Education and misconceptions
Members of the Connecticut Coalition to End FGM/C emphasized that legislation will need to go beyond criminalization to eradicate FGM/C in the state.
Mariya Taher, a FGM/C survivor and the co-founder of Sahiyo, an organization that works to empower communities to end FGM/C, said that the practice has become an “identity marker” for many communities in Connecticut.
“If we’re trying to change social norms around communities … we need to think about, at the state level, how laws can reflect those values and can also help to change perception around what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” Taher said.
She stressed that education and outreach about FGM/C harms will be critical.
“You can’t do just one approach,” Taher said. “You have to do all of it.”
Taher said that misconceptions surrounding FGM/C have facilitated its continued proliferation.
“It really is only in the last decade or so that I think we’ve started to recognize how global this issue is,” Taher said. “This is something that happens in 92 countries.”
Taher said that while FGM/C is often thought of as a problem among immigrant populations, its reach extends to second and third generation communities, and even white, Christian households.
Zehra Patwa, a Connecticut resident who is the co-founder of anti FGM/C movement WeSpeakOut and the U.S. Advisory Board chair for Sahiyo, said she learned FGM/C was practiced in her Bohra community when she was 42.
That was when Patwa also learned that she had been cut.
Patwa said that during that time, she reached out to 80 aunts, female cousins and friends.
“All but one of them had been cut,” Patwa said.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I came from this community that, when I was growing up, it was pretty progressive. Lots of great women role models, mentors, they were all educated to have these great careers, and yet they still cut their daughters.”
Patwa said that and Taher said that the data available on the number of girls at risk for FGM/C in Connecticut is likely under-representative of the true toll.
In communities where FGM/C is practiced, they said girls are taught to bury their trauma and are told to never speak about their experiences.
Anti-FGM/C activists are working to flip that narrative and expand community resources for survivors.
“You can’t create change if you’re not allowed to talk about something,” Taher said.
After moving from Ethiopia to Connecticut when she was 13, Comollo said she rarely spoke about her experience with FGM/C with her adoptive family.
“It was a topic that was never discussed because there was no space for that,” Comollo said.
She explained that it was not until she learned about FGM/C as an adult that she started to see it through a new lens and began to speak openly about and advocate against the practice.
“You don’t think about that growing up because you see it as normal, but then once you hear about it, once you learn about it, you are like, ‘Oh my God. It is up to us,’ ” Comollo said.
Comollo said she often wishes that “back in Africa, that somebody spoke up.”
She hopes the new legislation will provide a space for others in Connecticut to use their voice to protect girls.
“It’s important for every one of us to come together to do something about it because if there is nothing done it continues,” Comollo said. “This is more than just a story. This is something that violates humans, young children.”
Sharing deeply personal and traumatic experiences “takes a lot of courage, and it comes with a lot of shame” for FGMC/C survivors, Comollo said. But staying silent comes at an even greater price.
“If I don’t speak, nobody will,” Comollo said. “If you don’t do anything about it, evil will prevail.”