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For years human rights organizations have been working to put an end to the tradition of cutting off a girl's clitoris, which an estimated 92 million African women and girls have been subjected to. Particularly rapid progress is being made in Senegal, thanks to a local movement that addresses the problem with sensitivity to cultural practicies. More »
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WTF. This is just not right. More »
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Demi Lovato's rep says she's entering rehab for "emotional and physical issues." But is it really the Disney curse? More »
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• 18-year-old Disney star Demi Lovato has quit an international tour with the Jonas Brothers and entered a treatment center.

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Alice Dreger and Ellen K. Feder from Bioethics Forum have unearthed a 2007 study in which a doctor from Cornell University defends the practice of surgically cutting girls' clitorises. Disturbing, but his follow-up treatment is even worse. More »
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After years of condemning the practice, the American Academy of Pediatrics has rewritten their policy on female genital mutilation, advocating for state laws to allow doctors to give a "ritual nick" to girls' genitalia. More »
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At left: Seventeen editor Ann Shoket. At right: NBC medical analyst Dr. Nancy Snyderman. At issue: Girls who cut. More »
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Here's a one-night stand from hell: a guy woke up to find his "date" had carved her name into his arm. The judge warns her: don't do it again! More »
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Though it's estimated that 2 to 8 millions Americans self-injure, from cutting to the newly-reported practice of self-embedding, doctors still can't agree on whether self-injury itself is a disorder, or how to treat it. More »
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Those unfortunate souls who find cutting insufficiently harmful have taken mutilation to the next level with something doctors call "self-embedding disorder." According to the Chicago Tribune, embedding is when people deliberately insert objects into their flesh, either by forcing them through wounds or by puncturing the flesh with those objects. More »
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Girl Guides (the UK name of Girl Scouts) has released a report called A Generation Under Stress. The study was complied from an online survey of 350 girls and eight focus groups, and some of the results are startling: Many of the 10-14 year olds think that self-harm (cutting) is "normal" behavior for teenagers; 42% know someone who's harmed themselves. 32% know someone with an eating disorder, 50% know someone who suffers from depression, and 40% of the girls say they feel worse about themselves after looking at pictures of glamorous models, pop stars or actresses. (One said: "When I was eleven I read a teen magazine for the first time and that is when it kind of clicked — 'I should be like this.'") 74 % of the girls feel "worried," and 19% have negative thoughts about themselves. The question to consider: What kind of adults do stressed-out, self-harming children become? [Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, BBC] More »
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For some reason I just read a story called Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex. Okay, so I hate myself for actually reading such a story, since I was really only reading it for the purpose of reveling in how much I hate myself, which is fairly easy since I can't even get it up to make a joke along the lines of "Oh! Cutters and their bareback sex! What'll they take up next, coke and bulimia?" (You see the problem.) But no, I even went and bothered figuring out who we can thank for this breakthrough. Some research center underwritten by the toy industry, apparently. And here I am, trying to carve a post out of this crap when I would rather find a knife. Wouldn't it be cool if vibrators had fold out knives for cutters? Cool, but also scary, obviously? And the worst part is I'm reading about this cool new class of empowered "Nerdettes" that supposedly exists, and embraces its differences and enrolls in engineering classes, obligatory Tina Fey reference even though Tina Fey has fuckall to do with engineering but okay. More »
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Sometimes the New York Times is a little late to the party, so the "Growing Wave Of Teenage Self-Injury" story isn't really "news," per se, but yeah: Cutting is on the rise. Over the weekend I was on a college campus and saw a young lady in a tank top sitting outside of an ice cream parlor. Her hair was pinkish red, her knee socks were striped and her left arm was covered in razor slices — in various stages of healing — from shoulder to wrist. Writes the Times' Jane Brody: "There are no exact numbers for this largely hidden problem, but anonymous surveys among college students suggest that 17% of them have self-injured, and experts estimate that self-injury is practiced by 15% of the general adolescent population." Janis Whitlock, a psychologist doing an eight-college study on self-injury, says that the Internet is spreading the word, prompting many to try it who might not otherwise have known about it. And while some people can't understand why anyone would want to drag a blade across their skin until blood seeps out, it actually makes perfect sense. More »
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Did you hate your mom as a teenager? Who didn't! But a negative relationship between mothers and daughters taken in tandem with low serotonin levels could lead to cutting and other self-harm, a new study shows. Fraught mother/daughter dealings alone generally do not inspire cutting, says study co-author, University of Washington psych professor Theodore Beauchaine. It's the combo of low serotonin ("an important chemical for brain stability," says Science Daily) and poor mother/daughter relations that's really the one-two punch. "Most people think in terms of biology or environment rather than biology and environment working together," says Beauchaine. "Having a low level of serotonin is a biological vulnerability for self-harming behavior and that vulnerability increases remarkably when it is paired with maternal conflict." More »
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Tor Stimpson had a "pretty happy" childhood in a small British village; she had a St. Bernard and her own ponies. But her younger brother was super smart and, as the pressure built for her to get good grades and amazing test scores, Tor began to feel "this huge cloud" over her. She started to cut herself, using knives, razors, and blades from pencil sharpeners. When a teacher told Tor's parents that she seemed depressed, they sent her on vacation. "Money was a way of dealing with things," Tor says. "I didn't feel I could talk about feelings, I just pretended things were OK." Even after she started therapy, Tor didn't feel as though her parents took her seriously. "My mother would make jokes about my psychotherapist," she says. "I think a lot of people from my background think mental health issues only happen to the less well off, who are doing drugs and who've led a hectic life." More »
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