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Hi.

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Today I'm going to share[br]my personal journey

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with female genital mutilation, FGM.

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Feel free to cry, laugh, cross your legs,

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or do anything your body feels like doing.

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I'm not going to name[br]the things your body does.

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I was born in Sierra Leone.

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Did anybody watch "Blood Diamond"?

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If you have any thoughts --

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I don't have any diamonds [br]on me, by the way.

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If you have heard of Ebola,[br]well, that's in Sierra Leone as well.

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I don't have Ebola. You're all safe.

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Don't rush to the door.

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Be seated. You're fine.[br]I was checked before I got here.

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My grandfather had three wives.

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Don't ask me why a man[br]needs more than one wife.

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Men, do you need more than one wife?

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I don't think so. There you go.

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He was looking for a heart attack,[br]that's what I say.

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Oh yeah, he was.

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When I was three, war broke out[br]in Sierra Leone in 1991.

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I remember literally going to bed[br]one night, everything was good.

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The next day, I woke up,

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bombs were dropping everywhere,

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and people were trying[br]to kill me and my family.

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We escaped the war and ended up[br]in Gambia, in West Africa.

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Ebola is there as well. Stay away from it.

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While we were there as refugees,

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we didn't know what[br]was going to become of us.

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My mom applied for refugee status.

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She's a wonderful, smart woman, that one,

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and we were lucky.

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Australia said, we will take you in.

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Good job, Aussies.

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Before we were meant to travel,

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my mom came home one day, and said,

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"We're going on [br]a little holiday, a little trip."

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She put us in a car,

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and we drove for hours[br]and ended up in a bush

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in a remote area in Gambia.

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In this bush, we found two huts.

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An old lady came towards us.

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She was ethnic-looking, very old.

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She had a chat with my mom, and went back.

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Then she came back and walked[br]away from us into a second hut.

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I'm standing there thinking,

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"This is very confusing.[br]I don't know what's going on."

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The next thing I knew,

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my mom took me into this hut.

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She took my clothes off,

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and then she pinned me down on the floor.

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I struggled and tried[br]to get her off me, but I couldn't.

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Then the old lady came towards me[br]with a rusty-looking knife,

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one of the sharp knives,

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orange-looking, has never seen[br]water or sunlight before.

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I thought she was going to slaughter me,

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but she didn't.

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She slowly slid down my body

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and ended up where my vagina is.

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She took hold of what I now know[br]to be my clitoris,

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she took that rusty knife,[br]and started cutting away, inch by inch.

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I screamed, I cried,

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and asked my mom to get off me[br]so this pain will stop,

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but all she did was say, "Be quiet."

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This old lady sawed away at my flesh[br]for what felt like forever,

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and then when she was done,

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she threw that piece of flesh[br]across the floor

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as if it was the most disgusting thing[br]she's ever touched.

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They both got off me,[br]and left me there bleeding,

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crying, and confused[br]as to what just happened.

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We never talked about this again.

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Very soon, we found[br]that we were coming to Australia,

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and this is when you had[br]the Sydney Olympics at the time,

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and people said we were going[br]to the end of the world,

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there was nowhere else[br]to go after Australia.

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Yeah, that comforted us a bit.

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It took us three days to get here.

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We went to Senegal, then France,[br]and then Singapore.

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We went to the bathroom to wash our hands.

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We spent 15 minutes[br]opening the tap like this.

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Then somebody came in,

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slid their hand under and water came out,

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and we thought, is this what we're in for?

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Like, seriously.

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We got to Adelaide, small place,

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where literally they dumped us[br]in Adelaide, that's what I would say.

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They dumped us there.

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We were very grateful.

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We settled and we liked it.

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We were like, "We're home, we're here."

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Then somebody took us to Rundle Mall.

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Adelaide has only one mall.

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It's this small place.

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And we saw a lot of Asian people.

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My mom said all of a sudden, panicking,

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"You brought us to the wrong place.[br]You must take us back to Australia."

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Yeah. It had to be explained to her that [br]there were a lot of Asians in Australia

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and we were in the right place.

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So fine, it's all good.

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My mom then had this brilliant idea

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that I should go to a girls school[br]because they were less racist.

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I don't know where she read [br]that publication. (Laughter)

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Never found evidence of it to this day.

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Six hundred white kids, [br]and I was the only black child there.

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No, I was the only person[br]with a bit of a color on me.

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Let me say that. Chocolate color.

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There were no Asians, no indigenous.

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All we had was some tan girls,

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girls who felt the need[br]to be under the sun.

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It wasn't the same as my chocolate,[br]though. Not the same.

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Settling in Australia was quite hard,

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but it became harder when I started[br]volunteering for an organization

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called Women's Health Statewide,

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and I joined their[br]female genital mutilation program

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without any awareness of what[br]this program was actually about,

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or that it related to me in any way.

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I spent months educating[br]nurses and doctors

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about what female genital mutilation was

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and where it was practiced:

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Africa, the Middle East, Asia,[br]and now, Australia and London and America,

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because, as we all know,[br]we live in a multicultural society,

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and people who come from those backgrounds[br]come with their culture,

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and sometimes they have cultural practices[br]that we may not agree with,

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but they continue to practice them.

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One day, I was looking at the chart

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of the different types[br]of female genital mutilation,

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FGM, I will just say FGM for short.

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Type I is when they cut off the hood.

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Type II is when[br]they cut off the whole clitoris

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and some of your labia majora,[br]or your outer lips,

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and Type III is when they [br]cut off the whole clitoris

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and then they sew you up

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so you only have a little hole[br]to pee and have your period.

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My eyes went onto Type II.

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Before all of this,[br]I pretty much had amnesia.

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I was in so much shock [br]and traumatized by what had happened,

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I didn't remember any of it.

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Yes, I was aware something bad[br]happened to me,

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but I had no recollection[br]of what had happened.

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I knew I had a scar down there,

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but I thought everybody[br]had a scar down there.

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This had happened to everybody else.

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But when I looked at Type II,[br]it all came back to me.

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I remembered what was done to me.

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I remembered being in that hut

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with that old lady and my mom[br]holding me down.

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Words cannot express the pain I felt,

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the confusion that I felt,

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because now I realized that [br]what was done to me was a terrible thing

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that in this society was called barbaric,

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it was called mutilation.

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My mother had said[br]it was called circumcision,

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but here it was mutilation.

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I was thinking, I'm mutilated?[br]I'm a mutilated person.

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Oh my God.

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And then the anger came.

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I was a black angry woman.[br](Laughter)

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Oh yeah.

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A little one, but angry nevertheless.

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I went home and said to my mom,

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"You did something."

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This is not the African thing to do,[br]pointing at your mother,

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but hey, I was ready for any consequences.

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"You did something to me."

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She's like, "What are you[br]talking about, Khadija?"

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She's used to me mouthing off.

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I'm like, "Those years ago,[br]You circumcised me.

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You cut away something[br]that belonged to me."

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She said, "Yes, I did.

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I did it for your own good.

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It was in your best interest.

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Your grandmother did it to me,[br]and I did it to you.

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It's made you a woman."

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I'm like, "How?"

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She said, "You're empowered, Khadija.

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Do you get itchy down there?"

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I'm like, "No, why would I[br]get itchy down there?"

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She said, "Well,[br]if you were not circumcised,

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you would get itchy down there.

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Women who are not circumcised[br]get itchy all the time.

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Then they sleep around with everybody.

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You are not going[br]to sleep around with anybody."

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And I thought,

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her definition of empowerment[br]was very strange. (Laughter)

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That was the end[br]of our first conversation.

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I went back to school.

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These were the days when we had [br]Dolly and Girlfriend magazines.

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There was always the sealed section.[br]Anybody remember those sealed sections?

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The naughty bits, you know?

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Oh yeah, I love those.[br](Laughter)

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Anyway, there was always[br]an article about pleasure

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and relationships and, of course, sex.

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But it always assumed[br]that you had a clitoris, though,

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and I thought, this doesn't fit me.

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This doesn't talk about people like me.

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I don't have a clitoris.

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I watched TV and those women[br]would moan like, "Oh! Oh!"

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I was like, these people[br]and their damned clitoris.

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(Laughter)

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What is a woman without a clitoris[br]supposed to do with her life?

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That's what I want to know.

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I want to do that too --[br]"Oh! Oh!" and all of that.

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Didn't happen.

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So I came home once again[br]and said to my mom,

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"Dolly and Girlfriend said[br]I deserve pleasure,

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that I should be having orgasms,

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and that white men should figure out[br]how to find the clitoris."

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Apparently, white men[br]have a problem finding the clitoris.

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(Laughter)

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Just saying, it wasn't me.[br]It was Dolly that said that.

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And I thought to myself,[br]I had an inner joke in my head

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that said, "I will marry a white man.

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He won't have that problem with me."[br](Laughter)

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So I said to my mom,

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"Dolly and Girlfriend said[br]I deserve pleasure, and do you know

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what you have taken away from me,[br]what you have denied me?

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You have invaded me[br]in the most sacred way.

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I want pleasure.

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I want to get horny, dammit, as well."

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And she said to me,[br]"Who is Dolly and Girlfriend?

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Are they your new friends, Khadija?"

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I was like, "No, they're not.[br]That's a magazine, mom, a magazine."

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She didn't get it.

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We came from two different worlds.

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When she was growing up,[br]not having a clitoris was the norm.

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It was celebrated.

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I was an African Australian girl.

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I lived in a society[br]that was very clitoris-centric.

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It was all about the damn clitoris!

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And I didn't have one!

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That pissed me off.

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So once I went through[br]this strange phase of anger

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and pain and confusion,

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I remember booking[br]an appointment with my therapist.

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Yes, I'm an African [br]who has a therapist. There you go.

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And I said to her,

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"I was 13. I was a child.

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I was settling in a new country,

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I was dealing with racism[br]and discrimination,

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English is my third language,[br]and then there it was."

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I said to her, "I feel like[br]I'm not a woman

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because of what was done to me.

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I feel incomplete.

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Am I going to be asexual?"

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Because from what I knew about FGM,

0:12:11.704,0:12:15.386
the whole aim of it was to control[br]the sexuality of women.

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It's so that we don't have[br]any sexual desire.

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And I said, "Am I asexual now?

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Will I just live the rest of my life[br]not feeling like having sex,

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not enjoying sex?"

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She couldn't answer my questions,

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so they went unanswered.

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When I started having my period[br]around the age of 14,

0:12:34.092,0:12:37.973
I realized I didn't have [br]normal periods because of FGM.

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My periods were heavy, they were long,[br]and they were very painful.

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Then they told me I had fibroids.

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They're like these little balls[br]sitting there.

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One was covering one of my ovaries.

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And there came then the big news.

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"We don't think you can[br]have children, Khadija."

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And once again, I was[br]an angry black woman.

0:13:02.138,0:13:05.313
I went home and I said to my mom,

0:13:05.313,0:13:09.807
"Your act, your action,[br]no matter what your may defense may be" --

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because she thought she did it out love --

0:13:12.401,0:13:17.029
"what you did out of love [br]is harming me, and it's hurting me.

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What do you have to say for that?"

0:13:20.851,0:13:24.035
She said, "I did what I had to do[br]as a mother."

0:13:24.035,0:13:26.744
I'm still waiting[br]for an apology, by the way.

0:13:28.124,0:13:30.511
Then I got married.

0:13:31.811,0:13:33.949
And once again --

0:13:33.949,0:13:36.177
FGM is like the gift that keeps giving.

0:13:36.177,0:13:38.862
You figure that out very soon.

0:13:38.862,0:13:41.888
Sex was very painful.

0:13:41.888,0:13:44.138
It hurt all the time.

0:13:44.138,0:13:47.836
And of course I realized, they said,[br]"You can't have kids."

0:13:47.836,0:13:53.769
I thought, "Wow, is this my existence?[br]Is this what life is all about?"

0:13:56.843,0:13:59.045
I'm proud to tell you,

0:13:59.045,0:14:00.921
five months ago,

0:14:00.921,0:14:03.435
I was told I was pregnant.

0:14:03.435,0:14:07.831
(Applause)

0:14:12.027,0:14:13.842
I am the lucky girl.

0:14:13.842,0:14:16.652
There are so many women out there[br]who have gone through FGM

0:14:16.652,0:14:18.283
who have infertility.

0:14:18.283,0:14:24.943
I know a nine-year-old girl who has[br]incontinence, constant infections, pain.

0:14:25.513,0:14:28.140
It's that gift. It doesn't stop giving.

0:14:28.140,0:14:31.286
It affects every area of your life,

0:14:31.286,0:14:34.572
and this happened to me[br]because I was born a girl

0:14:34.572,0:14:36.301
in the wrong place.

0:14:36.301,0:14:38.845
That's why it happened to me.

0:14:38.845,0:14:43.117
I channel all that anger, [br]all that pain, into advocacy

0:14:43.121,0:14:46.587
because I needed my pain[br]to be worth something.

0:14:46.587,0:14:50.658
So I'm the director of an organization[br]called No FGM Australia.

0:14:50.663,0:14:52.107
You heard me right.

0:14:52.107,0:14:53.775
Why No FGM Australia?

0:14:53.775,0:14:56.941
FGM is in Australia.

0:14:56.941,0:15:00.606
Two days ago, I had to call[br]Child Protective Services,

0:15:00.606,0:15:03.401
because somewhere in Australia,

0:15:03.401,0:15:05.547
there's a four-year old

0:15:05.547,0:15:10.277
there's a four-year-old whose mom [br]is planning on performing FGM on her.

0:15:10.277,0:15:16.381
That child is in kindy.[br]I'll let that sink in: four years old.

0:15:19.432,0:15:23.763
A couple of months ago, I met a lady[br]who is married to a Malaysian man.

0:15:23.763,0:15:27.334
Her husband came home one day and said[br]he was going to take their daughters

0:15:27.334,0:15:29.709
back to Malaysia[br]to cut off their clitoris.

0:15:29.709,0:15:33.443
And she said, "Why?"[br]He said they were dirty.

0:15:33.910,0:15:35.728
And she said, "Well, you married me."

0:15:35.728,0:15:38.278
He said, "Oh, this is my cultural belief."

0:15:39.278,0:15:42.163
They then went into a whole discussion[br]where she said to him,

0:15:42.163,0:15:45.255
"Over my dead body[br]will you do that to my daughters."

0:15:45.255,0:15:49.004
But imagine if this woman[br]wasn't aware of what FGM was,

0:15:49.004,0:15:51.161
if they never had that conversation?

0:15:51.161,0:15:54.399
Her children would have been[br]flown over to Malaysia

0:15:54.399,0:15:57.709
and they would have come back[br]changed for the rest of their lives.

0:15:57.709,0:15:59.416
Do you know the millions of dollars

0:15:59.416,0:16:01.802
it would take us to deal[br]with an issue like that?

0:16:01.802,0:16:04.561
[Three children per day] in Australia

0:16:04.561,0:16:07.760
are at risk of having FGM[br]performed on them.

0:16:07.760,0:16:10.261
This is an Australian problem, people.

0:16:10.261,0:16:13.268
It's not an African problem.[br]It's not a Middle Eastern problem.

0:16:13.268,0:16:18.411
It's not white, it's not black,[br]it has no color, it's everybody's problem.

0:16:18.411,0:16:21.844
FGM is child abuse.

0:16:21.844,0:16:23.754
It's violence against women.

0:16:23.754,0:16:27.769
It's saying that women don't have[br]a right to sexual pleasure.

0:16:27.769,0:16:30.804
It says we don't have[br]a right to our bodies.

0:16:30.804,0:16:34.613
Well, I say no to that,[br]and you know what? Bullshit.

0:16:34.613,0:16:36.719
That's what I have to say to that.

0:16:36.719,0:16:41.600
(Applause)

0:16:42.999,0:16:48.514
I am proud to say that[br]I'm doing my part in ending FGM.

0:16:48.514,0:16:50.646
What are you going to do?

0:16:50.646,0:16:55.297
There may be a child in your classroom[br]who is at risk of FGM.

0:16:55.297,0:16:58.393
There may be a patient[br]who comes to your hospital

0:16:58.393,0:17:00.026
who is at risk of FGM.

0:17:00.026,0:17:02.385
But this is the reality,

0:17:02.385,0:17:04.465
that even in our beloved Australia,

0:17:04.465,0:17:06.567
the most wonderful place in the world,

0:17:06.567,0:17:10.653
children are being abused[br]because of a culture.

0:17:10.653,0:17:13.612
Culture should not be[br]a defense for child abuse.

0:17:13.612,0:17:18.655
I want ever single one of you[br]to see FGM as an issue for you.

0:17:18.655,0:17:20.141
Make it personal.

0:17:20.141,0:17:23.230
It could be your daughter,[br]your sister, your cousin.

0:17:23.230,0:17:25.391
I can't fight FGM alone.

0:17:26.321,0:17:28.928
I could try, but I can't.

0:17:28.928,0:17:31.733
So my appeal to you is, please join me.

0:17:31.733,0:17:33.846
Sign my petition on Change.org

0:17:33.846,0:17:37.833
and type in Khadija, my name,[br]and it'll come up, and sign it.

0:17:37.833,0:17:41.425
The aim of that is to get support[br]for FGM victims in Australia

0:17:41.425,0:17:43.688
and to protect little girls[br]growing up here

0:17:43.688,0:17:46.826
to not have this evil done to them,

0:17:46.826,0:17:50.509
because every child[br]has a right to pleasure.

0:17:50.509,0:17:53.970
Every child has a right[br]to their bodies being left intact,

0:17:53.970,0:17:58.687
and dammit, ever child[br]has a right to a clitoris.

0:17:58.687,0:18:02.352
So please join me in ending this act.

0:18:02.352,0:18:04.501
My favorite quote is,

0:18:04.501,0:18:06.349
"All it takes for evil to prevail

0:18:06.349,0:18:09.783
is for a few good men[br]and women to do nothing."

0:18:09.783,0:18:14.652
Are you going to let this evil[br]of female genital mutilation

0:18:14.652,0:18:16.884
to prevail in Australia?

0:18:16.884,0:18:18.172
I don't think so,

0:18:18.172,0:18:22.198
so please join me in ensuring[br]that it ends in my generation.

0:18:22.198,0:18:24.269
Thank you.

0:18:24.269,0:18:26.707
(Applause)