Thread by @monaeltahawy

Feb. 6 is International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting.

In #Egypt, my country of birth, 87% of girls and women aged 15-49 years have undergone FGM/C. feministgiant.com/p/endfgm #EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

With a population of 100 million, that horrific percentage means that Egypt has the greatest number of women and girls who have experienced FGM/C of any country in the world.

#EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

We hack away at perfectly healthy parts of our girls’ genitals because we’re obsessed with female virginity and because women’s sexuality is a taboo.

#EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

I first learned about FGM/C from a news article when I was about eighteen, soon after which I was told that many women of my extended family had been subjected to the horror when they were girls. My world came apart.
#EndFGM #ZeroTolerance2FGM

I was worried sick that I’d been cut and had somehow buried the memory. I checked my genitals in panic, not really knowing what would have been missing had I been cut, but worried nonetheless.

I have not been cut. I have spent the past 36 years obsessed feministgiant.com/p/endfgm

Something that hurts so many girls and women is kept silent and taboo because it has to do with our genitals and with sex.

The biggest obstacle in the global fight vs FGM is the reluctance to talk about the practice & the ways it harms girls & women–physically & psychologically

Laws are not enough. We need nothing short of a sexual revolution that centres our pleasure & liberation; a recognition that it isn't enough to stand up to the State alone, as we did during January 2011 revolution. We must stand up to patriarchy too. feministgiant.com/p/endfgm

At the heart of any revolution are consent and agency, the unequivocal belief that I own my body–not the State, not the Church/Mosque/Temple, not the Street and not the Family.
#EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

If is from that belief that we can all help in the fight against FGM/C by talking openly and unashasmedly about sex and our bodies, as these sexual radicals and revolutionaries have begun to do.

feministgiant.com/p/egypts-sexua… #EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

#Egypt now has the region’s first ever multidisciplinary center for #FGM survivors,

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1361761455780036612?s=20&t=GRvcY3Kw9rNKuxrsLpP4Ww

#EndFGM #zerotoleranceday

Every day–not just this one day when we urge the world to remember yet another way that patriarchy hurts us–I will fight to ensure that we claim ownership of our bodies; no longer vectors, but authors of our liberation.
#EndFGM #ZeroToleranceToFGM

It is our right to enjoy sex.

We have a right to pleasure.

We own our desire and we have a right to express it freely.

We must end FGM

feministgiant.com/p/endfgm #EndFGM #ZeroTolerance2FGM

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