That Takes Ovaries! (34 page)

The practice of FGM subjects women to a number of long-term physical and psychological problems. Often carried out without anesthesia and with unsterilized razors or knives, it is a sometimes deadly practice. My other aunt died from it, as do many girls every year, either from hemorrhaging or infection.

I wanted nothing to do with either the [forced] marriage or the so-called circumcision, so with the help of my sister, and my mother from afar, I fled that very day.

Fauziya left her home, her family, her country to escape the brutality of FGM. Today, in part because of her work publicizing the horrors of FGM, Fauziya’s homeland of Togo, West Africa, has outlawed the practice. But it still goes on legally and illegally around the world. Equality Now is one of the leading organizations working to stop it.

They also work to end global sex trafficking of girls and women. Ruchira Gupta describes sexual slavery in India in her story in
That Takes Ovaries!:

I came to learn that the sale of girls is no secret; it is all done in the open, like any business. There is the local procurer,
an uncle or fellow villager, who buys the girl from her parents for twenty to thirty dollars. He’ll collect three or four females, aged seven to thirty, bring them to a bigger town, collect another dozen girls from other rural areas, put them all in a truck, smuggle them over the Nepal-India border (where he’ll pay off the border police), then sell them to the next middleman up the chain, in India. The new men take the girls to small boardinghouses. There they rape the girls, beat them, subjugate their spirits completely until they do whatever these men want. The men sometimes use ice to break in the premenstrual girls. Then the girls are taken to Bombay and sold to brothel madams for three thousand rupees apiece, about forty to fifty dollars.

Back in Bombay, I heard how the half-grown children are bonded sex slaves for the first five years, unpaid and forced to “service” twenty-five to thirty men a day:
raped
twenty-five to thirty times a day! “Clients” stub out cigarettes on their young breasts and shove bottles up their vaginas. They are kept in five-by-seven-foot rooms each crammed with about four miniature beds. The rooms have no walking space, just beds and curtains separating them. Windows are barred, entrances locked and guarded. A severe beating follows any attempt to flee. After five years, they are allowed to keep half their meager earnings. By then the madams have made sure that the girls have become addicted to drugs and alcohol and have had a baby, so they won’t run. The girls, now with distorted, almost caricatured bodies, get trapped by disease and debt—they have to pay for water, bedding, and food. By age forty they are usually dead from AIDS.

I learned that this horror goes on around the globe, from Africa to Albania. Each year 4 million girls are sold by their impoverished parents, tricked with false promises of good jobs, or outright kidnapped. They are brought to big cities in their own country or sent abroad to rich Western nations. Fifty thousand are shipped to the United States each year.

Both Ruchira’s and Fauziya’s descriptions help to explain why
That Takes Ovaries!
established a relationship with Equality Now and why I strongly suggest you send them a percentage of the money raised at any
Ovaries!
Open Mikes.

Equality Now

P.O. Box 20646

Columbus Circle Station

New York, NY 10023

Phone: (212) 586-0906

Fax: (212) 586-1611

E-mail:
[email protected]

Website:
www.equalitynow.org

To three heroines:

HARRIET TUBMAN,
who, despite the threat of lynching, escaped—and then went back again and again to guide fellow Africans from the horrors of slavery via the Underground Railroad.

WONDER WOMAN,
who gave girls starved for positive images of our own a way to envision ourselves as wielders of great physical power and agents of world change.

BELLA ABZUG,
a smart, tenacious, loud, and proud fighter—champion!—of women’s social, political, and economic rights. My first feminist role model (after my parents, of course).

It should be made part of our common knowledge, told to every newborn upon making it out the canal: “Welcome to the world, baby! Oh, and FYI, the Earth is round, mufflers are made to rot just after the warranty runs out, and it’s a ton and a half of work to compile an anthology.” That way would-be writers will know in advance and can thus choose to channel their overachiever energies in other arenas, like, say,
anything else.
Complaints aside, I loved working on this book. And it couldn’t have happened without these folks:

The Decades-Long Inner Circle: A big thanks to these people, my “core group,” for E•V•E•R•Y•T•H•I•N•G—from seemingly unconditional love to dollops of emotional (and financial!) support, for teaching me how to act decisively, courageously, compassionately. To Mom & Dad: I love you. I am so lucky and grateful to have you. All the gutsy things I ever do in my life come from having watched you do it first. To my sister: In our quest to save the world, we split it fifty-fifty—she got the natural earth, I got its human inhabitants. I’ve fallen short, but she’s doing an amazing job. Thanks for encouragement and for modeling how to be an effective leader. To my auntie for her warmth, affection, generosity, and our shared struggles. To my uncle for caring about family. To the indispensable trio: Patsy, Jevera, and Mireya (my angel on Earth, thank you for standing by me for so long).

Lucky me, I’ve had a posse of wonderful writing assistants—all energetic, colorful, caring, and smart. Without their help editing, writing, and typing,
That Takes Ovaries!
would have remained a mere book proposal. In order of appearance these Supergirls are: Jessica Turco, the let’s-face-it-she’s-invaluable Julia Magnusson, Alisa Moskowitz, Janna Weinstein, Shauna Rogan, Sarah Tyler.

A special
“Oy,
am I glad you exist,” to Ellen Samuels, who skillfully edited some of these stories, and gives this writer a fab friendship based on support and perennially useful advice. Warm hugs to Richard Hoffman and England’s Crown Jewels, Joan and Louie Solomon, for helping me recognize I had a career in writing. For the combo of friendship, editing, and sharp thinking: B
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i, Hanne Blank, Marie Celestin, Hannah Doress, Jan Gardner, the irrepressible Loolwa Khazzoom, Tommye-K Mayer, Peggy Munson, Elizabeth O’Neill, Martha Ramsey, Susan and Mimi Parker, Katie Wheeler, and the dedicated and generous Gail Dines, the one person besides my editor who graciously commented on near every story and intro in the manuscript. For being my buddies and assisting with many computing and artistic tasks: Will
Ballard, Lee Mandell, Vicki Van Sant. To friends who make my life more depthful and playful: Ami & Holli, John Grebe, essential-to-my-health John Herd, Peter (“the cape’s at the cleaners”) Kane, tenacious Judy Krugerwoman, David Levy, Joan Livingston, Rosie and Theresa McMahan, Eva y Roberto, Susan Mortimer, geekboy-on-wheels Michael Muehe, Jean Perrin, One Angry Girl Jill Portugal, Frezzia y Yessenia y Gabriel, Eli Rosenblatt, Mistress of Hedonism Meg Rosser, Jan Sunoo, the guys at Superior, Jose Luis Sandoz, Adam T-Zak, Cecelia Wambach.

For offering comments, or help with networking and writing, I thank Cathy Armer, Joani Blank, Soul Brown, Kari Bodnarchuk, Teresa Dovidio, Ophira Edut, Holly Jackson, Patricia A. Johnson, Shoshanna Kaplinsky, Julayka Latigua, Lynn Lu, Kathy Morris, Regina Preciado (Benevolent Dictator of the Writergrrls), Amy Richards, Liz Skipper, Naomi Sweitzer, Kara Trott, Theresa Urist, Janie Ward, and all the Writergrrls. Thanks to Siobhán Ohmart <
E-gateco.com
> for initial website development and Martha Friend for photography.

The National Writers Union is vital—necessary if we want to organize for our rights as writers. Join today <
www.nwu.org
>! Involved in this book were the generous NWU Contract Advisors Lee Lockwood and Phil Mattera, and NWU Goddess Barbara Beckwith. Vital to other legal aspects is Steve, trademark attorney with a heart of gold.

My Repetitive Strain Injury team is made up of these mensches and miracle workers who keep me able to work: the Coalition for New Office Technology, Rick Bird, Jenn Dean, Peggy Dellea, Priscilla Mann, Diane Sheehan.

A decade and a half of thanks to Doc Hubbuch.

My deep appreciation to everyone dedicated to finding the cause and cure for Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), for all the research, advocacy, and info dissemination you have done, and all the patient care and support you have given. Living with unrelenting exhaustion, brain-fogas-thick-as-pea-soup, and the societal stigmatization of this
invisible and poorly named but very real and debilitating physical illness, is… well, hard. Anyone who lives in spite of CFIDS’s life-altering restrictions has BIG ovaries. For info: CFIDS Association of America, P.O. Box 220398, Charlotte, NC 28222-0398, USA; (800) 442-3437; (704) 365-2343;
www.cfids.org

Thanks to Eileen Cope, Barbara Lowenstein, and the crew at Lowenstein Associates for agenting my book beyond the call of duty. Thanks to Rachel Kahan, my editor at Random House, who immediately understood the book’s message and goal, and whose support was/is sooooo helpful.

My heartfelt appreciation to the hundreds of women and girls who submitted their stories for this book, including those who did and did not make the final cut.
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You are amazing! You have plowed through oppression, sailed gracefully around obstacles, jumped over barriers, and walked through fear. Whether you impulsively did something sorta silly, or wisely implemented a well-thought-out altruistic deed, in the end you playfully danced on top of dead, outdated stereotypes, and therefore blazed new trails for the rest of us to follow.
Go get’em, grrrrrrrrrls!

RIVKA SOLOMON
writes and rabble-rouses on the East Coast. Her work has appeared in national magazines, newspapers, and anthologies and has aired on radio broadcasts—including all the right places, such as
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture; Bust: The New Girl Order; Lilith Magazine; MoXi: For the Woman Who Dares; Sojourner: The Women’s Forum;
and
WBUR,
Boston’s National Public Radio news station. Since damn near babyhood, she has been a women’s rights advocate and activist.