Content note: detailed references to self-harm methods I started burning myself at 15. A friend and I burned ourselves in an attempt to engrave a symbol on our arms. After going to the local mall and buying a book on witchcraft, we decided we needed a symbol of our commitment to our new two-person coven. We drew up a draft of our symbol containing our initials (S & T) and … [Read more...]
Why We Should Say ‘Female Genital Cutting’ and Not ‘Mutilation’
Having worked on campaigns like the Olympics and the Paralympics, London-born Jay Kamara Frederick believes the key to her award winning marketing is that she always tries to understand her audience’s mind-set. But that’s something, she says, that Austrian-born feminist Fran Hosken failed to do in her 1976 manifesto ‘The Hosken Report: Genital/Sexual Mutilation.’ Despite her … [Read more...]
More Than My Scars: Radical Self-love and the Self-injured Body
I have never forgotten the first time I cut into my own flesh deliberately: the motes of dust in the air lit by a late afternoon sunbeam; the threadbare sofa in my dorm room where I sat; the blue-handled scissors that I held open for what seemed an eternity; the expanse of pale, clear skin on the inside of my forearm before I brought the scissors down against it. My skin has … [Read more...]
