Pelvic Pain Victoria Symposium: Gabrielle Jackson

In this speech, Khadija Gbla talks about growing up in Australia as a refugee and as a victim of Female Genital Mutilation. She talks about the impact of FGM on her body-awareness, on her sexuality and on knowing herself. Gbla grew up caught between two definitions of what it means to be an empowered woman. While her Sierra Leonean mother thought that circumsizing her — and thus stifling her sexual urges — was the ultimate form of empowerment, her culture as a teenager in Australia told her that she deserved pleasure and that what happened to her was called female genital mutilation.

Professor Leslie Cannold talks about the shame associated with having an abortion and why this exists. Cannold discusses the unproductivity of shame and its relationship with law reform.