Thank you so much Hibo Wardere and all the others who safeguard female children for all that you do in the face of this onslaught of misogyny. These days added to by this bunch of privileged men. How fucking galling it must be. What’s their real motivation?
Completely agree it’s because if one group of children being physically mutilated purely to fit in with one set of cultural mores is indefensible, then that indefensibility also goes (or it bloody well should!) for every group of children and every set of cultural mores.
And it’s worth noticing the massive entitlement behind the TRA tirades against this, which should be a red flag in themselves. Proponents can’t prove any objective benefit in health terms to those children that have been ‘operated on’ in either group. Because there isn’t any objective benefit. There are objectively proven serious and lifelong harms though. So the TRAs just shout and bully and call names at anyone looking closely and try to make unproven obscure scientific claims to justify what is happening.
And I’d imagine that they can’t stand the obvious comparisons, when the practice of FGM puts the cultural drivers of FGM quite rightly into the ‘some people believe… but that’s not the only important thing for society and the law to consider..’ sphere.
It’s absolute anathema to those advocating invasive and irreversible medications and ultimately surgery on distressed children and young people, removing key natural physical functions purely to give a different cosmetic appearance….to acknowledge that this arbitrary and lifelong-harmful intervention is every bit as blindly motivated by their cultural beliefs. Beliefs which in reality, everyone else is free to take or leave.
Obviously the belief in ‘gender confirmation’ physical interventions being the right thing to do may be every bit as sincerely held by TRAs, as those who support FGM sincerely hold their own views that FGM is the right thing to do.
The question is not whether the views are right or wrong, but whether everyone else in society needs to sit by and let the practical implications of those beliefs be legally performed on children or young people or not.
And the TRA’s entitlement and privilege means they’re able to get access and influence to law and try to influence social policy in a way that those who support FGM could never hope to gain in their wildest dreams for pro-FGM views in Northern Europe or America. Which really doesn’t fit in with the ‘most marginalised group in society ever’ trope.
So there are lots of reasons why TRAs desperately want to shut up Hibo Wardere. Her light shines so much wider than the girls and women affected by FGM, it also touches on lots of other issues that some people must feel are better kept unexamined.
Please keep going Hibo 