A Survivor’s Agony: What Happened to My Vagina Should Never Happen to Any Woman
A Dawoodi Bohra woman shares her painful experience of FGM and marital abuse, urging a ban on this cruel practice and a right to dignity for all women.
Heartbreaking Story of a Dawoodi Bohra Woman: From Female Genital Mutilation at 12 to Marital Abuse on Her Wedding Night — A Cry for Justice and Reform
As per Mrs. Asmao, a Dawoodi Bohra woman, her recent experience with female genital mutilation and the horrible events of her early days after marriage have been sobbed about and described as the most painful traumatic ordeal she ever encountered. Silent suffering; conditioning by culture, and the hopelessly desperate hope for change are what her story tells.
Asmao was almost 12 when her mother took her to the local midwife. In this community, without being cut, a girl may not be considered as “pure” or as “ready for marriage”. Besides that, she said, her mother was scared because she might begin to explore her sexuality; there could possibly be masturbation or love, desires that can shame a woman. So, in the name of faith and purity, she handed over her daughter under a clitoridectomy, thereby suturing her vagina. Brutally painful and left scars that were not merely physical, but psychological as well.
Asmao got married two years ago. She was aware of the horror of her past lifting weights over her. On the wedding night, fear gripped more than excitement. She was aware that her shape was changed, and she knew what might happen. Here comes her husband in an eager and completely unmindful—or perhaps fully aware—way of the things done to her. He removed her underwear and, rather than showing care, began to touch her with excitement. Thereafter, in horrible fashion, he pulled a razor blade out and explained how he would cut the stitches himself. Asmao, terrified, begged him to let a doctor do it, but he stood firm, insisting that it would be shameful if anyone other than him opened his wife.
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As she resisted in pain and fear, he called in his family-his mother, father, and two brothers. They entered the room and held her down. The sight of her husband cutting her stitches before them completely stripped her naked and helpless. She cried and bled, and those people simply laughed at it. Absolutely no privacy-no dignity-only violence.
She, of course, did not care that she had been traumatized. With that condition, her husband went on to have sex with her. This was not intimacy but a violation, a rape, as far as Asmao was concerned. The next day, she called her mother for comfort. Instead, she received indifference. Her mother simply said, “Even I went through the same. You need to be strong and satisfy your husband”.
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Those words broke her further. What she had gone through was normalized in generations of women who had suffered in silence. But in deepest self, Asmao, knew that something was terribly wrong. Everything came under suspicion—family, faith, and community.
I just hope, the government ban this cruel ritual because girls and women too have Right to have Sexual Pleasure.”
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