Source: Toxic Lesbian
In this short, moving video, Marianna, a lesbian from Senegal, explains that her parents had her circumcised to cure her lesbianism. Later, she was caught with her girlfriend and they were beaten so badly by a mob that her girlfriend died. Marianna sought asylum, and was successful.
The video was produced by the Toxic Lesbian group in collaboration with the Belgian LGBT rights group Merhaba as part of the “When Love in Africa Costs your Life” project. Toxic Lesbian is a collection of Spanish activist-artists who have been working at the Matadero Madrid Contemporary Art Center in Madrid. They have produced a number of videos in English, French and Spanish, and more are in the works.
This video is in French, but English and French transcripts follow.
Yes, I am an asylum seeker.
One night I took the plane. It’s a woman who helped me, because I was with a female friend.
You know, in Senegal, people do not like to see people of the same sex loving each other deeply[?]. So when I lost my friend there, there is a woman who helped me. It’s that woman there, with her knowledge, [and] a gentleman named George, he's the one who helped me get here.
It started when I was very little. But my parents became aware of it, my parents truly knew, when I was 17.
And when they knew that, you know, first of all, in Senegal, we practice female circumcision, but as [unintelligible] the association that fights against female genital mutilation there, my parents at first told themselves, no, we won’t do that [unintelligible].
I was not circumcised at first, but, at 17, when they learned that I was a lesbian over there, my grandmother came to say: Oh, it's because you want to leave our traditions. That's why your daughter is sick. We must do that.
Them, they thought circumcising me would treat me. So I was circumcised.
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