Female Genital Mutilation and Social Media

Christina Julios

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138894686
• eBook ISBN: 9781351717618
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the phenomenon of anti-femail genital mutilation (FGM) social media activism. Against a backdrop of over 200 million girls and women worldwide affected by FGM, this volume examines key global online campaigns to end the practice, involving leading virtual platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Drawing from twenty-one fieldwork interviews with anti-FGM activists, frontline practitioners and survivors, the volume investigates opportunities and challenges inherent to cyberspace. These include online FGM bans as well as practices such as 'cyber-misogyny' and 'clicktivism'.

Global campaigns featured include the UN's International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, the WHO's Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme, The Girl Generation, The Guardian's End FGM Global Media Campaign and the Massai Cricket Warriors. Furthermore, ten case-studies document prominent anti-FGM campaigners. Firstly, five African-led narratives from celebrated activists: Efua Dorkenoo OBE, Waris Dirie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jaha Mapenzi Dukureh and Leyla Hussein. Second, five accounts from FGM survivors interviewed for the book: Mama Sylla, Masooma Ranalvi, Farzana Doctor, Fatou Baldeh and Mariya Taher.

By exploring anti-FGM online activism, this book fills a gap in the literature which has largely overlooked FGM's presence in cyberspace as a virtual social movement. Female Genital Mutilation and Social Media will be of interest to activists, survivors, frontline professionals, students, academics and the wider public.

1 Introduction

Understanding FGM and social media

International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation

On 6 February 2017, the United Nations (UN) marked International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (IDZTFGM) (UN Women, 2017a). The annual occasion served as a powerful reminder of an intractable social problem affecting over 200 million girls and women worldwide (UNICEF, 2016; WHO, 2017). It also illustrated the extent to which online social media activism has now become part of the solution. In a statement released on the official UN Women website, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, denounced the entrenched patriarchal mindset underlying Female Genital Mutilation (FGM):¹

The existence of the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) concentrates some of the most intractable problems we face in trying to change the future for the world’s girls. The cutting and sewing of a young child’s private parts so that she is substantially damaged for the rest of her life, has no sensation during sex except probably pain, and may well face further damage when she gives birth, is to many an obvious and horrifying violation of that child’s rights. It is a kind of control that lasts a lifetime. It makes a mockery of the idea of any part being truly private and underlines the institutionalized way in which decisions over her own body have been taken from that girl.

(Mlambo-Ngcuka cited in UN Women, 2017a)

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, issued in turn a call for action: ‘On this Day of Zero Tolerance’, he said, ‘let us build on positive momentum and commit to intensifying global action against this heinous human rights violation for the sake of all affected women and girls, their communities and our common future’ (UN Secretary-General, 2017). A key target under Goal 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2016a, 2016b),² ending FGM is part of a wider international drive to eradicate ‘all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage’ (CEFM) (UN, 2016b). Central to the success of this collective endeavour to eradicate FGM lays the enabling power of online social media, which has long been harnessed by the UN to serve its humanitarian agenda. The extensive presence of the UN in cyberspace alone attests to the importance of Internet-based communications not only for the UN itself, but by extension, its many international partners, stakeholders and wider global audience. Along with an UN official website and bespoke individual sites for its various agencies, the UN counts with its own online blog, Web TV and audio channels, digital photo and audio-visual libraries together with a range of UN News mobile applications such as those aimed at iOS (Apple Inc.’s mobile operating system) and Android devices (UN, 2017a). The UN’s dedicated social media function moreover operates multiple accounts from various leading online media platforms including Twitter³ (Twitter, 2016a), Facebook⁴ (Facebook, 2018), YouTube⁵ (YouTube, 2016a, 2016b), LinkedIn,⁶ Instagram⁷ and Tumblr,⁸ to name a few (UN, 2017b). Such an array of online social media tools allows the UN to promote its shared anti-FGM agenda while reaching out to virtual communities worldwide. The extent of this online media strategy and the UN’s anti-FGM cyberactivism is showcased every year during IDZTFGM. The United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) own social media output to mark the occasion illustrates this point. On 5 February 2017, the UNFPA, for instance, posted an anticipatory message on Twitter actively encouraging online users to support the UN’s flagship anti-FGM campaign the following day by engaging with social media:

On Monday, 6 Feb., watch live as activists, youth & health experts talk about how YOU can help #EndFGM: http://Facebook.com/UNFPA#GlobalGoals.

(UNFPA, 2017a)

The tweet featured an official UN poster depicting a hand holding a mobile phone with the caption: ‘Join UNFPA, The United Nations Population Fund [February 6] for a Facebook Live Chat…’ (UNFPA, 2017a). The post included links to the relevant UN Facebook page together with the #EndFGM and #GlobalGoals hashtags⁹ (UN, 2016a, 2016b). The UNFPA’s website carried the same picture and encouraged users to ‘Watch, participate, take action’, ‘Stay tuned for Facebook Live programming’ and ‘Listen to activists, survivors, young people, journalists and health experts speaking throughout the day about the reality of FGM and what you can do about it’ (UNFPA, 2017b). The UN Facebook page itself carried a further post including a link to the UN’s own website:

Female genital mutilation is a long-running harmful traditional practice that has led generations of women to a lifetime of pain, a lack of control of their own bodily integrity and sexuality, and debilitating health risks, including death … UNFPA [UN Population Fund] and UNICEF [UN Children’s Fund] lead the largest global programme to #endFGM. More here: http://www.unfpa.org/female-genital-mutilation.

(UN, 2017c)

The UN’s YouTube Channel, in turn, ran a video titled ‘#EndFGM by 2030, for the sake of our “‘common future”’ (UN, 2017e). It pointed in comparable terms to the scale of the FGM problem and the challenges it poses to the well-being of girls and women affected. The video highlighted the investment required to effect meaningful change, estimating that ‘$980 million will be needed to significantly impact FGM between 2018 and 2030’ (UNFPA cited in UN, 2017e). Part of the UN’s overarching communications strategy, similar multimedia messages by various UN agencies appeared in cyberspace signposting online users to relevant initiatives and programmes (GEM Report, 2017; UN Education Report, 2017; UNICEF Education, 2017).

As the evidence presented in this book will show, engaging with online multimedia tools is not only a defining characteristic of social media, but also the standard modus operandi of those involved in activism generally and anti-FGM cyberactivism in particular. Of all the advantages afforded to anti-FGM activists by online technology, it is precisely the ability to simultaneously use multimedia systems across different platforms that provides them with unprecedented access to a global audience. Online multimedia anti-FGM materials are therefore regularly posted on main social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter posts, for instance, typically direct online users to other Twitter accounts, hashtags, news items and Internet websites. Twitter’s functionality moreover allows for images, videos and multimedia links to other online platforms to be included in tweets. Twitter users can furthermore ‘like’¹⁰ and ‘retweet’ (RT)¹¹ posts as they interact with members of their online community, thus allowing for an endless flow of information being instantly disseminated far and wide. Within this context, single YouTube video uploads and the more structured YouTube channels have proven a popular dissemination vehicle for individuals and organisations campaigning against FGM as well as wider gender activism. Since 2006, for example, the UN YouTube channel (UN, 2017d) has featured videos ‘on a wide range of global topics including current news, peace and security, social and economic development, human rights’, among others (UN, 2017d). At the time of writing, the channel features 6,198 videos, counts with 123,058 subscribers and recorded 27,918,750 views (UN, 2017d). In turn, specific gender-related UN agencies and initiatives such as UN Women (2017a), He For She (HeForShe, 2017) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, 2017) have spawned their own individual YouTube channels. Set up in 2010, UN Women YouTube channel, for instance, currently features 535 videos broadly relating to gender equality, violence against women including FGM as well as women’s rights and development issues (UN Women, 2017c). The channel presently counts with 16,363 subscribers and recorded 4,351,153 views (UN Women, 2017c).

It is against this background that the present book examines the rise of online social media in recent years and its impact on FGM activism. Within the context of ubiquitous social networking platforms such as Twitter (2016a), Facebook (2018) and YouTube (2016a), the volume documents developments in anti-FGM campaigning over time. It also considers the ways in which activists have deployed new Internet-based technology and how cyberactivism has shaped their traditional offline efforts. The volume shows how the interactive nature of social media has allowed individual users of virtual spaces to connect with ‘large-scale narratives’ of FGM affecting ‘a global community’ (Dosemagen, 2016). The unprecedented reach of online multimedia platforms has also seen cyberactivists engaged in the fluid process of framing the FGM phenomenon from predominantly a health concern to a human rights issue as well as redefining the meaning of ‘activism’ and their own ‘collective identity’ (McCaughey and Ayers, 2003). Underpinned by a feminist perspective (Berkovitch and Bradley, 1999; Julios, 2015; Kasana, 2014; Wade, 2009, 2012), the volume examines the opportunities and challenges presented by online activism including the spread of cyber-misogyny as a by-product of patriarchal attitudes in virtual public spaces. Drawing from social movement theory (Fairfield, 2012; Gilmore, 2012; McCaughey and Ayers, 2003; Opp, 2009), the book furthermore examines potential drawbacks of online mobilisation such as so-called clicktivism and the dangers of ‘technological determinism that glosses over the importance of offline participation’ (Harlow, 2011: 6; Van de Donk et al., 2004). By exploring for the first time the impact of social media on FGM activism, this book fills a gap in the literature, which has largely overlooked the digital aspects of FGM while focusing instead on survivor-led, public health policy and human rights-based narratives (Ali, 2007; Burrage, 2015; Dirie and Miller, 1999; Dorkenoo, 1994; Koso-Thomas, 1992; Wardere, 2016). Engaging with feminist and social movement theory as well as practice will allow the book to further understanding of gendered approaches to cyberactivism within the context of FGM and harmful cultural practices. In doing so, the book raises important questions about the evolving nature of anti-FGM advocacy in a technologically dominated world and the implications for future action.

Cutting girls: like mother, like daughter

In her seminal biography Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad, Waris Dirie describes how as a child she was subjected to a traditional FGM procedure in her native Somalia (Dirie and Miller, 1999). Dirie’s memoir is one of the first prominent accounts from an FGM survivor of its kind. It also forms the basis of her remarkable transition from becoming one of Africa’s first fashion supermodels to turning herself into an award-winning anti-FGM campaigner and, in 2002, Founder of the Waris Dirie Foundation (eight years later renamed as Desert Flower Foundation) (Desert Flower Foundation, 2015). Dirie’s Desert Flower traces her early formative years in a patriarchal nomadic tribe in the Gallacaio region on the Somali border with Ethiopia (Dirie and Miller, 1999). In accordance with local custom, when Dirie was five years old, her mother Fattuma Ahmed Aden hired a ‘gypsy woman’ to perform the rite-of-passage ritual involving cutting off the girl’s genitals and sewing up her vagina (Dirie and Miller, 1999). Like many of her fellow FGM victims before her, Dirie was unware at the time of what she was about to undergo and neither did she receive any appropriate medical treatment or anaesthetics throughout. Instead Fattuma resorted to blindfolding and restraining her daughter during the procedure. In the meantime, the seasoned ‘circumciser’ proceeded to excise Dirie’s genitalia with a worn-out razorblade, then stitched up the wounds with a set of ‘thorns from an acacia tree’ and a piece of white thread, leaving only a small orifice for the passing of urine and menstrual blood (Dirie and Miller, 1999: 45–46). Despite being rendered unconscious due to extreme pain and trauma, Dirie managed to survive her ‘circumcision’ and its aftermath, but only after having sustained life-changing injuries. Reflecting on her childhood experience decades later, Dirie would declare: ‘All I knew was that I had been butchered with my mother’s permission, and I couldn’t understand why’ (Dirie and Miller, 1999: 48).

What happened to Dirie as a child in rural Somalia largely mirrors the experience of the FGM survivors interviewed for this book together with the over 200 million girls and women worldwide estimated today to have been subjected to some form of FGM, with 44 million of them being below the age of 15 (UNICEF, 2016). The practice of FGM is ‘usually carried out on girls between infancy and the age of 15’, being common in ‘western, eastern and northeastern regions of Africa, and some countries in the Middle East and Asia’ (WHO, 2013 cited in Terry and Harris, 2013: 41). Although the exact figure of FGM victims/survivors worldwide remains ‘unknown’, existing data show that the practice is ‘highly concentrated in a swath of countries from the Atlantic coast to the Horn of Africa, in areas of the Middle East such as Iraq and Yemen and in some countries in Asia like Indonesia’ (UNICEF, 2016, 2014). Three states alone account for more than half of the 200 million girls and women affected by FGM worldwide, namely: Indonesia, Egypt and Ethiopia (UNICEF, 2016). A veritable global phenomenon, FGM-practising countries and cultures have exported the practice beyond their national borders ‘with large variations in terms of the type performed, circumstances surrounding the practice and size of the affected population groups’ (UNICEF, 2016). FGM is now present in Europe, North and South America, India, Australia, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (EIGE, 2015; UNICEF, 2016, 2013). Horner (2016) recently reported ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: understanding FGM and social media
• 2 Finding a voice: when survivors turn hashtag activists
• 3 The FGM debate: to cut or not to cut?
• 4 Anti-FGM activism and the law: a British case study
• 5 Going viral: global campaigns to end FGM and child marriage
• 6 From grassroots activism to online ‘Clicktivism’ opportunities and challenges
• 7 Conclusion: tackling FGM in the digital age
• Index