The Day I Will Never Forget: an interview with Kim Longinotto

The documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto talks to Catherine Fowler about her latest film The Day I Will Never Forget (2003) about female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa. Longinotto’s films have consistently interrogated our understanding of womens’ place in the world, and her latest film is no exception. She discusses how she found her subjects: Fardohsa, a midwife who has been campaigning against FGM, a group of girls who have (successfully) taken their parents to court in order to prevent FGM being practised, and Fouzia, a girl of nine who reads a poem that she wrote the day after she was circumcised, asking her mother to explain why she put her daughter through such a painful experience. Longinotto also discusses the ethical issues raised by her filming of a circumcision of two sisters, and the wider issues that her film engages: the powerless position of women in African societies, the confusion of religion and culture in discussions of FGM, and the impact of saying ‘no’ to this practice.     

Maternal Predictors of Noncoital Sexual Behavior: Examining a Nationally Representative Sample of Asian and White American Adolescents Who Have Never had Sex

Current research in adolescent sexuality has largely focused on vaginal-penile intercourse, with less attention to noncoital sexual activity. This study examined how maternal factors influence the transition from virginity to noncoital behavior among White and Asian American youth who have never experienced vaginal intercourse. We conducted logistic regression analyses to examine whether traditional maternal predictors of coital sex were important in understanding noncoital sexual activity of these two populations. Waves 1 and 2 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were utilized. For White Americans (n = 3,926), direct and indirect maternal factors were associated with noncoital sexual involvement: maternal support, control, mother–child communication about sex, and adolescents’ perceptions of maternal approval of sex. In contrast, only maternal support was associated with the onset of noncoital sexual behavior for Asian Americans (n = 611). The study underscores the need to explore culturally specific factors that may influence Asian American adolescent noncoital sexual behaviors.