Anti-FGM campaigner Hibo Wardere comes under attack

Yes, another poster on the thread has already posted about the orchid project.

If anyone is interested in donating, this is the FGM charity I support. They front and centre women, and do great work on the ground.

www.orchidproject.org/get-involved/donate/#donate

Collecting data on trans men in particular in that region is very hard, but there is some information here.

Not information gleaned from finding, let alone talking to them. The only time they are mentioned on their own, not subsumed into a general LGBT group (or SOGIESC as these researchers call it) is on page 63:

No targeted services for trans men were identified, despite their having complex protection, health, and other needs. Trans men may be targeted for rape and forced marriage, and some have children as a result. Yet they are often uncomfortable accessing sexual and reproductive health services oriented to women, and may be isolated from other refugees with diverse SOGIESC and therefore not attuned to available services. “Olivia,” a trans refugee woman, said, “Trans men want to be alone and stay by themselves. We don’t meet them very often. They want to be in their own safe space as trans men.”

I have quoted the passage in full, because it tells us two things: female transgender people exist in the region and there are so few of them that not only could these researchers not find any (they couldn't find individuals and they couldn't find any groups or communities of them), but although there are now a number of services and organisations supporting male transgender people, there are none for female people.

That the researchers couldn't find any female transgender people to talk to is remarkable, because they did manage to find and speak to hundreds of male victims of rape, including male homosexual victims and male transsexual victims, all of whom come from a culture where being known as a male victim of sexual violence comes with extreme social repercussions for the entire family of a victim. That suggests the problem did not lie with the researchers not being able to build trust within the community, but with the vanishingly small numbers of female transsexuals in their target region.

From reading the report it is also clear that the people being interviewed are homosexual transsexuals. The prevalence of homosexual transsexuals amongst the female sex is 1 in about 34,000. Not 1 in 100. (The estimate in the US is 1 in 2000 to 1 in 100,000.)

This is not hard to explain - in the region, the doctrine of gender identity hasn't gained traction yet, so the few people who do socially transition do so because they are transsexual and seeking to minimise their gender dysphoria by doing so. (Access to medical transition is extremely limited, and many transsexual people find accessing general healthcare very difficult, too, due to discrimination, motivated mostly by homophobia.)

We haven't argued that female transgender people do not exist in the region, of course, but that they are so vanishingly rare in the communities Hibo is trying to reach, that there is no logical reason for her to change her language to appease followers of the doctrine of gender identity. Especially when this hinders the clarity of her message: this is something only women and girls have to endure. And only women and girls.

What is it you're trying to achieve here, DadJoke?

Perhaps your energies would be better spent campaigning in Somalia. You could start an information campaign to explain to children that having their genitals cut shouldn't stop them from identifying as they please?

Then you could just let women focus on helping each other and helping girls, instead of trying to police our language, thoughts, campaigns and bodies.

I mean, it's heroic that you're here, on a feminist board, fighting for the rights of hypothetical transmen who have suffered FGM, (whether or not they actually exist) and educating women about what language we should use to describe our selves, our bodies, and our experiences. But I think we are probably okay without your input, thanks.

God I was so utterly furious about that one.

I don't think she should be lecturing anyone about inclusive language after that.

People pointed out that transboys had clitorises too and her proposed wording would exclude them, and she said, oh good point.

Apart from anything else, a normal reaction to being excluded from FGM would be thank fuck for that. Not, er, complain about it.

@Datun You always manage to hit the nail on the head.

"she is clearly slightly transphobic"

man repeatedly slurs woman on feminist board to apparently burnish his feminist credentials

Why anyone is continuing to feed this particular energy sucker I don't know. He's just going to carry on slurring a woman because he's found an excuse to do it on a feminism board where the mods wont stop him.

I believe it was Nora Imlau who had the problem with that, actually.

Is that the person who claims FGM excludes transwomen?

Apart from anything else, a normal reaction to being excluded from FGM would be thank fuck for that.

Not, er, complain about it.

@datun I am surprised that you can’t acknowledge the reality that trans men have vulvas and vaginas

Of course they do, because they are female. Female genital mutilation is all the inclusivity that is required.

It’s shameful behaviour.

Really shameful

I can’t tell you how much I hate this behaviour from the privileged

Taking over behaviour because of course they know so much better

[quote DadJoke]@datun I am surprised that you can’t acknowledge the reality that trans men have vulvas and vaginas.[/quote]
I believe it was Nora Imlau who had the problem with that, actually.

[quote DadJoke]@datun I am surprised that you can’t acknowledge the reality that trans men have vulvas and vaginas.[/quote]
Strewth this is like wading through treacle.

That's not why they're targeted. That's how they're targeted.

They're targeted because they're female.

@datun I am surprised that you can’t acknowledge the reality that trans men have vulvas and vaginas.

You brought up a screencap from 2020. This thread was about the incident in February 2021, involving various German women, one of whom outright implied that FGM didn't happen to transboys! Have you still not read this thread?

If you are interested, I actually found one of the instigators from a few days before them which was the Canadian transwoman Meghan McKie.

have also not found any reports of one single trans man who has been subjected to FGM. All this seems to be in aid of something that hasn’t actually ever happened.

It seems to happen to children before they're old enough to wrestle with havng a gender identity. One case I read about from one campaigner was inflicted on a newborn.

I cannot speak for Hibo, but I have a feeling that if she knew a survivor who identified as a man, she would be kind and respectful to them.

But that's quite a different thing from adopting "individual with a cervix" as her terminology going forward, at the request of a random anime-fan because the anime fan says they feel "alienated" by her campaign .

When you work in this field - as I have - you ensure that the voices of the women and girls involved are respected and centred. Training materials should be respectful of community issues while ensuring that the practice is challenged. Teaching about FGM in schools must be done so that community tensions / racism are not unintentionally inflamed. Girls who have been subject to FGM must not be traumatised by well intentioned lessons that describe their suffering and allow discussion with no thought for their feelings. It's complex and that's why women like Hibo are so important as the voices of these women are too often overlooked.
Posters who choose her as a target for baseless slurs contribute to a racist and sexist agenda that acts only to undermine her views and her role. And that is shameful behaviour.

You do understand, don't you, that girls are targeted, because they are girls. And their biology is mutilated, because they are girls.

Do you understand that if a relative of one of those girls claimed they were not a girl, they would still be targeted?

It's not because they have a clitoris. Or are a 'cervix owner'. It's because they are girls.

It's female oppression wholly based on their sex. It takes many different forms, and FGM is one of them

But you expect an activist to embrace an ideology which claims the opposite.

That somehow saying you're not a girl, will stop you being targeted. Because sex is determined by the way you think or what you say.

Do you have idea what it feels like to women activists, when you try and separate female oppression out?

Into people who menstruate for period poverty, or those who have a cervix for gynaecological health failures, or humans who get pregnant for maternity rights, or people who have a clitoris for FGM, or those who are trafficked...etc.

You are obscuring the basis, which is that they are women. Lesser than. Second class. To be controlled.

If you can't define what a woman is, you'll never connect the dots.

And you wonder, all wide-eyed, why women a) can instantly out argue you, and b) aren't having it.

Oh I agree--I just meant that those outside the US may not realise how much currents of thought in the US (including the trans debate) may be influenced by US puritanism/religious feeling/Biblical fear of homosexuality. Trying to transplant the US ideas wholesale into the UK or other places, without understanding the context, leads to trouble

Certainly!

[quote DadJoke]@persistentwoman she is clearly slightly transphobic, so why would I retract this remark?[/quote]
How is she transphobic though?

She just said to someone who is quite obviously not in need of her time and emotional energy that she wasn’t interested in their attempt to police her language around her extremely important work.

She didn’t owe them her energy or an explanation as you seemed to suggest earlier, she wasn’t rude so how could you possibly translate that into being transphobic?

she is clearly slightly transphobic

Just out of interest, what level would you rate your misogyny? Do you think you're managing to stay below "slightly misogynistic"?

The idea that I've seen from some TRAs and their allies that sex reassignment surgery on males is a form of FGM is incredibly offensive.

Or not considering their feelings when she says stuff.

Stuff about fgm, and refers to women and girls.

The whole thing is grim.

Another point. Has the idea that the term FGM is transphobic been dropped now? Too unpopular? Strange silence on that in the Twitter responses.