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 science.

Really helps to confirm my suspicion that the only good girl is one who knows how to disappear, doesn't it? And if she can't figure out the skill of it, don't worry, someone will hold her down and do it for her.

I won't ask you what this fear of big clits is, since we can all figure it out, but did you know that women with larger clitorises are also more likely to identify as gay?

Yup, that's right, one of the many HORRIFYING implications here is all about trying to erase queerness, erase the existence of people like me (and let's note the particularities of this particular act of hate, since there is also a correlation between larger penises and men being gay, but no one is cutting into these suspect little boys).

Things that will never make any queer woman less queer: hair removal, makeup, self-hatred, dresses, boyfriends, surgery, "therapy." My mother used to buy me electric razors, over and over.

All of this speaks with terrible eloquence to the suspicion I often harbour that the most inherently queer thing about me is my unwillingness to disappear.

If you don't get how all of this connects, you should probably go read Valerie's Letter again and again and again until you do.

An inch.

One inch.

Get it?

Comments

[nonsecateur.livejournal.com]

Any possibility of criminal charges for these people? I hope at the very least they get sued into the ground in the decades to come. God damn.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

*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.livejournal.com]

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/

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

That has to have been the most horrifying article I've read in a long time. Since others should know about it, I linked to it on FB.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

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

[mariadkins.livejournal.com]

me too

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

It is amazing if you tell people it is for science and medicine, they will let you get away with any sort of abuse. This makes me want to vomit, and then shoot that guy in the face.

Those poor kids. Also, what parent signed their kids up for that barbaric shit?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Parents who think electric shavers aren't enough.

[elisi]

I have no words. I can't even begin to comprehend the mindset behind this.

(I have three young daughters. I am trying very, very hard not to throw things at the screen.)

[billijean.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's just. uh. It's shocking and horrible.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to respond to this except by screaming.

If the doctor who did this were in front of me, I would bloody well be reaching for a knife. And it wouldn't be his heart I took aim for.

[verasteine.livejournal.com]

And I'm officially creeped out. And wondering why adding the letters 'MD' behind your name suddenly seems to protect people from what we in other context would, without question or hesitance, call a crime.

Argh. This is very, very frightening stuff.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

This. Still wondering wtf about the parents, but considering some of the stories I've heard about other people's parents, I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Oh, but we're *better* than people who do this for religious reasons. ARGH.

Women with higher testosterone levels - which may be correlated with gayness - are very often women who have "male" behavioral characteristics like aggressiveness, better spatial and mathematical abilities, risk tolerance, and so on - in other words, bitches who compete with men and don't put up with their shit. That some of 'em won't sleep with men just adds to the "problem".

[eac.livejournal.com]

Oh, my god. It's easy to think this kind of thing somehow stopped in 1920 or 1930 or 1950. But no.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Detail I've not added to the post: this man's office is four blocks from where I grew up. It's always strange to wonder how nearly the bullet's missed, assuming it has at all.

[toujours-nigel.livejournal.com]

oh, bloody, bloody hell.

i'd like to say i can't imagine what sort of people would do this, but i suspect it's the sort that parades suspected lesbians naked around the village.

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

That is utterly horrifying. I sincerely hope a stop is put to this.

[valancy17.livejournal.com]

I'm so disturbed by this idiocy that I can't even talk about it. It makes me think of eugenics and forced sterilizations and child abuse and all manner of horrible things that I don't want to think about. I'm going to my happy place now, where there are hugs and puppies.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Userpic says it all.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

I can't ever read or listen to that letter without crying.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Has anyone contacted Cornell to ask about the ethics board's oversight of this thing? I seem to recall that was done for the Rule 34 guys.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

ontd_political and ontd_feminism have been contacting various of Poppas' superiors at Cornell, apparently.

[usullusa.livejournal.com]

This is horrific. What kind of idiot, what kind of monster, decides to mutilate their daughter's genitals because they're "too big"? What does that even mean?

The implication that this is an attempt to erase queerness is chilling.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is barbaric, but when I saw "too big" I said "what the fuck does that mean anyway?" If there was a little boy who had a penis larger than his peers, would we be lopping part of that off? I'm not talking about circumcision, which--well, I'm Jewish, but YMMV. Would a surgeon cut off the tip, remove some of the shaft, and then reattach the tip? Well, maybe this guy would. But the rest of us sane, civilized people wouldn't.

And don't even get me started on his post-op vibrator tests....

[eandh99.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this story is going everywhere - I saw it at Jezebel this morning, not usually where I see serious news. Hopefully a big enough and hot enough s*&^storm of bad publicity will ensue that Cornell will have to react.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Hopefully. Apart from Jezebel, and Dan Savage's article at thestranger.com, it's also been blogged at Psychology Today by one of the people who first found out these shenanigans.

[st-aelphaba.livejournal.com]

I would like to have a half hour in a locked room with the mothers who took their daughters to that doctor. It's unforgivable.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that you blame the mothers and not the fathers as well.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I've seen this around but each time I read it I am boggled over again by the sheer evil of this. And not only the evil, but how much the number of forces around them must ahve agreed to this, supported this or at least looked the other way

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

How completely and utterly horrifying.