Emerging Women

By Mihee Kim-Kort

There’s a huge tree in front of our house. It’s the tree that I fell in love with when we first saw the house, and eventually bought it and moved in. We’re situated on top of a slight hill so that our front lawn is basically a small, steep slope, and we have to climb two different sets of stairs to get to the front door. The master bedroom is right above the front door and porch, with three windows that face out to the tree. It’s one of those trees that seems to be the last on the street to grow in green, and perhaps the first to shed its leaves during the beginning of autumn. When it is full, its leaves are a bright Irish green that fall down in truckloads planting themselves all over the front yard and sprouting into little trees that I unfortunately have to pull up like weeds. It kind of breaks my heart in a way, like I’m preventing the tree’s offspring from growing up and reaching their fullest potential.

It’s a comforting presence with branches that hang low and cover the porch a little while still letting in bits of light and warmth. I love laying in bed sometimes and just letting myself drown in the green that fills the windows. On those days I don’t want to crawl out of bed, it feels like a soothing balm for my tattered spirit…

New life is springing up all around us now, and living in PA, it is particularly undeniable and beautiful. There’s something about this area where everything kind of explodes to new life – flowers, plants, trees. And…it’s even more poignant as A- and I struggle to create our own little life. I’ve only talked about this struggle with a few folks already, and though I find it difficult to share, I am realizing that I need to start accepting this as a part of my own journey, my own process, my own…story. After a couple of years of trying to get pregnant we recently found out that the only way for us to have our own offspring is through in vitro fertilization. I am grieving…the loss of all and any romantic notions of this whole getting-pregnant process in general…and not being able to be a part of nature’s cycle in a “natural” way…But even while that specific dream is still-born, I am feeling thankful for the inkling of other possibilities…and how I can bear hope in other ways even if it isn’t the “natural” way. Even as I watch little seedlings sprout all around me, whether it’s flowers or children, though painful, it’s healing, too. And in that healing, there’s always new life…

The tree has become a mothering presence to me…a reminder of all the mothering spirits in my life…and a picture of what I might be, too…

Mihee is an associate pastor at a Presbyterian church for youth and children in Pennsylvania. This post originally appeared at Mihee’s blog First Day Walking

By Julie Clawson

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for “federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick’,” such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises. The Policy Statement “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors”, issued by the AAP on April 26, 2010, is on one hand intended to help protect young girls. The reasoning is that often families from certain cultural traditions will leave the country or find alternate sources to perform FGM on their daughters, so the AAP is suggesting that if doctors here perform a ritual prick or minor incision of a girl’s clitoris, it will prevent families from inflicting the harsher forms on their daughters.

This recommendation has of course been met with some outrage. FGM is illegal in the United States and a new law is currently being proposed to make it illegal to transport girls out of the U.S. for the purpose of FGM. While this is a cultural tradition for some, others see it as simply another form of violence against women. FGM is the removal of all or part of a woman’s genitalia for the purposes of controlling her sexuality and insuring she is a virgin until marriage. Women in cultures that practice FGM are often not accepted by their culture unless they have had it done to them. Advocates of women’s rights argue that women should be permitted to control their own bodies and be free to experience sexual pleasure as adults.

So it is shocking to many to hear the AAP’s recommendations. While the proposal is supposedly meant to protect young girls, it still sanctions the mentality that women’s sexuality must be controlled by men. The idea that doctor’s in America could do this to young children is abhorrent to those who fight to protect the voiceless.

Of course, this is only a recommendation from the AAP and may never become reality it raises some serious ethical questions. How do you react to this recommendation? Do you see this as protecting women or oppressing them?