Hitting Women on Facebook

Facebook is as popular, if not more popular than twitter or any other social networking site. I know many people who use it, like it and gain great pleasure from it. There are many groups big and small, some typical ones and some quirky ones. People make friends and it seems a great place of enjoyment. People making friends who want to connect. 

Causes and concerns are set up as groups, and I recently have been attracted to Facebook by joining a woman’s group with an interest close to my heart.

However, I was horrified beyond belief yesterday when I saw this. A group set up called Hitting Woman. At time of writing it has attracted 65 fans from 24 yesterday afternoon and appears to be growing strong. The picture attached to the group’s page states just what it is: a site that appears to encourage the abuse and violence towards women.

I reported the page immediately. But what the hell is Facebook doing allowing this on here? There appears to be no e-mail contact anywhere to write to the site. I wrote my comments of complaint by clicking report this page, under the title inappropriate content. A standard message flashes up on the screen, that no personal replies will be made.

Ok, Facebook is a big place and it can not be expected to reply to every comment made- perhaps. Yet, this site is still there. I have a feeling it may have been taken off once already to only be put back on again. Other sites such as flickr and Twitter do have an proper vetting system where individuals can have accounts suspended if violations of conduct occur.

I would need to look into this with Facebook. So I need your feedback here and your help. For those of you who know Facebook far better than me, I need to know what we can do to shut this group down and ideally to suspend the accounts of the individuals who have joined.

I realise the problem here that you can pop up with another name and start all over again with these sites, if suspended. Facebook, as with other social sites, need to look into this. There must be something we can do. Or sadly, is this an example of sinister activity that we just have to sit by and can do nothing about???

I have posted comments and links on my wall and feed on Facebook with no response to date. This is another way for me to highlight this appalling little group.

Reviews have been left on the site and I have been tempted to write my own comments which would make people see me in a new light.  I think you would be surprised by my language and word usage there. However, I have not done so, as does this not give them the attention they crave? And I don’t think such sick bastards would care two hoots about what I have got to say to them anyway. The only message that would get threw to them is, if women rose up against them and gave them a bloody good hiding such as they would want to give us. Then they might get the message.

So what can be done? I have already said to Facebook that I will be shutting my account down within the week if this is not sorted and will encourage anyone else to do so. I know I have no right to ask anyone to do this but it would be great if people did and tell Facebook just what we think. My one account closure isn’t going to make a scrap of difference to them. But it is my statement to say I won’t participate in a site that allows this. It is my principle here.

Your comments and suggestions please. But most of all your actions are appreciated!

The Silent Sexual Genocide of Females

The 6th February is International Female Genital Mutilation Day and is dedicated to the aboilition of what one survivor has described as vaginal genocide.

Many blog posts today, supporting this day of awareness, will speak out in various tongues all over the world, the terrible statistics of one of the most hideous and silent crimes done to girls and young women in 28 African countries alone and others nations worldwide.

My blog post is aimed at those who have some basic knowledge of the mutilation and torture that FGM is and how there is an aim to see the crime abolished by the next generation- if the practice has any chance of ceasing at all by then.

How can we stop it? How can we change the cultural attitudes and the empowerment of men over women’s bodies? A practice so entrenched in tradition that girls, unless controlled by suppression of their sexuality at this most basic, hideous level,will not be able to marry and have any chance of surviving in their country at all, with honour and acceptance by their own people, both men and women. ( Yes, the women’s attitudes have to change as well).

We have passed International laws aiming to outlaw it by making it a criminal offence. Reports and manifestos are written detailing how FGM should be stopped. There are groups and individuals, survivors of the practice worldwide and NGO’S working tirelessly day and night to stop this practice, with meetings, articles, voices and committees. Strategies, targets and polices are all there. Detailed research giving some idea of the scale is well documented,( though correct figures as to the scale of the problem may never be known), given the difficulties of collecting data out there in rural areas and tribal villages, where deaths are hushed up and suffering quietly hidden away. 

Yet, As I write this post, one girl approx every 15 seconds are having their genitals hacked into, removed, some never to heal. To bleed, to have infections, to develop gangrene and yes, even to die. The survivors can have a life time of injury, of pain and health complications. Go to any FGM website to discover the facts and the misery that embodies FGM, for yourself, in terms of health and mortality.

My own thinking has changed in recent times as I delve more into this sensitive and totally complicated subject. One answer to me seems clear. FGM has to be tackled on the inside, by the people, for the people. You can’t crack a nut with a sledge hammer. It would be easy for “us” the uncut to roller-coaster in and say STOP! You can’t do this. It doesn’t work. Such pressure has been met with a wall of resistance, eg, in the Gambia in 1997. An opinion that “We” the un-cut know nothing about how these people live. What problems they are up against, of poverty, of basic lack of education. Of a status that means that if you are uncut then you will be deemed inferior, unclean, unmarriageable and are stigmatised.

I have read literature over and over about the education of girls being the key, which yes, I agree with in spades , but how can we change the attitudes of The Husband, The African man, The Muslim man, The Chief Elder of the tribe, the Father figure and say?

” You do not need to mutilate your women, rip out their clitoris to subdue and control them. To make them sexually faithful and compliant. They will and can give you so much more without you doing this”

If we are ever to abolish FGM, the political will of all the Governments,where this is practice occurs  have to be on-side. But also, there needs to be  a cultural shift of attitudes of the people whose lives are directly affected by it . That is the mine-field of work that lays ahead. And we are still a long, long way from achieving that goal.

There has been progress with local initiatives at grass-roots level which has seen the change. Alternative rites of passage, where the tradition of the girl reaching maturity can be honoured, without the need for cutting is one example. A softer approach where this subject is raised with sensitivity and care has produced more lasting results.To go into a country and condemn FGM will just fail in the large part. Discussion and help with community projects, healthcare, clean water and a working and committed knowledge of helping these people in other areas of their lives will potentially reap more benefits in the long-run.

 Local women empowered to set up communities where health and living standards in villages can be improved creates the intial focus of change. Local and international charities can facilitate and tap into this work and be seen as a help not as an interference. This is one way of gaining something so vital: trust not condemnation and what can be viewed as potential interference from outsiders.

We must not forget the mutilators themselves. We  see these people as The Enemy but they to can often be victims of circumstance. The mutilators are held in esteem in their communities. These women are often paid, and could be facing extreme poverty themselves.This work may be their main life-line for income. These are women who can be grandmothers and birth attendants whose efforts are not seen as being harmful by some. (However, the mutilated have often a different view on this and rightly so). Their practice is seen as ensuring a women’s  rite of passage to maturity and eventual motherhood. Motherhood is held in high esteem, where a women’s value is measured by her ability to have children. These women feel they are giving a right and just service to their communities, even when the consequences of mutilation is terrifying and life-changing for the girls involved.

I have read initiatives where mutilators are found alternative employment and are encouraged to abandon the practice, when practical and acceptable solutions are found for them. And when their own attitudes to the need for FGM changes but are not imposed on them. We just have to keep working with these people. But the people who need to work with them ideally need to be one of them, who have an in-depth understanding of their daily lives and their principles.

 If men can see  the benefits to themselves, as a result of their women being educated, in better health, by not being mutilated, then their attitudes might begin to change. Women running small businesses with micro-financed loans via Kiva is one example which benefits the whole family.This may be one way of seeing that their status need not be threatened and where their family can prosper with them as the head. That their standing in the community will be increased, if their wives and families can work and improve the family’s prosperity.

I am still not sure how best it is to approach the male thinking over the unneccessary need to control a woman’s fidelity. But I do know that women desperately need good contraception and basic family planning, which is one of the biggest health and human rights needs of women today in the Developing World. I need to research this more and welcome your views.  We need to educate the girls. But we need to educate the boys as well.

Finally, the whole value of a woman’s price and a woman’s life has to be addressed. This violence has to stop. It’s just a question of how, taking all the difficulties into consideration that we can do it. We have to work as a team, to connect, to speak together, to share ideas and to act together, so that the “inside” can change and we can watch, do and share in it’s happening and success.

 At least 480 girls will have been cut by the end of writing and editing this post. How can we stop, just one, two, hundreds, thousands, all of them? This is my mission, my cause, my fight, even to save one. This is why I write and work and will do so forever as long as I can and have a voice.

This is Zero Tolerance Day to Female Genital Mutilation. We can stop it. We must stop it. And today or tomorrow is not soon enough.