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. We had to know if this new surgical technique could really mean orgasms for the 140M women worldwide who'd had their genitals mutilated in the name of tradition.
It was all I could think about the entire day before the scheduled "session". I thought maybe I should bow out and let Betty run it. Stupidly, I had agreed to go out to dinner with a group of friends earlier in the day. That evening, as we all piled in a cab, I jumped in the front seat knowing that my mind was elsewhere and that I had no interest in small talk. A few minutes went by before someone asked what I was doing tomorrow. I just laid it out there, "Betty and I are doing a private session with a woman who's been circumcised". Silence. Then the African cab driver next to me said, "I've been with many women who've had this done to them. And when we had sex they just cry. I wish they didn't cry". That was all I needed to hear.
Her name was Badu. She was from Kenya. And she called to say that she'd be a few minutes late. That was a good sign. When she walked into the room, I was struck by the strength of her presence and her beauty. We introduced ourselves and went right into the pre-interview. Her story mirrored Ayaan Hirsi Ali's story in Infidel. It happened when she was 10. Her aunts took her to her grandmother's house with her 2 cousins and all three girls were held down - an aunt holding each leg and each arm - and forcibly mutilated. Then, they had to walk 2 miles back home, stay in the house for 1 week, and have their dressings changed daily. This was done so that they could marry. Badu told me how there was a word for women who hadn't been circumcised in Kenya: "aegesane". Yet, there was no word in their language for the female genitals.
She had never touched herself. And she couldn't let her husband touch her either. After his numerous affairs and his relationship with an older English woman, she'd left Kenya for the states to stay with her sister and get a divorce. She'd always wondered what "she" had that she didn't. "She" had an intact sex organ. How could she compete with that? This is what compelled her to spend 2 years looking for information about what had happened to her and how to fix it. The UN had sent their package. It was about activism and putting and end to FGM but what about the women who'd been mutilated? There was only one resource: Betty Dodson. And now Badu was sitting in her living room ready to reclaim her sexuality.
Betty asked her to go to the bathroom, take off her clothes from the waist down, wrap a towel around herself, and join her on the living room floor for her genital exam. Badu returned from the bathroom and sat next to Betty. They sat with their backs propped up against the wall on cushions with a towel under them. There was a small lamp and a mirror at their feet just like the description of Betty's technique in First Time Orgasm. I sat a few feet away in a chair with my notepad and my camera. Betty asked her to spread her legs open with her knees apart...Badu couldn't. That's when the tears started. Betty said, "Let it out. You're going back to that day when you were hurt. Let it out." By now, she was sobbing. I went to the backroom and brought out the tissue box and a glass of water. Badu sat there crying into a towel unable to relax her body and open her legs. This was going to take some time. Badu kept on repeating, "I don't touch myself...I've never touched myself...I don't touch myself".
Now Betty is a master at humor. She's your irreverent fairy godmother who can make you feel loved and secure and drop a joke in the same instant that will make you laugh your ass off. Add me to the mix and you're got Abbot and Costello. Betty started in first, "Badu, you're going to have to open up your legs for me, Darling. You can't keep them closed forever." Then I chimed in, "yeah, the worst thing has already happened so there's really nothing to worry about". Badu started to laugh. We had her. We continued cracking jokes as Badu laughed, cried, and laughed some more. It took her an hour to let go of the pain of reliving her circumcision. She kept on pulling her arms behind her and tightening up her legs assuming a defensive posture. The last time she had opened her legs she had been mutilated. Her body remembered that pain and was protecting itself. We had to create a new positive experience before she could move forward with her life.
With her legs apart, Betty placed the mirror between her legs and turned on the small light so that she could look at her vulva. Then, Betty took some almond oil and squeezed a bit into Badu's hands. "Now, I want you to run your hands over your vulva with long strokes from the bottom to the top like you're stroking a baby", Betty announced. Badu hesitated at first but then softly cupped her vulva and began stroking it. Betty took the next step, "Badu I want you to keep stroking your vulva and say ‘This is my vulva', Badu repeated, ‘This is my vulva', Betty continued, "now say after me ‘I'm reclaiming my vulva today', and Badu said, "I'm reclaiming my vulva today".
From across the room, I was looking to see if she had inner lips or anything that looked like a clitoris. She definitely had outer lips so I knew that she hadn't suffered the most extreme excision called farooni where they cut everything away so that it's just skin on bone. We were ahead of the game. Then, Betty asked Badu if she could touch her vulva to access what had been done to her. I moved closer so that I was sitting Indian style at their feet with my camera next to me. Betty put on a surgical glove and lubed up with some almond oil and lightly pulled back on Badu's outer lips. She didn't seem to have any visible inner lips. We didn't know if that was her natural vulva style of if they had been cut away. Then Betty spread her outer lips open wider with her fingers and we could see her teeny, tiny inner lips. "You do have inner lips. There they are. They're just small," Betty exclaimed. "Badu, you have a total porn pussy, "I continued, "Women in America have surgery to reduce their inner lips so that they look like yours". She couldn't believe it.
It was the moment of truth. Did she have a clitoris? We could see that there was a small dent if her clitoral hood like someone had just taken a piece out of it. So far that was the only visible sign of circumcision. Then, Betty placed her index finger and middle finger over her outer lips making a V and pulled back. Suddenly, a very pink clitoris popped out! "Oh my god, Badu, you have a clitoris", I yelled. Betty added, "YOU don't need any surgery. You have a totally normal sex organ". Badu started to cry incredulous that she had had a clitoris all these years. It was like that part in the Wizard of Oz when the good witch of the North tells Dorothy that she could have clicked her heels 3 times and gone home at any time. Badu could have rubbed her clit and had an orgasm for the last 48 years. Betty fucking Dodson had just told her that she was a complete woman. Badu was totally overwhelmed. Betty and I couldn't stop smiling. We were elated. Badu wondered whether it had been a mistake - whether her circumcision had been botched - or whether this was intentional. "You have to contact your Aunt Tara and tell her thank you", Betty added.
I had to get this on film and I wasn't sure if Badu would be ok with me photographing her vulva. I crossed the room, sat down in front of Badu, got down on my knees and my elbows between her legs, and got in position to take some shots. I almost sat back wondering if I was being too forward. Badu moved her foot towards me and touched my leg. She was closing the circle. I readied the camera and took three pictures of Badu's beautiful vulva and her clitoris in all its glory. We spent some time letting her feel different types of stimulation. Her clitoris was hypersensitive after not being touched for 48 years. We had her try the water dancer...the liberte...she seemed to like the liberte. At one point, Betty asked, "what do you feel Badu"? She said that she didn't know but that she felt happy. I chimed in, "I think that's pleasure you're feeling". We laughed. Badu wasn't ready to have an orgasm just yet. Being able to let go of the pain of her circumcision and view and touch her vulva were the first steps to reclaiming her sexual self.
Badu got dressed and we all sat around Betty's coffee table talking about the amazing experience that we'd all had together. We wondered how many other women were out there who believed that they had been circumcised but had their clitorises intact. Even it if was just 1% of the 140 million women out there who'd been mutilated that was over a million women we could heal without surgery. I looked at Badu and said, "I think it may be time to let go of the resentment you've held for your husband all these years. It must have been hard for him not to be able to touch his wife." Badu nodded in agreement as a tear ran down her cheek.
Then, Badu asked Betty how she started doing this work. She asked Betty about her background. Betty shared a story about her pioneer family and how in the middle of the night while the men were in town her grandmother had shot a cougar that was stalking their pigpen right between the eyes. That story totally summed up Betty. She is a feminist revolutionary and a pioneer of women's sexual freedom of choice. Somehow I'd been fortunate enough to be there in the room with these remarkable women. I thought about how the women in my family marched down Madison Avenue campaigning for their right to vote, how my grandfather was featured in a Gerber baby food ad with the slogan "suffragettes feed their babies Gerber", and how my great aunt was one of the first female doctors in New York (and how she must have felt on her first day when 12 male doctors resigned in protest). Now I could carry forward my family's feminist legacy and lend my talents to this most just cause.
We all hugged good-bye and I walked Badu to the front door. As she turned to me for one last hug, she asked if she could come back again. That went without saying. She was just 2 hours away. I closed the door and walked into the living room when I saw Badu's scarf on the chair, "she left that intentionally", Betty said, "we'll be seeing her again". I couldn't wait.
