As Told By Us: Female Genital Mutilation in the United States
As Told By Us: Female Genital Mutilation in the United States
History featuring the voices time has erased
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“We can now understand how the most irritable young girl, the one who is most disagreeable and hysterical, may be made gentle, charming, and become endowed with a thousand feminine graces.” Dr. Morris - Boston - late 19th century
This is the history of female genital mutilation (FGM), mainly in the United States, but also touching on other areas. I have wanted to tell this story for so long, but much of what we know about what happened to these women in the period where it was most common in the USA, 1840 and on, is written by the doctors that performed the surgeries. Scholarly articles touting the good of cutting a woman. I refuse to tell that story.
This story is emotional. It’s draining. If you don’t have the energy to read it now, I understand. You can come back when you feel up to it. It’s also extremely long. If you read this in the Substack app, it will save your place to come back to. If you do need to read it in several parts, it would help me immensely if you would give this a heart today before you go.
It was done to babies and children unaware of what they were ever missing.
It was done to women to fix them in some way.
It was done to women out of anger.
It was done to keep them pure.
Where are the voices of those women?
1840 and on. I didn’t give an end date, because it hasn’t ended. As I tell this story, I’ve added in the voices of three women alive today who have experienced FGM, and a fourth whose grandmother experienced it, to help tell the story of those from the past. The pain we feel today cannot be much different than what they felt. Their emotions we carry on.
The women helping tell this story I will leave anonymous by choice. There are dark quotes in here. Honest quotes about the way having this done makes women feel. It’s understandable if you read them and think they should not feel so bad about themselves, but I ask you not to comment that it’s okay. It’s not.
As you read this story the quotes from the victims will be bolded while the quotes from the perpetrators, the doctors and other medical professionals, will be italicized. Their quotes I have pulled directly from old medical journals where they bragged about their successes mutilating women. They are these doctors own words. The way they really described women.
A
“I’m 23. I was born in the United States and have lived here my whole life but during a trip to my parents’ homeland at 14 I was mutilated. I do not have a clitoris or not one that you can see. I’m choosing not to share where it happened because sometimes when I do I hear comments about how barbaric that country is. This will be good for me to be able to have information to say back about how it happened here. I call it my parents’ homeland because I don’t know what else to call it but they are not my parents anymore. Parents don’t do that to their child. My auntie is also estranged from the family and she is my mother. I don’t want to be too confusing though so for here I’ll call them my parents.
They said they did it to help me find a husband. I was 14. What did I need to find a husband for? They said it helped keep women pure but I don’t want to be pure.
I was scared for a long time to see a doctor but through a support group last year I finally did. My reconstruction surgery will finally happen this winter. I’m extremely excited about it but also very scared. I know it won’t be the same.”
B
“I’m 36 and live in the United Kingdom. I honestly had no idea it even happened until I was pregnant at 21 and went in for a medical exam. I have no memory of it happening. My Mother had it done too. I was born in Sudan before we moved here when I was 5. There a clitoridectomy and sometimes labia removal is done to girls to protect them usually on girls a little older but mine was done before we left. I learned later people celebrate this when it happens. My mom feels bad about letting it happen to me. I am glad I don’t remember.
It’s given me bladder issues. When I was a teen I thought something was wrong with me always having trouble urinating but we were poor and I didn’t see the doctor. My urethra was damaged during the procedure and this I am lucky that doctors here were able to fix. I have decided not to have reconstruction for now because I feel content with my body and with the surgery I’m no longer in pain. I am married with 2 children neither of which I would ever consider doing this to.”
C
“I’m in my 30s and live in the United States. It was not done by a doctor. It happened here. The desire to take that away doesn’t need to be taught. It happened 9 years ago out of anger to prevent me from leaving. ‘No one else will want me,’ he said. It was a cut from the right side of my clitoris to inside my vagina on the right side. I’ve had two surgeries and physical therapy to fix this and I’m supposedly healed and fine although I don’t feel fine. I think I am just not mentally fine.”
D
“My grandmother faced FGM here in the United States in 1946. It was done by a doctor to cure masturbation when she was only 13 years old. I found this out only a few years ago and could not believe this really happened here! My mom says grandma didn’t tell anyone until she was close to death. She was telling them stories about her life and then just cried and cried and finally told them she had been cut there. It made everything painful for her is what she said. Her first marriage to my grandpa ended in a divorce and my mom said she wonders if the pain was the problem. She remembers him always being so mad at her for saying she was in pain. My grandpa and grandma are both dead now but I will share what I know about her.”
What is Female Genital Mutilation?
FGM is illegal here in the United States now, but it wasn’t always. At one point the practice was widespread enough to be commonly mentioned in medical journals. What is FGM? FGM encompasses anything from the removal of a portion or all of the clitoris, the cutting of the labia, or even infibulation (the near complete closure of the vagina.) Female circumcision refers to the removal of the clitoral hood and clitoridectomy refers to the removal of the external part of the clitoris. I will mainly be talking about clitoridectomies and female circumcision.
Our vocabulary makes us think FGM didn’t happen here in the United States. It did. We just justified it as medically necessary while looking down upon other countries that practice it. The World Health Organization currently defines FGM as “the cutting or removal of some or all of the vulva for non-medical reasons,” but the medical reasons used to justify it in the past are not valid reasons for it to have happened.
Why Did It Happen?
The doctors removed part of or all of the clitoris. They cut off a woman’s clitoris and then wrote in their scholarly journals that it cured them. The main victims were lesbians (then called tribades), girls who doctors feared would become tribades because of their naturally larger clitorises, girls or women who masturbated, and girls and women who doctors feared masturbated, again because of their naturally larger clitorises.
This time period saw gynecology texts discussing clitoridectomies more frequently. There is no one reason for the procedure, or one agreed upon operation. The clitoris could make women go insane. It caused epilepsy, loss of sleep, neurasthenia, pre-senility, melancholia, chorea, hysteria, retroversion, ovarian pain, leucorrhea, cancer, spinal irritation, menorrhagia, tuberculosis, depression, suicide, lesbianism and more.
Medical professionals disagreed on procedures and ideas even then, so although I’ll give a general timeline starting with the 1840s, not everything will be in chronological order.
If a woman wanted to touch her clitoris it was because it was diseased. Clitorises were blamed for all sexual “evils.” “Could I portray the amount of evil this neglect has caused! Think of all the brothels in this land. The young women ruined in society . . . . Homes abandoned. Bleeding and broken hearts everywhere.”
This could all be fixed.
Cut it off.
In the early 1800’s, reflex neurosis theory explained the desire for a woman to masturbate as an irritation. The clitoris was irritated and the cure for this, was touching it. Unfortunately, doing so only temporarily quelled the irritation. It caused her to want to do so again, eroding her physical and mental health
A woman who experienced sexual desire without a man was sure to have health problems. Masturbation, and lesbian sex, was dangerous because a woman could become diseased if she orgasmed without “a drop of seminal fluid . . . to refresh and protect from disease.” Even cancer was caused by masturbation. They were told that sexual activity could cause insanity. This was because it was noted that “in prisons and lunatic asylums homosexual practices flourish.” Homosexuality was especially dangerous because women whose clitorises were previously “normal” could have them grow after contagious encounters “experimenting with pseudohermaphrodites”, women with large clitorises.
How could parents know if masturbation occurred? John Harvey Kellogg in 1877 advocated for watching for a child to appear to be sleeping before throwing off the blankets and inspecting their genitals. In a girl he said the parents should look for a “congested” clitoris and moisture from increased secretion. He also told of how masturbation causes the vagina to become “unnaturally enlarged.”
Women went to their doctors for help, but they didn’t need to share what their problems were. No matter what they said, the doctors knew the problem was masturbation. “In most cases, the patient need not utter a word, for the physician can read in his countenance his whole history.”
Kellogg advocated for bandaging the genitals in young girls, or tying their hands. This he said might not always work because he fantasized that children “will often contrive to continue the habit in other ways, as by working the limbs, or lying upon the abdomen.” So, he said parents could cover their children’s genitals with a cage. In adults, he also recommended electrocution.
“Why do these parents feel such an ownership of their daughter’s vagina. Your daughter’s body is not yours to control. Fucking putting it in a cage or tying their hands? I wish someone had told my parents they don’t own my genitals.” B
If that didn’t work, “in females, the author [Kellogg] has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.” Carbolic acid, by the way, causes burning and numbness. It is corrosive but since it at first has an anesthetic effect, the person may not feel the pain of the damage taking place. Female genital mutilation wasn’t always cutting, some doctors used methods like this to damage the nerves of the clitoris.
“You’re supposed to feel. These doctors numbed to take away pleasure. For a few years after I was hurt, it felt painful to move. I had a numbing cream prescribed to me too. Mine to take away pain. These women’s to take away pleasure and give them pain. You’re supposed to feel, but not pain.” C
A large clitoris was a sure sign of deviant sexual behavior, as were ones that appeared swollen or red. “With those addicted to [masturbation] there is a real increase in size of the clitoris, and it is frequently found situated higher up or farther away from the vaginal outlet than usual.” When a clitoris looked like that, physician H.E. Beebe said in 1897, “we are suspicious of masturbation!”
“It seems like these men knew nothing about women’s bodies. It’s no surprise my mom says grandma distrusted doctors. I imagine a doctor looking at her and saying this.” D
What it meant was that girls and women whose bodies naturally had larger clitorises, were being mutilated, regardless of if they insisted they didn’t masturbate. This in part tied into racism with an 1895 report by gynecologist Robert T. Morris writing that the clitoris is larger in women in “tropical climates,” while disappearing from “civilized women.” This piece he called, “Is Evolution Trying to Do Away with the Clitoris?”
“Of course they have to be racist about it. They still think we are more sexual because they fantasize about us and want us to be.” B
In 1845 Dr. Fontaine wrote such a bizarre, passionate, description of what happens to girls that masturbate that I absolutely have to show you the entire thing. “In general, the victims of this secret depravity are announced by their aspect. The roses fade from the cheek ; the face assumes an appearance of faintness and weakness; the skin becomes rough; the eyes lose their brightness, and a livid circle surrounds them ; the lips become colorless, and all the features sink down and become disordered. If the baneful practice be not soon arrested, general disease and local affections of the organs of reproduction ensue ; acrid leucorrhoea (the whites) ; ulceration of the vulvo-uterine canal of the vagina and orifice ; falling of the womb, and various diseases therein, are its concomitants; abortions, and oftentimes, nymphomania and furor uterinus terminate life amidst the horrors of despair, uncontrolled passions, delirium, and convulsions. The tastes of an unnatural love form another aberration. They abandon themselves to a carnal love of their own sex, and voluptuous embraces and enchanting songs and address ; breathing their raptures, in the languor, delirium, ecstacy, and convulsion of passions, not to a lover, but to one of her female companions. The victims of this awful depravity demand the most active vigilance of mothers, to preserve either the morals or the health of their daughters; and be it remembered, that the same practices are scarcely less injurious at a more advanced age, even in a matrimonial life, or widowhood.”
“Definitely sounds like he thought it was an ‘awful depravity’ and surely not a secret fantasy of his.” C
“I’m not even a little bisexual but now I suddenly want to be.” B
Lesbians. It began with a fear of tribades. These women had uncontrollable sexual urges to have sex with other women. Medical journals noted, or speculated, that these women had enlarged clitorises of which they used to penetrate other women. The enlarged clitoris could both make a woman a lesbian and be the reason she was doomed to become one.
In 1920 William Graves described how masturbation could cause a child to “develop sooner or later into an invert or homosexualist.” The problem was when “normal coitus takes place the clitoris permanently refuses to give up its excitability to the zones of the vulva and vagina, which play an absolutely essential part in complete natural orgasm.” It also caused vulvitis and ulcers. He agreed with other doctors that tying the hands wasn’t enough, “Prevention by tying the hands or by other mechanical means is, for the most part, futile, for orgasm can be accomplished by simple movement of the body.” Dr. Graves thought a clitoris should be removed if it was too large.
A large clitoris was just too similar to a small penis. To have a large one was seen as a sign of female promiscuity and masculinity. “The clitoris is often found enlarged in the degenerate.” The clitoris would grow until it resembled a small penis and then the woman became a lesbian and penetrated other women with her large clitoris.
In 1883 Dr. Wise wrote of a woman who said she could “erect [her clitoris] in the same way a turtle protrudes its head,” sparking fear in men of female homosexuals. Masturbation was a path to lesbianism. “The female masturbator . . . usually becomes excessively prudish, despises and hates the opposite sex, and frequently forms a furious attachment for another woman.” This “perversion may also develop in women by a kind of magnetic attraction towards some sensual member of their own sex, when the natural partner has in some way disappointed or displeased them. Homosexuality was so bad it was categorized in the level of degeneracy of women who have “intercourse with dogs, monkey and other animals.”
“At least they’re admitting the ‘natural’ partner couldn’t please women. Sometimes I hear women talking about how men ‘can’t find the clit’ and laughing. They don’t know how lucky they are to be able to say that without being punished like this.” A
In 1900 Dr. Denslow Lewis agreed about those lesbians writing “There are women for whom the sexual act is not only devoid of pleasure but positively repugnant. In certain instances these women have been accustomed to find gratification in abnormal practices from their earliest girlhood. It is, I fear, not generally known to what an extent these practices exist among young girls.” “They think no harm can come from any form of intimacy with one of their own sex.” Lesbians again. Young girls making friends who embrace and then “resort to cunnilinguistic practices.” The problem with girls having homosexual sex, he wrote, was afterwards when she “assumes the responsibilities of a wife the normal sexual act fails to satisfy her.” They feared once they had lesbian sex these women wouldn’t want a man, but they could fix this.
Cut it off.
The Clitoris
In 1845 Dr. Fontaine may have been the first man to have performed a full clitoridectomy in the United States. He’s at least the first recorded one done in a medical setting. One of the most well known doctors who performed clitoridectomies was England’s Isaac Baker Brown. Neither man came up with the clitoridectomy, it had been used for centuries, but Brown did popularize it in the 1860s. He was one of the most vocal proponents of it. Brown concluded masturbation was the cause of epilepsy after observing that many epileptic patients masturbated. He wrote a book detailing how insanity, epilepsy, catalepsy and hysteria were all caused by one little thing, the clitoris.
Many things could signal a woman needed a clitoridectomy. She could become “restless and excited, or melancholy and retiring.” It seems any emotion could be a cause, and she better not become ill. “She will always be ailing, and complain of different affections.” If she has an “inability to look one straight in the face,” she may also need a clitoridectomy. He doesn’t specify if this is women scared to look him in the eye, the monster doctor he was, or women we would now call neurodivergent who don’t like to make eye contact. It didn’t matter.
Cut it off.
I’m going to include a description now of the procedure, as described by another witnessing doctor. It’s cruel and sickening. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to read it. Brown called his method “far more humane and effectual” than the methods other doctors used. More humane.
“Two instruments were used; the pair of hooked forceps which Mr. Brown always uses in clitoridectomy, and a cautery iron such as he uses in dividing the pedicure in ovariotomy . . . . The clitoris was seized by the forceps in the usual manner. The thin edge of the red-hot iron was then passed around its base until the organ was severed from its attachment, being party cut or saw, and partly torn away. After the clitoris was removed, the nymphae on each side were severed in a similar way by a sawing motion of the hot iron. After the clitoris and nymphae were got rid of the operation was brought to a close by taking the back of the iron and sawing the surfaces of the labia and the other parts of the vulva which had escaped the cautery, and the instrument was rubbed down backwards and forwards til the parts were more effectually destroyed.”
“I didn’t see what they cut me with but I felt the pain. My mother stood there and told me not to cry.” A
“A knife left on the table from dinner. Sometimes I wonder if I had just done the dishes.” C
He wrote, happily, of his cases. A 21 year old woman with back pain. Cut if off. A 24 year old woman who had “for many years been ailing, and always had something the matter. Has suffered from intense irritation in the genitalia region.” Cut if off. A woman who had been “ill ever since marriage, five years previously; having distaste for the society of her husband.” Cut it off. A 32 year old woman who said “that for the last three years the act of coition has been accomplished without the least pleasure, but with pain.” Afterwards she “became in every respect a good wife.” Cut it off. A 20 year old woman who objected that “in the event of marriage my operation might interfere with marital happiness.” No matter. Cut it off. A 20 year old woman who thought “every gentleman she admired was in love with her” always sending her calling card “to her favored one for the time being.” Cut it off. After that “all her delusions disappeared.” A woman who had “frequently taken in a fit” by getting dizzy and fainting. Cut it off. A 41 year old woman, “a miserable, nervous creature, with pinched features and a wandering restless expression of the eye.” Cut it off. A 25 year old woman who was “incessantly crying without cause or power to prevent herself.” Cut it off. A 34 year old woman who “would go out and walk away into the country alone for miles, and come back exhausted.” She “was so forward and open in her manners, that she was generally avoided by gentlemen. Never had an offer of marriage.” She “talked of flowers which she called her friends.” Cut it off.
“‘In every respect a good wife.’ That’s why it was done to me. To make me a good wife. I don’t even know if I want to get married and men here wouldn’t expect that. I haven’t dated anyone because unlike where I came from men here would expect me to have a clitoris and think I’m wrong, not a good wife.” A
“That woman wondering if it would interfere with her marital happiness is right. It does. My husband is so sweet to me. We were both inexperienced and he also didn’t know it had happened to me until the doctors told me I was missing a clitoris. He knew sometimes sex would be painful because of my bladder problems and he never pressured me. He’s been everything but happiness it is not always easy for others. I’ve met women in my support group who have not been as lucky.” B
“Mutilation it seems doesn’t make women stop being overly romantic. It doesn’t make us stop crying, or stop going on walks alone, or thinking of the flowers as our friends. It can’t. Those women are me.” C
“Scattering clitorises about the floors of his hospitals like bits of meat in shambles.”
It’s difficult to say how often clitoridectomies were performed. That description of the state of Brown’s hospital tells a story. An 1867 medical journal describes doctors performing the operation 40-50 times a year, but how many doctors were actually performing these isn’t well documented. Even at the time it was controversial and could cause issues with a doctor’s reputation.
An 1866 edition of the Southern Journal of Medical Sciences featured disdain from doctors on the topic. “The mass of opinion is wholly adverse to the views of Mr. Brown, and his operation is unqualifiedly condemned.” “The operation is not founded in correct theory, and that ere long it will be numbered among the silly vagaries which will sometimes possess even very intelligent men.” Yet, even those that spoke against actually removing the clitoris still agreed that masturbation caused many illnesses. Some just advocated for other means, like circumcision, or the burning of the clitoris.
“I think my grandma too thought masturbation caused illness. My mom wishes she had known what she went through when she was a teenager. Her behavior would have made more sense. She didn’t have much of a sex talk because grandma said it wasn’t something she needed to know about until she got married. My mom does remember her saying to be careful not to ruin herself by trying anything.” D
Brown’s public backlash squandered the use of the procedure by him, and in England. “Member after member arose to record his experience of the utter failure” of Brown’s surgeries. Brown though never could see what it was he did wrong, stating, “lastly, objections have been advanced against the morality of the operation, and I am here at a loss how to give an answer.” How could removing a woman’s clitoris possibly be immoral, he wondered.
“This is, verily, the age of woman’s suffering.” Dr. Bedford - 1860s.
“This is the age of woman’s suffering - 2015.” C
“2018” A
“1946” D
“1988” B
Brown’s disgrace was too far away to make much of a difference in the United States. The procedure continued to be used here. Below is the description of how one American doctor performed a clitoridectomy.
Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to read the graphic description.
“The operation consisted in grasping the clitoris, back of the glans, with a pair of forceps, drawing it forwards, so as to place the rectories clitoris is and corpus spongiform upon the stretch, when the whole mass was cut away, by the scalpel, with small portions of the nymphae.” United States doctor E. S. Cooper 1862.
Many American doctors bemoaned the downfall of Brown and the effect it had on the use of the clitoridectomy. In 1882 George Engelmann complained of how Brown had been unfairly targeted for removing such an “insignificant part.” Engelmann described a 46 year old woman who he referred to as excitable and nervous, the go-to description of all women with medical pains, and how a clitoridectomy had cured her. He tells of how she didn’t feel pain from the wound, and then goes on to say she was in intense pain, it just wasn’t from the procedure. This pain, he reassured his readers, was just her “usual attacks” and was her body flushing out the “offending nerves” he had removed.
He writes this surgery as an example of why they should bring back clitoridectomies, but his patient didn’t improve. Her anxiety and pain got worse. The doctor accepted responsibility. “I see that I was at fault. She gradually returned to the same state of nervous prostration and suffering.” He accepted responsibility for not noticing she was to blame. “The cause of this unfortunate relapse is to be found…in continued masturbation. What else could have caused the enlargement of the clitoris?”
“I had a lot of anxiety and depression as a teen before it happened. Anxiety does not go away by removing our clitorises. Mine got so much worse. Only recently when I found support did it get better.” A
Dr. Denslow Lewis, of who I had previously mentioned had lesbian fear, also turned to mutilation to fix the women, writing in 1900 of how he applied a cocaine solution to the clitoris. If that didn’t work, a circumcision may be needed for her to show “passion, real or simulated. . . to afford the husband a satisfactory sexual life.” Otherwise, amputation he said cured women of their dislike of marital sex. After being cut, “by moral suasion and by intelligent understanding of the duties of the marital relationship the patients became in time proper wives.” If none of these worked, “the value of alcohol as an aphrodisiac is well known and has been frequently demonstrated.”
“Sounds more like getting her drunk and raping her.” B
“Passion, real or simulated. Maybe there was no passion because those husbands weren’t worthy of her love, something they never would be after letting her be mutilated, sentencing her to a lifetime of simulation.” C
A mother in 1891 brought her 19 year old daughter to see a physician due to painful periods and a sense of “utter worthlessness that prompted in her a desire for death.” The doctor fixed this by cutting her clitoris. This, according to his note left her remarkably improved.
“Imagine she felt extreme menstrual pain as so many of us do now. She likely turned to her mother for help. This doctor he took her pain and made it worse. She already felt worthless, now she was. They broke her and then gloated about it.” C
A medical journal on Orificial Surgery from the late 1800s describes how a girl of 8-10 years old who had injured her hip was brought to a physician. Her hip was swollen and tender. The limb was elongated and there was pain in the knee. Thankfully the doctor found the actual problem. It was her clitoris.
After resting in bed for weeks, it turned out cutting the clitoris a small amount actually cured her because she was able to get up again. Until, months later when she fell and the hip pain got much worse. Her father brought her back to the doctor asking for help with her hip. Obviously the doctor cut her clitoris again.
“It was my parents too who brought me to have it done. It was too difficult after to trust them. I have no relationship with my parents. My father died a few years ago and I think I felt it was better. I imagine her going back again to the doctor because of her father knowing what pain she was going to be in and how he made her go.” A
Cutting women would make them more intelligent. E.S. Cooper, a professor of anatomy and surgery, wrote of his case studies in this. He described how he saw a 13 year old girl who had lost her intellect. He gave no examples as to why he thought she was no longer intelligent, beyond to say how her face now looked idiotic. This he attributed to her confession of masturbation. This he treated with a full clitoridectomy.
Cut it off.
Cooper went on to brag of his cure of a 10 year old girl who also was becoming stupid. “Her nervous system had lost, almost entirely, its wonted tone” he lamented. He did as usual, cutting off her clitoris. This solved all her problems and he noted it made her more intelligent than before. Her writing shows “her to be a girl of extraordinary intellect, though, prior to the operation, she had occasionally a vacant idiotic stare, which promised anything but her present bright state of mind.”
“No actually I am smarter than before. I know not to trust anyone with my body. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good lesson to have been forced to learn. You should be able to trust your family and doctors.” A
Other doctors agreed the clitoris and masturbation interfered with a woman’s intelligence. California doctor J.S. Eastman wrote in 1893 of a 26 year old woman with cold hands covered in sweat who complained of sleeplessness. He described her as “pale, haggard and evacuated; she avoided society, had lost all interest in books, could not read with interest for five minutes.” She admitted to masturbating “one or more times a week.” She complained of pain during sexual intercourse, leaving her preferring “self-abuse.” First he tried acid on the clitoris, then he tried putting wire through the labia-majora so that “any manipulation would be painful.” Eventually he had to remove her clitoris. “She has become a great reader.”
“I wonder if the last part is true, if she became a ‘great reader’ to escape from the pain of reality for a while.” C
Other doctors who didn’t wish to inflict pain on masturbating women Dr. Eastman condemned, “either from soreness of heart, disgust, or absolute despair, do we not too often neglect the unfortunate class of masturbators?”
Some doctors preferred to remove just a portion of the clitoris, female circumcision. The two terms though were sometimes used interchangeably perhaps by inexperienced doctors, or perhaps intentionally to remove more than agreed upon. A 1923 medical journal told of a 19 year old epileptic girl whose father was under the impression she had been “circumcised” for medical treatment. However, a second doctor found she had received a full clitoridectomy which caused her to have a mental breakdown. “Immediately following this operation, she went violently insane.”
“This one I believe. I feel insane too. I can’t imagine having epilepsy, and being told you can control it if you don’t masturbate, and having your clitoris removed for this.” A
Epileptic girls and women were told masturbation caused epilepsy and insanity. Doctors repeatedly described their epileptic patients in a sexual manner such as Dr. Fontaine who in 1845 wrote about a girl with the “most lewd manner, with the most brutal and shockingly obscene contortions. When left alone, she would shriek piteously and roll on the sofa, or bed, or floor, and in raving anguish, fiercely strike her head on the walls, or anything at hand.” After examination he attributed this to the size of her clitoris.
“She may have been having a seizure and been unable to control where she put her head, but I also wonder if maybe she had autism since head banging can be a habit of self-southing. Either way, he saw what he wanted to see.” C
Epileptic women being portrayed as overtly sexual with the contorting of their bodies is apparent in California Dr. Tompkin’s 1886 description of Catherine. She had convulsions which Dr. Tompkins described as having a “lascivious leer of her eye and lips, the contortions of her mouth and tongue, the insanity of lust which disfigured her face.” He said her convulsions increased by his presence as a male. He had “no doubt at all the nature of the case.” He examined her genitals and “by the size of her labia minora… the morbid delicacy of the clitoris,” he “concluded that she had been addicted to attouchement [touching], and that she was unchaste.” He recommended her mother first frighten “the girl with the terrors of an early and horrible death” if she didn’t not obey his routine. She was to apply silver nitrate in the vagina, apply leeches to her perinium and insert bittersweet into the vagina where it should “remain as long as possible.”
Catherine did not submit willingly to this. Tompkins said he was “more than once denounced for having destroyed her virility. I controlled her with threatens of exposure on the one part, if she destroyed my work, and, on the other, promised to render her sexually fit to assume the duties of a wife whenever such services were needed.” By telling Catherine right now something was wrong with her and he would expose that to the world, and by telling her what was wrong with her made her unsuitable to be a wife, but that he could help, he kept her under his control.
“My daughter actually has epilepsy. It’s extremely disturbing to find a doctor thinking the convulsions are somehow sexual. There’s no lust in her face when she has a seizure. How terrible both this girl and her mother were convinced this was happening because of her vagina.” D
Other doctors too saw the connection between epilepsy and the clitoris. Dr. Hayes recommended clitoridectomy “for the cure of epilepsy.” “The number of successful cases. . .amply justify this procedure.” However, in some cases “neurotomy ought to be practiced,” cutting the nerve without removing the clitoris. To his credit he said that masturbation did not increase the size of the clitoris, but he reported it in his own misogynistic way as “women of the town and masturbators do not differ materially in this respect [size] from those whose lives are pure.”
The clitoris could also be the cause of urinary problems. Dr. Egbert Grandin in 1906 wrote, “While I am not willing to admit that the clitoris is the root of all evil, as someone has termed it, I am satisfied that from it emanate many of the neuroses of childhood, as well as of more mature years.” The problems it could cause were “urinary tract” problems like “bed wetting [and] frequent micturition [urinating]” He advised circumcision of the clitoris.
“Did he think we peed from our clitorises? I have had so many years of bladder problems FROM having my removal done to me. I had to go to the bathroom constantly and also didn’t always make it.” B
The clitoris could cause so many problems that it should be cut at infancy. Remove it, before they could discover it.
Dr. Dawson of Missouri “cured” a lot of babies and children by cutting their clitorises. Around 1915 he saw a 2 1/2 year old child who had anemia, little development, weak limbs and who didn’t try to talk. To fix this, he cut her clitoris. “It worked.” He wrote that after this she was able to take steps, and she even learned to speak several words.
“The fucking audacity to say it fixed her health in some way. How old was she when she discovered it had happened I wonder? Was she ever told something was different about her or did she die never knowing?” B
The doctor saw a baby who had colic. It was of course due to the clitoris.
“These children grew into women. Did they know why their clitorises were mutilated? Did they like even know it wasn’t normal? I wonder a lot if it would be better not to know like if I didn’t even remember before.” A
For some it was control.
To remove the part that gives pleasure, would leave her desireless but still able to procreate and procreation was of course the only thing that mattered. Procreation still is the only thing that matters to some. The procedure would help women stay loyal to their husbands by removing, or attempting to remove, her desire.
Cut it off.
“I don’t think it made the desire go away. It’s mental. They didn’t remove her mind and her desire to feel love in that way. They only made her feel like it was wrong. That she deserved to have that done because she had been bad. I believe it helped them stay loyal, because to do anything else would be painful. To be loyal would be painful too. These men, her husband or her father, chose to make her be in pain. She would never not feel pain, even if all she wanted was the one man she was ‘supposed’ to want. Never.” C
Women weren’t supposed to desire anything sexual outside of vaginal sex with their husband, not even by themselves. To do so felt dirty and wrong. Growing up in a time when they were told masturbation was wrong, and that women were only supposed to enjoy penetration, women felt a state of confusion and guilt. A guilt fed by religion, medical practices of the time, and the opinions of their family and friends.
Women shouldn’t masturbate because it caused disease, and if they didn’t have heterosexual sex they would also become diseased. Dr. Fontaine in 1845 wrote of how some young girls, he speculated 14, needed to get married right after puberty to fulfill their sexual desires. “When hysterics, epilepsy, or other distempers are caused by the burning flame of unsatisfied love or restrained continence, matrimony becomes imperative.” Fontaine was also suspicious that some girls may have been pretending to be epileptic in order for them to be married off early, to fulfill those unmanageable sexual desires.
They needed to desire their husbands, for their own health. Dr. Fontaine described the symptoms of these young girls trying to ignore their sexual desires, how it “speedily plunges her into languor and melancholy, terminated in a morbid state.” They needed sex or their menstruation might “occur at irregular periods, and accompanied by painful symptoms; the reproductive organs, by privation and inactivity, become diseased and irritable to excess. The stomach is much impaired; the pulsations of the heart is powerfully affected, and the nervous system greatly excited. The poor victim falls at last, into deep despondency and despair. She is seized with a horror of life, which leads her, finally, to utter ruin and death. Marriage alone will put an end to this awful state.” If she didn’t get married, “in the extravagance of passion, suicide is often contemplated, and understandingly executed.”
Old women too were at danger of becoming ill from not having a man’s semen. “Disease also of the womb and breasts, occur chiefly amongst unmarried females. Old maids are especially liable to such disorders, because their organs have not fulfilled their functions.”
Some women asked for it to be cut off.
I can’t ignore that part of the story. Reading the words of the doctors who described these women who asked for that though, it’s clear they fall into these categories. There were those who felt intense shame from feeling sexual desire and/or women who masturbated. There were women who had pain in that area, whether they complained of bladder problems or vaginal pain, and were advised to have full or partial clitoridectomies. They were told a clitoridectomy would cure them. Of course they asked for it. It wasn’t even just reproductive health. There were also women who suffered from other unknown health problems who were told it was the result of masturbation and could be cured by one of these methods.
“What woman would put herself through that willingly unless she was absolutely convinced what she was feeling was wrong?” C
The field of gynecology was a lucrative endeavor. An 1896 medical journal emphasized the growing field. “What disasters the art of surgery has produced.” The “mutilation work which continues in spite of such opposition and well-meant advice.” “Do you suppose that an aspirant for gynecological fame ever examines a woman and finds her perfect?” At every opportunity these women were being told they had something wrong with them. Of course they asked for it to be fixed.
They were punished for having normal desires. Both people actually suffering from psychosis, who would show their genitals to everyone and masturbate publicly, and women who showed sexual desire by flirting, being a lesbian, having a greater sexual desire than their husbands or being divorced were at risk of being labeled nymphomaniacs.
In 1868 Dr. Storer wrote of a woman he deemed a nymphomaniac who “can hardly meet or converse with a a gentleman but that next night fancies she has intercourse with him.” She was married to a much older man and she “does not think her husband has missed having connection with her a single night since her marriage, even at times of menstruation-frequently three times in a night, and always with a seminal emission.” Yet, she said she was unable to restrain herself from thinking about other men, although she didn’t think she would act on it. She “thinks that she would at once repel an improper advance on part of any man, and is not conscious of ever having shown to any such what was passing in her mind.”
She didn’t desire her husband. Her husband complained “that he found physical obstruction to intercourse on her part” and called for the psychiatrist. Dr. Storer examined her by bringing her to orgasm with his hands even though he writes that she told him she was sensitive there and asked him not to. To cure her nymphomania he advised “borax placed on the anterior of the vagina,” “to try to have a child” and “no more writing.” He warned, “if she continued in her present habits of indulgence, it would probably become necessary to send her to an asylum.”
“WTF. It sounds more like the guy is the nymphomaniac or maybe both men.” B
“I feel this one a lot. She is me. Not that I actually ‘fancy intercourse’ with every man I meet, but the man that did this to me thought I did, so what is the difference? He liked to call me a whore. Even before I had that happen though I had other psychological issues and I was anything but a whore. Sometimes out of anger he would destroy my stuff, including writing. Like her, he also tried to convince people I was mentally ill and needed to be hospitalized. They can be so convincing that what we feel is wrong.” C
“Masturbation is a disease” wrote Iowa doctor George Huff in 1951 in a book, written for women to understand their bodies. He conceded that masturbation “does not cause insanity,” but it still caused a slew of other medical problems. “The outstanding symptoms are: loss of memory, shyness, bashfulness, inability to concentrate, inability to recall important dates (for example, the date Columbus discovered America), inability to express themselves well, a fear of the opposite sex, irritability (abnormally irritated by insufficient causes), day-dreaming, introspection, morbid dreams, pain and weakness of thigh and back muscles, and a very markedly tender and sensitive external opening of the bladder. . . . In the last stages of masturbation, we find a nervous, depressed, irritable, morose individual with indigestion, trembling hands, quick temper and a dislike for everyone.” To cure this, he advocated for “removing the congestion,” although no specific directions were given as to which procedure he was referring to.
“Ladies? In ____ Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” C
“2024?” A
“Wait we don’t have to know this because they already removed our irritability. Lol.” B
“Oh they will find something to remove I’m sure.” C
Not Just The Clitoris
Although the clitoris was usually the culprit, the labia could cause medical problems too. Dr. Chas Gwyn in 1885 wrote of how strange it was for men to think the clitoris was the culprit. Clearly it was something else, the labia minora. The labia “frequently become prominent, especially in the multipara [a woman with more than one child] ; also, in those who handle that organ or abuse themselves. . . . The disease that they are liable to are vulvitis, parasites, eczema . . .”
“Ahhh. The whole bigger labia means you’re a whore thing. Men haven’t changed.” A
Large labias could cause nervousness and stomach sickness too. M.D. Grant Freeborn published a paper in 1895 stating he found a large labia in “many cases to be the cause of severe nervousness, stomach sickness (sometimes with vomiting).” He told of how he cured a 35 year old of such trouble by amputating her labia. An average labia minora was said by German scientist Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz to be 2.5-3.5 cm. Anything larger than that doctors feared could cause disease, or be the cause of the disease of masturbation.
“There is no part of us that is safe from their hands. If that did help her stomach, then her nervousness must have been from feeling her labia was too large due to these same men declaring that a problem. It seems to me though that the amputation would only increase nervousness. Existing with something missing is anxiety.” C
In 1896, either women commonly were really into urethra masturbation, or Dr. Joseph Howe was mildly confused. His description of how women masturbate described the urethra, which was used “for purposes of excitement.” “Hair pins, lead and slate pencils, leather thongs, sealing wax and other like substances are passed in and out of the canal, until the necessary degree of excitement is produced.” Regardless of how popular this actually was, some women’s desires were used against all women.
Dr. Howe also in 1896 warned doctors of women faking urinary medical problems for “titillation.” Dr. Howe tells of an 18 year old girl who was having trouble urinating. When he inserted the catheter he noticed “a peculiar convulsive movement that she was under the influence of strong excitement.” Howe attributed this movement to sexual desires. “Every disease they ever heard of may be complained of by such patients in their insane endeavors to obtain manipulations at the hands of the physician.” Many women, Howe speculated, faked diseases to have their genitals in the hands of these physicians. “An appalling number of cases of a similar nature come under the physician’s observation.” Howe is rather vague on the treatment of urethra masturbation specifically, but later he describes removal of the ovaries, and a clitoridectomy, sometimes including the labia minora.
“I’ve had to have a catheter in multiple times. My body liked to both not be able to hold pee in and not be able to get it out. Catheters feel horrible even now and I’m sure they felt worse then!” B
This idea of the sexual desire women have for gynecologists and catheters continued into the 20th century with Dr. Huhner of Philadelphia writing in 1922 that “one of the prominent symptoms, especially in young girls, is the demand for gynecological examination, and especially for catherization. Any excuse for examination is brought forward. . . . The mind of these patients is simply full of sexual ideas. The patients, if unmarried, will invent numberless diseases for the purpose of being manipulated by the gynecologist.”
“You couldn’t go to a doctor for anything without them being suspicious you just want them to touch you sexually. Whose minds were really full of sexual ideas?” C
Sterilization
Not all doctors thought the clitoris and the labia were the source of female masturbation and disease. New York’s Dr. Spratling in 1895 ridiculed clitoridectomies as “but a failure.” As to the burning of the genitals other doctors did, “blistering is only cruelty.” The correct thing to do to curb masturbation, was the removal of one or both of her ovaries.
The removal of the ovaries, referred to as either female castration, oophorectomy or normal ovariotomy, was practiced at greater rates than the clitoridectomy according to medical journals. Although Female Genital Mutilation usually only refers to the external genitals, the doctors interchangeably talked of the problems of the external and internal. I wouldn’t be telling the full story without a discussion of the ovaries. Like clitoridectomies, female castration was also used to prevent masturbation. Many medical journals talked of problems of the ovaries, but they linked the causation as from masturbation, leading to a feeling of shame associated with medical problems.
In 1869 Dr. Robert Battey performed a procedure to remove women’s ovaries. Although it had legitimate uses, the operation was also used to cure nymphomania, masturbation, epilepsy and insanity among other things. In 1884 Dr. William Thallon estimated that “out of every ten women who are operated on five are ‘cured’, two are ‘benefited,’ while of the remaining three one recovers, but ‘not benefited,’ while the other two die.” He didn’t like its success rate but conceded that “the operation will restore a certain number of women to the possibility of fulfilling their marital functions.” He speculated it might work on “very recent cases of masturbation,” “especially if clitoridectomy was done at the same time.”
“They wake up without their clitoris and without their ovaries? That must have felt physically and mentally painful. I don’t know if I ever want a child but I am still glad that wasn’t taken from me too.” A
“Some of these doctors boasted they had removed from 1500 to 2000 ovaries,” a doctor described in an 1893 medical journal. The success of the ovariotomy was often told as whether or not the woman became subservient. “The moral sense of the patient is elevated. . . She becomes tractable, orderly, industrious and cleanly.” Another woman brought “honor to her home and was “also a beautiful monument to operative art” following her ovariotomy.
“Women should just sit and be pretty. Yeah. That’s part of why it was done to me too so I could look be a good wife.” B
A 1922 medical paper mentions Roentgen-Ray Therapy being used by doctors on nymphomaniacs for “sterility” and “diminution of the libido” by “treatment of the ovaries.” This refers to a type of radiation therapy even then used on cancer patients. This doctor though found Roentgen rays for nymphomania to not be best, preferring instead to put nymphomaniacs in the asylums. Another doctor agreed ovary removal wasn’t best because although it did remove sexual impulses, sex with a male partner also suffered. A third stating “In eight cases where the patient was under treatment for indifference to the conjugal embrace” the removal of the ovaries had no effect.
Female castration was used on women who doctors thought shouldn’t breed. Tubal ligation, and hysterectomies were used in the same way to prevent women from having sexual desires. Poor women and minority women were most likely to be the victims of this sterilization. “The female criminal also should be sterilized by removal of the fallopian tubes,” said Chicago Professor Frank Lydston in 1917. “It also should be practiced on the milder types,” of sexual psychosis. Their alleged hypersexuality was thought to cause their clitoris and/or labia to grow to sizes much too large, and to cause them to be more likely to have children unmarried.
The disabled and epileptics were also targets of sterilization during this time because of eugenic fears compounding into the idea that they should not be allowed to pass these traits to their children. Tubal ligation, and later hysterectomies were performed on women without consent, or in a way where they didn’t know what they were consenting to. I’ve written more on this previously, which I will link at the bottom of this piece.
“The Husband Stitch”
Some female genital mutilation was done at the request of the husband to increase sexual pleasure, for him. In 1885 Dr. Geo Cupples gave a speech described by another doctor as he “was called upon to explain the ‘husband stitch’ which he did as follows: He said that when he was stitching up a ruptured perineum, of a married lady, the husband was an anxious and interested observer, and when he had taken all the stitches necessary, the husband peeped over his shoulders and said, ‘Dr. can’t you take another stitch?’ And he did, and called it the “Husband Stitch.”
During that time episiotomies were routinely performed on women giving birth, the purpose being to make the opening of the vagina wider. Afterwards, the cut was stitched back up, giving opportunity for the doctor to perform the “husband stitch.” Although since the 1990s episiotomies are no longer routine during childbirth, tearing can still happen. Women in the 21st century report having this done to them. These women have pain afterwords with sex. Husband stitches, although being illegal and secretive, still happen, regardless of the fact that medical professionals now know the stitching does nothing to actually tighten the inside of the vagina.
“The same men that want us to be pregnant will turn around and say now that we’ve had a child our bodies are no longer desirable. ‘Hot dog in a hallway’ is the phrase he used to describe me.” C
To Increase Pleasure
Although at first female circumcision was mainly used to prevent irritation that caused masturbation, it was also used to increase pleasure. How could the same procedure be used both to stop sexual activity and to promote it by different doctors at around the same time period?
Women shouldn’t be sexual! Women had to be sexual! As time went on, public opinion emphasized the importance of women’s sexual enjoyment, with their husbands, of course. The start of the 20th century brought in increased attention to the clitoris, this time to try to increase pleasure by loosening, or removing the clitoral hood. While arguably better, their reasons for doing so were still bathed in misogyny. Change the woman to please the man. Women who couldn’t orgasm from missionary sex with their spouse were considered abnormal.
Dr. Edwin Hale was one such doctor. His describes a woman who after giving birth became emotional and jealous. “She grew morose, ill-tempered and unwomanly.” We would attribute this to postpartum depression, if severe, or normal exhaustion from having a child, but Dr. Hale knew better. He described how she had an “offensive” sexual desire “yet experienced no orgasm” and how she angrily scolded her husband because of this. He cut her clitoral hood to fix this.
Dr. W.G. Rathmann, while advocating for the importance of the female orgasm in 1959, talked of the success of his procedure upon making the clitoris more easily accessible. Rathmann advocated for female circumcision to help the husband by making the clitoris “easier to find.” “If the husband is unusually awkward or difficult to educate, one should at times make the clitoris easier to find.” Rathmann to his credit thought wives should also enjoy sex with their husbands, but again if they didn’t, he looked to changing their bodies to make it easier for the men.
Then he said female circumcision may be helpful if “the patient is quite adipose”, fat. Not to make it easier to find. Being circumcised, he claimed, might help her lose weight. “This operation may help cure her adiposity.”
“I can’t stand the ‘can’t find the clit’ jokes because no one ever thinks about how it makes us feel when we don’t have one but I think Rathmann is the perfect example of a can’t find the clit joke.” A
Dr. James Burt of Ohio had a procedure that went much further than circumcision to increase pleasure. The “Love Surgery.” His surgery involved, a circumcision of the clitoris and the movement of the vagina’s entrance closer to the clitoris to change a woman’s internal and external genitals to better align them for missionary sex. The vagina was now almost vertical when a woman was on her back. The surgery also left women with vaginal openings too small for childbirth, requiring a episiotomy for any women who wished to do so after. Some women reported happiness with the surgery, such as Judy who in 1977 said the surgery “actually changed my life.”
I fully support the freedom of women to choose what they have done with their body, but Dr. Burt didn’t. He practiced his surgery, without consent, on hundreds of women after they had given birth starting in the mid 1960s. By 1975, he claimed he performed love surgery on more than four thousand women without consent. All female bodies he believed needed this surgery. This he did until 1989 when a group of women sued him for malpractice.
Although Burt claimed he was doing this for the women, his book about the surgery is filled with misogynistic phrases like the chapter title of “How Any Man Can Make His Woman into a Seething Mass of Perpetual Passion for Himself: Your Own Private Sex Pot in Your Own Private World.” He marketed his surgery to women who had given birth by saying some women were “large enough to drive a truck through sideways” after birth. That husbands felt like sex after birth was “taking it out in a warm room.”
“I think if a doctor told me my vagina was ‘large enough to drive a truck through sideways’ I might have agreed to this too. That is manipulative.” D
Decades later, women feel pain from the operation. In 2012, Cheryl Dillon described it as "I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in places I couldn't understand.” She didn’t know at first what the pain was from, but later she found he had put her through his love surgery when she had only consented to minor bladder surgery.
The Beginning of Change?
By the 1950s, many medical professionals were wondering if masturbation really did cause the clitoris to enlarge and if it really did need to be cut off. By 1955 a medical journal said “enlargement of the clitoris; is mentioned frequently in connection with masturbation, but the cause-effect relationship here is quite uncertain.”
As ideas began to change, the other part of the existing medical community took time to catch up. In 1959 a survey of graduates at a medical school showed that half of the students still believed masturbation caused mental illness. Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance paid for clitoridectomies in the United States until 1977.
It didn’t go away. It stopped being talked about in medical journals, but the damage was still there, too many people believed in it. It was in many ways a secret. It’s why today so few people realize we did this. Parents grew up being told that masturbation was wrong, that it caused large clitorises, that both of those caused health problems, they didn’t let that go. Mothers who had the procedure done to them, did it to their daughters. As we get closer to today, we have the voices of these women. To differentiate between the quotes of the doctors of their time, these women’s quotes will also be in bold.
An American woman tells of how when she was 12 in 1944 her parents took her to the doctor. They placed an ether-soaked rag over her mouth from behind. When she woke up, her clitoris was gone. “They tried to keep me from masturbating,” but it “didn’t work.”
“Okay I will share. That is a question women ask me sometimes if I can I still orgasm or they are surprised I would still masturbate. Yes I can but I do wonder what I am missing or if it feels different to orgasm with a clitoris because I never did but I do orgasm from inside.” B
“It did work on me for a long time. Then I discovered I could on accident, but in an entirely mental way which I think is too weird to share. With other people though it is different and more like what ‘B’ said.” C
“It stopped me. I’ve been feeling a lot more optimistic though after scheduling my reconstruction.” A
In the 1950s Patricia Robinett was cut. She told of how she believes her own mother was cut, but she never asked her before she died. She remembered her mother would sometimes cry and say “They cut me. They cut me.” “Don’t touch yourself.” her mother screamed. She remembers telling her mother about a book on female orgasm and telling her women were supposed to enjoy sex. She remembers the shocked look on her mother’s face. The tradition had continued though. Patricia was cut too.
“When I tell people I had a clitoridectomy, many of them will ask me, ‘weren’t’ you angry when you found out?’ They expect me to say, Yes! I have to tell them the truth. The answer is, No. I was angry until I found out.” Patricia was scared of why she was different. Knowing why, brought her healing. “Knowing I didn’t have to run scared forever . . . My smile is not altogether restored, but it comes far more easily now . . . My heart is more peaceful.”
It happened in white Christian communities. A 1951 Christian book “On Becoming a Woman” recommended clitoridectomies, still repeating the century before reasoning of masturbation being due to an irritated clitoris, and that it could cause loss of health. “There are teenage girls who, impelled by an unwholesome curiosity or by the example of unscrupulous girl friends, have fallen into the habit of manipulating these sensitive tissues as a means of excitement. . . . Masturbation is to be avoided. It consumes the reserve supply of vital force, leaving the individual tired, listless and downcast. . . . There is an anatomical factor that sometimes causes irritation about the clitoris and thus encourages a manipulation for the delicate reproductive organs. . . . Oftentimes the remedy for this situation consists of a minor surgical operation spoken of as circumcision. This operation is not hazardous and is much to be preferred to allowing the condition of irritation to continue.” The book was republished again with the same ideas in 1968.
“It’s so important to share that Christians did it too. It was in so many religions.” A
Jennifer was cut in the 1980s. Her father was an evangelical minister. “We were taught men were the leaders and God made women submissive. . . .For a woman to be sexual was seen as sin.” Her parents told her she was going somewhere special. “It felt like an adventure.” “I remember my arms and legs being held down and somebody covered my eyes. It was awful. I think I blacked out and when I came to they had tied my legs together.” She didn’t tell anyone until she was an adult. “I thought it was a sin to talk about it. Religion can be a powerful tool for keeping someone silent.”
Even after cutting began to stop being used to treat other diseases, clitoridectomies were still used on women with larger clitorises. More often now large clitorises were the cause prompting women to masturbate, and not the opposite, caused to grow from masturbation. If a large clitoris was the problem, there was still an obvious solution.
Cut it off.
A 1966 Journal of Surgery mocked those who didn’t agree with removing a large clitoris. “Some persons have been reluctant to advocate excision of even the most grotesquely enlarged clitoris.” Qrotesque. They had to remove the whole thing. A circumcision wouldn’t do. “Half-way measures are much less satisfactory than complete clitoridectomy.”
In the late 1950s, as a toddler, Cheryl Chase’s clitoris was too large. It was removed leaving her scar tissues with no erotic sensation. As she grew older she became “withdrawn, [a] depressed adolescent, trying to steal a glance of a woman’s genitals” to see what hers should look like. “This cannot be anyone’s story, much less mine. I don’t want it.”
“We don’t want it.” A, B, C
In 1958, at the age of 6, Martha Coventry received a clitoridectomy. Her father, a surgeon, worried she would “be mistaken for a hermaphrodite” if he didn’t fix it. Her records indicate her clitoris measured only 1/2 inch. That wasn’t normal enough for her father. “Just because your body may look “normal” is no guarantee that you will feel that way. The truth is that the very thing surgery claims to save us from — a sense of differentness and abnormality — it quite unequivocally creates.”
In 1965 three year old Annie Green’s clitoris was also too large. An inch long. Her parents had it removed. Annie wondered why she was different from other girls as she grew up. Why she couldn’t find the pleasure in masturbation others described. “I studied the female anatomy and read about sex from that [Our Bodies, Ourselves]. That was when I learned I didn’t have a clitoris. I remember looking at the diagram, feeling myself, and reading what a clitoris was over and over. My God, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t have one. I couldn’t fathom anyone removing it if it was that important. I was stunned, and I held it all in. I was only 14. I became depressed. I was disgusted with my body, and I thought there was no hope that I would ever be loved by anyone.”
“I’m too scared to be loved too because I don’t love my body so how could anyone else?” A
“There’s no way to tell anyone you like them because they will eventually find out. You have to watch the rest of the world find love without you.” C
Intersex Children
In the late 1970s Angela Moreno’s parents were told that if she didn’t have surgery she might kill herself when she found out that she was different from other girls. Her clitoris was too large. She was born intersex and had testes in her abdomen, but she didn’t know this. Angela was 12. In order to convince her to agree they told her that her ovaries, which she didn’t have, would become cancerous if they weren’t removed. The surgery removed both the testes and her too-large clitoris. She wishes she could go back.
As many intersex adults have stated they identity as female, their stories belong here in the story of FGM. Although, obviously all children, regardless of their identity, deserve to not have their genitals mutilated without their consent. Currently parents and doctors still can legally choose which genitals their child keeps and which are removed or surgically altered to conform to “normal” standards.
Ignoring surgeries done for legitimate health concerns, intersex surgeries are typically done to babies for appearance reasons. Intersex adults who have undergone this advocate for waiting until the child can choose for themselves. They report feeling depressed and a feeling of loss from being unable to choose, especially when they feel the doctor made the wrong decision. Doctors say the surgery will help them feel more secure, but it only increases the feeling that something was wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with bodies that aren’t the same as the average body.
Legality
In the United States female genital mutilation is illegal now. In 1996 Representative Patricia Schroeder introduced legislation to the US Congress outlawing FGM. It passed, making female genital mutilation on anyone under 18 a felony with up to five years imprisonment. The law was challenged in 2017 by doctors who had been accused of performing FGM on at least nine minor girls in a Detroit clinic. Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was accused of performing the surgery and Dr. Fakhurddin Attar and his wife Farida Attar were accused of allowing him to use their clinic. The mothers who brought their children to the clinic were also charged.
One 7 year old victim said she was given cake after for “doing good.” She was told she could not tell anyone about going to the doctor. Two people held the child down while the doctor performed what she called a religious rite of passage. Prosecutors speculated over a period of 10 years this doctor had performed 100 of these operations.
In 2018 U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman said Congress “overstepped its bounds” and that FGM is a “local criminal activity which, in keeping with long-standing tradition and our federal system of government, is for the states to regulate, not Congress.” This ruling dropped the charges. In 2018 those girls were allowed to be mutilated without consequence. A Michigan law against FGM was signed into law but it could not be retroactively used for this case.
In 2021 the STOP FGM Act of 2020 was signed into law, giving federal authorities the power to prosecute those who commit FGM, or conspire to do so, a maximum prison sentence of five to ten years. We can hope this protection of our girls and women is never challenged and removed again. The majority of states also have legislation against FGM. Currently only Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and New Mexico do not have laws against FGM.
“Whether it was legal was something my uncle asked when we found out. He was saying well we could still sue. My grandmother didn’t want that to happen so they let it be.” D
Genital mutilation is still happening today.
It’s happening legally with intersex children. Even in states where conservatives have banned gender affirming care for transgender youth, they allow intersex children to be have surgery forced upon them. It’s only the ability to choose they hate.
FGM is still happening in other countries too. The World Health Organization estimates that 230 million girls and women alive today have faced female genital mutilation. The reason and method that is done can vary by area. UNICEF states that Africa accounts for the most cases of FGM, followed by Asia and then the Middle East.
“Since learning this is why I was different I have found out a lot of why it happened to me. In Sudan they take both the labia and the clitoris. It can be hard for women to get married without it.” B
It’s happening here illegally. “Vacation cutting,” taking girls from a place where FGM is illegal to another country to undergo FGM, is still a common practice. The CDC estimates that 513,000 American girls are at risk of, or have undergone FGM.
“That is what happened to me and I know other girls who that happened to. What I want to have people know about it is that yes it is a horrible thing but it doesn’t mean the people are horrible. These mothers really believe they are doing the right thing. I think that’s better than doing it to be cruel to girls because that can be untaught.” A
If that seems hard to understand, think of male circumcision’s popularity here. Growing up I heard boys with uncircumcised penises mocked. I never knew until recently that circumcision was considered an unnecessary form of genital mutilation. I wish I had known that, but am I a bad person for not? I had certainly never studied it and believed what I was told. That is was for cleanliness and for their benefit. Now I see many men being clear they want that to end and doctors saying there is no health benefit. This is the way I look at many people who promote female genital mutilation. Sometimes something is taught to us as helpful, and so the tradition continues until enough people speak out and say stop.
Can FGM Be Reversed?
Depending on the procedure done, there are reconstructive surgery options to help women today. 90% of the clitoris is under the surface, and through surgery it can be brought back up the surface. Most insurances should cover this, but if they don’t, or if you don’t have insurance, there are other options.
The Global Women’s PEACE Foundation can help with vaginal restorative surgery, and physical therapy along with psychological counseling and asylum applications. They also have a monthly online support group. If you contact them they can help you find resources in your area. It can be difficult to know what to say or how to get help, so they created a toolkit to help women know what to expect when they go to the doctor. There is a waiting list for reconstructive surgery though. For each surgery they need to raise $2,000. You can donate to helping victims here.
The surgeries can be very effective. In 2017 F.A. Cole, a victim of FGM in 1984, wrote of how “a few days after my surgery, while watching television, I had this weird but good, very good sensation in my hoo-haa area. I quickly got my mobile phone and sent a text message to my surgeon telling her about this feeling to which I was not accustomed. She wrote back saying ‘that’s your clitoris. That’s what it does.’ ‘No kidding!’ I said. Is this what I have been missing out on? So, this is one of the functions of this beautiful thing called the clitoris? I was upset.’”
“My surgery is scheduled for December 2024 and I am beyond excited. My gynecologist was able to help me get set up with special women’s counseling to plan for the surgery and all the anxiety that comes along with it. It turned out for me that my insurance will pay for this surgery! I hadn’t really cared much about anything sexual before it was done and I feel mostly not interested in it now but I hope this will change it for me like it did for her.” A
“I actually had two surgeries because the first one was right after it happened just to stop the bleeding. Most things were very painful. Mainly for reasons of not wanting to share the truth of what happened I didn’t try to find help to treat that until 2022 and had surgery in 2023. For mine it was slightly different because they were trying to repair tissue that had scarred badly causing pain. They repaired the right side of my clitoris, part of my labia and inside my vagina they repaired a scar that ran down the right side. There’s really only one spot you can feel the scar anymore and I don’t even know if it’s something noticeable. Prior to this sex was very painful.
According to my doctor, I’m healed and should even be able to have sex, although I haven’t tested that out, with a man. I’m not sure if I want to find out, because if the answer is no, then I feel I am unlovable. Sometimes I’d rather not know.” C
“I worry too much that another surgery will make things worse and I’m really happy that just the surgery I’ve had will stop my bladder problems. Even if you think nothing can be done you should see a doctor because they can fix so many things. My friend I met through an FGM group also had surgery. She could not orgasm and didn’t until after the surgery. Cole’s surgery reminds me of what she said OMG what is this feeling. It’s sad some of us have to wait until we are adults to even know.” B
“My grandmother never discussed it with any of her children until before her death. I’m not sure if she would have been able to get help if she had because of when she lived. One thing she told my mom was that she felt pain always when she walked. Anything that moved her thighs together. I’m glad other women can now have that changed.” D
To the Future
There are many people working to end FGM but they need your help, if you can, donate to The Global Women’s PEACE Foundation or use their resources to find somewhere local to you.
“You can help people feel comfortable to be able to say something about what happened to them by being careful to not react as if everyone in that country wants this especially in a racist way. Many people don’t and are trying to change.” A
“FGM should be talked about more and the signs of what it is because if we don’t know what we should have looked like we never know what to look for.” B
“Nobody wants to have something abnormal about their body. People are not always nice. Even women. They may say they support FGM victims but then mock a consequence of it, like whether or not we can have sex. Women being sexual is so important that our failure to be anything but is something to be mocked. If we create a culture where people feel constantly like they aren’t good enough it’s difficult for people to speak up and say this happened to them.” C
“I wish this had never happened to me. It seems so unfair. Why did I have to have it happen? How better of a childhood would I have had? Or if someone had told me sooner that was why I had bladder problems?” B
“I don’t think I’ll forgive my mother. I can look at other moms and understand they didn’t really know what they were doing but my own mom it hurts too much.” A
“I feel like I’ve forgiven him, but not myself. I’m not sure what I’m even mad at myself for.” C
“My grandma carried the shame of thinking the doctors did that because she had been bad until she died. We need to make sure we teach our daughters and all our girls that it’s okay to want sex so they can’t be tricked by doctors again.” D
“It’s easy for me to say other women didn’t deserve that and if I’m going to say that, I think I have to say I didn’t either. None of us deserved it.” C
It’s a time when many men openly don’t want women to be able to make choices about their body. They will make new laws, new choices to make us conform to their ideas of morality and they will say, that they are helping us.
“May we not, by a timely care of the genitals of our girls, rob the bawdy house of many a victim and assist in preserving the chastity of our young women?”
Dr. Chas Gwyn Galveston Texas 1885
Thank you to the women who volunteered their stories to help tell the stories of the women who doctors silenced. Without you this story wouldn’t be the one I wanted to tell. One day we will get to the point where there will be no more voices to tell the story of FGM. We have to.
After all this story, I still feel I need to warn the next part is disturbing.
There are men that fantasize about this. There are men that fantasize about anything, and these men, they get off on thinking about women having been mutilated. One of them approached me about being in this story, as one of the voices of the women. He even sent me pictures of what happened to “him.” He stole these pictures of a victim in his sick role-play.
His story seemed off to me even at the beginning. It made me uncomfortable the way he told it in such detail about the graphic parts. The way it seemed like it excited him in some way. The questions he’s asked over and over again. I put that aside though, thinking we all heal in different ways and this woman maybe was different from everyone else, but I didn’t want to shame her.
It wasn’t a woman though. He asked to video chat. It was a man with a FGM fetish. How many men in the past were just like him? How many of these doctors put women through this because they got off on it? Not to stop them from masturbating. Not to stop them from falling ill from all the diseases the clitoris could cause. Not to stop them from being a lesbian. To get off on inflicting pain upon women. We will never know.
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Sources:
Cliteridectomy in the West: 1500 to 2000 Norbert Finzsch
Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment Sarah Rodriguez
A Practical Treatise of Disorders of the Sexual Function 1922 Max Huhner
The American Journal of the Medical Sciences 1857
Illustrations of Human Vivisection
The Psychohistory Review Winter 1995
Ohio Woman Still Scarred By 'Love' Doctor's Sex Surgery
The Principles and Practice of Surgery 1878 Hayes
The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. Vol. 5 Part 1 January 1924
Impotence and Sterility, with Aberrations of the Sexual Function Frank Lydston
Gynecology 1920 William Graves
Excessive Venery, Masturbation and Continence 1896 Joseph Howe
Human Reproduction and Gynecology 1951 George Huff
The Gynecologic Consideration of the Sexual Act 1900 Denslow Lewis
Medical Record, Volume 48 1895
Why the 'Husband Stitch' Isn’t Just a Horrifying Childbirth Myth Carrie Murphy
Transactions of the Texas State Medical Association, Volume 17 1885
Amid Transgender Care Bans, Exceptions Made for Surgery on Intersex Children ABC News
Cutting History, Cutting Culture Sarah Webber, Toby Schonfeld
Making the Cut Martha Coventry
The Tyranny of the Esthetic Surgery’s Most Intimate Violation Martha Coventry
The Rape of Innocence Patricia Robinett
Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States Sarah Rodriguez
San Francisco Medical Press 1862
Female Circumcision: Indications and a New Technique Rathmann
Plain Facts for Old and Young : Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life Kellogg
Homoeopathic Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Paedology
The Medical News 1893 Volume 63 Issue 7
The American Practitioner 1882
On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy, and Hysteria in Females Baker Brown
Victorian Clitoridectomy: Isaac Baker Brown and His Harmless Operative Procedure Elizabeth Sheehan
Southern Journal of Medical Sciences 1866
Sexual Hygiene and Pathology; a Manual for the Physician
Sex Problems in Women Marian
Saint Louis Medical and Surgical Journal Volume 4 Number 6 1867
Clitoral Corruptions Margaret Gibson
The Book of Prudential Revelations Fontaine
Journal of Orificial Surgery Volume 4 Pratt
The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 1915-06: Volume 22 Issue 6
Journal of Orificial Surgery Volume 6 Pratt
Female Genital Mutilation UNICEF
The New York Journal of Medicine 1857 Volume 2 Issue 1
I Want To Be Like Nature Made Me Human Rights Watch
Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Journal 1885
Next “As Told By Us”
I likely won’t be starting this one for another month, but the next As Told By Us will be on hysteria. If you have any connections to that and want your voice to be included, you can reach out to me here or email me at TheLetsNotDate@gmail.com.
You should also read…
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You and the women you interviewed are amazing. I'm grateful for their bravery in speaking, and for yours in enduring the research to write this piece. I absolutely hated it. Thank you.