Senegal: Total End of Female Genital Cutting Now in Sight

If any of you have read Papillon's story, you will know she is of Senegalese descent and that this post means that in the furture there is every chance that no other will have to go through what she had to endure.

Last night I received the following email from Tostan, which I reproduce in full.

 Government of Senegal launches major national action plan to seize on momentum created by local communities and the NGO Tostan to end the practice by 2015

DAKAR, Senegal, 18 February 2010—Building on a massive grassroots movement for the abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC) which has seen thousands of communities in Senegal join its ranks in recent years, the Government of Senegal will announce tomorrow the launch of a comprehensive strategy for achieving its goal of nationwide abandonment of FGC by 2015.

The strategy, to be announced at an event attended by Senegalese Prime Minister Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, is largely based on the human rights approach developed by Tostan, an NGO working in Senegal since 1991. Through Tostan's respectful, cross-cutting model of engaging communities, over 4,200 communities in Senegal have publicly declared their abandonment of the practice since 1997. A recent UNICEF study confirmed the long-term abandonment of FGC in communities that participated in the Tostan program.

The National Action Plan for FGC Abandonment 2010-2015 will focus on three key components of the Tostan strategy: implementing empowering education programs in national languages, engaging extended social networks through an "organized diffusion" model of communication, and supporting public declarations for the abandonment of FGC.

The Action Plan also stresses the importance of working with populations in the regions where FGC is most commonly practiced, Saint Louis, Matam, Kaolack, Tambacounda, Ziguinchor, and Kolda─regions which are among the poorest of Senegal.  

The launch event will recognize the local community leaders who have led this movement from infancy to its current tipping point. Special recognition will be given to the first community to publicly declare abandonment of FGC in 1997, Malicounda Bambara. The Tostan organization and staff will also be recognized for their dedicated work on this and other development issues over the past 19 years. Khaldiou Sy, Director of Tostan Senegal, will speak at the event. 

The launch event comes just days before a massive public declaration of all 256 communities of the Kedougou Region of Senegal, where, on Sunday, February 21, participating communities will declare an end to the practices of FGC and child/forced marriage on a regional level, marking one of the largest such events to-date. The event will be attended by the Minister of Women and the Country Representative of UNICEF in Senegal.

 # # #

About Tostan: Tostan, a US 501c3 organization that was founded in 1991, currently has over 1,000 full-time staff and community facilitators, and is working in over 800 communities in eight countries in Africa. Over 99% of Tostan’s staff is African. The organization’s US office is based in Washington, D.C.  Tostan has been the recipient of several awards including the 2007 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the UNESCO King Sejong Prize for Literacy, and Sweden’s 2005 Anna Lindh Award for Human Rights. For more information, please visit www.tostan.org.

 

The Cut

The cut - a traditional rite of passage into womanhood: genital cutting.  Or an issue that should concern us all.
 
Some of my longer-standing readers will remember Papillon's story which I translated from her French blog. It was all about her quest to have reconstructive surgery for the genital cutting she had suffered at the age four.  If you haven't read it, please at least consider reading the first two or three posts which tell of how it happened.  "When I was 4 my mother had me circumcised. It ruined my life". 

It was over two years ago when I found the blog and asked her if she would allow me to translate it so that young English speaking women could benefit from her experiences.  Since then, I've had numerous enquiries from people asking if the surgery is available in the UK (no), and how to go about contacting Dr Foldès, the surgeon who developed the procedure.

Recently I've heard that a Spanish surgeon, Pere Barri of the Instituto Dexeus, has spent some time in Paris with Dr Foldès, and now operates two or three times a month.  Not only that, he is hoping to share the knowledge and skills with other clinics in Spain so that more women "can leave their ghosts behind".

The practice of FGM used to be more or less confined to sub-Saharan Africa and a few parts of the Middle East and Asia but nowadays, with migration and population movement, the incidence in Europe and elsewhere has been increasing.  It is illegal to carry out the practice in Europe but it is so very hard to counteract traditional beliefs.

There are various initiatives in progress.  One in the UK is a survey which is funded by the Health Department to increase knowledge and understanding about FGM and to try to find out how much training might be required by health practitioners.  France had an informative and educational campaign in April.  There are initiatives in a number of African countries: Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and several others.

Now from Norway there is a project to educate and raise awareness which has produced a documentary film called "The Cut".  This, the first episode, shows two girls from different villages in Kenya where FGM is still practised in spite of its being illegal.  One girl has rejected the practice and is actively working to help educate people, the other is about to undergo this traditional but harmful rite of passage. It goes some way to explaining the tradition, incidentally showing unequivocally that it isn't specifically an Islamic practice, and suggests a way it can be eradicated.

If you wish, you can download the film, less than 15 minutes in length, from the project website.  It doesn't make the most pleasant viewing, but nor does it go out of its way to shock.

Papillon

Anyone going through Papillon’s blog will see from the comments that her story has resonated with many people who have had different experiences. One person, Little Ms Dalu, a Sudanese student in America, has written a very compelling post on this subject and how she has identified with a lot of what Papillon has been through: "her writings speak to me and give me some comfort and I feel less alone".

That particular article was primarily about “Body and Soul” but another one I know many women relate to is “The Great Femininity Mystery”. I know I do. I spent miserable times when I was young thinking I wasn't up to the standard I saw as a requirement of femininity, primarily long-STRAIGHT-blonde-hair. I know, it seems ridiculous now and I have come to realise that femininity comes from within and not from external props.

Anyway, I’d like to join with Ms Dalu in thanking Papillon for her articulate and honest writing.

Papillon revisited

For anyone who is following Papillon's progress by a news reader, you may notice over the next few days that posts will be appearing again.

I'm taking advantage of the fact that Papillon will still be on holiday for the next week to go through all her posts updating comments and amending various typos that still glare at me.

Communication, or lack of it

To illustrate a point, I am reproducing part of one of Papillon's earlier posts (the one where she meets Dr Icecube), with a comment from a later post, taking her to task for something she didn't say, and her reply, which does miss a point made by Guardian Angel.

I spent exactly 7 minutes with Dr Ice-cube. 7 minutes opposite an iceberg who started by taking my blood pressure in a heavy silence. Then he asked me some questions with an uncommunicative face (what medicines do I take? Do I have any allergies? Have I had previous operations?) He then examined the results of my blood tests, and told me everything was all right. Then he delivered a rambling speech in a rapid voice, explaining to me that I wouldn’t be intubated, but I would have oxygen from a mask, that I would be asleep for approximately an hour and a half.

Completely without a glimmer of sympathy, Dr Cold told me I would have to be fasting from midnight from the evening before the operation. He didn’t tell me but I read in the information leaflet that fasting eliminates the risk of suffocating from untimely vomiting. He also said not to take any aspirin.

He got his breath back and asked me, while filling in the patient consent form for the anaesthetic, if I had any questions.

I asked him what the sedative was for which is given before the anaesthetics. He explained that the sedative helped reduce my nervousness, natural when faced with surgery, and so to help the anaesthesia. I also asked about waking up, I wanted to know if I would feel dopey. He answered no, that I would wake up as if after a night’s sleep. If I take the prescribed medicines, he told me, I will feel no pain. I spoke to him about my patch and he assured me I could keep it when I enter the clinic.

7 minutes went by this way and he took me back to the secretary. I paid 28 euros, 4 euros per minute, for this rather frosty anaesthesia consultation. I was a little irritated. Not because of the price, no, because of Dr Snow’s temperature.

So, all right, kindness, human warmth and sympathy aren’t rights, nobody is obliged to be warm and kind (although for the medical professions that's debatable) but all the same, the coldness of the anaesthetist troubled me, if not annoyed me. And then to have been dispatched in seven minutes, that downright worried me. I reassured myself as well as I could by telling myself that I must be a commonplace and trivial case, but above all the fact that I know Dr Foldès will be there and that I am his patient and not Dr Iceberg's calms my distress.

This was commented on weeks later by a nurse who, I have a strong suspicion, knows the character involved.

Mr FOLDES is a pioneer in your reconstruction and those of all the other victims. Thanks to him and to the anaesthetist.

I am an anaesthetic nurse and so an assistant to Drs Snow, Icecube, DontGiveaDamn…

Without them, the operation would have traumatised you a second time. Happily, anaesthesia exists. Those who practice it are on the road to extinction. This speciality doesn’t appeal to young medical students. It’s not a game of poker where you have to pretend with a mischievous expression, or a half smile. It’s a matter of putting you asleep and waking you. It seems so simple.

Alas it’s far from that.

It's very challenging practicing this profession, very stressful, very demanding. Like the surgeon when he repairs you with his hands. The anaesthetist has a consultation with you for two minutes to see you. That's true. Your face, your neck, your general silhouette, your veins,... are warning indicators or signs for the progress of the anaesthetic. He can't tell you compassionately that everything will go well, knowing that zero risk of accident doesn't exist. Lowered eyes, writing, aren't signs of indifference but of concentration.

An anaesthetist who has just lost his mother after a long illness, or his son after a motorcycle accident, will be on duty for a consultation, for an expert look, or to watch for a problem for an emergency cesarean, to resuscitate the mother or the baby. This anaesthetist is a human being who has weaknesses, pain, tiredness... he won't tell you, he takes it upon himself and looks after you.

The consultation lasted two minutes for you, ten minutes for another patient. He has seen ten patients while one other consultant will have seen only five patients. It is public service which is larger and larger, and less and less recognised.

Waking up is a matter of a miracle in the face of the shortage of nursing staff.

I am subject to confidentiality but freely attacking anaesthetists makes me fly off the handle.

I hope you continue well.

Signed: A guardian angel who is at your disposal.

And Papillon's reply:

Dear guardian angel, far from challenging anaesthesia,I asked myself about the question (I was regretting not "being there" during my operation) and from my thoughts it emerged that it was without doubt good for me to have a general anaesthetic.

A large part of the psychological trauma from circumcision comes from the fact that it's done while conscious. So you can well imagine that I am not going to militate against anaesthesia. On the contrary, in view of my feeble resistance to pain, I am very happy that it exists and that there are (still) specialists who practice this discipline.

It wasn't the profession I was criticising here, but a man. Who happened to be an anaesthetist but could have been the surgeon or the nurse who met me on my arrival at the clinic. I found this man cold and distant. And that annoyed me.

There are surely warm-hearted anaesthetists, as there are no doubt surgeons and gynaecologists who are cold as ice. Equally, there are no doubt patients who are relieved that the consultation lasts only two minutes, as there are no doubt others who aren't reassured after a quarter of an hour.

I am not generalising, dear guardian angel, and I am not attacking all anaesthetists gratuitously. I'm talking about what I felt when I met that man, that day, and at that time.

The nurse appears to miss the point that Papillon was trying to make totally and then introduces all sorts of other questions, but Papillon also overlooks the fact that the anaesthetist may have had some personal issues which turned it into a bad day. Not that he appeared to be any warmer on the day of the operation.

There are other parts I thought interesting. France is often held up to be a great example of how a health service should be, but how many British people would like to be paying for each consultation as it comes? Yes you can claim the money back, but not always all of it unless you have extra insurance, and it often takes quite a while to turn up. And they appear to have staff shortages too.

Shiraz said:

I have realised that I have missed some comments from Papillon's blog. I don't always notice them if they appear several days after the original post. I noticed this one which I thought worth a post of its own. Shiraz, the commenter, didn't leave a link.

Dear Papillon

What a coincidence that the question you ask here is exactly the question of the year for me! In fact, I haven’t been circumcised, but the question affects me personally because, as a result of the environment in which I was born (Moslem, not fundamental but practising) I have always felt circumcised in my head.

Although my family is very “modern” as far as the status of women is concerned at work for example, I have been expressly forbidden from being too close to men, and to avoid having these problems I prevented my femininity from blossoming freely, I succeeded in forgetting I had a body because it was of no use.

I believe that physical circumcision is the most extreme expression of the repression of women’s bodies, and I do not see how one can be feminine, accept yourself as a woman, if our environment refuses to let us enjoy our own bodies. In wanting to kill femininity, these societies only make themselves sick.

To answer your question, Papillon, it’s several years now that I have been following “body therapies” such as yoga, tai chi, chiropractic, to put myself back in touch with my body.

As for femininity itself, I’ve made some fascinating discoveries this year since being in England. I’ve discovered “pagan” communities, inheritors of Celtic traditions where, like all pre-monotheist civilisations, Woman is held in high esteem, and each woman is considered to be the image of the Goddess. I am not criticising monotheist religions, but since I rediscovered these traditions, I am immersing myself in all sorts of books which suggest “archetypes” which we can refer to as we develop ourselves as women., in effect, consider that there are the goddess-mother, the goddess-warrior, the goddess-priestess, and they are all WOMEN. I don’t intend becoming a pagan priestess, far from it, but I think that immersing yourself in this ancient wisdom allows you to build mental models, which are universal because everlasting, and which you don’t necessarily find within your family.

So, it was very long, but I hope it makes sense!! Thank you for your blog, and I will be thinking of you very, very much on 16 May!

The Week of the Butterfly

This week, on Wednesday 16 May, Papillon will have her operation, the reconstructive surgery to repair the damage done by circumcision carried out when she was four years old.

If you haven't read the account of her journey this far, her blog is called "Le Chemin de ma reconstruction" and can also be read in English here.

Grand Rounds

Papillon's Remembering and Forgetting post is mentioned over on Med Valley High, in Grand Rounds, a collection of interesting pieces from the medical blogosphere. Her very latest post can always be reached from the side bar on the right, including the date of last update, as can her blog in the original French.

For anyone interested in medical subjects, Grand Rounds is a weekly round-up of posts that have caught the attention of that week's host.

Dr Pierre Foldès

The clitoris is now known to be much larger than the external glans, a relatively small structure which is removed during many forms of female genital mutilation or FGM, and so the possibility is there for reconstruction.

Dr Foldès is the surgeon in St Germain en Laye who is one of the few who perform clitoral reconstruction after FGM. There are plenty of others who perform repairs, or reversals, but do not rebuild the clitoris. Even reversal though, is a great step forward for women who have undergone more extreme forms of FGM. One report follows up some women who have had reversals done and found them very happy with the outcome.

As mentioned in one of Papillon’s posts, Dr Foldès has trained some Burkinabe surgeons in the techniques. There is an interview of one of them published online in January by the journalist Ochieng' Ogodo. He himself has now trained 50 surgeons in Burkina Faso to do the operation and is happy to pass on his expertise to surgeons in other African countries.

Christine Aziz has interviewed two women who have been patients of Dr Foldès, one French, originally from Somalia, and one Sudanese living in London. Their accounts are similar but well worth reading. A French journalist has written a book, Victoire sur l'excision, about this "modest and profoundly humanitarian doctor".

It is evident from all these stories that his patients have nothing but praise for the doctor.

Contact details for Dr Foldès:
Clinique St. Germain
12, rue Barone Gerard
78100 Saint Germain En Laye.

• tél : 0033 1 39 10 26 26
• tél : 0033 1 61 30 22 15

Don't forget to read Papillon's story.

Papillon

Papillon's latest post is important because she is hoping to be more proactive in attempting to help other women in her position. She wants to make her blog into a central point for exchange of information, questions and answers, individual stories, support etc.

If there are any English speakers who would like to contribute or contact her, I'd be happy to translate into French for you.

Papillon update

Her latest posts (two of them) translated into English start here, and the originals are here. The latest starts to question her femininity, a very big topic I would say.

As always, please let me know if I've made any awful mistakes in translation.

Papillon update

I've translated Papillon's latest post here. If you want to start at the beginning of the posts in translation, it is here and if you would like to go to the original French, this is Papillon's blog.

Papillon update

Two more posts over the weekend and today, starting here. I have included a long response to the last post.

Papillon update

Papillon has posted again today, and again you can find the translation here.

Papillon update

Just before we left France Papillon posted again, and then again today. My translations of both can be found in the usual place in the 2006 archives.

Papillon's blog

Papillon posted again on her blog, which I translated very rapidly last night before I disappear off for the weekend. The new ones start here but I have linked them together so that they follow on from each other.

There may well be another soon because her doctor's appointment is this morning - she will be well on her way if she hasn't already arrived. What is making it all the more poignant for me is that she is going to the hospital in a town where I lived for three years.

If you want to read all of Papillon's story of how she was circumcised as a child of four, and her subsequent decision to have the mutilation, as she called it, reversed, you should start with the introduction.

Female circumcision

.... or genital mutilation.

So often people think it's a problem for developing countries but it's equally a problem in the developed world. Please have a look at this blog from a French woman, called My Path to Renewal. If you don't read French I have translated it here, but I am no translator or writer, so please make allowances. It's one thing reading and understanding, another when you try to find appropriate words in English. Nevertheless, it makes a moving account of an awful situation.

It's worth bearing in mind that there are other people with other problems when we are so ready to complain. It puts things into perspective.

Seventh heaven alone

Tuesday 27 November 2007 (The first in this series of posts is here)

I knew that I couldn’t avoid it. I knew it!

Damn it!

This week, my therapist returned to one of Dr Foldès’ recommendations.

He said it was fundamental, well, all of us have a tendency to exaggeration. As a result I took it on board with a major reservation. I replaced “fundamental” with “will help things along”.

I have to say that as much as there are instructions which I can apply with zeal and concentration (applying cream to my clitoris every day, for example), as for that, I couldn’t. Total block. So, wisely, I set it aside.

With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t be useful. It’s true that at times things happen without intervention. That’s called magic.

I certainly felt that I was on slippery ground when I let my therapist know my slight disappointment about my operation. Don’t be mistaken, I’m very happy with the improvement I’ve noticed in my sexuality since the operation.

I’m already much more serene in my lovemaking, the horrible and heavy shadow left by the mutilation having disappeared. Love in the horizontal had acquired a light heartedness I hadn’t imagined possible.

On the physical side too, I felt very clearly the difference between before and after. I had no more pain or discomfort from my pleasurable parts, which have become richer in sensation.

In short, bedroom sport became much more pleasurable for me and I really have no complaint.

Having said that, at the risk of seeming a naïve perfectionist, I have to admit that, all the same, I was expecting something a bit more.. … overwhelming, a bit more intense.

I imagined nirvana, the intoxication of multiple orgasms, pleasure and joy from all stages, all without any special effort. I thought that all I had to do was wait patiently until my clitoris would invite itself to all these festivities of the senses.

So I told my therapist that I found it was taking quite a time all the same.

Bam!

“What about the masturbation?” she asked my tranquilly.

What? Sorry? What?

In total collapse, on the point of being totally shocked, I restrained with great difficulty a stupid chuckle of embarrassment. And of course the question could be dismissed very quickly: I don’t masturbate.

“And why not?” she asked me, her eyes round with surprise.

Why? But… but I don’t know! I don’t masturbate, that’s all, that’s the way it is.

The subject appealed to me so little, I squirmed like a worm on my chair.

There are women for whom it is just the thing, who find it completely natural and who are totally at ease with the question. Well I’m not one of them, there it is.

No, madam, I don’t “stimulate” myself alone! I don’t want to be taken for a “frigid tight-ass” as one says (and I can’t help but think how this crude expression suits the situation we are addressing) but I said it straight: it’s not my cup of tea!

That doesn’t appeal to me at all. Even the word itself I find ugly and rather frightening. Masturbation (brrr!). That brings to my mind a man playing alone, and when it’s a woman, it seems it’s something to endure and which flirts with pornography pure and simple. You can therefore easily understand my reservation on the question. When I tried to visualise myself in full flow all alone, I am torn between dismay and ridicule.

So yes, it is well known that it’s the best way of knowing your body, of knowing what pleases you and what doesn’t, all that, all that. I know it and I don’t doubt it’s true. Well all the same I’ll happily miss my turn.

My therapist said that in the light of my newly recovered clitoris, I am like a little six-year-old who has discovered that she has a very agreeable organ which gives her some pleasant sensations. And that there is no other way to know the extent of the possibilities of this organ than masturbation. So there is luck and the magic of life, but I believe I understood that the probability of that happening was negligible as far as auto-eroticism was concerned.

“You need to take it step by step”, she said.

OK. For all that, I still wasn’t taken with the idea of fiddling with myself.

My therapist advised me to put the subject of masturbation to one side for the moment (Alleluia!) and just explore my clitoris with my fingers, as I did while I was healing. Not to find out if it was sensitive or painful but more to feel the reactions, change of shape, size, according to my state of mind.

She advised me to forget the sexual dimension, which suited me well. She also said not to force myself, to take it gently, from time to time.

Good.

Exploring, that already sounds easier than “masturbating” (brrr!). I have still not got to it, but it seems less insurmountable.

I didn’t reckon on my operation implying a change of my sexuality. I didn’t suspect that it would be necessary to be more active in my sexual life. Nevertheless, that’s what it is: becoming mistress of my sexuality and abandoning the easy passivity which it involved before the operation.

Hell, but this is going to be difficult!

[Original in French]

The famous case of the stitches

Wednesday 17 October 2007

I have the real story.

For weeks I watched for my stitches to fall out. As long as they still hadn’t come out I couldn’t consider myself completely recovered. Those damned stitches were THE black spot of my healing. They exasperated me. And I watched for the day when I could tell myself they had come out.

I felt they were hindering me, I asked myself if they were going to be trapped in my reconstructed flesh. I was terrified all the same. I couldn’t forget them, saying to myself , “Oh it doesn’t matter if they’re still there”. I really didn’t at all want to live with these stitches transplanted on to my clitoris until the end of my days.

I am the sort who worries, so last week I returned to Dr Foldès and I had the real story.

There were no stitches any more. Not at all. Not for a long time.

No, no, no, no, it wasn’t possible. I felt them after all! They couldn’t have fallen out already, don’t you see. It was impossible!

Well, no, it was true. The stitches were dissolvable. So they had “disappeared” about five weeks after the operation, which would be around the last week of June.

I gaped at Dr Foldès. Speechless. I really couldn’t get over it. How was that, the stitches dissolved? How was that, they dissolved? Where did this news come from? Hadn't I understood anything?

It was unbelievable. For all these weeks when I thought I could feel the stitches, when I was waiting to see them flap about and then fall out in little bits, for all these weeks of worry and frustration, there were no stitches. There were no longer any stitches.

I immediately felt stupid. Really embarrassed I answered Dr Foldès that the consultation didn’t need to continue as I had come because I was worried that I hadn’t seen the stitches come out.

Hells’ bells, I could have made do with calling by telephone. But no. I had made the journey from Paris on a Thursday afternoon, leaving my work like a thief, indecently early, just to learn that my stitches had fallen out ages ago. This was unbelievable!

How could I have missed this critical information about my stitches? How had I not understood it?

There weren’t too many theories. Either Dr Foldès had never spoken to me about it (but I doubt that very much and his surprised expression confirmed to me that this was a fanciful theory), or I had misunderstood (that rapidly seemed to me to be right).

There was a total misunderstanding. Because of the verb “to fall out”.

We both use the verb “to fall out”, Dr Foldès and I, when we talk about the stitches and their disappearance. Except that we don’t hear it in the same way.

For me, when someone says of something that it’s going to fall, especially a stitch, I visualise a dropping. In the situation we are currently studying, I see the dropping of a thread. I see it leaving point A (my intimate area for example) and describing a straight vertical movement towards the base, this movement only being stopped by an obstacle on which the stitch is immobilised at point B (the bottom of my pants or the floor, for example). In fact, as I had a very precise image of the expression “the stitches are going to fall out”, I was sure that that was going to happen. The stitches were going to drop out and I would see them.

Except that for Dr Foldès, obviously, the definition of the verb “to fall out” in the expression “the stitches will fall out” isn’t at all the same. For him a stitch which falls out is a stitch which disappears. The way it leaves the flesh doesn’t matter, just the fact that they leave and “fall out” means “no longer in the wound”. He added that the fact that there was no appointment planned in the procedure for clitoral reconstruction for removal of the stitches showed that the stitches were dissolvable.

Certainly, that’s true. But I hadn’t thought about it.

On the way home, I was torn between incredulity and wanting to laugh. This news was astounding. And, on the RER which was taking me back to Paris, I was happy. There were no more stitches. Everything was over and I could definitely close this chapter of my healing.

All the same, in reality it had been closed for weeks, the weeks I was hesitating about going to see Dr Foldès to ease my mind. So, knowing that the end of my healing was already far behind me moderated my joy somewhat.

That evening I re-read the document which he had given to me the day after the operation and which had the title “Immediately after surgery to repair the clitoris”.

And it said: “The sutures used are dissolvable, so there is no need for them to be taken out, they will fall out themselves during the first five or six weeks”.

So, OK, OK, I had completely zapped the word “dissolvable” but I had retained the sentence, “They will fall out themselves in the first five or six weeks”. And that sentence could well say what it seemed to say, couldn’t it?

I think so: it seems to say that the stitches are going to come out by themselves. And fall.

So I have spent weeks waiting for the stitches to fall out, stitches which had disappeared ages ago.

So there you have the real story.

[Original in French]

Next post

In the end, the desert doesn’t suit me…

Monday 15 October 2007

I've come back.

All at once I didn't want to write any more. And all at once I wanted to again. So I've come back.

All at once I no longer wanted to tell people about myself. All at once it became an effort. A greater and greater effort. The days were passing and I wasn't writing. The days were passing and I didn't wan’t to write any more. Not even a farewell, not even a goodbye.

There was a moment when I asked myself when I was going to close this blog. I couldn't manage to decide. Where should this journey end? Besides, did it have an end?

The days were passing and I was deciding nothing. The days were passing and I was feeling guilty. The days were passing and in the end I stopped feeling guilty. I stopped looking for a reason for my lack of desire. I said to myself that this blog could perhaps stop just like that, abruptly, without warning.

Then one of the readers of my blog was operated on by Dr Foldès. We had corresponded a lot before her decision. As the operation approached, we talked on the telephone. I went to see her at the clinic, I called her after the operation. And accompanying her a little on her way gave me a happiness I hadn't imagined.

That’s when I understood what made me silent for the month of August.

I had doubts.

It’s ridiculous I know, but I doubted the efficacy of my operation, I thought that perhaps I had chased after a fantasy, that this operation had in fact served for nothing. I thought I had lulled myself with illusions, which would change nothing in my life.

I can’t really explain to myself how it happened, how this idea forced its way into my mind.

No doubt the reaction of my ex-gynaecologist had something to do with it. "Basically the operation is just cosmetic, isn't it?" she said to me. She didn't seem interested in my endeavour, I had the feeling she found it grotesque. I cried when I left her office.

No doubt the discovery that Dr Foldès said the same thing to a number of his patients weighed equally in the equation. It pained me to think in the end I was only a number amongst others, an nth patient to tell her clitoris was superb, an nth patient to whom to give a rambling discourse depending on which stage she was approaching.

I came to believe that the whole adventure had no meaning, that my clitoris would never function "normally". That I had to turn the page and think no more about it.

But in the end I didn't want to. In the end I didn't give a damn about my ex-gynaecologist's opinion. In the end it mattered little that Dr Foldès said the same thing to each of his patients. In the end it came down to the value of what happened on 16 May last.

And I decided that it had meaning for me. I would no longer let myself analyse this idea. I would no longer allow it to be cheerfully stamped on. And I wouldn't stamp on it myself.

In giving direction to my endeavour, I have found my voice again. So I am back.

Thanks to Fiftra who, in allowing me to accompany her, has allowed me to find my own path again.

Thanks to Moira, who sent me such a kind email to find out my news.

Thanks to all of you who were worried by my silence in the comments of my last post.

[Original in French]

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