What’s a clitoris ?

As ever, a fascinating article that reveals the stupidity, deviousness, farce and gullibility that plague our world. Those who are fed up to the back teeth with the daily half-hour of “news” looped endlessly should pay Anna a visit.

I’m reminded of that lovely line by Willy (sic) Russell in ‘Shirley Valentine’

“I’d never heard of the clitoris. I thought it was pronounced Clit-aw-ris. I thought that would be a lovely name. Hello – my name’s Clit-aw-ris…”

Priceless.

The NHS seems to say “reversal” is mostly only done in order to allow safe child-birth, which is what has to be done in the native setting anyway; and also seems to be saying there is no possible reversal of the nervous damage. That latter is not what these other folks seem to be saying.
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/female-genital-mutilation/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Does max hastings, “button mushroom” qualify?

“…but who now lives with Carol Cornetto…”

Just the one..?

Although I could be interested I’m afraid Mrs Ancient+Tattered would soon put a stop to said interest!

Anna, a marvellous article, with probably the best set of comments we’ll see all year. Ted Treen’s contribution must surely win a “comment of the month award”

Your readers may be interested to know that the source of Carol’s bio also includes this gem:-

“…….Bowers is at first reserved and impenetrable……..”

Anna, this is a bit offtopic, but it DOES clearly reflect the same sort of deranged mindset about priorities, AND it happens to be something I wrote just a couple of days ago and shared publicly on another blog just about an hour ago. When I finished writing it I looked at it and thought, “I have NO idea if I’ll ever find anywhere this fits in.” but in terms of the mindset of spending money on a hospital to rebuild clitorises in a country where there’s probably a child dying every minute of the day from dirty water etc, I think this fits.

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Lights! Cameras! Action!!!

OMG! Our news crew found an African village where there is a two year old child lying in a pool of her own feces, slowly dying of a combination of dysentery, cholera, and malaria!

An advisory team has been dispatched to counsel the family and make a determination as to whether they should be flown to a health center in a province several thousand miles away so the child can be treated and her imminent and painful death averted.

Oh… wait… uh oh… we just found out there are several MILLION such little girls and boys. Sheeesh. That’s too depressing. We can’t help them ALL! What’ll we do for the evening news?

I’ve got it! Over here guys! Look! Here’s a little Indonesian boy. He looks fat and happy and healthy, but he’s SMOKING! If he keeps that up there’s a good chance he’ll get some kind of illness from it, maybe he’ll even die when he’s in his seventies instead of living into his eighties! And the visuals of him smoking make for great footage and will DEFINITELY open up those pocketbooks to write checks for our sponsors. Screw the starving diseased dying millions of infants, THIS kid smoker is our news story of the night! We can turn it into a week-long series, make a video that will go viral on YouTube, revisit it in a week and a month and a year from now to see if he’s still smoking or has been cured or maybe (with a bit of luck) even died in a writhing pool of agony from something or other we can blame on his smoking!

Hinckley! Get that camera over here where he’s blowing smoke rings and stop filming those kidnapped child prostitutes! That’s too raunchy for our sponsors and there’s no money in it. Anyhow, I’ve got a date with one of them once we wrap up here!

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Reminds me of the story line on the Seinfeld comedy show on TV in which one of the characters has forgotten the name of a girl, and knows that it rhymes with part of the female body, but still cannot recall it. At the end of the show he finally remembers–Dolores. Lame, I know.

(This in turn reminds me of a chemist’s shop I know in the Dominican Republic called Farmacia Dolores. This could easily be mistranslated into English as “the pharmacy of pains.”)

Clitaid is ridiculous in the context of Burkina Faso, but I am surprised that Jimmy Savile’s name has not been associated with their fundraising. If all we hear is true, then a sponsored Clitathon would have been right up his alley.

The subject makes me feel, well, a little awkward…and it’s not because I have to rub up on female anatomy, naughty Anna!
A sense of the indelicate confines my protest to the fact that most women are being deliberately denied the sexual arousal of a ridiculously large…wait for it, Anna…bank account, along with a guards red 997 turbo.

I remember watching Clive Anderson interviewing Raël at the start of his broadcasting career on C4 on “Clive Anderson Talks Back”. That would have been 1990/91. Raël was suitably humiliated, but the ‘aliens’ hadn’t taught him how to decipher Clive’s sense of hunour.

I love Ted Treens witty comment Anna. Don’t forget lads, the gals are off to the plastic surgeon to get their vulvas enhanced in this country too. With aneasthesia of course, hopefully not with dirty razor blades. You might find one of those in a packet of Poppets, if there are such sweeties.

Ohhhh….I can’t wait to adopt one…..do you think it will send me postcards from the seaside or a card at Christmas?

Well I don;t know about “rebuilding” the clitoris- once the erectile tissue has been cut out I don’t see how that would be possible. The clitoris contains 8,000 sensory nerve endings- twice as much as the glans penis! So it could not be replaced with any old bit of spare tissue.

However, the physical damage caused by FGM is horrendous. For example, in Ethiopia some other Western group has funded a hospital for the repair of fistulae, a fistula being an abnormal passage between two organs or between an organ and the outside, eg in this case from the bowel to the vagina, ie the woman is permanently leaking shit from her vagina. These women are social outcasts- although the condition is not their fault, I guess one can understand why their company might not be desired given the lack of hygeine facilities, wipes, soap, etc etc.

In the case of the most drastic form of FGM, the husband is required to cut his wife open on her wedding night. Extreme complications of childbirth develop due to the amount of scar tissue that develops, and very lengthy obstructed labour then causes the fistula.

Given the above outcomes, and the fact that FGM is performed without anaesthetic, and purely for the purpose of reducing the woman’s capacity to experience sexual pleasure and thus making her less likely to “stray”, it’s hard to imagine a more horrible practice.

Thousands of British-born girls of African origin are still at risk of this being done to them- although FGM is illegal in the UK there has never been a prosecution in this country- unlike in France where there have been a good many. Political correctness has apparently been a major reason for the lack of action in this country. Specifically, the dogma that anything is OK if it is a “cultural practice” among some ethnic minority. Due to the reluctance of professionals to interfere with anything relating to religion (well, one specific religion, anyway!), campaigners against FGM find it necessary to emphasise that it is not sanctioned by the Quran, the Talmud, or the Bible.

Given the above, I’m surprised that you, Anna, would trivialise this issue.

As for the Raelians, the Roman Catholic Church have even stranger ideas (2000 year old rabbi can turn himself into a piece of bread, Pope incapable of error, etc etc) but that doesn’t stop some of their orders and local priests doing genuinely good work.

There are several types of FGM and at least two that I’m aware of involving male genital mutilation (yes, that’s a thing, and yes circumcision is the milder form of it) as well.
“Pete” was talking about one of the more extensive types of FGM. Quoting the wiki:

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” … It is typically carried out, with or without anaesthesia, by a traditional circumciser using a knife or razor.[9] The age of the girls varies from weeks after birth to puberty; in half the countries for which figures were available in 2013, most girls were cut before the age of five.[5]

The practice involves one or more of several procedures, which vary according to the ethnic group. They include removal of all or part of the clitoris and clitoral hood; all or part of the clitoris and inner labia; and in its most severe form (infibulation) all or part of the inner and outer labia and the closure of the vagina. In this last procedure, which the WHO calls Type III FGM, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual blood, and the vagina is opened up for intercourse and childbirth.[10] The health effects depend on the procedure but can include recurrent infections, chronic pain, cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth and fatal bleeding… The practice is an ethnic marker, rooted in gender inequality, ideas about purity, modesty and aesthetics, and attempts to control women’s sexuality.[13] It is supported by both women and men in countries that practise it, particularly by the women, who see it as a source of honour and authority, and an essential part of raising a daughter well.

I do note in his comment he talked only of type 3 (the least common) , and only mentioned men as perpetrating the practice. He also mentioned cases where the type 3 was performed improperly and caused complications.

In short, Pete’s comment:
A. Needlessly genderized the practice. Way to keep a narrative about a War between the sexes going. Good job, Pete, ol’ buddy!
B. Made as if the exceptional bad case was the rule.
C. “Given the above outcomes, and the fact that FGM is performed without anaesthetic, and purely for the purpose of reducing the woman’s capacity to experience sexual pleasure and thus making her less likely to “stray”, it’s hard to imagine a more horrible practice.” So claims Pete. But those are not all of the reasons, of course. There are religious and cultural ones as well, same as with male genital mutilations.

While I think that all unnecessary genital surgery should be avoided and downright outlawed for both males and females when they are of too tender an age to possibly consent and esp when such are performed in less than perfectly sterile hospital type conditions, I would freely admit that food, medicine, and shelter would easily trump any concerns about types one or two of FGM and about normal male circ as well. These practices are usually safe enough. Anyway, whether type 3 is outlawed outright in Burkina Faso or not won’t make much of a difference in terms of ‘quality of life’ for women who are dying anyway, and this ridiculous reconstruction project will do even less.

Michael:
A circumcision is a surgery, and what is the problem with unnecessary surgeries, EVEN when performed in a hospital environment?
Complications. The amount of circumcision related injuries and deaths (yes, baby male humans have died when a botched circumcision resulted in an infection, and some have lost their penises and had to be ‘regendered’ *look up the famous case of David Reimer*). Whether stuff like infection occurs in one out of every ten thousand cases or as little as one out of every million, it doesn’t really matter because the larger culture doesn’t seem to really care that this is happening for no good reason at all.
And in the US (which is where I live and the only place I’m familiar with male circumcision law and politics) male circumcisions can be performed by just about anyone no permit , medical facilities, or medical training required. Mine was performed in a Polish town hall, and they made quite a ceremony of it from what I understand. There’s also the fact that circumcision, while there is argument about any real health benefits, was initially pushed in the US by John Harvey Kellog (one of the founders of the breakfast cereal company) as a way to curb masturbation. There’s also a ‘very interesting’ jewish practice that some types of ultra -orthodox jews perform after they have cut off the foreskin. This is known as ‘metzitzah bpeh’ and I urge you to look this up and wonder why this is not illegal as in any other circumstance we would call this sexual abuse. In the US, at least, things are kind of messed up : metzitzah bpeh is defended rabidly in the few (mostly big) cities where it is kind of a common practice, and because of ultra-orthodox votes the very idea of regulating, let alone stopping male circumcision is a total non-starter. Meanwhile, because it MIGHT be construed as disrespectful to women, even the very prick of a clitoris with a needle in a medical facility (the very very mildest type of FGM imaginable; basically a totally symbolic cut) is a total no-go. We do seem to value the body integrity of our female babies more than our male ones, at least in my first-world country.

Anyway, my circumcision went well, there’s no indication that I was damaged other than the fact that I’m reasonably certain the thousands of nerves I’m missing have somewhat – but obviously not entirely – made sex less pleasurable for me. I also know that , like the case in most problematic cultural traditions my parents meant only the best, and were not malicious, merely uneducated. But more to the point, I can complain about that one in ten thousand (or whatever) victim of male circumcision, I can worry about the sexual abuse implications of ceremonial oral, and I can debate whether a practice needs to be medicalized or totally pushed out existence, only because I’m free not to worry about food, shelter, and more extreme medical conditions.

Actually, the main reason for male genital mutilation seems to be cultural discrimination, that is a marker for one’s tribal or familial identity. That’s why the Jewish started doing it , at least. Nowadays there are supposedly some health benefits concerning spreading aids or acquiring certain types of cancer. Of course all of this is rather contested, more to the point even if there is a medical benefit to the practice there’s no real reason this has to be done at birth: it could just as easily be done later in life when the person involved can give informed consent.
But you see quite a bit of money comes into play here. Some Doctors make a pretty good portion of their income from the rather routine circumcision of male infants, something that many hospitals recommend to the new mother or dad.

And now, I apologize for dropping in and not introducing myself.
I’ll just say Hi, Anna. I hope you do get better soon. I first discovered your blog early last year when looking up the Jimmy Saville witch-hunt, and I’ve been lurking ever since because of the vast knowledge you bring of some aspects of the case and the high quality of your articles.

Well, I’ve learnt something. The plural of ‘clitoris’ is, it seems, ‘clitorises’. Not ‘clitori’, ‘clitorises’.

I’ve never needed to know the plural, as I&#8217