Cornell research on reducing clitoral size - v worrying

[Habbibu]

Came across this by accident the other day, via one of DH's fb friends - it's really worrrying and disconcerting. A team from Cornell university have been surgically reducing the size of girls' clitorises - perfectly healthy, but deemed "too large"; they produced a paper apparently showing retained feeling, and intend to follow-up by testing sensation over the years. I think this is quite horrible and disturbing on several levels - anyone else seen this?

Related blog post

Isn't it? The initial operation is vile enough, but the that these poor girls have to go back year after year to have their "sensitivity" tested - it just makes me nauseous. Would their parents agree to have that done to them, I wonder?

What the fucking fuck?

Bloody hell, that is awful! Why are these people getting away with convincing parents that their daughters "need" cosmetic surgery which could severly affect their lives. And then "testing" them like that - what effect could that have on a little girl?!

Flaming hell - I am gobsmacked....is that for real???

It's the effect on the pubescent girls that really scares me. Poor souls. And this is happening in one of the most "advanced" countries in the world. Fucking obscene, and yet has been going on for ages, apparently.

Oh my gosh, that is so wrong those poor girls.

Well its abuse surely?!

Think so, blackduck - would love to find out it was a vile joke, but looks kosher to me.

Just checked PubMed - yup.

Ugh.

Oh, Jesus - a 4 month old BABY.

'Surgically feminized clitoris'

Vile and surely totally uneccessary?

4 MONTHS!! what were the parents thinking.....

feminized. ffs. It's on a girl. It's a clitoris. How much more "feminized" can it get?

Ok - 24 year old woman decides she has issues - shame, but it's up to her. A baby? A 6 yo. Fuck right off.

What? How can there be a standard clitoris size and what the hell can be psychologically damaging about a certain sized clitoris?? I don't understand the rationale for making it smaller, let alone the justification for the testing techniques.

For those of you on facebook (I'm not) there is a group about it - don't know if it'll make much difference, but spreading word good, surely?

Here

This cannot be true. This is abuse. This should be against the law.

If this is true, it must be illegal.

It's true, backto - see the PubMed link above.

This is absolutely vile. How can surgery on the clitoris NOT reduce sensation? Another way to take control of female sexuale pleasure, and yet another female body part now expected to conform to some absurd standard of uniformity.

Imagine if a small male penis was aestehtically the ideal, would they be cutting little boys' penises in half?

Really disturbing. People come in all shapes and sizes and a beautiful body is one that does the job it was made for.

Before I read the article, I wondered if this was a new version of FGM under a new name or some such.

Usually men who want to sexually stimulate young girls are arrested and condemned as paedophiles...

I must say that it had never occurred to me to worry about the size of my dd's clitoris, but I would have serious misgivings about subjecting her to the sensory testing.

What in the name of all that is holy are they playing at??? Who gets to determine what constitutes an "acceptable" clitoris size, and at such an early age?
ARGH!!

I am cringing, wincing and joining you in your extreme anger, Habbs - and wondering if there is some sort of Human Rights group that should take this up as a cause!

Aren't baby girls' "bits" all a bit swollen for quite a while anyway? Admittedly I don't know how long, but surely 4m would be too soon to tell - she might grow into it!

Next thing they'll be doing penis enlargements on baby boys..

It is horrendous. Do these girls simply have large clitorises? Or do they have some condition that means they might be described as intersex? Either way, the idea of a purely cosmetic procedure in which parents' ideas of normality pre-empt any possibility of the girls herself coming to her own view of any 'problem' (or possibly non-problem) there might be is very shocking. And so are all the complacent remarks about preserving sensitivity. And so are the sensitivity-measuring procesdures.

There was a programme recently about the recent history of British psychiatric methods -- drugs and surgery. It was really very shocking how completely self-confidently and arrogantly doctors went ahead with fashionable forms of treatment that were in many cases very damaging and that were castigated within a decade or so.