Former member of the Indonesian Parliament Nursyahbani Katjasungkana has started an initiative to enable a dialogue on sexual rights in her home country Indonesia, were sex and sexuality remains a taboo in the public domain.

Katjasungkana want to promote a movement on sexual rights in Indonesia, arguing that “Sexuality is not only about having sex. It controls human’s behaviours when they interact with each other. [...] The control over women’s bodies in a patriarchal society also stems from a fear of women’s sexuality.”

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana was genitally mutilated as a baby and had her own daughter mutilated at the age of six months. “The first time I saw clearly how female sexuality was oppressed was in the case of my own daughter”, she says and admits she deeply regrets agreeing to have her daughter mutilated.

“The Waris Dirie Foundation has repeatedly received reports by doctors from Indonesia, informing us that female genital mutilation is very widespread in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world.
Nursyahbani Katjasungkana makes a very important point in highlighting that FGM is part of a system that degrades and oppressed women out of an unwarranted fear of female sexuality. It is very important to address sexuality and the fears related to it openly in order to overcome harmful practices such as FGM and the suppression of women within a society!” – Waris Dirie

Source: The Jakarta Post