By Lakshmi Anantnarayan

I recently attended Sahiyo and Story Center’s Voices to End FGM/C Digital Storytelling workshop to share my experience as an anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) advocate. I certainly did not expect the process to be so enlightening and personally fulfilling! Though my work to end FGM goes back more than 20 years in the U.S., Africa, and India, in all that time I never really examined why FGM moved me personally; until this workshop. 

I have found that women’s rights advocates are often putting out fires and responding to crises in our work. There is hardly ever  any time for the kind of introspection and self-reflection that this workshop gently nudges you towards. I believe that professionalizing advocacy and human rights work also lays down certain expectations of ‘professionalism’, whichi demarcates the ‘activist’ from the ‘survivor’ for people who started out as ‘activists’. And many like myself who started out as ‘activists’ have a difficult time both with  connecting the personal aspects of our life to our work, and going public with our truths.

As a communications specialist, I have worked with many survivors to tell their stories. I have always felt that the story-teller/interviewer has a lot of power in framing the story and in drawing out details of the survivor’s experience. Therefore, with that power, one needs to be sensitive and responsible. During the FGM/C research project in India, we spoke with many survivors who were  willing to share intimate experiences of their pain. I was in awe of their strength and  ability to face their truth. The survivors in the Voices workshop once again reminded me of how incredibly brave it is to publicly acknowledge one’s own pain and move towards healing. I drew strength from their courage.  

It was by a stroke of serendipity that  the story of a woman with endometriosis was shared within the context of FGM/C on the first day of the Voices workshop. It helped me begin my journey to acknowledge my own pain and see how it informs my feminist activism. I believe connecting the political to the personal grounds one’s activism in a lived reality that is relatable and human. 

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Lakshmi Anantnarayan is an international women’s rights activist and multimedia professional, with a background in social work and international development. Lakshmi has worked on domestic violence, reproductive rights, sexual violence, and female genital mutilation (FGM) in the US, India and parts of Africa. In 2018, Lakshmi co-authored “The Clitoral Hood A Contested Site: Khafd or FGM/C in India,” a field-research study on FGM/C in India. Lakshmi currently works with the Frontline Women’s Fund in New York.

Disclaimer
This blog was produced by Sahiyo under 15POVC-21-GG-00988-NONF, awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this guide are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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