While the whole world was debating the American Academy of Pediatrics' position on "female genital cutting"—the AAP was against it before they were for it, and now, after an outcry, they're against it again—Alice Dreger and Ellen Feder have been raising the alarm about "medical research" currently being conducted at Cornell University. A pediatric urologist at Cornell—Dix Poppas—has been operating on little girls with what he judges to be oversized clitorises, cutting away important clitoral tissues, and then stitching the glans to what remains of the shaft. Poppas claims that, unlike past clitoral-reduction procedures, his procedure is "nerve sparing." First big problem: "nerve-sparing" surgeries don't always work. And the chunks of these girls' clitorises that the doctor is cutting away—large pieces of their clitoral shafts—may be just as important as the clitoral glans. Dreger: There's lots to be outraged about here: there's nothing wrong with these girls and their healthy, functional-if- Here more specifically is, apparently, what is happening: At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, Poppas touches the daughter's surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a "vibratory device," and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch.... Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls.... Although we have tried, we have been unable to locate any other pediatric urologist who uses these techniques. Indeed, we doubt many would, because we think most would—as we do—find this technique to be impossible to justify as being in these girls' best interests. We understand that these tests might produce generalized knowledge that shows whether Poppas's techniques are better than some other surgeons', but it isn't clear to us how this kind of genital touching post-operatively is in individual patients' best interests. If the testing shows a girl has lost sensation through the surgery, her lost clitoral tissue cannot be put back. However, the tests would seem to expose the girls to significant risk of psychological harm. In the course of our inquiries, made in preparation for this publication, nearly all clinicians to whom we described Poppas's "clitoral sensory testing and vibratory sensory testing" practices thought them so outrageous that they told us we must have the facts wrong. When we showed them the 2007 article, their disbelief ceased, but they then seemed to become as agitated as we were. At an international conference two weeks ago, when Dreger told Ken Zucker, a psychologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and member of the clinical establishment, about this, Zucker said that we could quote him as saying this: "Applying a vibrator to a six-year-old girl's surgically feminized clitoris is developmentally inappropriate." We couldn't find a clinician who disagreed with Zucker. Yang, Felsen, and Poppas describe the girls "sensory tested" as being older than five. They are, therefore, old enough to remember being asked to lie back, be touched with the vibrator, and report on whether they can still feel sensation. They may also be able to remember their emotions and the physical sensations they experienced. Their parents' participation may also figure in these memories. We think therefore that most reasonable people will agree with Zucker that Poppas's techniques are "developmentally inappropriate." The 2007 article documenting Poppas's research is here. Now more from Dreger's post at Psychology Today: There's so much to be angry about I hardly know where to start. Applying a vibrator a girl's clitoris after it's been surgically shortened may demonstrate that she still has "sensation" in what's been left behind—that she still has a few nerve endings that function—but that's not proof that she hasn't been physically or emotionally harmed by the surgery and those traumatic follow-up "procedures. There's another disturbing reason this surgery is being performed: girls with large clitorises are more likely to identify as lesbians when they grow up. Needless to say (or maybe not-so-needless) Please go and read Dreger and Feder's piece—"Bad Vibrations"—at the Bioethics Forum. And read Dreger's post at her own blog. And if you're reading this and you're a student at Cornell: female genital mutilation is being practiced on your campus. What are you going to do about it?Wednesday, June 16, 2010
News / ??!! / Sex Female Genital Mutilation at Cornell University
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 7:15 PM
To shorten these clitorises, Poppas is saving the glans (tip) but cutting out parts of the shaft. Bo Laurent has pointed out that Masters and Johnsons showed that many women masturbate by rubbing the shafts of their clitorises. (Think about it: the clit is the homologue of the penis. How do men masturbate?) Many women seem to find their clitoral glans almost too sensitive. Poppas's patients are loosing the option of touching parts of their shafts, because he's throwing them out (after the cut-away parts have been sent to pathology to see if he accidentally took out a nerve).
But we are not writing today to again bring attention to the surgeries themselves. Rather, we are writing to express our shock and concern over the follow-up examination techniques described in the 2007 article by Yang, Felsen, and Poppas. Indeed, when a colleague first alerted us to these follow-up exams—which involve Poppas stimulating the girls' clitorises with vibrators while the girls, aged six and older, are conscious—we were so stunned that we did not believe it until we looked up his publications ourselves.
So why the heck do Poppas and other surgeons do these surgeries? They believe it is necessary to ensure "normal" sexual development.
Share via
My uncle was circumcised on the kitchen table. I shudder to think of what parents do when of the mindset "we know better than nature". 
My clit is pretty big. But I didn't *know* it was bigger than average until I explored my bisexuality and saw someone else's clit, and having a bigger than average clit has not in any way negatively impacted my life or my sexuality. Contrary to what these doctors and parents seem to think, six year olds are NOT comparing clit size during kindergarten nap time. And who the hell is judging what's "normal" and what isn't? Christ on toast, this pisses me off.
I wish I went to Cornell so I could raise holy stinking hell about this. In the office of the president, in front of television cameras. 
Because if ever there was a reason to pull a doctors credentials, this is it. 
The procedure - and the entire conceptual framework behind it - is appalling. The fact that it's bad science, that the follow-up "testing" is so utterly facile, just adds to the indignity.
Most men have no trouble finding a bar.
Q: What do a clitoris, an anniversary and a toilet have in common? A : Men usually miss them. 
http://en.wikipedia
How did this get past ethics review? How? 
Also - using a vibrator on a 6 year old girl? Last I checked, vibrating someone to orgasm counts as having sex. This piece of shit is having sex with six year old girls.
This whole story is mind-bloggling.
Sounds like a child molester to me. With the added thrill of having the parents present while he molests them. What a sick fuck.
And where is the IRB here? Where is the Medical Board?
And where are those evangelicals who claim they want to protect innocent life (think of the children!)?
Thank you, Dan, for posting on this. 
It is absolutely no exaggeration to call this Nazi medicine.
Weill Medical Collge needs to be thoroughly examined from head to toe to find out what the hell is going on and who knew about it. All of these people need to be censured if not actually imprisoned. Dix Poppas needs to never see the sky again.
The other two doctors are women: Jennifer Yang, Diane Felson. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? 
Confluence is one of the worst hack commenters polluting SLOG these days, Canuck. Don't encourage her.
I haven't felt this disgusted and infuriated since I watched Mississippi Burning. Time for a good, long run. Uphill. 
The paper says "Phallus length was 1.0 to 4.5 cm (average 2.4)." I don't think that's enough to justify modifying a girl's genitalia, even if you've got an intense belief that surgery is justified to help kids fit in. I don't see how an inch-long clit/penis is going to affect your life much before you're sexually active.
This gets even worse when you read the links, the doctor is the one deeming their little bodies "too big," and is performing the surgery at 3-6 months! Babies often seem to have somewhat exaggerated genitals, relative to their bodies, how could you even make a diagnosis at that age? I was reading a blog just now by a woman who identifies as intersex, and she says the medical community is so eager to put everyone into boxes, absolute male/absolute female, when there is plenty of gender *fluidity* out there. As with looking for a *cause* for gayness, this smacks of the arrogance of identifying something as needing fixing simply because it doesn't fit into an expected category. SO sad.
You can email the Dean of Weill Medical College, Antonio Gotto: dean@med.cornell.
Or Dr. Poppas himself: dpoppas@med.
You can also email University President, David Skorton: president@cornell.
You can find phone numbers and email addresses for all Cornell faculty here: http://cornell.
When parents mistakenly make the decision to allow doctors to operate on an obviously intersexed newborn's genitals, I can understand how and why they might come to that decision (especially with doctors assuring them that it's "the way it's done"). But THIS? How any parent could knowingly take their young daughter into a building where a strange man was going to cut out chunks of her normally developed crotch and then annually rub it? Fuck that. No brochure or pamphlet could make that shit sound ok.
Shocking and disgusting. This asshole better be jobless ASAP. On my way to check if there's a page about ending this malpractice on Facebook. 
I thought they stopped doing this shit 40 years ago when all those quack surgeons tried to turn boys into girls cuz their penis's were too small, or were accidentally damaged? Theres even been a bunch of Dateline's, 20/20's, and 60 minutes on this shit!
And its happening at CORNELL?!?!?
Fuck the doctor, i want to know what the hell is going on in the ethics department and with the administration for allowing this shit to even be THOUGHT of, let alone practiced!
Doctors and administrators asses need to be on silver platters. 
I'm also a bit confused at how cutting someone's genitalia for purely aesthetic reasons somehow amounts to promoting "natural" growth. Promoting natural growth would be letting their clit grow as long and large as it pleases, that's natural.
Comments (211) RSS