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

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

a substantial fraction of those will not have seen a big enough sample to even guess what "normal" would be

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm a member of vaginapagina, and women post there all the time concerned about the shape, size, configuration, and color of their genitals, either because they've been mocked and denigrated by partners or because they've seen enough porn to fear that they will be mocked and denigrated. The average person has access to photographs of female genitalia and boys in particular generally see quite a bit of pornography before the age of 18. And then draw conclusions about what is and is not acceptable on a woman's body.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

If you (general you) have a partner that mocks you because of the appearance of your sex organ(s), is that someone you really want to share your emotional vulnerabilities with? I'd be showing that person the door. Or possibly the window...

Having said that, I'm not surprised other women ask "Is this normal?" We've been conditioned to think there is a singular normal, or that "normal" is what one sees in porn. But as my gyn told me once, "If it's not falling off, bleeding or has green goo dripping from it, you're probably fine."

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Of course it's not a good idea to be involved with someone who mocks your body. But I was challenging the idea that young men and women probably can't tell what's "not normal." They absolutely can.