While the whole world was debating the American Academy of Pediatrics’ position on “female genital cutting”—the AAP was against it before they were for it, and now, after an outcry, they’re against it again—Alice Dreger and Ellen Feder have been raising the alarm about “medical research” currently being conducted at Cornell University. A pediatric urologist at Cornell—Dix Poppas—has been operating on little girls with what he judges to be oversized clitorises, cutting away important clitoral tissues, and then stitching the glans to what remains of the shaft. Poppas claims that, unlike past clitoral-reduction procedures, his procedure is “nerve sparing.”

First big problem: “nerve-sparing” surgeries don’t always work. And the chunks of these girls’ clitorises that the doctor is cutting away—large pieces of their clitoral shafts—may be just as important as the clitoral glans. Dreger:

To shorten these clitorises, Poppas is saving the glans (tip) but cutting out parts of the shaft. Bo Laurent has pointed out that Masters and Johnsons showed that many women masturbate by rubbing the shafts of their clitorises. (Think about it: the clit is the homologue of the penis. How do men masturbate?) Many women seem to find their clitoral glans almost too sensitive. Poppas’s patients are loosing the option of touching parts of their shafts, because he’s throwing them out (after the cut-away parts have been sent to pathology to see if he accidentally took out a nerve).

There’s lots to be outraged about here: there’s nothing wrong with these girls and their healthy, functional-if-larger-than-average clitorises; there’s no need to operate on these girls; and surgically altering a girl’s clitoris because it’s “too big” has been found to do lasting physical and psychological harm. But what’s most outrageous is how Poppas is “proving” that his surgery “spares nerves.” Dreger and Feder:

But we are not writing today to again bring attention to the surgeries themselves. Rather, we are writing to express our shock and concern over the follow-up examination techniques described in the 2007 article by Yang, Felsen, and Poppas. Indeed, when a colleague first alerted us to these follow-up exams—which involve Poppas stimulating the girls’ clitorises with vibrators while the girls, aged six and older, are conscious—we were so stunned that we did not believe it until we looked up his publications ourselves.

Here more specifically is, apparently, what is happening: At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, 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…. Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls….

Although we have tried, we have been unable to locate any other pediatric urologist who uses these techniques. Indeed, we doubt many would, because we think most would—as we do—find this technique to be impossible to justify as being in these girls’ best interests. We understand that these tests might produce generalized knowledge that shows whether Poppas’s techniques are better than some other surgeons’, but it isn’t clear to us how this kind of genital touching post-operatively is in individual patients’ best interests. If the testing shows a girl has lost sensation through the surgery, her lost clitoral tissue cannot be put back. However, the tests would seem to expose the girls to significant risk of psychological harm.

In the course of our inquiries, made in preparation for this publication, nearly all clinicians to whom we described Poppas’s “clitoral sensory testing and vibratory sensory testing” practices thought them so outrageous that they told us we must have the facts wrong. When we showed them the 2007 article, their disbelief ceased, but they then seemed to become as agitated as we were. At an international conference two weeks ago, when Dreger told Ken Zucker, a psychologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and member of the clinical establishment, about this, Zucker said that we could quote him as saying this: “Applying a vibrator to a six-year-old girl’s surgically feminized clitoris is developmentally inappropriate.” We couldn’t find a clinician who disagreed with Zucker.

Yang, Felsen, and Poppas describe the girls “sensory tested” as being older than five. They are, therefore, old enough to remember being asked to lie back, be touched with the vibrator, and report on whether they can still feel sensation. They may also be able to remember their emotions and the physical sensations they experienced. Their parents’ participation may also figure in these memories. We think therefore that most reasonable people will agree with Zucker that Poppas’s techniques are “developmentally inappropriate.”

The 2007 article documenting Poppas’s research is here.

Now more from Dreger’s post at Psychology Today:

So why the heck do Poppas and other surgeons do these surgeries? They believe it is necessary to ensure “normal” sexual development…. Many of us happen to think “normal” sexual development is actually likely to be thwarted by having parts of your genitals taken away without your consent, and thwarted by follow-up exams like the ones we are describing. Ellen and I have gotten to know hundreds of adults born with sex anomalies who went through these medical scenes growing up. Many have told us that the genital displays involved in the follow-up exams were more traumatic than any other part of the experience. Indeed, when I once asked a group of women with androgen insensitivity syndrome what they wanted me to work on primarily in my advocacy work, they said stopping the exams, particularly those in which med students, residents, and fellows parade through to check out the surgeon’s handiwork.

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.)

Please go and read Dreger and Feder’s piece—”Bad Vibrations“—at the Bioethics Forum. And read Dreger’s post at her own blog.

And if you’re reading this and you’re a student at Cornell: female genital mutilation is being practiced on your campus. What are you going to do about it?

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359 replies on “Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University”

  1. After a bazillion comments already posted, this one is probably unnecessary, and won’t even be read, but…

    A certain number of children have outsize features of one sort or another, THAT THEY WILL GROW INTO! A big clit on a tiny kid might end up being a normal clit on the big girl that she becomes in a decade or so. Cosmetic surgery on a tiny kid is bizarre in general, unless it’s for a developmental defect like a hare lip. Purely cosmetic genito-urologic surgery on infants is plain old unforgivable.

    I wonder if this quack butcher even bothers to check the genetic sex of the kids he’s cutting? Some of those overlarge clitorises might not even be clitorises, but might belong to someone who’s intersexed, and who might very well want to try to transition to male later on.

  3. This is what I sent to the Dean of Cornell’s med college

    Dear Dr. Gotto,

    I am a MA student of archaeology, and an avid reader of Dan Savage’s blog. Perhaps you’ve heard of his sexual advice column, Savage Love? Today when I was reading his daily blog, I noticed an article about female genital mutilation being performed at Cornell University. At first I thought it was some elaborate joke, but upon reading the article I found that there is actually a licensed physician, one Dr. Poppas, that is operating on the clitoral tissues of young girls to reduce them to “normal” sizes.

    As the dean of a medical college I assume you are well aware that in infants and young children genital size can vary almost to extremes and the ultimate size of the organs will not be known till the end of adolescence. I am shocked that you and your ethics review board allows such operations on girls who are at least a decade away from the end of puberty.

    Additionally, I am sure that either you, or the top gynecologist on your board is also aware that each woman’s response to clitoral stimulation is just as different from woman to woman. The clitoral glans is usually the “best” part to stimulate, but that is not the case in every woman. Cutting away pieces of the sides of the clitoris to shorten it is somewhat akin to removing parts of the shaft of a man’s penis. Imagine a man trying to achieve orgasm without being able to stimulate the shaft of his penis! Such an operation would be considered ludicrous, so why is your college condoning it for young girls?

    Also, the glans of some womens’ clitorises are so sensitive they cannot stand direct contact. It would be unfortunate for a woman to go through life not being able to achieve orgasm because she couldn’t bear direct stimulation, but was lacking the natural tissues that would have allowed indirect stimulation to work. While it may be commendable to examine what parts of an adult woman’s clitoris does what in a properly undertaken medical study so that we can gain a better understanding of sex and stimulation, cutting children and following up to see how it has affected their lives is not only different, but morally wrong and a clear violation of every American’s right to “the pursuit of happiness.”

    What shocks me most, however, is that this Dr. Poppas uses a vibrator to stimulate the remaining clitoral tissues of these girls while they are conscious and asks them to rate the amount of feeling they have left on a scale of 1 to 5! It is never, and I repeat, NEVER appropriate for a grown man to stimulate a six year old girl’s clitoral tissues and ask her if she can “feel” anything. I don’t care if the parents have given their consent; it is child abuse and needs to be stopped immediately.

    I read that Dr. Poppas insists his research ensures “normal sexual development” and I must reiterate that normal development cannot be measured till puberty ends. I believe he also believes that larger than “normal” clitorises lead to lesbianism? That alone should disqualify him from working at a university as prestigious and upstanding as Cornell. Blatant homophobia and pseudoscience worthy of the Nazi regime have no place in the scientific world, and I recommend you cull his work immediately, or run the risk of having every discovery and advancement made in your college shaded with doubt reflected from Poppas’ dubious “work”. How are these girls to grow up as sexually normal when their parents were so unhappy with the girls’ genitals they forced their girls to undergo surgery at a young age? How are they supposed to understand appropriate sexual boundaries when an old man stimulated their genitals once a year whether they protested or not? How are they supposed to learn what makes them happy when parts of their clitoris have been removed and what’s left may be too sensitive or not sensitive at all?

    I must demand that you remove Dr. Poppas and his staff from their work at once. Female genital mutilation is unacceptable no matter where it is practiced, and to practice it in a “free” country under the ideal of “sexual normalcy” is absolutely appalling.

    In taking the Hippocratic oath you pledged to “apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.” You also swore to “remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.” Do you not have an obligation to those little girls that are being mutilated? To their minds, which will be clouded with doubt, fear, and the pain of their parents’ (and by extension, the world’s) disapproval? To their bodies, which may not function as they would have, and disappoint both them, and the life partners they could have had a happy and productive relationship with?
    The abominations practiced by Dr. Poppas and his staff are so removed from the oaths they took that I’m appalled they haven’t lost their licenses yet.

    I hope that you will consider what I have said.
    Sincerely,
    Carla Pereira, B.A.

  4. @135, 138: CORNELL MEDICAL SCHOOL IS NOT IN ITHACA! (Sorry for the ass-caps, but I’m hoping to get some people’s attention. Dan, if you could put a damn note to this effect in the post, that would be great.) The main campus of Cornell is in Ithaca, but the Medical School is in New York City. None of this is happening in Ithaca.

  5. Why is this being allowed? Who are the totally fucked up parents that are doing this? I think the fathers should be put onto the table and have their penis downsized to a more comfortable and natural fit, and while we are at it, why not take away their testes so that they can truly experience what life is like with no sensation. OH, and let’s not stop there – let’s start a new reality show parading these dumb-ass dad’s and equally fucked up mothers naked before the television making them have to bare all for the world to see how “normal” they now look. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH HUMANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  6. Agreeing with post #154. Both Weill Cornell College and its teaching hospital, New York-Presbyterian, are located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

  7. This is a standard treatment for girls born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia – a serious life-long condition that does not just cause an extremely enlarged and often nonfunctional clitoris, but can also cause the growth of male pattern hair (facial hair, back hair, etc), infertility, and death. Furthermore, the doctors used a biothesiometer – not a vibrator. The ‘vibrations’ from a biothesiometer are extremely hard for the human nervous system to even detect and are used to establish the threshold sensitivity of a nerve.

  8. @144 I’m sorry, but what you are saying is completely different than anything I’ve ever heard before. I’ve looked at research about male circumcision, and even the most-anti-male circumcision research doesn’t say that male circumcision and female circumcision are even close to being on the same level. I’ve never even heard of a circumcision that didn’t go wrong (for example, by cutting off the whole end of the penis instead of the foreskin) that made it so men couldn’t achieve sexual orgasm. Where are you getting this information? What research supports what you are saying? I would like to look at it.

    And you misunderstood my comparison. I’m saying that comparing female circumcision to male circumcision is like comparing male circumcision to ear piercing. Is male circumcision on the same level as ear piercing? Of course not. But I hold that male circumcision isn’t on the same level as female circumcision, either.

    @149 I do agree there are all kinds of reason that infant male circumcision is wrong. I really wish more people would become educated about what it is and what it does. I find it odd that we live in a culture that frowns on fully adult women getting breast implants (they should love their body as it is! Impairing function to look better is bad!) but then routinely circumcises male infants because of things like appearance and a desire for the boy to not face potential negative social stigma (aka, teasing). It’s so strange.

  10. @130: Dan, I see how you didn’t read a bloody word I wrote. I was not praising Alice Dreger. Do entertain me and go back to point out where I gave her the thumbs-up. I’m all ears.

    And I’m quite sorry, but of all the people who might chime in on this, you are patently unqualified to speak to Anne Lawrence’s credibility with any, well, credibility (shall we bring up Rob McKenna again? No. I’ll spare all of us).

    As a cissexual gay man in Seattle who has nearly complete run of wherever you want to go and whatever you want to do (including where you want to have a general exam with a doctor of your choosing), you would have no direct, first-hand knowledge of the destructive, crippling grip Mr(s). Lawrence has exacted on non-cissexual people for the better of the last 13 years — both in Seattle and throughout North America (where the web is a very accessible place). Lawrence is nothing shy of a human pitcher plant — attracting unsuspecting, innocent people with hope of knowledge and care, and instead, they’re emotionally burnt by a very sick, twisted . . . uhm, man.

    I won’t even dignify “doctor” for someone who got nailed by the State of Washington in 1997 for molesting a patient on a table at Swedish under Lawrence’s own administering of anaesthesia without any prior patient consent — much less the extremely creepy, extremely troublesome obsession with touching and examining every single genital alteration on which s/he can put grubby paws. Absent a title like “doctor”, this behaviour is basically criminal sexual assault. But with that title, trust is given by the patient, and Lawrence demonstrably uses that to satisfy whatever fetish s/he has.

    The list of people I personally know — and some quite well — who have been traumatized by Lawrence steadily grows. Some years, I hear nothing, but then the following year, I’ll hear about three more people. And yes, I have most certainly had the (mis)fortune of meeting Lawrence. It’s like looking into the eyes of Skeletor. Fortunately, I knew enough by then to steer clear of her. Others? Not as lucky.

    So Dan, your input on this topic about Lawrence and this entire oeuvre of “sexology” (and the related specialists like endocrinologists and urologists who take sexology with more than a grain of salt, such as Poppas) is really out of your league, your jurisdiction and, frankly, beyond your realm of knowledge or personal life experiences.

    I’d be happy to take this up with you either here or in private. But rather than play the politics of who you know (and with what clout), why not hear out from those directly (and negatively) impacted by the harm someone like Anne Lawrence has wrought on intersexed and transsexual people? Oh, wait. They’ve no credibility in your mind. Got it.

    Lawrence is the primary reason why a transsexual woman (and in one notable case, an intersexed woman) can’t even get an exam by a doctor at any clinic in Seattle — including the once-respectable County Docto — without being told to “go to a gender clinic”, whatever that means. This isn’t for anything special: general exam, blood pressure, etc. But still, “Go somewhere else” is the refrain.

    Again, because I’m no longer living in Seattle, I don’t have a personal stake in physician accessibility (I’ve my own care in Canada, thanks), but I know people in Seattle who are impacted by this every single day. And it hurts me to see them being screwed over and over again and suffering because of it. I’ll even go out on a limb and advance that being a 16-year-old transsexual in Seattle these days is not an easy thing when it comes to health care. Thanks, Anne Lawrence et al.

    Yes, I know shame, and I know it well (good lord, do I ever). But being told by a cissexual gay man with a loud mouth and limited wisdom on the attendant topic to effectively suck it up, get ashamed, and stfu? Gigga plz, surely you’re kidding. Am I being harsh on Lawrence? I think so. I’m sorta sick of hearing the perpetual harm that person has exacted upon good people and upon an otherwise invisible population of people who have to remain so in order to survive. Sorry I can’t be a little less emotional about it.

    But this is all off-topic, and it’s the last I’ll bring up on Lawrence, who is most certainly tied into this incestuous, peer-subjective field of sexology implicating many of the parties already discussed in this thread — such as Poppas, the late Money, Blanchard, Zucker, Dreger, and Bailey.

    And that’s just for starters. Like said earlier: big, nasty iceberg.

  11. @157 And? A biothesiometer still vibrates, right? Do you think a little girl being told by her parents to lie back and tell the old man in her crotch whether and how much she can feel the vibrations on her clitoris isn’t going to be affected psychosexually? I call bullshit.

  12. @158 Thanks for the clarification on your comparison. It still makes me uneasy—this type of comparison is so often misread and misunderstood (as I did)—but I understand what you were saying.

    I’ll tell you what, I am content to stop the competition between MGM and FGM. It serves no purpose and has no meaning. This thread focuses, as it should, on the issue in the article, FGM.

    For those who are interested in the larger issues, such as: how did we get here?, and why is @157’s argument (that is, the reply we will hear from Cornell) invalid?; it is worth looking into the history and development of modern medical sexual understanding. And there one will find a convergence of perversity and sexual fear which marks the shared history of FGM and MGM. They are performed for the same reasons with the same history and with the same results, not in every detail, but in every defining characteristic.

    A good resource for that history and for research and fact on MGM is the NOCIRC website: nocirc(dot)org (in painful comic sans, sorry). And the excellent article by Dr. Paul Fleiss from Mothering Magazine is a good place to start: nocirc(dot)org(slash)articles(slash)fleiss(dot)php

    The male foreskin is a sexual organ with blood vessels, nerves, and unique bodily functions. “No procedure in the history of medicine has been claimed (falsely!) to cure and prevent more diseases than circumcision”. Don’t believe the hype: circumcision is MGM.

    And that is the most important characteristic shared by FGM and MGM: both will continue to be whitewashed by the docs. When this story hits the MSM, it will be about an hysterical blogosphere out of their league. The docs will dismiss us, the medical establishment will rally, and this will go on.

    I figure each discussion like this one is an opportunity to win a little ground.

  13. @161. “And? A biothesiometer still vibrates, right? Do you think a little girl being told by her parents to lie back and tell the old man in her crotch whether and how much she can feel the vibrations on her clitoris isn’t going to be affected psychosexually? I call bullshit.” – Then I assume you feel the same way about visiting a gynecologist? Having some old man stick a speculum in you is a traumatic sexual experience? A biothesiometer technically vibrates, but the sensation is so slight that it is perceived more as sense of pressure than as a vibration. It is a medical device, not a sex toy.

    Whether genital reconstructive surgery is a good practice or not is a real debate. For instance, they often need more cosmetic surgery later in life and are more likely to experience painful intercourse. On the other hand, in some cases, girls born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia cannot physically have intercourse without surgery because their clitoris and labia are too deformed.

    Claiming that some doctor who has discovered a better way to perform genital reconstructive surgery is some old pervert trying to give a ‘mutilated’ five-year-old an orgasm is utter nonsense.

  14. @163 Post-puberty women going to a gynecologist is comparable to six year old girls forced into genital reconstructive surgery by their parents? Oh, silly me.

  15. This is appalling. I can’t believe this doctor. I can’t believe this is happening at Cornell. But what I really, really can’t believe is, what in the hell kind of parent puts a FIVE YEAR OLD GIRL through cosmetic genital surgery that is potentially harmful as hell? Parents have no business altering their children’s genitals. Period. End of story.

    So, speaking as a parent to parents:

    It’s your job to keep doctors’ hands off your kids’ genitals. Period. Don’t let them cut them, shorten them, “nick” them, retract them, touch them with a vibrator, or dye them purple. This goes for boys, girls, intersex, whatever. Moms: no, you don’t abdicate responsibility (or get extra responsibility) because your child doesn’t have (or has) the same equipment as you do. Dads: your son doesn’t have to “look like” you. The Olan Mills family photographs won’t show your dicks, I promise. It’s your job to be assertive, even aggressive if they’re not listening to you, with doctors, from birth on, to keep your kids’ bodies intact.

  16. @164. The condition is going to cause problems either way. It is the responsibility of the parents to decide between two bad options – not perform surgery presents one set of problems, performing surgery presents another set. A bunch of self-righteous blog commenters that have absolutely no knowledge of the condition or its treatments have no right to criticize their difficult decision.

  17. I think that “normalization” surgery is wrong, but I was so appalled by the commenters who are focusing on the problem being “sex with young girls” that I wrote 800 words about it on my professional blog – here http://bit.ly/90sX9g

  18. I don’t mean to “hijack the thread”, but I just wanted to point out to #4, et al that certain male commenters on Slog seem to be in some kind of denial about their own circumcision and don’t take too kindly to it being referred to as “mutilation”, correct as that assessment may be.

  19. Only because someone has a Ph.D. added to their name, doesn’t mean that he can’t be a sexual predator. Obviously, these tests are nothing more than a fantasy fulfillment of some sick pervert that needs to be put in jail.

  20. @166 Really? Is it the responsibility of the parents to decide on a condition that won’t affect this girl until after puberty and she’s sexually active? Does this condition absolutely necessitate the decision to be made pre-puberty? You say @163 that only in some cases of congenital adrenal hyperplasia is sex physically impossible. So these girls won’t know if it’s something they want to fix or not until after they are having or trying to have sex. So how do you justify making that decision before the girl can consent to it? It’s her genitalia and future sex life, after all.

    I may not have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, but my labia were fused and my mom opted me into corrective surgery when I was really young, like four or five. It wasn’t necessary surgery, I functioned normally. But as a result of a minor complication my clitoris and labia have very little sensitivity. I’m lucky enough that I can still achieve orgasm, if I work really hard at it. It is so difficult for sex to be pleasurable for me now, and I always wonder what sex would be like if I hadn’t had the surgery. Wish I’d had a choice.

    Seeing as I have first-hand experience of some of the long-term effects of genital corrective surgery, I feel that self-righteous though I may be, I have the right to comment. Anyone on this board who has a child has a right to comment. Any person who is horrified at the idea of an adult stimulating a child’s genitalia no matter what the pretense has a right to comment. This isn’t something that’s only up to people with medical knowledge.

    Also, you may notice that there’s no control group for this study. That’s because no parent in their right mind would consent to allowing a doctor to use a biosthesiometer or a q-tip to stimulate the clitoral nerves of a little girl congenital adrenal hyperplasia who hasn’t been operated on, because it’s awfully close to molestation.

  22. Someone ought to cut off his penis & then ask him if he has any sensation left; if he can still enjoy sex. No vindictiveness here, of course, just for research purposes.

  23. I am struck by the fact that this has been going on for years, yet apparently only now is coming under scrutiny – I mean, by other than those in the medical profession who knew about it all along. I cannot imagine any circumstances where this is going to resolve itself in favor of Cornell, but the only way to find out what is really going on is to spread the word and insist on public review. It won’t be enough just to stop the current practice – whatever ethical standards were in play when this got approved also need updating and review….and what about the journals that published information about the surgeries and follow-up exams? How come those editors and readers didn’t notice any red-flags within this practice? I think we can assume that even back then somebody had to have realized that this was just plain wrong, but they did not speak up, which touches on the need for wide spread education in this little-known area of human physiology and development.

  26. @170

    That is really, really terrible; my heart truly goes out to you. :o(

    “I feel that self-righteous though I may be, I have the right to comment.”

    You absolutely have every right to be self righteous and I think there needs to be more and more women/men/intersexed people such as yourself who expand the reality of the situation. HBO did a documentary on people born intersexed and there was a woman who had a similar thing happen. She was technically a man because she had XY chromosomes but had androgen insensitivity so she developed like a woman but with an extra large clitoris. Here parents took her in for a labiaplasty so that she could look “normal” and in that regard the surgery worked, her vagina looked like most other vaginas, EXCEPT she lost ALL sexual sensation.

    I have yet to here one argument that even comes close to explaining why everyone (man, woman, boy, girl) should have the right to decide was happens cosmetically to their body.

  27. @173

    I think one of the main reasons we haven’t really heard about it as this point is b/c we live in a culture that places a HUGE emphasis on looking “normal.” If you read some of the post surgery check-ups on David Reimer (the kid who was castrated while he was being circumcised and then given a neonatal sex change) it was straight up pederast stuff for both him/her and his/her twin brother and yet no one really gave it a second thought.

  28. @ 165
    So, speaking as a parent to parents:

    It’s your job to keep doctors’ hands off your kids’ genitals. Period. Don’t let them cut them, shorten them, “nick” them, retract them, touch them with a vibrator, or dye them purple. This goes for boys, girls, intersex, whatever. Moms: no, you don’t abdicate responsibility (or get extra responsibility) because your child doesn’t have (or has) the same equipment as you do. Dads: your son doesn’t have to “look like” you. The Olan Mills family photographs won’t show your dicks, I promise. It’s your job to be assertive, even aggressive if they’re not listening to you, with doctors, from birth on, to keep your kids’ bodies intact.

    As sickening an experience as it has been – I have read all these comments. I am outraged and disgusted to the point of distorted vision and trembling fingers and gagging. Now after reading 165 I would like everyone to pause and read it again. This is the bottom line here. Parents it is your/our job to keep our children intact and healthy! Just because some sick fuck, or just plain stupid/misinformed doctors thinks you should let them slice and dice your infants most tender bits is no reason to be cowed into doing it. When I was faced, in 1982 mind you, with deciding to circumcise my three sons or not the one overriding reason I had to say no was because I had no way of knowing how they would feel about it. I had to consent, or not, to something beyond my own body – something irretrievable, something they would have to live with. Now that is a very heavy burden and even as a teenage mom, during a time when the assumption was all boys get cut, I knew I had no right to say yes to totally cosmetic surgery on the tiny pink genitals of my brand new child. This has got to stop – all of it. So thank you @165 for reminding all of us that this could all end today if every parent simply said no and then hell no and then screamed and pounded fists and stomped feet and said no again. Geez I feel sick.

  30. @176 Thanks for your sympathy. 96 had the same condition as I did, but I am so much more fortunate than her because they put me under a general anesthesia, whereas she was both conscious and not anesthetized, and old enough to remember it. I remember going into the surgery, but I don’t remember the surgery itself. I feel worse for her, and for all the little girls being “treated” by Dr. Poppas. My surgery caused me enough physical damage as it is. If I try to imagine the psychological damage being caused by your parents’ shame and fear of your “abnormality,” or by being forced to display your six-year-old privates so your doctor can fiddle with them, it just makes me sick.

  31. So lots of great comments… What is the plan of action? What concrete steps can we take? I’ve posted something on this to my Facebook account to spread the word. What else can we do?

  32. @125 I’m a man who has to say to his partners “I was circumcised, and as a result am unable to orgasm.” It’s underreported because no guy in our society likes to admit to being “impotent” (a term I detest) but it happens.

  33. Dan,

    Why is it up to Cornell students to do something? When has the administration at a big-name school (or any school, for that matter) really taken to heart what the student body has to say? What, exactly, can we “do” about it, besides be mortified that such bullshit is coming from our institution? I’m a recent Cornell grad, who is going to listen to me? I can’t even make more than 30k a year with my ivy league degree.

    The people you need to be asking that question to is President Skorton, and the numerous fuckwits who approved this research. And then, if you want to ask someone else, let’s go bigger than just Cornell students: let’s ask society what they’re going to do about the misogyny they continue to institutionalize and justify with the word “medicine.” This issue, as you know, is much greater than Dix Poppas.

  34. Dan,

    Why is it up to Cornell students to do something? When has the administration at a big-name school (or any school, for that matter) really taken to heart what the student body has to say? What, exactly, can we “do” about it, besides be mortified that such bullshit is coming from our institution? I’m a recent Cornell grad, who is going to listen to me? I can’t even make more than 30k a year with my ivy league degree.

    The people you need to be asking that question to is President Skorton, and the numerous fuckwits who approved this research. And then, if you want to ask someone else, let’s go bigger than just Cornell students: let’s ask society what they’re going to do about the misogyny they continue to institutionalize and justify with the word “medicine.” This issue, as you know, is much greater than Dix Poppas.

  35. Dan,

    Why is it up to Cornell students to do something? When has the administration at a big-name school (or any school, for that matter) really taken to heart what the student body has to say? What, exactly, can we “do” about it, besides be mortified that such bullshit is coming from our institution? I’m a recent Cornell grad, who is going to listen to me? I can’t even make more than 30k a year with my ivy league degree.

    The people you need to be asking that question to is President Skorton, and the numerous fuckwits who approved this research. And then, if you want to ask someone else, let’s go bigger than just Cornell students: let’s ask society what they’re going to do about the misogyny they continue to institutionalize and justify with the word “medicine.” This issue, as you know, is much greater than Dix Poppas.

  36. I called Cornell…Call this Number to complain, it’s their HR dept for the medical part of Cornell

    HR:6072548370

    the hospital where he works: 2127465454

  37. Thanks bassplayerguy, you brought a little smile to my face in spite of all this horrible stuff. I like your name too — bass players = 🙂

    @182 anorgasmicman, I am deeply sorry for the terrible loss you have been living with. I have such an urge to kiss you booboo and wish that could make it all better. I’m glad you told us — more people need to know what is at stake.

  39. @182

    God damn, dude that sucks. Thanks for speaking up though, I can only imagine how shitty it is to have to deal with that situation. You are 100% right, it’s not that it doesn’t happen it’s just that people don’t really talk about it but the information is out there if people want to hear it. Just doing a quick internet search I found more than a few examples:

    There was a fore mentioned David Reimer:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reime…

    Dan dealt with it in his column (the second letter down):

    http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Savag…

    This is about a guy in Perth:

    http://www.circumstitions.com/Shane.html

    NY:

    http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2006/11/don…

    This one’s probably the most disturbing (NSFW):

    http://www.infocirc.org/fourn.htm

    And like most people here I’m just recently finding about about little girls being given a labiaplasty and, of course, this particular (and absolutely INFURIATING article) that Dan posted (I don’t know why but I just assumed this shit didn’t happen to girls here.) I think this all falls under the general umbrella of “Why the fuck are we doing this?”

  42. @bassplayerguy
    I went to the school site and got their number and scared the shit out of the poor girl who was operating and gave me the numbers…not because i was mean but because she was horrified of what was going on, i summarized the article for her and told her to read it for herself…as to unleashing my fury on the bigwigs, that will have to wait till tomorrow…east coast times…*sigh* i’ve also sent this article to all my med school friends with the numbers. i hope we can get this fucker. >_

  44. @192

    “and scared the shit out of the poor girl who was operating and gave me the numbers”

    I actually had to wait a day before reading the whole article b/c the first paragraph alone pissed me off too much. I have a feeling that this story is going to spread pretty fast.

  45. have a look at the article. one of the professors has included their entire contact information. go on, give them a call, fax, or email, or just show up on their doorstep and demand justice for subjecting innocent children to an adult’s perverse curiosity.

    Dix P. Poppas
    Institute for Pediatric Urology, Rodgers Family
    Professor of Pediatric Urology, New York Presbyterian Hospital,
    Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 525 East 68th St., Box
    94, New York, NY 10021 (telephone: 212-746-5337; FAX: 212-746-
    8065; e-mail: dpoppas@med.cornell.edu)

  46. Is the same outrage expressed at this “study” of some guy shortening clitorises that are “too big” expressed at doctors that cut off the “extra skin” off of the penises of males?

    Does it outrage people that currently “studies” continue to try and justify circumcision in baby boys?

    Do people regard circumcisors of baby boys as “rapists,” as they regard Poppas?

    Or is that “different?”

    Why?

    Why does outrage only happen in this country when the subject of mutilation is girls?

    Why are only experiments and “studies” legit when it involves the cutting of healthy BOYS?

    If you can’t ask yourself these questions, then this outrage is false and contrived.

    May one day children of BOTH sexes be protected under the law.

    What Poppas is doing goes against the FGM ban. There can’t be any “studies” that violate the genital integrity of girls. This supposed institution of higher education, and anyone that funded him is going to have hell to pay.

    We need to work against “studies” that attempt to justify the violation of the basic human rights of others.

    We would never accept a “study” that tries to show the “medical virtues” of neck stretching. Breast ironing. Feet binding. We don’t accept this “study” performed on infant girls. We must reject all the “studies” that try to justify the mutilation of boys too.

  47. @125

    I was circumcised at three days of age and I couldn’t have a painless, porn-free orgasm until I was 29 because {looks around} circumcision is done by machines that operate under the assumption that all penises are between 14-18 cm. My adult-sized penis (once I was able to loosen the leftover skin enough to allow for full erections) measures 21 cm. If you think that I’m bragging, I’ll repeat the fact that I DIDN’T HAVE A PAINLESS PORN-FREE ORGASM UNTIL I WAS 29 YEARS OLD. For emphasis, I DIDN’T HAVE A PAINLESS PORN-FREE ORGASM UNTIL I WAS 29 WHILE I WAS DATING WOMEN WHO WERE EXTREMELY PORN-NEGATIVE, which led to me either wearing women out (and leaving myself frustrated) or having to “use” porn to gain enough mental stimulation to overcome the pain at the base of my penis. If you honestly believe that there are millions of porn-positive, body issue-free women between the ages of 18-28 in America (IOW, women who won’t see using porn instead of/in combination with their bodies as an insult), you’re dead wrong. I missed out on at least two potential LTRs because they were creeped out/pissed off by the idea of marrying a man who needed porn to reach orgasm (because they felt that I was saying that they weren’t “good enough”.) Now, my skin is loose enough to allow full orgasms, and the nice thing about Peyronie’s is that it gives me a good bend, but I missed a decade of good sex and lost a few good women because some money-grubbing doctor convinced my mother that foreskins are “ugly” and “dirty”. To be honest, I’d rather have the skin back.

    Back on topic, the idea that this man is still alive and that George Tiller is dead shows that there’s no justice in the world. Removing a fetus to save the life of a living and breathing woman=abomination, but slashing and molestiing a living, breathing child for the sake of vanity=good!?

  48. Telsa’s attacks on Anne Lawrence are complete bullshit.

    Alice Dreger—whose work Telsa is praising and endorsing here—unpacks, explains, and calls bullshit on the vengeful hate/spite campaign waged against Lawrence by Telsa and her ilk in this paper:

    http://bioethics.northwestern.edu/facult…

    Other Sloggers should read it—and Telsa should too. And she should be ashamed of herself, if she’s capable of feeling shame.

    Really Dan? You’re going to get into the same bed as NARTH now? I mean, I know you have this hating trans people thing that’s been going on for years, but really?

  49. As the PC saying goes, we shouldn’t be judgmental. God can do that. PLEASE let me be the one to arrange that meeting….I have a physiological need for stress relief after reading this.

  50. As the PC saying goes, we shouldn’t be judgmental. God can do that. PLEASE let me be the one to arrange that meeting….I have a physiological need for stress relief after reading this.

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