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

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

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