{"id":1240,"date":"2017-03-16T13:39:40","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T13:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2017-03-16T13:39:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T13:39:40","slug":"my-vulva-cupcakes-were-confiscated-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-anti-fgm-campaigner-leyla-hussein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/my-vulva-cupcakes-were-confiscated-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-anti-fgm-campaigner-leyla-hussein\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;My vulva cupcakes were confiscated&#8217; &#8211; a day in the life of an anti-FGM campaigner Leyla Hussein"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop-cap\"><span class=\"drop-cap__inner\">S<\/span><\/span>muggling vulva-decorated cupcakes into the Somali region of <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ethiopia\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Ethiopia<\/a> was one of those moments where I thought: \u201cMy work as an anti-FGM campaigner gets me into interesting situations sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three years earlier I\u2019d made vulva cupcakes as part of a <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/programmes\/the-cruel-cut\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">documentary about FGM<\/a>that I\u2019d done for Channel 4. \u201cWe need you to bring them with you,\u201d said Sagal Abdi, vice executive director of <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/themaandeeq.com\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Maandeeq<\/a>, when she invited me to an event in Jijiga, the capital of the region, part of <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.unwomen.org\/en\/what-we-do\/ending-violence-against-women\/take-action\/16-days-of-activism\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">16 days of activism<\/a> against gender-based violence.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, I was taken aback. I grew up in the UK as part of the Somali diaspora, and I\u2019d assumed the people of Jijiga would not be ready for vulva cupcakes. But Abdi, also part of the diaspora, reassured me that the Ethiopian women had requested them. \u201cLeyla, they watched the documentary and loved the concept of using art for campaigning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development-professionals-network\/2017\/mar\/13\/my-vulva-cupcakes-were-confiscated-but-i-gained-a-sense-of-home\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development-professionals-network\/2017\/mar\/13\/my-vulva-cupcakes-were-confiscated-but-i-gained-a-sense-of-home<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smuggling vulva-decorated cupcakes into the Somali region of Ethiopia was one of those moments where I thought: \u201cMy work as an anti-FGM campaigner gets me into interesting situations sometimes.\u201d Three years earlier I\u2019d made vulva cupcakes as part of a documentary about FGMthat I\u2019d done for Channel 4. \u201cWe need you to bring them with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fgm"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}