The sanctioning of child genital cutting at Cornell Universi

[Chula]

http://www.feministing.com/archives/021581.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Feministing+%28Feministing%29

[Prettygrimm]

yup. just threw up in my mouth.

[just_icarus]

... oh my god. that is fucking AWFUL. what the hell is wrong with people?!

[sapphire_distortion]

Yeeeahh I saw this yesterday. Pretty fucking nauseating.

[MissVicious]

I dont believe in any harmful acts towards children who don't have an opinion. Including piercing ears as infants.

ugh. this is utterly disgusting.

[FrankensteinsBride]

^^ Piercing ears is no where near the same thing as any genital mutilation, not even close but that's a whole other topic...

Back to the OP, WTF!?!?!?! I'm literally mad right now. You have to be a pretty fucking shitty parent (in my opinion) to sit back and let that happen to your child. I think it's obvious that it is morally wrong and fucked up, so really whats wrong with these parents letting it happen? GAH!!

The world is so messed up, those poor little girls :'(

[MooMooMonster]

Wow...what fucking ignorant parents. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to grow up with them if they are concerned about your genitals' appearance. WTF

And that is disturbing for more than just that reason..ugh.

[Chula]

I know its so fucking disgusting, how could you allow someone to mutilate your little girl like this, it's sickening!

[sapphire_distortion]

(this is paraphrased and off the top of my head, so nobody jump down my throat if I'm way off)

On one of the other blogs I read where this got posted, there was someone in the comments who works in the medical field. She said that from the looks of things (i.e. the information that she had read and her prior experiences), there was a very good chance that the doctor had told or implied to the parents that this wasn't an experimental procedure, that it was routine, and that it was important for their daughters to be "normal". I don't think that makes the parents blameless, but I think the doctor and the university probably deserve more of the blame. JMO & all that. I mean, after all, we are living in a country where it's totally normal for doctors to put *a lot* of pressure on parents to "normalize" genitals if they have an intersex child. That's genital mutilation without consent, too.

[MooMooMonster]

I think both are at fault. Even if their children are intersexed they shouldn't have their genitals altered until they decide to do so as adults. A lot of the time when that happens the parents choose the wrong sex and it doesn't match their child's mental gender.

[Melanie]

Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but how reputable is this news source? When I searched for it elsewhere, its only on sites that are dedicated to one cause (feminism, lesbianism, alternative living) and not really a neutral news source. I think it could be easy to spin a story like this. Perhaps some of these children are born hermaphroditic, and that's why the parents request the surgery.

[Chaosbean]

Thats why people are asking the questions about the children being intersexed.

[sapphire_distortion]

Even if children are born intersexed? It is NOT FUCKING OKAY to cut up their genitals until they can consent to it.

You sure can't trust those feminist sites - they're always making up news (This just started getting posted about 2-3 days ago, mainstream news sources are always behind. I'm betting it'll come up sooner or later.)

Also, you apparently weren't looking hard enough:

http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioeth ... blogid=140 < link to the original paper is here as well, I think
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fet ... ear-us-now?

MooMooMonster: yeah I totally don't think that's okay by any means. I just have heard plenty of stories about how easy to is for doctors to pressure parents into things and so I think it might not just be a case of 'OMG! Our daughters have big clitorises! They must be MADE NORMAL!' coming from the parents.

[sapphire_distortion]

FWIW, I did just read a post by someone who went through and read the paper and said that the study was done on individuals who might have had ambiguous genitals. Does that make it okay? No. It makes it something that happens all the freaking time - the whole "sensitivity test" is not the norm, though.

[MeritaViola]

This is not a new issue, you all know that, right? It's been going on in our country for decades, and its not just intersexed children, and its not just clitoral reconstructions either. Read up on the early "treatments" for pseudohermaphroditism and/or ambiguous genitalia. Even the parents of Turner's babies get pressured into things like this.

It's a really complex issue, A lot of parents see it as "I want to give my child the best chance at having a high quality of life" not as "omg, there is something wrong with my kid, fix it"