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female circumcision

The Sexologist, The Witness, and The Victim

Tue, 01/27/2009 - 22:50
Submitted by Carlin Ross

Last Saturday Betty and I had a private session with an African woman who had been circumcised.  Her name is Badu.  She found us through our work with Clitoraid, an organization that is paying for these women to have genital reconstruction. The hope is that this surgery may help the 140,000,000 women who've been mutiliated. It was the most amazing experience of my life.  I'm so grateful to have done this with Betty and for us to be able to share it with you. Betty and I wrote separate essays and Badu is writing hers too:

My First Circumcised African Woman

The Witness: Observing Betty's First Circumcised African Woman

My First Circumcised African Woman

Tue, 01/27/2009 - 22:18
Submitted by Betty Dodson

She was so soft spoken on the phone that I had to ask her to speak up several times. Badu told me she was an African woman from Kenya who had been circumcised. Two years ago, she began looking for information to understand what had been done to her as a ten year-old child. She came across my name online and made the call. When I asked what type of procedure had been done, she didn't know. Did she still have part of her clitoris? She didn't know. Were her inner lips intact? She didn't know. Each question was answered the same. She had never looked or touched herself "there." Well, no biggie. I'd heard the same sad story from American women who had been psychologically mutilated by the absence of information about their clitoris coupled with severe prohibition of childhood masturbation.

The Witness: Observing Betty’s First Circumcised African Client

The Bodysex workshop in Copenhagen was one thing but a private session with an African woman who'd been circumcised was another. I wasn't sure if I was ready. I wasn't sure if I could bring anything to the session at all. The worst part: I'd been after Betty for several months to agree to it. After meeting Sylvie from Clitoraid, I had begged and pleaded for Betty to do a free private session with a circumcised woman before her surgery with Dr. Bowers.  We needed to assess if there was any feeling in their clitoral area before the surgery to know if you could really reconstruct a clitoris.