Every year, two million girls suffer the pain of genital mutilation—a clear violation of their human rights. No government should continue to ignore this crime. Help us to stop violence against women.
i’ve seen this poster making the rounds in the feminist blogosphere. i appreciate and understand the message the poster and this campaign are trying to express, but there is something about the delivery that makes me uneasy/queasy. i think it’s most likely that i am sick and tired of women and girls being compared to flowers. a perfect little red rose.
i don’t know about you, but my vagina is not a flower. i’m quite glad that it is, in fact, a vagina, and not a flower. call it however you like, a vagina, a cunt, a pussy. labia majora, labia minora, all that jazz, and of course the wonderful wonderful clitoris.
so what the hell do all of those things have to do with a flower? what the hell can a rose do that my vagina can’t? can it can it cum fiercely and amazingly, over and over? can it taste delicious? can it play a huge, essential role in giving birth and creating human life? can it resist all of the shame patriarchal culture imposes on it, encouraging people to subject it to various forms of torture like douching, waxing and surgical interventions not dramatically unlike female genital cutting? i don’t think so.
all of these amazing things that my vagina can do make me appreciate it, love it, and to love other vaginas. the idea that someone else could decide and force me, or any other vagina possessing person i know, to have part of their anatomy sewn shut, or cut off… enrages me. and the fact that two million people endure this practice is deserving of our rage, and efforts to put an end to it.
so back to the rose: all i know about roses is that they grow in gardens, are beautiful, and smell nice. the reason i don’t want my person or my genitals reduced to a rose in a poster to raise awareness about and hopefully put an end to female genital cutting is because i do a hell of a lot more than look beautiful and smell good. damn, sometimes i really fucking enjoy not looking beautiful and not smelling good, and i don’t think that means that i am less deserving of respect and love and all of those good things.
this leads me to the question: what would an efficient poster against female genital cutting look like? i don’t really know if i have an answer to that. but part of me feels like seeing the faces of the girls and women who endure this practice would be more efficient. part of me feels like hearing the voices of those people would be more powerful.
i just know that representing all two million of them with the image of a sewn up rose doesn’t do them, or this issue, justice.
(little rant i wrote on my more “feminist” centric blog)
I think in any other context, the rose would be offensive and a ridiculous idea. However, and this is only my take on it, maybe they have used a rose/flower to represent female genitalia to convey the innocence and delicateness of the millions of little girls vaginas that are being hacked at unnecessarily.
I think because of the context, the picture used in this poster is powerful.
i’m not arguing against your opinion, but attempting to clarify mine; of course an image can be interpreted differently. but to me, the reasons why you think it is appropriate is part of what really bothers me. it takes away the voices of the people affected by this horrific practice, and instead portrays them as innocent, delicate victims instead of strong, resilient survivors and fighters. i see where you are coming from, but i find that kind of language and rhetoric disempowering and slightly distracting from the issue at heart. no matter how “innocent” or young or beautiful or ugly or old the person subjected to female genital cutting is, it does not make the crime any less wrong. and i don’t think you, or the people involved in this amnesty international campaign would disagree with that statement. this symbol of the rose, however, says otherwise.
the first time i ever heard about female genital cutting was reading warris dirie’s story in an early nineties edition of reader’s digest. i was young and it shocked and appaled me that such a thing could happen, and happens, over and over and over. even her book is called “desert flower” but at least in that case in represents the kind of strength a flower would need to grow and exist in a desert. the main difference there is that it was told in her words! it was her voice, and her story. i did not feel like “oh my goodness poor innocent violated woman” but rather “wow, what a strong person.” i feel like ad campaigns created mostly by western run NGOs about issues that attempt to address violence against women (especially in african and middle eastern countries) often impose their own rhetoric (of beautiful, innocent, voiceless flowers) without letting the atrocity of the crimes and the resilient strength of the survivors speak for itself. i’ve seen this in documentaries, television reports, and of course posters and ad campaign material.
i’ve thought about it some more, and i think a campaign like stop rape in DRC, where we not only see the faces of the people affected by this horrible crime, but can watch documentaries, and hear the stories first hand, is more effective. the poster of this campaign confronts the viewer with the word rape and tells us these are two survivors, under the age of 9. tell me one person who can see that image without it having some sort of impact. whereas in this case we can hardly even read the words “genital mutilation”; the image is supposed to speak in lieu of words… i think that’s why i really want to deconstruct the message behind this rose.
I saw a documentary the other week that showed women holding a girl of about 7 down, so they could circumcise her. The girl was screaming, punching, kicking and the women would just force her back down. I was so horrified to think that these women could resist the strength of this thrashing child’s cries. Were the women victims of this practice when they were children? Why did one of them slap the child and tell her to stop crying, that it didn’t hurt? It was graphic and bloody. I was shocked.
Sewn up rose petals don’t come close to painting an accurate picture of this horrible violence against women.