The bipartisan movement against female genital mutilation and cutting is being co-opted by anti-trans activists, hindering urgent laws from
Caitlin LeMay, the executive director of the U.S. End FGM/C Network, and her fellow advocates have needed to devote significant energy and resources to educating their networks about the differences between FGM/C and medically necesary trans health care.
“Intersex infants and young kids who are being subjected to nonconsensual surgeries are suffering the exact harm that is being falsely claimed about gender-affirming care, and meanwhile, no one in the administration cares to do anything about it [intersex genital mutilation],” Anthony said.
I’m reading more on FGM and the arguments for it so I can better fight against them, since I believe it’s an important issue internationally. And one common one I keep seeing is “what about male circumcision” and “what about intersex genital mutilation” and holy shit??? We shouldn’t be so eager to cut any child’s genitalia is my hot take that hopefully shouldn’t be a hot take.
Trans FGM survivors exist and we really need to support their rights to therapeutic and medical services for FGM survivors.
They deserve support that doesn't force them to call themselves women by an already traumatic experience. They deserve to talk about their experiences and raise awareness without feeling the need to call themselves women by doing so.
Warnings: Allusions to FGM/Clitorectomy; Allusions to Child Abuse; Allusions to Scars; Angst; Arguments; Throwing of Glass; Psychology and the Healing of the Inner Child; Some element of Hurt/Comfort
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, PLEASE DO NOT READ
Word Count: 2k words
Summary: To love a God is no easy thing. To face a God who could not shape a kinder humanity is even harder.
Author’s Notes: When I was five years old, I was subjected to a clitorectomy, a procedure that was a violation of my human rights and bodily autonomy. It has fundamentally changed the way I view my sexuality and challenged my ability to see myself as a person worthy of sexual pleasure and love.
Eternals was a movie that I both loved and hated because of the implication that the Eternals just… sat by and watched human history become what it is, or that they may have actually shaped it into what it is. Knowing the historical origins of FGM and connecting that to some of the story of the Eternals, I had a mini-breakdown and ended up spending weeks writing this to deal with it.
As always, thank you @brandycranby for putting up with me ranting about this.
All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.
In a way, you almost should have known this would happen — just as Icarus himself so loved the freedom of his wings and the warmth of the sun upon them that he flew too close and fell to his death, the act of loving Ikaris has burned you alive, hasn’t it?
Immortality, you know — have known, long before he broke his way into your life — is a curse. He has seen so much, grappled with Gods and Monsters, shaped the very humanity you are afflicted with. How can he see your pain properly, viewed from so high above, so aware of the whole scope of humanity, unbothered by your mundane troubles? Small things to a giant, the rough edges of this unforgiving universe are… nothing.
But you, mortal you, a microscopic blip in the scope of human history, wrapped in the constant daily stressors of your ephemeral life. To see the world through your eyes is to magnify his view a thousandfold and even the smoothest of surfaces are a mountain range of jagged peaks reaching up to the sky when viewed from up close.
To love a God is to know he was never truly yours, no matter how many promises he makes of himself — fealty and fidelity and faith — or how many ways you want to believe him. Never yours, but in the moments your life and his coincide, you are his.
The weight of truth is a heavy, heartless thing, sinking into the bliss of new love slowly, burning away the hazy edge of infatuation to bring about clear realization. A hand of ice and stone emerges from the ocean floor and truth emerges from the well of his mouth to shame you both for having the very audacity to think that you could.
A thousand lives born from every single one lost — it seemed like such a fair exchange at the time, he tells you, barely able to meet the pained betrayal in your gaze. He almost makes it sound so reasonable.
What is the cost of a life, what is worth the weight of all your memories, is it a thousand lives scattered across a thousand different worlds, a consciousness split across many infinite light years? What is the price you would pay to erase all your pain in conjunction with your pleasures, all for the chance to maybe be reborn on a world guided by kinder Gods?
So all of this, all of human progress was … priming us to be cattle, it is not a question, merely a truth, a shameful reality you are forced to face, Then what was I? There. A selfish question — but then again, what are humans but inherently selfish, occupied by their own survival first? What are you too, but a tangle of traumas desperate to be seen as yourself and loved for it all the same.
You… How can he answer that, what answer can he give to that, when the truth cannot be softened, cannot be smoothed over? You would have been my greatest regret to lose.
On television, a reporter speculates aloud on the investigation into the dormant behemoth that might have borne any number of new utopias and before you, the Eternal who once never questioned the cost holds back tears.
It’s a tragedy you failed.
At five, a child’s body does not belong to them, belongs to the elders, the “know-betters” who decide everything from clothes to eventual college education, to “best interests” and good intentions, an object both sacred and unconsecrated, carefully cataloged and sealed away until — like wine — it has aged enough to be known.
And who are the catalogers but kindly doctors and home surgeons, self-taught anesthesiologists with adulterated sherbets and unwanted visits to hospital rooms built in the home, meant for the poking and the prodding, the measuring and marking before the magic is done — just a moment of knifework, easy as that — and the specimen is released into the arms of its anxious owners, finally made pretty and perfect, purified in blood.
If there was a physical recovery for you, you don’t remember, not anymore. Memories fracture with your mind, shattered by the knowing you’ll never stop grappling with, the wondering you’ll never find an end to.
The blame you need to try and place.
Would you have? Regretted it, if the Emergence had actually happened?
You ask it of him days later, days of pretending you aren’t weighing every word of his confession in a thousand different configurations, trying to find one that did not anchor your heart to the slumbering giant at the bottom of the sea.
You ask it of him and all he does is watch you, measuring the weight of your distrust, I would never want to see you hurt.
Oh.
Oh sweet love, you almost tell him, almost throw the glass in your hand at him, almost shatter yourself at his feet, Oh sweet love it is far too late for that.
You bite it back instead, bite back the bile rising in your throat, bite back that scream you wish you could shatter the planet with, You wouldn’t have seen though.
You never do.
He wouldn’t have seen, you charge him, and in doing so you set his hackles to rise, the uneasy truce of your broken heart splitting the chasm between you further and this time he wonders if it’s worth trying to fly, I promised you I would protect you, he reminds, in the sharp admonition of a father insisting his love is Real don’t you see all that I do for you?
You did, you concede. You have to acknowledge it.
The tragedy is, so does he.
It is strange. To be a child and an adult all at once, to watch him and feel all the hurt and betrayal of your present coursing through your five-year-old psyche, the terrified child at the very core of you screaming for answers you promised, you promise, you promised!
Did he know, would he have known, would it ever have been relevant for him, so passionately dedicated to ridding the world of Deviants in their entirety? Wasn’t that enough?
Would it ever be enough?
You shouldn’t. You know you shouldn’t, shouldn’t charge him with the failure to protect you from the crimes committed before he ever knew he would come into your life in the aftermath. How could he have known, have seen, have anticipated the consequences of his indifference when — for so many centuries of his immortal life — he has followed only the design of a God merciful enough to let him pretend to be one on this planet?
You shouldn’t, yet you do.
You do for the sake of the girl you have never stopped comforting, for the woman you could have become, the mourning you have not ceased. He can see it, can’t he? Can see the child at the core of you wondering if she has — once more — placed her trust in the wrong person.
He says your name like an apology, approaches you slowly, watches you burn from the inside out and wonders too if he has — once more — laid waste to the heart of a woman he loves.
The weight of truth is a heavy, heartless thing, sinking into the bliss of new love slowly, burning away the hazy edge of infatuation to bring about clear realization and as the smoke of your denial clears you find yourself facing a man who could have and did not and you wonder if the weight of your resentment is enough to unseat him from your chest, from that space between your ribs where his name beats like a drum, Did you know?
What?
Did. You. Know.
Sweetheart, if I had known I would have—
Don’t call me sweetheart! You have lost the right to any sweetness left in me.
The glass that goes sailing from your hand flies without much coaxing, an act compelled by a girl who knows only that she is angry and in pain, believing ardently that the current target of her ire was at fault for all of it.
He manages to avoid the projectile with infuriating ease, glancing back to eye the shards of your heartbroken psyche, seeing the many injustices of time past reflected back at him in the wreckage and still… walks… closer. I know you’re angry, swee— he cuts himself off his time, hands bare and bloody before you like surrender.
Surrender surrender surrender.
It’s a standoff, shards of you twinkling in the once-comfortable home of your kitchen, his hands unsteady as he wonders how to put you back together without crumbling you to dust. You step back and he steps closer, like he could cage you in. Did you know did you know did you know?
Did he?
To be all-knowing and all-seeing is to know that seeing and noticing are two different things — one does not always take notice of that which one sees, the nose in front of one’s own eyes is edited out by one’s own mind — and the Eternals are neither omnipotent nor omniscient, merely … eternal. And to be eternal is to forget. Forget the mundane terrors of the past, leave the present an unfolding path, and look to what chains drag the future ever closer.
All of this was supposed to end.
To love a God is to know he was never truly yours but what of a God who loves a human? What of knowing the inexorable passage of time will lead to the inevitability of decay, what of immortalizing a memory that too, will one day fade in the mind of a being that has only so much space to remember?
All of this was supposed to end, he tells you, arms wrapped around you, collapse halted but briefly as he tries to justify the unjust.
What is the cost of a life, what is worth the weight of all your memories, is it a thousand lives scattered across a thousand different worlds, a consciousness split across many infinite light years? What is the price he would pay to erase all your pain and all his guilt, all for the chance that somewhere, on a world far away from here, there is a being composed of the same atoms as you who does not know pain or betrayal or him?
Thus, All of this was supposed to end.
You knew.
Knowing is different from doing. We trusted Arishem then, when we were told not to intervene.
Immortality, you know — have known, long before he broke his way into your life and your heart — is a curse. He has seen so much, faced the collapse of his very faith itself, saved the very humanity you are afflicted with. How could he have done anything, when — so aware of the scope of history — he would then have had to do more and how close can a God wander towards Tyrant? Small things to a giant, the rough edges of this unforgiving universe are humanity’s very struggle to survive.
He will see you too, and find fleeting joy in the small things.
Everything was always so fast — there were so many Deviants and still no one could unite to fight them.
So their traditions took a backseat.
They always found a new way to kill each other.
Humanity is a hard thing to love, but humans are soft, are fragile, are reaching for meaning in an unfeeling universe and he… does not love them but loves you, has sworn to love you in the only ways he has learned to, been yours in the only way he has been capable of, is the only home you have ever known and here in the magnified reality of your life, he whispers the words, I’m sorry.
He is. You know he is.
So he says to you, Forgive me.
So. Singed by the fire of his devotion to the larger things beyond, you sink yourself into the hearth of his promise now — fealty, fidelity, faith — and try to believe.
Refrain from using graphic images/diagrams when explaining FGM. Simpler, non-graphic images are better, with no gore or knives displayed. The last thing you want to do it retraumatize a victim when you should be spreading awareness.
We typically see FGM as an issue of the East, but FGM can happen in North and South America, Europe, and Australia, typically by migrant families. However the Western world has been a bit quicker to outlaw these practices (no doubt orientalism/xenophobia/racism was involved in this intervention). However, in countries where FGM has been outlawed, many women fear speaking out against their abuse, fearing the prosecution of family and self, and disapproval from their community elders. This is why it's SO IMPORTANT that we make victims feel safe.
