Submitted by sokari on 11 April, 2010 - 23:32

Update: Sokari posted a follow-up post here: http://www.kabissa.org/blog/clitoraid-update

Clitoraid's demeaning campaign is urging supporters to adopt an African woman's clitoris! 

Please sign the online petition and take a stand up for dignity and respect for ALL women, including African women! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/feministscha

Clitoraid is a project of the Raelian cult. A UFO religion that believes that all life on Earth was created in scientific labs by a species of extraterrestrials. Their previous ventures, Clonaid and Stemaid were met with a kind of skepticism that Clitoraid has not.

Instead of supporting Clitoraid we feel that all interested in this important issue should support any of the numerous African women's organizations that have been mobilizing around the issue for generations. Supporting a cult is not the same as supporting African women's own initiatives!

We DO NOT encourage the continuation of Female Circumcision! Instead this is a call for all of us to respect African women when addressing this important issue.

We FULLY SUPPORT surgeries to repair the tissue damage caused by female circumcision but the fundraising for these surgeries needs to be done in a manner that respects African women's right to dignity

For more information on Clitoriad and their sponsers see Saving Africa or join the Facebook group : Feminists Challenging Clitoraid

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Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 14 April, 2010 - 11:16.

Thanks, Sokari, for crossposting this peitition also on Kabissa. Today I learned through Twitter that there is a good article covering this story in today's San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. I was pleased by the tail end of the article, which called for involving more African women in the discussion, and partnering with African initiatives instead of Clitoraid - and that Kamau-Rutenberg's campaign is having some success to get Good Vibrations to change direction: 

Kamau-Rutenberg has launched a small campaign to get Good Vibrations to rethink its association with Clitoraid, and instead work with African women's organizations that have a history of success in dealing with these issues. She suggests the Global Fund for Women and the African Women's Development Fund. They don't sound as sexy as Clitoraid, but as she said, "It's much better to support African women who are trying to stop this than it is to support a UFO cult."

That sounded pretty reasonable to me, so I called Good Vibrations. They seem to have realized that this was a terrible idea, because chief cultural officer Carol Queen told me that they're "distressed by the controversy" and that there's a lot of "discussion" about what their next steps should be. My suggestion to them: Bring actual African women into that discussion. Who knows? They might have a few ideas about how they can be helped.

Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/13/EDVF1CU21E.DTL

Source tweet by @wanjirukr 

@garden_hoe21 @DrPetra @mngreenall @bishtraining @blacklooks @maneno @kabissa SanFrancisco Chronicle on GV & #Clitoraid http://sfg.ly/bB5lEc

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 19 April, 2010 - 14:28.

I was pleased to read that on April 15th, only 10 days after it was started, this petition met its goal - Good Vibrations has dropped their support of Clitoraid. Well done! Below is an excerpt of the announcement:

 

WE DID IT!! Today’s San Francisco Chronicle further confirms that Good Vibrations has officially dropped their support of Clitoraid and with their humiliating ‘adopt a clitoris’ campaign.  Instead, Good Vibrations is searching to partner with a feminist organization addressing the issue of Female Circumcision in a culturally appropriate and respectful way. (see call for suggestions below).

YOUR signatures, tweets, blogs, led to the overwhelming public response so that the campaign only needed to last 10 days from April 5th to April 15th!

THANK YOU for taking a stand for African Women’s dignity and respect.

 

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