Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University

Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University | Slog | The Stranger, Seattles Only Newspaper.
There is so much disturbing about this story. A doctor at Cornell University is routinely preforming surgical procedures on very young girls to reduce the size of the clitoris. I have always had reservations about the ancient, and questionably ‘necessary’, practice of circumcision in males. But female clitoral shortening? My Gods, how can anyone believe this is appropriate? Why is it done? Well, apparently too large a clitoris will lead to ‘abnormal sexual development’.

Perhaps the most disturbing part is not that this is happening in the U.S., but rather the ‘annual checkups’ the doctor performs on these young girls to prove how humane his procedure is.

Indeed, when a colleague first alerted us to these follow-up exams—which involve Poppas stimulating the girls’ clitorises with vibrators while the girls, aged six and older, are conscious—we were so stunned that we did not believe it until we looked up his publications ourselves.

Yes, you read that correctly, six year olds are being ‘examined’ with vibrators to prove that the genital mutilation technique doesn’t hurt their sexual response.