[lbo-talk] Clitoridectomy in Britain and America (circumcision)

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Wed Feb 9 07:59:24 PST 2005


Yoshie writes:
>Actually, they used to remove the clitoris literally in Britain and
>America, as late as in the 1940s, to cure girls' and women's
>"emotional disorders."
>
>Take a look at Elizabeth Sheehan, "Victorian Clitoridectomy: Isaac
>Baker Brown and His Harmless Operative Procedure" (_Medical
>Anthropology Newsletter_ 12.4, August 1981):

Thanks, Yoshie, I'd read about this but didn't have a citation, so I didn't want to go off half-cocked (so to speak). Of course the universally-applied liberal clitoridectomy in the U.S. was the myth of the vaginal orgasm.

Jenny Brown



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