WARNING: This story contains details of female genital mutilation/cutting Shamsa Sharawe was six years old when she became convinced her family was going to kill her. "It felt so violent and so ..
. just horrific," she said. "I just thought, why? Like, if you're not trying to end my life, why would you do this?" In a viral TikTok with over 11 million views, Sharawe retells the moment she was a victim of female genital mutilation, a practice that was normalized and celebrated in the Somalian village where she was born.
In the video, she holds up a white rose and a razor, pinching and slicing off the petals. Then, she roughly stitches the remnants together. "The feeling of being sewn alive, awake, is something I will never be able to describe," said Sharawe, who now lives in the U.
K., just north of London. Sharawe is seven in this photo, about a year after she was a victim of FGM/C in Somalia.
The World Health Organization states that FGM/C is mostly carried out on girls between infancy and adolescence, and sometimes adult women. (Submitted by Shamsa Sharawe) Sharawe was a victim of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), what the World Health Organization describes as "the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." It may include cutting the clitoris, and the removal or stitching together of the labia.
Beyond excruciating pain, severe bleeding and risk of infection or death, long-term phys.