Women’s Fury At Gendered Violence Is Justified; How Can We Help To Stop The Harm?
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It was great recently to meet up with Prof. Lori Ann Post, whilst she was on a visit to London. Dr. Post is Director of the Buehler Center at the Northwestern University Feinstein School of Medicine in Chicago, where she some while ago appointed me an Adjunct Professor; so we had a lot to catch up on and discuss. Lori is well able to express her own views, but one issue which we explored a little is why there is often something of a chasm between the activists campaigning on the ground against, eg, FGM, and those who research it with the same aim. I will try to consider that challenge briefly in this post.
It is of course difficult to know for sure how many, what proportion, of community activists against female genital mutilation (FGM) and other violence against women and girls (VAWG) feel a distance between themselves and others who work to stop this gendered violence.
Nor do we know what ‘kind’ of distance such activists might want between themselves and others. Does the sentiment arise from resentment about failures of support, or because of ‘cultural’ contexts, or for deep (and perhaps understandable) psychological reasons, or maybe because ‘professional’ and academic campaigners are seen by some as opportunist and acting in bad faith? Or what?
My attempt here to unpick some of this is a preliminary shot at thinking things through, and I may be wrong about it all; but I hope nonetheless it’s an exercise worth a little effort. We really do need between us all to align and use our influence, knowledge and power to stop FGM and other gendered violence everywhere.
So where to start? Maybe from the centre, the most crucial actors with direct experience, and then outwards to others?
Community activists with first-hand experience
Campaigns against gendered violence are meaningless if they don’t embrace the experiences and insights of those who have themselves been the ‘victims’ (in the non-judgmental sense of having experienced a crime), and have become the ‘survivors’. First-hand shared knowledge is essential to any efforts to prevent further harm. We have to try to understand the vulnerabilities which exposed women and girls to this violence, and then identify ways to stop it happening again in the future.
But gendered violence can be an outcome of many situations, some of them personal and some much more socially formulated. The range of contexts is wide. The context of a woman attacked by a stranger in a public place is very different from that of the woman or girl harmed by a close associate, say a family member (‘honour’ killings, or violent threats of them) or an intimate partner (rape). And this again is different from FGM (or sometimes related harms), which may occur in a formal – albeit now often secret – ‘public’ ceremony, or behind closed doors as a younger child, or even as a new-born baby.
Perhaps it’s reasonable to expect that, the more the person (victim) of the violence is aware of it, the more she will likely want to align with others who share that experience.
This is a context already well-considered in other situations where people have experienced particular forms of violence, such as in military combat. (They are often referred to in US accounts as ‘vets’, as in veterans.) Shared direct experience of personal violence tends to create strong bonds and distrust of those outside the group. As the introduction to his book The Body Keeps The Score tells us,
Bessel van der Kolk shows that the terror and isolation at the core of trauma literally reshape both brain and body. New insights into our survival instincts explain why traumatized people experience incomprehensible anxiety and numbing and intolerable rage, and how trauma affects their capacity to concentrate, to remember, to form trusting relationships, and even to feel at home in their own bodies.
FGM ‘victim’ campaigners
Whether or not victims of personal violence such as FGM frame their harm in that specifically individualist, modern western way, it is sometimes the case that they trust almost no-one beyond their fellow sufferers. Part of this might be because of a community omerta about FGM and an unwillingness by victims to acknowledge it is wrong (especially if enabled by close family: how could they have caused such pain for no purpose?), part because of fear of any type of intrusion (fear, exacerbated by previous violence, of unknowns), and part generalised anger arising from the underlying impact of the violence, which may be directed ubiquitously. There may also be a (sometimes justified) fear or concern that western ‘newcomers’, especially from outside the community, will seek to impose their own interpretations on the harmful experience, a sort-of social-psychological imperialism.
(It’s also helpful perhaps ay this point to ask, ‘Why focus on the women and girls? Don’t men and boys also get hurt by traditional practices?’. The answer of course is yes, they do also get hurt by various practices such as circumcision and scarrings. But the additional potential sensitivities of what I term patriarchy incarnate – the intentional harmful imposition of some men’s will on women’s minds and bodies – are important. It is even harder for women to accept ‘support’ from men, when it is clear that some of them routinely constitute a threat to women’s safety and survival.)
All these factors, understandable in the context of traditional harms such as FGM, may become a barrier between women campaigning against FGM who have undergone the practice and others, however well-meaning, who have not.
Other VAWG ‘victim’ campaigners
Similar positions, it might be supposed, apply to women who have experienced other gendered violence, albeit most other forms of VAWG are rarely delivered in ceremonial ways. Yes, some FGM is conducted away from the public eye, on individual girls rather than groups of them, but personal isolation is much more likely when it comes to matters such as ‘honour’, forced marriage and domestic violence (so-called HVB: ‘honour’-based violence, of which men and boys can sometimes also be victims) or rape. Usually the victim is on her own; so (assuming she survives) can she too feel an affinity, excluding others, with fellow-sufferers? It seems reasonable to suppose that for some the distrust at least will be as incapacitating of normal social relationships. As the UK SafeLives charity tells us, referring to HBV
The isolation that individuals experience as part of the abuse can even expand once the immediate risk of abuse has been removed, and can have a severe and long term impact on the survivor’s wellbeing and sense of belonging.
In the words of a United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) report:
FGM may have lasting effects on women and girls who undergo FGM. The psychological stress of the procedure may trigger behavioural disturbances in children, closely linked to loss of trust and confidence in caregivers. In the longer term, women may suffer feelings of anxiety and depression. Sexual dysfunction may also contribute to marital conflicts or divorce.
Whatever the type of violence women (or men) experience to their own bodies and minds, it will with good reason likely long-term harm their lives and their trust in most of what happens, with whomever, afterwards.
Community activists face challenges
The one probable first priority for activists against FGM or other VAWG within a community, whether personally ‘victims’ or not, is navigating issues around loyalty to their group. Such affiliation is usually based on family ties, economic connections, friendships and traditional commonalities, perhaps enhanced by perceived risk for the activist if group norms are no longer accepted and observed.
There may also be issues for activists in traditional settings if they seek support for their efforts beyond their communities. Some activists may chose to disaffiliate from those parts of their communities which adhere to harmful practices, and some will walk away from these communities entirely. To quote one survivor-activist, Sarian Kamara from Sierra Leone, who is now working in London:
When I was older and went into society and realized that there’s so much violence going on and the horror of what happened to me, it just made me hate the practice, made me hate the people around me. And to even think that my mum and my grandmother and the rest of my family organized this kind of violence to happen to me.
Seeking to prevent a harm from within a community is one sort of ‘betrayal’; looking elsewhere for support in such an endeavour may in the eyes of that community be a different and even ‘worse’ form of selling out.
Explaining to their home audience why activists chose to do what they do may be difficult and result in harsh community judgements. Are they doing it for money? or because they want to betray or hurt their parents and family? or because they ‘look down’ on their origins? or because they have become ‘westernised’? Who knows?
In such a setting there is potential for personal peril however one conducts oneself. Challenging long-held beliefs and practices in a traditional community, wherever it’s located, is not for the feint-hearted.
And whilst this may still be true for communities in the ‘global south‘ perhaps in transition to more contemporary ‘modern’ ways of life, it may also be true for newly arrived communities in the global north. In this latter context there is sometimes a premium on maintaining traditional practices and beliefs as a marker of loyality to the community, even to the extent of reintroducing what others see as harmful practices. Challenging that re-emphasis on traditions can be very dangerous, as studies of ‘honour’-based violence (HBV) in the UK and USA demonstrate:
The role of the community in perpetrating or condoning abuse means that survivors of HBV are often unable to return to their communities even after the immediate risk has been removed. For survivors of HBV the impact on wellbeing, sense of belonging and day to day life can be severe and long lasting.
‘Third party’ activists against FGM and VAWG
Some beyond traditionally practising communities who seek to prevent FGM and other gendered violence are involved simply by dint of their employment: lawyers, clinicians, social workers, police officers, teachers and others are all likely in the course of their work to encounter such harm.
Others (me included) however have at some point consciously made FGM the focus of their research and personal-professional concern. The stories of how this has happened are doubtless widely various – in my case, I was already working in areas such as women’s health and the welfare of children – but research perspectives can offer a different and potentially helpful ‘interpretation’ of VAWG to those who must in their professional roles seek to stop it.
Engagement by ‘outsiders’ in the prevention of gendered harm can sometimes however be contentious, especially from the perspective of those from within the communities which still to whatever extent uphold these practices.
Even if the outside intervention seeks to be respectful and understanding of the pressures survivors and other community activists experience, it may be seen as at best questionable. Why would anyone want to interfere in such intimate and private matters? Are they doing it to enhance their careers, on the backs of people in practising communities who likely receive no or little income from their work? Are they doing it because privately they think activists in these communities don’t actually understand how to achieve their stated aim? Or because these third parties are seeking new funding strands for their organisation? Maybe – if they are not of the same ethnicity as the community in question – they are racist?
Again, who knows? These are all reasonable questions to which there may be many and varied answers. It is up to the researcher or ‘third party’ activist to provide when appropriate the reassurance (and evidence) that s/he has no self-serving hidden agenda.
It is understandable that community activists might resent third parties who, even as their job requires involvement, earn a decent salary whilst those in the community itself barely scrape by. Similarly, legal and related strictures imposed by ‘the authorities’ may grate, especially where they touch on interactions within the community; and there may be misunderstandings due to ‘cultural’ misinterpretations or language barriers. Tact and respect from third parties are essential in collaborations.
Anger and resentment
We have seen above that there are multiple bases for resentment of, even anger about, disinterested third party ‘interference’ on the part of the victims (survivors) and community activists who work to end FGM and other VAWG.* That is not of course to say that such sentiments are always bubbling beneath the surface, but it is important for third party activists to listen carefully and try to understand how such feelings might arise. If we are honest almost all of us get anxious, resentful or angry when bad things are done to us – and never more so than when we are totally vulnerable and defenceless.
* (In fact – and I have never suggested this before – I suspect that many of us working as third parties against FGM or VAWG have ourselves, or via close others, experienced ‘similar’, though probably ultimately much less harmful and traumatic, hurt at some point; we are not entirely disinterested, we ourselves know something of it. So instinctively we respond very strongly to hearing about others’ violence? Who is to say? But considering that self-referencing possibility is for another time…. The focus here is on the enduring and grim life-long damage to women and girls of traditional intentional harms.)
Whatever, resentful sentiments are probably enhanced where there is also a sense of disengagement. As the paper Missing from the debate? A qualitative study exploring the role of communities within interventions to address female genital mutilation in Europe (BMJOpen 2018) tells us:
The role of communities appeared most developed within prevention interventions, with good practice examples of both community-led initiatives and partnership. Protection-focused approaches were more challenging in terms of participation, as the clear child-protection focus could stigmatise families. Community participation within safeguarding varied, with examples of both effective and emerging roles. Individuals and organisations had roles in building trust and bridging gaps between communities and authorities, though responsibility for managing risk should remain firmly with statutory bodies. While several community-led organisations delivered a range of services, few examples were found of communities participating in designing, delivering or evaluating statutory services. … Without an effective commitment to the participation and empowerment of potentially affected communities, policy-makers and practitioners will not identify the actual risks experienced by diaspora girls and women in Europe or develop effective interventions, and risk further marginalising those community voices that are the most effective advocates for change.
One well-worked universally acknowledged phrase takes on a new wording and interpretation here: ‘No intervention without (genuine) involvement.’ It is little wonder some women and girls who have already suffered grievous harm resent ‘strangers’ walking in with their professional status, questionnaires, legal strictures and secure salaries.
What to do?
Intentionally I have not subtitled this section of my post as ‘The way forward’. There is I suspect no simple or single way to make ‘progress’.
We have here multiple factors which are difficult to coalesce meaningfully and constructively. Each particular situation requires resolution in its own way, depending on the specific objectives and the context and the characteristics of the main actors.
Nonetheless, one requirement is probably universal; and that is respect.
Respect cannot be demanded; it must be earned. It isn’t another version of ‘meaning well’. It’s an understanding by others that a person’s position and ideas are due appreciation, that they are, in this scenario, entitled to be involved. In such contexts these understandings must also be two- (or multiple-) way/s. Third parties, community activists and victims / survivors all need to hold each other in high regard.
Of course some others want to ‘help’; and of course some professionals are now in many countries obliged by dint of their formal roles (albeit sometimes without due resourcing) to intervene.
And of course people who have experienced sometimes terrible assaults and trauma are cautious about trusting others. It is not enough, albeit necessary, for third parties to show that these people’s pain is ‘understood’; we have to find ways to demonstrate that their fear and likely buried fury are part of the solution.
One ‘problem’ here is that psychoanalytic and other modern explanations of sentiments like fear depend largely on western interpretations of mental processes. These have far less resonance in some traditional communities, even in the global north. Actions will speak far louder than words – and especially so when people in minoritised ethnic communities in these ‘developed’ countries already experience the very opposite of acceptance and care in other aspects of their lives.
We all have to remember carefully that Black Lives (really do) Matter, everywhere. There is very good reason for some people in ‘traditional’ communities to doubt the goodwill of others, part of the social majority.
Those who have experienced the trauma first hand, or at close second hand, need to see that their desire to end FGM and other types of VAWG are enabled and supported properly; they are not ‘just’ the way in for third party intrusions, but rather the bedrock of the action to stop the harm.
Joined up solutions are a challenge. How to make this meaningful interaction a reality in dealing with deeply embedded traditional harms is a very big question, thus far only occasionally fully addressed; but ignoring it – ‘too difficult’ – won’t make the issue go away.
I much appreciated my discussion with Prof Lori Ann Post, and also with another colleague, Prof Hazel Barrett, on this complex issue, though my thoughts here are of course mine alone.
At a time when there are still girls and women in the world who believe life is not even worth living, it is essential that the outrage of those who have survived gendered cruelty is understood and harnessed respectfully, wherever we can, to bring such harms to an end.
Your views on how aspects of this objective might be best achieved, in what order of priorities, are as ever very welcome.
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Books by Hilary Burrage on female genital mutilation
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6684-2740
Hilary has published widely and has contributed two chapters to Routledge International Handbooks:
Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries: Chapter 33,
in Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2019),
eds Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz
and
FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Well-Being: Chapter 12,
in The Routledge International Handbook on Harmful Cultural Practices (2023),
eds Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Comfort Momoh
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PLEASE NOTE:
The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, which has a primary focus on FGM, is clear that in formal discourse any term other than ‘mutilation’ concedes damagingly to the cultural relativists. ‘FGM’ is therefore the term I use here – though the terms employed may of necessity vary in informal discussion with those who by tradition use alternative vocabulary. See the Feminist Statement on the Naming and Abolition of Female Genital Mutilation, The Bamako Declaration: Female Genital Mutilation Terminology and the debate about Anthr/Apologists on this website.
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This article concerns approaches to the eradication specifically of FGM. I am also categorically opposed to MGM, but that is not the focus of this particular piece, except if in any specifics as discussed above.
Anyone wishing to offer additional comment on more general considerations around male infant and juvenile genital mutilation is asked please to do so via these relevant dedicated threads.
Discussion of the general issues re M/FGM will not be published unless they are posted on these dedicated pages. Thanks.
Hilary Burrage 