Clitoridectomy--an American tradition

I have been re-reading Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (second edition), the incredible collection of Gloria Steinem's best essays. Many of the essays I have read several times because I read them in their first incarnation, before they became part of the first edition of the book.

There is a chapter (co-authored by Robin Morgan) on clitoridectomy and its variations, which are too horrible to describe. One of the things Steinem makes very clear is that it wasn't until the 1990s that even the most "progressive" human rights organizations included female genital mutilation in their campaigns or in their funding. It just wasn't seen as an important issue, and when someone brought it up, it was referred to as a "cultural difference."

Clitoridectomy was sometimes performed in the United States, as this essay desribes, in the 19th Century, as a means of "curing" masturbation (it worked) in women, and men who were known to masturbate were also subjected to terrible tortures, such as having acid poured on their penises. The essay goes on to to say that the advent of the 20th Century brought about an end to the use of clitoridectomy in the U.S. Steinem refutes this assertion, however, by referring to clitoridectomies performed in the U.S. in the 1950s to--you guessed it--stop female masturbation, "melancholia," "promiscuity," and to "cure" lesbianism (because everyone knows that "mature," i.e., heterosexual, women have "vaginal" orgasms).

Some of you may remember the "love surgery" procedure from the 1970s, in which the clitoris was moved to a different location (in our current political climate, those in charge would probably like to move it to somewhere in Old Europe). This little bit of "progress" in the medical community finally acknowledged two things: that women receive sexual pleasure via the clitoris, and that women were entitled to receive such pleasure. But instead of encouraging men to "find" the clitoris (how did they lose it?!) and learn to stimulate it, the medical community's answer was to just move the damned thing so the penis could get to it more easily during intercourse. Aside from being incredibly male-centric and misogynistic, this "solution" was also a product of ignorance, for not all women can receive successful clitoral stimulation from intercourse.

In 1979, one American doctor was completely reconstucting women's vaginas so that the penis could have "better access."

Last year, when Eve Ensler appeared on Real Time, she made the rest of the (male) panel visibly uncomfortable when she said that though behaviors may differ, attitudes toward women and girls are the same in this country as they are everywhere else in the world. A short history of clitoridectomy in America shows us that sometimes, even behaviors are the same.