Cornell University Researchers Mutilating Girls
June 30, 2010 | 6 Comments
Some blog posts are difficult to write. They’re difficult because you don’ t know just where or how to start, and they’re difficult because of the topic at hand. This is one of those posts.
I’ve written before about circumcision and female genital mutilation. What we, as a species, do to our children on a routine basis is rather barbaric. Historically, we’ve had all sorts of reasons, from cleanliness to fighting sexual urges. We’ve claimed that routine circumcision has health benefits (it does not), “cures” homosexuality (because it’s a disease, y’know) and stops masturbation.
Would many adults submit to the routine mutilation of their genitals? Maybe, maybe not. I would guess most of us would prefer that our genitals remain as intact as possible. But this doesn’t matter with our children. Apparently, we can do anything to our children’s genitals… as long as a proper authority condones it.
At Cornell University, this includes cutting pieces off of the clitorises of little girls and then pulling out a vibrator. From Dan Savage:
There’s so much to be angry about I hardly know where to start. Applying a vibrator a girl’s clitoris after it’s been surgically shortened may demonstrate that she still has “sensation” in what’s been left behind—that she still has a few nerve endings that function—but that’s not proof that she hasn’t been physically or emotionally harmed by the surgery and those traumatic follow-up “procedures.” These post-op visits with the doctor and his vibrator do the girls no good—what can the doctor do if a girl reports no sensation? reassemble her clit?—and retaining sensation isn’t proof that these girls will grow up to be healthy, sexually functional adults. All of the tissues that make up the clitoris—the glans, the stem, the erectile tissues—are important to sexual response, orgasm, and fulfillment, not just the part of the clitoris that’s “normally” exposed.
There’s another disturbing reason this surgery is being performed: girls with large clitorises are more likely to identify as lesbians when they grow up. Needless to say (or maybe not-so-needless): carving up a girl’s clitoris does nothing to change the underlying hormonal and genetic factors that contribute to lesbian orientation and identity. Big clits don’t make lesbians—lesbians sometimes make big clits. These surgeries are partly motivated by out-and-out homophobia, by the belief that “fixing” a large clit somehow prevents lesbianism. (Larger penises correlate positively with gayness in males but no one is out there shortening boys’ penises.)
For a more clinical take, here’s Alice Dreger (Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine) and Ellen K. Feder (Associate Professor and Acting Chair in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University):
For over a decade, many people (including us) have criticized this surgical practice. Critics in medicine, bioethics, and patient advocacy have questioned the surgery’s necessity, safety, and efficacy. We still know of no evidence that a large clitoris increases psychological risk (so is the surgery even necessary?), and we do know of substantial anecdotal evidence that it does not increase risk. Importantly, there also seems to be evidence that clitoroplasties performed in infancy do increase risk – of harm to physical and sexual functioning, as well as psychosocial harm.
…
Here more specifically is, apparently, what is happening: At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, ["researcher" Dix P. ] Poppas touches the daughter’s surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a “vibratory device,” and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch. Yang, Felsen, and Poppas also report a “capillary perfusion testing,” which means a physician or nurse pushes a finger nail on the girl’s clitoris to see if the blood goes away and comes back, a sign of healthy tissue. Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls. He intends to chart the development of their sexual sensation over time.
…
Tamar-Mattis added that she is “also concerned about whether parents who take their daughters with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) to Cornell for genital surgery are being given full information about the risks and unknowns of these surgeries.” Indeed, the Web site for the Division of Pediatric Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College, where Dix Poppas serves as chief, reports that disagreement about infant genital surgery and its putative necessity is in the past; the site does not acknowledge that the practice remains controversial among specialist clinicians as well as patient advocates who have called for reform over the last 15 years.
Parents reading the Cornell Web site are also not informed that there is no evidence that having a big clitoris puts a girl at psychosocial risk. On the contrary, the Web site assures parents that plastic surgery performed between three and six months of age “is recommended because female patients are able to undergo a more natural psychological and sexual development.”
As Tamar-Mattis points out, the Web site also seems to promise that girls with CAH who undergo genital surgery at Cornell will have normal sexual function. It says, “Our approach to clitoroplasty leaves the patient with intact clitoral sensation, painless sexual arousal, a viable and sensate glans clitoris, and appropriate erectile function during sexual arousal.”
Risks of nerve damage, incontinence, urinary tract infections, inability to experience orgasm, or many other problems – including psychosocial problems – associated with genital surgery and follow-up receive no mention. According to Tamar-Mattis, “Parents who find out about these risks only after the fact may be very unhappy, and might even have legal claims against the surgeon and the hospital.”
In a recent conversation about this matter with Janet Green, a longtime patient advocate for girls and women with CAH and atypical genitalia, Green captured our own sense of frustration: “I had hoped this generation of parents would finally be beyond where the last several generations had been – wondering what they had consented to, what they had done to their children, thinking doctors always know best.”
You know, if I sliced up young girls’ genitals, then pulled out a vibrator… well, there’d be a special cell and special place in hell waiting for me.
Tags: Alice Dreger > Cornell University > Dix P. Poppas > Ellen K. Feder > Genital Mutilation > Informed Consent
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6 Responses to “Cornell University Researchers Mutilating Girls”
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June 30th, 2010 @ 1:52 pm
[...] http://thecommons-ccd.com/2010/06/cornell-university-researchers-mutilating-girls/ [...]
June 30th, 2010 @ 5:26 pm
Per Dan Savage’s assertions:
http://letfreedomrain.blogspot.com/2010/06/at-last-cure-for-lesbianism.html
[Reply]
June 30th, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
I think this is disgusting! Several years ago I gave a large donation to a woman who was running a program in Africa to educate women against female curcumcision. To hear that it is condoned on this continent by the medical profesion is deplorable.
[Reply]
June 30th, 2010 @ 9:53 pm
Cornell University Researchers Mutilating Girls…
I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
July 1st, 2010 @ 9:59 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pixel Project Team, Fallopia Tuba, The Commons and others. The Commons said: We've got a new post!: Cornell University Researchers… http://thecommons-ccd.com/2010/06/cornell-university-researchers-mutilating-girls/ [...]
July 2nd, 2010 @ 9:10 am
Here’s an interesting twist: a researcher has developed a drug pregnant women can take to insure their daughters don’t turn out to be lesbians and be certain that she will “eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and [have] normal sexual development, and [become] a mother.”
http://io9.com/5577804/a-drug-for-pregnant-women-that-prevents-lesbian-daughters
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