one inch

[rm]

I was going to chuck this into sundries, but then some of you might miss it, and it needs to be talked about.

Over at Cornell we have a case of gender and body policing, unnecessary surgery, and stimulating 6-year-old girls with vibrators in the name of dodgy scienceReally helps to confirm my suspicion that the only good girl is one who knows how

Comments

[xtricks]

Welcome to the intersex world. This sort of surgury has been done for years on intersex people -- in the past with absolutely no concern whatsoever that those who are medically defined as female retain any sexual sensitivity at all.

The whole history of medically/surgically correcting intersex conditions is fraught with sexual hatred, mysgyny, homophobia and a kind of callousness that better suits crazed horror movies than modern medical practice.

[rm]

Yup, as regards to intersex people I was aware of this, although I know there's been, thankfully, some reduction of it/increased awareness of it in the US in the last decade, although I'm sure all sorts of atrocities continue to be committed.

This is certainly the first I've heard of it as regards non-intersexed (although granted, I know what gets defined as intersex often isn't anything other than large clits) female people though.

[xtricks]

I think it's because it's assumed that a woman who has a 'too large' clit is assumed to be intersexed in some way. Even if, in fact, there is nothing hormonally/biologically different than any other woman. Since, from what I've seen (almost exclusively based on porn images of woman's genitalia so there's a large grain of salt here), woman's genitals vary pretty widely, I'm really not sure how 'too large' is determined anyway.

[aslant]

but i don't think they were non-intersexed people though...they had congenital adrenal hyperplasia. is there an overlap between cah and intersex? in any case, the original bioethics discussion of it has more details: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4730&blogid=140#

[pantryslut]

I was just thinking this morning about how one inherent aspect of my ownqueerness is my inability to feign a certain kind of helplessness--which functions a form of camouflage, from my perspective. Disappearing of a sort. So yes.

[girlofavalon]

WHAT THE FUCK?

I'm really sorry for the coarse language, but honestly! Isn't it a form of sexual abuse as well? My god, it's barbaric!

[britgeekgrrl]

*reads article*

OMG, this is horrific.

Where's the petition to get this guy's license revoked? (And for Cornell to get royally roasted too, for that matter)

[brewsternorth]

There's a FB group here, for a start.

Also, the provost for medical affairs (the sort of grand fromage who's supposed to be overseeing the IRBs) is here: http://www.cornell.edu/medprovost/

[liminalia]

One of the issues is that the doc did *not* go get IRB approval for the post-surgery vibrator testing, only the surgery itself. Cornell is pissed.

[arielstarshadow]

I read this yesterday, and I'm still incoherent with rage.

[mariadkins]

me too