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It took years for Mina to comprehend the brutality of this act. Now, surgery has changed her life
Female genital mutilation has left many women grappling with health issues but a procedure to reverse some of the damage is proving 'life-changing'.
Published 6 February 2023 5:48am
By Amy Hall, Charis Chang
Source: SBS News
Image: Mina (not pictured) was one of at least 200 million women and girls alive today to have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) but a reversal procedure has been life-changing. (SBS News)
Mina* was about six years old and living in a refugee camp in Kenya when her mother organised for her to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).
She doesn't remember how she felt about it at the time, but she does remember how “celebrated” the practice was among the women in her family.
“There was a big deal that was made out of it, and there was like a massive feast and all of that,” the 35-year-old told SBS News.
“But beyond that, there wasn't really much explanation that was given to us.
“It was just told to us that it was something we had to do so that other people don't look down on us, so that we're not shamed, so that we can be wholesome Somali women. There was also a lot of religious stuff that was associated with it.”
Mina said it was framed as a “good thing” and something she and her sisters should be “excited” about.
“Because we were going to a Western country, it was a way to ensure that we had held on to our womanhood, and we got married and had good husbands,” she said.
FGM, also know as female genital cutting, female circumcision, or traditional cutting, is defined by the World Health Organisation as “all procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.
The practice is mainly concentrated in the western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa, as well as some Middle Eastern and Asian nations. In Somalia, where Mina was born, FGM is almost universal.
A seven-year-old girl cries after FGM was performed on her. Source: Getty
The federal government's Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which provides health statistics, estimates there could be .
The practice is illegal in Australia.
A former excisor who performs female genital mutilation holding the tool she used to perform the procedure in Ethiopia. Source: AAP / UNICEF/HOLT/EPA
Mina had 'severe' form of FGM
Immediate complications of FGM can include severe pain, excessive bleeding, swelling of the genital tissue, fever, infection, shock, and death. Urinary, vaginal, sexual, and menstrual problems, scar tissue, increased risk of complications in childbirth, and psychological issues are among the long-term effects of the practice.
“The procedure that I had done on me is one of the most severe forms where the majority of my clitoris was cut off and they pretty much just sewed me up and there was just a tiny bit of the vagina opening that was left, that was it,” Mina said.
But it wasn’t until she had penetrative sex for the first time that she realised she had been “naive to the whole concept of FGM” and the impacts it can have on a person’s life.
“It was just a really, really painful, traumatic experience,” she said.
“That was the thing that triggered me that I wasn't like every other girl and something was actually done to me, and to find out what was going on with my body.”
'Life-changing' treatment offered in Melbourne
After a few years of self-education, and an incident where a gynaecologist told her there was nothing wrong with her vagina and there was no reason why she should be experiencing pain, Mina came into contact with another woman of Somali heritage who was a survivor of FGM. It was then that she learnt about the “life-saving” treatment offered at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne.
It took Mina another six months to work up the courage to make an appointment.
She said the nurses helped her to understand the extent of her FGM and the “brutality” of what was done to her.
“[They] were the first people that actually held a mirror up to me and encouraged me to look down there, and told me what had happened, showed me a diagram, ” she said.
“I just remember breaking down and bawling my eyes out because I don't think anyone had ever explained it to me like that."
Through the hospital’s African Women’s Clinic, Mina was also able to access a procedure known as deinfibulation, which 'reverses’ FGM.
“It's been life-changing,” she said
“The whole time I've known about this and I've dealt with this, I've never felt as empowered as they made me feel, and the clinic and the way that I was dealt with I was so culturally safe.
“I've never experienced anything like that before.”
Women should not feel shame about female genital mutilation
Mina encourages everyone who’s been subjected to FGM to not feel shame about what happened to them.
“You're a victim of a system that you had no control over,” she said.
“Regardless of whether you want to reverse the procedure or not, I think it's important to educate yourself on what was done to you and what was done to your body, and it's important to understand the impact that can have on your life.”
A month on from her surgery, and Mina’s already had “the best sex I've had in my entire life”.
“It was incredible,” she said.
“The women at that clinic, they’re literally game-changers.”
Practice strips away the rights of women
Suleeqa Hussein works as an educational support person at the Royal Women's Hospital's Family and Reproductive Rights Education Program (FARREP), and said around one or two FGM reversals were performed every fortnight in Melbourne.
"You can see the difference that it brings to the women," Ms Hussein said.
"Women are able to have better intercourse, women are able to have better menstruation. Basically it relieves all the complications due to the FGM."
Ms Hussein said there were four types of FGM and the reversals were generally only performed on those who'd had all their physical genitalia removed, including their labia minora and labia majora, and had then been stitched together.
"Basically, there's a small opening for menstruation and a small opening for urination to come through - we would help those women open up, that's the reversal part."
She said FGM strips away the rights of women because it happens at such a young age that they can not consent.
"The people that have done FGM to them did it as a form of continuing the tradition because it was seen in the past as something that a girl has to go through," she said.
While the practice is dying down, Ms Hussein said it does still happen.
"It will take a long time basically for this practice to be eliminated," she said.
Members of the Family & Reproductive Rights Education Program (FARREP) at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, from left to right: Marie Jones, Nigisti Mulholland, Tanaka Dune and Suleeqa Hussein. Source: Supplied
"Our other aim is to end the practice and no woman has to need a service like this in the future."
*Name has been changed.
International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation of is marked on 6 February.
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