing these people to come here? How could anyone possibly feel pride in or love for such a culture?
I say cut your losses while you can; embrace your identity as a beautiful American woman and forget Somalia, as I wish the rest of the damn world would. Fence it off. It’s beyond hope and and beyond redemption.
Always the quantitative morality, horrible for women, not so bad for boys. Never mind the boys who are maimed for life from the this degraded abysmal horror. Cease all child and infant mutilation now. It should never be called circumcision. It should be call a degenerate tribal practice, maiming to show ownership.
Totally agree. Children (mis)treatement starts in the mother’s womb and end when the kid is about 6 years old.
Everything, every care or damage on the kid (a human being) will be done upon him/her during these about 6 years and 9 months.
Genital mutilations belong to it, and they are a matter of MIStreatement and damage.
See if honesty in condamning them is unanimous,
of if there are so called double standards, be them based on gender (discrimination) or ethnical (same) or ideological (idem).
Good on humans – above all women, which give life to them, being totally (psychologically and phisically) involved with it – who fight for children’s rights,
and for protecting them (against abuses, mistreatements, …).
http://www.youtube.com/user/dmackler58#p/u/23/Al_tYuos2n4 (Daniel Mackler on Circumcision, see 2:20 and further).
You’re quite correct. And the same for all other tribal symbols carved into a body.
Forced tattooing, scarring, etc.
People are horrified when they see Lebanese flog themselves to bleeding in a religious festival, but when they hear about the practice of placing metal rings around a girl’s neck until it grows so long and thin her neck would snap if she ever took them off they call it a “quaint tribal tradition” that must be preserved.
The ONLY reason for circumcision (or indeed any mutilation of the body) to be legally allowed should IMO be medical necessity (in this case for example an infection that can’t be treated, similarly to the requirements to perform any other amputation of say a leg or arm).
How can anyone on this earth commit such a barbaric act on girls? And perpetrated not by vicious, predator/attackers, but by one’s own mother and/or grandmother. Violent mutilation. And to knowingly create anger, bitterness, immense emotional and physical pain, and life long serious physical problems.
From reading the Bible, one understands how much G-D wants all people to be safe and happy. To not suffer.
G-D is PERFECT. G-D’s work is PERFECT. G-D created the human body PERFECT. To mutilate innocent girls is first and foremost a terrible attack on G-D. The act declares to G-D that His work is NOT perfect and G-D’s PERFECT work must be DESTROYED. Second, the savage mutilation is a terrifying attack on defenseless girls who cannot escape their attackers. But G-D forbid, their attackers are their own mothers and grandmothers.
And what about boys?
–
“As a rule, children who were once injured
will later injure their own children,
maintaining that their behavior does no harm
because their own loving parents did the same.”
Alice Miller
Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries, p. 139, Doubleday, New York 1990
–
“Their consciousness,
however, has not registered
the realities of their situation.
By repressing not only the pain but also their anger
and desire for revenge,
they have managed
to banish consciousness,
even idealizing the custom.
Today,
as a result of their repression,
they can justify the procedure
as harmless and necessary.
They cannot recall
their repressed anger
and have never grieved about
what happened to them.
Consequently,
they inflict the same ordeal
on their children
without wishing to acknowledge
what they’re doing to them.”
Alice Miller
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence
p. 74, Meridian, New York 1993
[ Excerpts from http://www.noharmm.org/CAcycle.htm ]
To me it is appalling that someone would have so little empathy that they would want to have sex with someone who did not enjoy it along with the man. How can people be so cruel. Makes me hope I’m wrong to be an atheist so there will be a hell for these folks to go to.
To #11 Ozzy:
From your name you sound like you are Australian. The savage mutilation attack on girls has nothing whatsoever to do with, or comparable to male circumcision. Circumcision was a command of G-D given in the Bible for Jewish males as a sign between G-D and the Jewish people. In America, most boys both Jews and non-Jews are circumcised. They are most certainly NOT maimed for life! Most circumcisions are done in the hospital. It is hygienic to have this excess skin removed. Men who have been circumcised get less AIDS and less cancer. Their wives have less cervical cancer.
A very short article on circumcision:
Circumcised men less likely to give HPV to women; Lower cervical cancer risk: study
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-07/entertainment/27086688_1_male-circumcision-circumcised-men-hpv-infections
Male circumcision is still mutilation. It’s simply a matter of magnitude.
there’s one like you on every FGM discussion- get educated- and quit trolling- your bs is off topic …. FGM is NOT COMPARABLE to FGM- and I am freaking sick of you haters who say oh JEws do it too- go kiss a Muslim ass
FGM is NOT COMPARABLE to FGM
should read not comparable to circumcision
It IS comparable. Or do you approve of the “little female circumcision” that’s now being pushed by feminist groups in the west as a “civilised” replacement for the full thing “to get people to stop the practice”?
If so, I propose you get your arms and legs amputated “a little”, just the fingers and toes will do. After all, it’s just “a little procedure” and you’d still have your arms and legs afterwards, wouldn’t you?
Mutilation is mutilation, just because it happens to a girl doesn’t make it worse.
Chris in California,
Many men suffer from embarrassment over an uncircumcised penis, not to mention the smegma and uncleanliness and having to pull back the foreskin can be very painful for some men just to be able to clean their penises. Men can still orgasm, urinate and have enjoyable sex with the tiny snip of skin that is taken off in infancy.
Comparing male circumcision to female genital mutilation is like comparing cutting off a skin-tag to taking a hatchet to the head of your penis and expecting to be able to ever function normally again.
“Many men suffer from embarrassment over an uncircumcised penis,”
only when they’ve been conditioned to believe it’s bad to not be mutilated by the likes of you.
” not to mention the smegma and uncleanliness and having to pull back the foreskin can be very painful for some men just to be able to clean their penises. Men can still orgasm, urinate and have enjoyable sex with the tiny snip of skin that is taken off in infancy.”
BULL. Many more men have severe problems, report a total lack of pleasure, pain, etc.
And oh, if you are a normal person who practices some personal hygiene you won’t have any trouble when you’re not mutilated in the name of some pervert god.
The exact same thing as for women, for them too the excuse is used that it’s “only a little nip, no essential organs are removed, just some pieces of skin”, and that’s it’s more hygienic.
Double standards as usual from the left.
“Comparing male circumcision to female genital mutilation is like comparing cutting off a skin-tag to taking a hatchet to the head of your penis and expecting to be able to ever function normally again.”
BULL again, as expected.
In some places the practice on girls has degenerated well past what it originally was, the complete removal of the clitoris and little more. Which is exactly the same as the removal of the foreskin on boys as the foreskin is the male equivalent to the clitoris (in both positioning and function, being a major clump of nerves that cause the sense of pleasure during sexual intercourse. The removal of either has the exact same purpose: to prevent pleasure in sex because some religious leaders have decided that sex is a sin and therefore there should be no pleasure in it.
Odd, I never seem to have trouble enjoying sex and I’m circumcised.
Don’t seem to recall every being traumatized by it either, given that it happened when I was an infant and don’t remember it.
Sorry J.T. you’re as full of it as a Christmas Goose. Not the same thing AT ALL.
I have been on this since 1972 and recently became aware of a group that is actually successful in ending the practice even in Somolia. Unfortunetly, you have to listen tothe report in a radio show but it is worth it. If you use the link below, it will lead you to the Tostan link, which is the organizing group.
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_111103k.cfm
In 1997, a group of women from a Senegalese village took a public stand against the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in their village. Since then, over 5,000 villages across Africa have joined them in saying no to a centuries-old tradition. Molly Melching and Gerry Mackie have been actively helping African communities abolish this practice.
Guest
Molly Melching, Executive Director, Tostan
Gerry Mackie, Professor of Political Science, University of California at San Diego
Related Links
Tostan
NY Times article
Information about FGC
Blog on FGC
I have been on this since 1972 also beginning with Fran Hosken and recently became aware of a group that is actually successful in ending the practice even in Somalia. It was on a radio show that is usually apologist for Islam and sickens me but THIS SHOW IS NECESSARY TO LISTEN TO for everyone concerned with ending FGM.
Unfortunately, you have to listen to the report in a radio show but it is worth it. If you use the link below, it will lead you to the Tostan link, which is the organizing group.
When you click this link, look in the upper left corner and you will see a button that says LISTEN – you can hear the show and it is VERY informative –
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_111103k.cfm
In 1997, a group of women from a Senegalese village took a public stand against the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in their village. Since then, over 5,000 villages across Africa have joined them in saying no to a centuries-old tradition. Molly Melching and Gerry Mackie have been actively helping African communities abolish this practice.
Guest
Molly Melching, Executive Director, Tostan
Gerry Mackie, Professor of Political Science, University of California at San Diego
Related Links :
Tostan
NY Times article
Information about FGC
Blog on FGC
Some people here said she should forget it and just live her new life- I don’t agree- how could she forget that “at home” all these girls are still being tortured and victimized by their own. A truly caring person could not turn their back on them.
ISLAM – no one wants to look at what it really is and does- I too have been shocked at the response of Western so called feminists with exception of Ms Chesler, to respond appropriately- instead of truly standing for rights of all women worldwide they are into slut walks and squawking about mundane inconsequential issues- making a mockery of true feminism- the movements that fought for equal voice and vote, property rights,right not to be raped and to have proper legal recourse, things Muslim women do not have.
Ms Chesler I am shocked to see Alice Walker’s name in this piece. I had no idea she KNOWS this subject so well- and in that case how can she be such a jewhater, anti ISrael pro Palestinian supporter, a supporter of HAmas and Fath, of societies that demaean and debase women- and she KNOWS about it,makes it ten times uglier. I see her as a peron so racist she can only see all politics in termsof skin color, a person who erroneously equates Muslim with brown and good, and Israel despite its multiculture and colors as racist- please do not give her any publicity in future. For me she is just one more in a larger group of duped black people, sold on Muslim as race. A jewhater.
Phyllis, this is extremely powerful, moving, important–and pertinent to what is happening in the world that not very gradually slides into a major war between what is left of civilization (not too much) and barbarism (almost everywhere). Last night on BBC Knowledge I watched a documentary on the ten-year-long Salman Rushdi fatwah: but your reports are more shocking, cut deeper into the very quick of the issue of what is left of humanity amidst the satanic activity. Next in importance to the brave stands and words of the women who confront the EVIL of FGM and the belief-system behind it is the need to expose the false liberals and poilitically-correct intellectuals who have lost all sense of proportion, all contextual history, and all human empathy.
Dear Phyllis,
Have you seen Ann Barnhardt’s work? Google “Islamic Sexuality: A Survey of Evil” for her youtube videos.
This kind of thing is so tragic.
As far as I’m concerned, the voices of Soraya Mire and Phyllis Chesler are like oasises in a stifling, burned out landscape where mirages and treachery truly dominate.
Sanity, today, is a thing of the past. Perhaps like certain outdated dress fasions, what with the modern digital, high-tech age, it must seem too inconvenient for most “educated” folks to examine their thinking.
As far as women are concerned, in general, I think too many of them refuse to question anything, hence, they go along with male supremacy. While the same could most likely be said for men, at least they generally are unapologetic in defending themselves, unlike so many women.
In any event, I consider myself to be feminist and proudly pro-choice.
Islam continues to serve as license for various and sundry forms of barbarism. Other religions—-including my own Christian religion—-have done the same. However the others proceeded to clean up their act after it became apparent that such practices were detrimentional to the survival of the followers.
Why is it that Islam is defined by and even dominated by those that deny reality? Why does that religion not have a rebirth of learning or an enlightenment? All others seem to make the grade. Why not Islam?
Anser that question and we may be on to something.
Such bravery and honesty, what a remarkable woman.
I love unreasonable women like Soroya. I am glad that she is so brave. She is helping women everywhere with health and the right to choose how we treat our boides. Thank you for sharing Phyllis.