Story about American woman who had clit cut off by Christian doctor

[SplitDik (imported)]

This happened to a white girl in the midwest (albeit 70 years ago). Wonder how many other little girls got the snip from those perverts...

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/reveale ... turbating/

REVEALED: Christian docs removed 3-year-old girl’s genitals because they feared she was masturbating

Erin Corbett ERIN CORBETT

06 DEC 2016 AT 17:01 ET

Serious girl (Shutterstock)

Serious girl (Shutterstock)

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Dr. Renée Bergstrom broke the silence about her experience with female genital mutilation as a child. She recounted how when she was just three years old she was taken to the doctor to have her clitoris removed, Bergstrom wrote for the Guardian.

Bergstrom is now 72 years old, but is now breaking the silence about female genital mutilation, which happened in white, Midwest America. She wrote of her Christian mother taking her to a church clinic to have the procedure as a “‘cure’ for masturbation.”

“My mother was concerned that I was masturbating, and my face turned very red,” Bergstrom shared in a video that accompanied her piece. “She took me to a doctor who said, ‘Well I can fix that,’ and cut off my clitoris.”

“As I was growing older, she told me she knew it was a mistake and that I was not supposed to ever talk about it,” she said.

“I remember the excruciating pain and feeling betrayed,” she wrote. “I was told not to talk about it, but keeping the secret meant I was alone with my questions as I grew into puberty: what was missing? What would it be like to be ‘whole’?”

Bergstrom shared some of the serious risks associated with the procedure, namely that she and her first child could have died during childbirth.

She wrote, “I, like so many women around the world, did not know genital scar tissue does not stretch. I wanted to be fully awake to experience giving birth, but my obstetrician performed an extensive episiotomy under anesthetic that took months to heal.”

“My first child was in danger of becoming stuck in the birth canal,” she explained.

“It was never rare, but it also wasn’t common,” explained Dr. Sarah Rodriguez of the Northwestern University Medical School. “A lot of Americans don’t know about this particular type of history because it was a quick procedure and it was done in a physician’s office, and also because probably it wasn’t something that families really talked about amongst themselves.”

Bergstrom noted that she decided to finally share her story because, she said, “This is not my shame. The shame belongs to our culture, the medical profession.”

“Even though this angers me, if some people will listen to what is happening to our sisters across the world because it also happened to a white person,” she added, “It’s worth my sharing my story.”

You can watch Bergstrom’s story below.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

The mother was concerned that her three-year-old was masturbating???

I know that in some cultures FGM is expected, but I would think that in the US Midwest in 1946 it would be unheard of.

Sandi

[kristoff]

Probably a case of the mother projecting her own thoughts and feelings on the daughter, and reacting to them.

[JesusA (imported)]

Actually, 1946 is very late for performing a clitoridectomy for masturbation. There was a great fear of sexuality at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth and clitoridectomy might well have been prescribed then, but the 1940s are very late. More often, castration was prescribed for habitual masturbation by boys.

An 1893 article in the Psychological Bulletin allowed that a majority of boys masturbate at some time during puberty, but it recommended castration for boys who indulged in habitual masturbation. The paper had been presented at two medical conferences, one U.S. and one international before its first publication. It was subsequently reprinted at least three times in medical journals after its publication in the Psychological Bulletin.

Here are a few quotations from the article:

[N]o one at all acquainted with the subject will deny that masturbation (a perverted sexual sense) may, and frequently does, become a cause of mental alienation; and I can not subscribe to the belief' that it is always a symptom of mental disease already existing. There is no doubt that habitual masturbation is often a manifestation of mental disease; nor, on the other hand, that it will lead to, and become a cause of, insanity. [p. 371]

I would substitute castration as a penalty for all sexual crimes or misdemeanors. including confirmed masturbation. [p. 378]

Reasoning a priori, if a perverted sexual sense be the cause of mental disturbance and unsoundness. — and there can be no doubt that habitual masturbation frequently is, — both cause and effect, — the removal of the glands should restore the equilibrium, on the fundamental principles on which we practice medicine.... [pp. 378-79]

_______

Daniel, F.E. (1893). Should Insane Criminals or Sexual Perverts be Permitted to Procreate? Reprinted 1912 as Castration of Sexual Perverts. Texas Medical Journal, vol. 27, no. 10, pp. 369-385.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

....

Here are a few quotations from the article:

....I can not subscribe to the belief' that it is always a symptom of mental disease already existing. There is no doubt that habitual masturbation is often a manifestation of mental disease; nor, on the other hand, that it will lead to, and become a cause of, insanity. [p. 371]....

....

There seems to be a case of the Emperor's New Clothes effect in the logic. I refer to the story of that name by Hans Christian Andersen, wherein only people unfit for their jobs could fail to see the king's (nonexistent) new clothes. Nobody wanted to admit they were unfit for their jobs, so everybody, including the king, went along with the fiction that the king wasn't buck naked--except for one little kid who had no job, which unraveled the whole thing.

The tie in? Everybody masturbated, but masturbation was said to be cause and symptom of insanity. Nobody wanted to admit to masturbating lest he be declared insane, locked up, or, worse, castrated. The only place people had no privacy and therefore could be observed masturbating was in asylums, and (supposedly) nobody else masturbated. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Q.E.D.

Wonder who played the role of the kid and unraveled the whole story on masturbation and insanity.

Sandi

[viltord_koka (imported)]

there would be a great story on this topic!