Do systems that claim to save us end up doing harm?

Mamasa Kamara is a Gambian-American writer and researcher. She describes herself as ‘thinking through faith, care, refusal – and what happens when systems that claim to save us end up doing harm instead.’

In her latest very interesting and exploratory Substack post she takes to task systems that falsely suggest that self-love is the path to healing from FGM. That if women could just love themselves enough, they’d begin to feel whole again.

“Because what hurt was not the cut experienced at infancy. What hurt was being told the wound was all I was. That the only acceptable response was to love myself back into silence.”

Instead she asserts that the care she needed, “real care, the kind that holds and listens and stays – was nowhere to be found. Only policies. Only speeches. Only silence.”

These ideas are explored more fully in the post What They Call Self-Love, I Call Abandonment, which can be accessed here.