 |
| Asha Hagi Elmi |
Somalia has suffered through years of conflict between clans, lawlessness, failed peace talks and a current transitional government fighting for control. However, through it all, Asha Elmi maintains that Somalis must take responsibility and the first steps to invest in their future.
Her mission is restoring order and creating a stable government in Somalia. She is a member of Somalia's transitional parliament and heads the first and only clan made up of women. It is considered the sixth clan since there are five major clans in Somalia.
The uniqueness of her clan is that the women are from the different Somali clans that fight for dominance. It crossed the clan lines. Asha understood the effects of conflict between clans because like many Somalis she married outside her clan. Neither her birth or married clan accepted her. She says she realized that the only full identity she had, was her womanhood identity. The road to peace has been long and dangerous of this mother of four.
 |
| Voiceless women need to be heard |
In 1992 Asha Hagi and her husband founded Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) while living in Nairobi, Kenya. The purpose of the organization was to advocate for equal rights for women in politics. This was and continues to be a difficult endeavor considering Somalia is a muslim country and in particular women are considered second class citizens.
In 2000 the Sixth Clan secured 25 assembly seats (10% of the Transitional National Government). For the first time in Somali history women officially had a voice. Asha Hagi called it a "total revolution".
After several more peace talks and a reconciliation retreat, Asha made history by being the first woman to sign a peace accord in Somali on January 29, 2004. The women also made another significant gain as their role in government increased to 12 percent of parliament's seats.
In 2005, Asha's name was included in the list of "1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize". Unfortunately her name also topped the warlords' hit list. She has refused to let this terrifying designation deter her. She continues to fight for a restored and stable Somalia.
So how about the sexual empowerment of Somali women?
ReplyDeleteSOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS OF AN ATHEIST MALE
They have mutilated my lover’s body. The stupid cunts and motherfuckers! In the name of tradition and Islam! They have mutilated her beautiful, God-given body when she was still an innocent Somali girl. They have robbed her of her delicious hub of female sexual sensation. Cut it away before she had a chance to experience the tactile pleasures and sexual promises of her clit. They have done this, when she still was a child and unable to resist. They don’t even have the guts to mutilate a grown up women. The ignorant cowards! That’s why they assault young innocent girls.
My lover, Hodhan, would rather kill them than letting them proceed, if it happened nowadays. And I love her for that, for her wholehearted despise of female genital mutilation, in the name of tradition, God and Allah.
Who are they, some thugs assaulting young African girls in the dark of the night? Not at all! It was her family, it always is. Mothers, grandmothers and ants. Because the fathers don’t had the balls to take care of this business themselves. The women in the family are pleasing their Somali men, doing to their daughters what has been done to them, the stupid cows. Somebody should have stopped them, a generation ago!
ReplyDeleteBut they have failed, nonetheless. Me and my lover, we’re having great fun and we are enjoying intense sexual pleasures, whenever together. Dig this traditionalists, you have tried so hard to ruin her ability to get an orgasm, but fortunately the human body has this wonderful capacity of compensation. My lover has taken control of her ‘mutilated’ body and she knows how to help herself come, with or without me. I love her madly!
My lover has been become the victim of her people’s stubborn beliefs and ignorant traditions, but she is NOT VICTIMISED! She is not giving them this satisfaction as well. She owns her body and she has taken control. But she will best tell you about this herself. Me, I’m just trying to encourage her to find and express her voice. Somebody has got to have the courage to tell the truth. Somebody has to take up the fight, not only AGAINST female genital mutilation, a fight which unfortunately is far from won, but a fight FOR the sexual liberation and self-determination of the millions of African women who are struggling with the consequences of their mutilation.
We hope to encourage all my lover’s sisters-in-pain to reject the ‘theft’ of their female sexuality. Our message is simple: What has been done to your bodies has been done and can’t ever been fully redone. But don’t let them subjugate your minds as well. Don’t let them scare you! Explore your potential to achieve sexual satisfaction. It is your time for revenge without fear of condemnation. They have robbed you of your precious gem and with their terror they have sought to subdue you in a state of physical self-denial. It’s time that you kick their chauvinist ass. Give yourself a helping hand and tell your husband/lover what it needs to make you come. You might surprise yourself! Especially, if you have been so lucky to have been subjected to no mutilation worse than clitoridectomy (type I in the range of the WHO’s broadly accepted classification). For the victims of female genital mutilations (fgm) of the type II, III and IV the imposed pain and limitations are for sure more severe and beyond my experience, so we leave it to you amongst our readers to join this conversation. Your right to experience sexual pleasure is the same, though it might be less easy to achieve.
ReplyDeleteIn the coming weeks I will ask my lover to write about her pussy. Mutilated but not muted! And I will ask her to give voice to the circumcised African woman, who dares not to demand her right to sexual satisfaction, the way God has enabled her. Because she has all reason to fear for her life if she dares to say so in public in societies like Somalia. At best she will be called a slut and a whore and her family will be ashamed, at worst some screwed-up fundamentalist fuckers will come after her for asking a simple human right, for asking the right to enjoy sex without pain.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore my lover’s pussy; Miss Lucy as she calls her. I love this Miss Lucy (but admittedly I had to get used to this nickname for her vulva, as if Miss Lucy was not a part of Hodhan herself; believe me it is. Also in a way it feels more personal than calling it your/her pussy, vulva, cunt or I don’t know what else. Maybe a Muslim name would have been appropriate, but I don’t want the fundamentalist motherfuckers to come after us for calling my lover’s pussy Amina, Fatuh or Aisha. So Miss Lucy it is, like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"). Even without that little magic thing on the top of Miss Lucy, my lover is still perfectly beautiful. And I want her to know.
ReplyDeleteI know this is a dangerous thing to say. Some people misunderstand you on purpose. So let me make it very clear. I don’t think Miss Lucy is beautiful because she has been subjected to the practice of their sick traditions. Removing my lover’s clit or any other woman’s clit is no act of beautification. To the contrary. It makes me sick when I hear them arguing so. If their aesthetic sense rejects sexual organs that protrude (and all the clits that I have seen, touched and kissed in my life were rather small and delicate) why don’t they cut off the dicks that dingle between the legs of their sons?
I tell my lover that Miss Lucy is beautiful and I have done so from the first time that I slept with her because I want her to love her body and her pussy the way they are. How can she enjoy her sexuality, if she feels less than complete. In this sense the Western discourse condemning fgm is, to my view, getting it often wrong. You can’t fight the practice by telling those women who have been subjected to circumcision that they, unfortunately, are some mutilated victims, who better should give up any hope to ever feel the way any women has a right to. (male pov)