General While much
feminist scholarship has described clitoridectomy as a practice aimed at controlling women's sexuality, the historic emergence of the practice in ancient European and Middle Eastern cultures may also have derived from ideas about what a normal female genitalia should look like and the policing of boundaries between the sexes. In the seventeenth century, anatomists remained divided on whether a clitoris was a normal female organ, with some arguing that it was an abnormality in female development and, if large enough to be visible, it should always be removed at birth. In the 19th century, a clitoridectomy was thought by some to curb
female masturbation; until the late 19th century, masturbation
was thought by many to be unhealthy or immoral.
Isaac Baker Brown (1812–1873), an English gynaecologist who was president of the
Medical Society of London believed that the "unnatural irritation" of the clitoris caused
epilepsy,
hysteria, and
mania, and he worked "to remove [it] whenever he had the opportunity of doing so", according to his obituary in the
Medical Times and Gazette.
Peter Lewis Allen writes that Brown's views caused outrage, and he died penniless after being expelled from the
Obstetrical Society. Occasionally, in American and English medicine of the nineteenth century,
circumcision was done as a cure for insanity. Some believed that
mental and emotional disorders were related to female reproductive organs and that removing the clitoris would cure the neurosis. This treatment was discontinued in 1867.
Aesthetics may determine clitoral norms. A lack of ambiguity of the genitalia is seen as necessary in the
assignment of a sex to infants and therefore whether a child's genitalia is normal, but what is considered ambiguous or normal can vary from person to person. Sexual behavior is another reason for clitoridectomies. Author Sarah Rodriguez stated that the history of medical textbooks has indirectly created accepted ideas about the female body. Medical and gynecological textbooks are also at fault in the way that the clitoris is described in comparison to a male's
penis. The importance and originality of a female's clitoris is underscored because it is seen as "a less significant organ, since anatomy texts compared the penis and the clitoris in only one direction." Rodriguez said that a male's penis created the framework of the sexual organ. Not all historical examples of clitoral surgeries should be assumed to be clitoridectomy (removal of the clitoris). In the nineteen thirties, the French psychoanalyst
Marie Bonaparte studied African clitoral surgical practices and showed that these often involved removal of the clitoral hood, not the clitoris. She also had a surgery done to her own clitoris by the Viennese surgeon Dr Halban, which entailed cutting the
suspensory ligament of the clitoris to permit it to sit closer to her vaginal opening. These sorts of clitoral surgeries, contrary to reducing women's sexual pleasure, actually appear aimed at making coitus more pleasurable for women, though it is unclear if that is ever their actual outcome.
Human rights concerns Clitoridectomies are the most common form of female genital mutilation. The
World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that clitoridectomies have been performed on 200 million girls and women that are currently alive. The regions that most clitoridectomies take place are Asia, the Middle East and west, north and east Africa. The practice also exists in migrants originating from these regions. Most of the surgeries are for cultural or religious reasons. Clitoridectomy of people with conditions such as
congenital adrenal hyperplasia that cause a clitoromegaly is controversial when it takes place during childhood or under duress. Many women who were exposed to such treatment have reported loss of physical sensation in the affected area, and loss of
autonomy. In recent years, multiple human rights institutions have criticized early surgical management of such characteristics. In 2013, it was disclosed in a medical journal that four unnamed elite female athletes from developing countries were subjected to gonadectomies and partial clitoridectomies after
testosterone testing revealed that they had an
intersex variation or disorder of sex development. In April 2016, the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on health, Dainius Pūras, condemned this treatment as a form of genital mutilation "in the absence of symptoms or health issues warranting those procedures." ==See also==