Making them fit the genital norms: “The rationale for clitoridectomy in (the 19th century) was

straightforwardly terrible, and ridiculously unscientific. By contrast,

modern theories seem slightly more humane, but when you get down to

it, the same question of gender links the Victorian Age’s clitoridectomy

to its Dot-Com Age cousin. We have been altering the healthy genitals

of our children-—boys as well as girls-—for 135 years so that a girl will

look and act like a girl, and a boy will look and act like a boy, according

to social norms. The strict division between female and male bodies and

behavior is our most cherished and comforting truth.

“All over this country there are people whose clitorises have been

removed, either totally or partially. They range from your great-aunt’s

roommate in the nursing home to your neighbor’s two-year-old. They

include hundreds of women from every generation. Some were born

clearly female; some were born clearly male but were reassigned as

female and then had their genitals altered; and some were babies whose

sex was not so easy to define. Although statistics for childhood clitoral

surgery are extremely difficult to gather, one can extrapolate a figure

from the number of babies born each year in the U.S., the number born

with conditions that produce enlarged clitorises, and the number-—most

of them-—who will undergo clitoroplasty. Approximately five times a

day in the U.S., surgeons change the size and shape of a child’s healthy

clitoris. Few of these children are capable of expressing what they want.

Some, if given the choice later in life, might choose clitoroplasty. But

judging from the responses of women who had the surgery done either

without their agreement or at an age when they were too young to know

what they were agreeing to, many would have preferred to stay the way

they were.” Ms. Magazine