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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I think it's because it's assumed that a woman who has a 'too large' clit is assumed to be intersexed in some way. Even if, in fact, there is nothing hormonally/biologically different than any other woman. Since, from what I've seen (almost exclusively based on porn images of woman's genitalia so there's a large grain of salt here), woman's genitals vary pretty widely, I'm really not sure how 'too large' is determined anyway.

[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.

[eac.livejournal.com]

(also, I want to throw up.)

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

You know, my father once threatened to shoot me for having sex with a girl. And I heard some of the most hideous stories working at the hotline. But this really trumps all that shit.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You know, I didn't know that, and I know all sorts of awful shit about you. God, what the fuck?

[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.