Jezebel: genital mutilation

Palin Supporters Ask Area Teen To Help "Make A Photoshop" • Evil Australian Gyno Finally Arrested

Maria — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Wow, Sarah Palin gets Photoshopped into something other than a bikini. Is this progress? • In the past decade there has been a 40% increase of female soldiers training to be officers in the UK Territorial Army, as more and more UK soldiers are being expected to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. • New research shows that sexual harassment is 10 times more likely to occur at contract-only jobs and 5 times more likely to occur at casual jobs. • An Italian newspaper reports that a 50-year-old Italian woman was woken from her coma long enough to consent to marriage with her longtime partner. •

• Men become less fertile after the age of 24 and a risk of bipolar disorder is increased in children who are fathered by a man age 55 or older. • A North Korean woman is on trial for allegedly sleeping with South Korean military officials in exchange for classified military information. • A sociologist from Canada says that single fathers should not be prevented from seeing their children, even in cases of incest or abuse, because normal contact will help the fathers cope. • A circuit court judge in Florida has ruled that the state's 31-year-old ban on openly gay men and women adopting children is unconstitutional. • Should we encourage senior citizens that are regulated to nursery homes to have sex with each other? Oh, why not. • Hurt in the line of duty! A Florida sheriff's deputy suffered a serious injury after a storm drain grate fell on his arm after he was done rescuing a kitten who was caught in the drain. • Round things that appear next to each other will be chronicled in a these-things-look-like-boobs book (aptly) called One-Track Mind. • A 16-year-old girl in India killed herself after she became consumed with fear that small-scale "Big Bang" experiments in Europe would cause the end of the world. • A man from Santa Clara, California has been authorized to drive around with a vanity plate reading "HIV POZ," showing other motorists that he shouldn't feel ashamed (or keep secret) his HIV status. • An Australian woman was fined yesterday after she sent letters to a convicted sex offender's neighbors telling them that he is a child molester. • The Royal College of Midwives in England is claiming that "freebirths," or births without any medical assistance, are on the rise in America. • Graeme Reeves, the Australian OB-GYN who assaulted and inflicted genital mutilation on his patients, has been arrested and charged with 17 offenses against 10 women, with more coming in. •

Anti-Circumcision Movement Gains Ground In Egypt • Vaginal Infection Linked To HIV

Maria — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EDT

A grass-roots movement against female circumcision in Egypt (where 96% of married women are circumcised) is gaining momentum with mothers considering circumcision for their daughters. • Male contraceptive options will "perpetually remain five to 10 years away." Why? Pharmaceutical companies believe they aren't marketable, although many men disagree. • Nazmunnahar Beauty had to struggle through orphanhood and poverty to make it to Olympics, much like the rest of her Bangladeshi teammates. • Keren Dunaway, a Honduran tween who was born with HIV, is one of the most prominent AIDS activists in Latin America, where she edits an educational children's magazine about the virus and speaks at major conferences.

Filipino teachers are becoming more popular hires as school officials in Prince George County, MD see a shortage in staff. • Presented without comment: "A herpes virus is killing young oysters in France because they have spent too much energy developing their sexual organs rather than their natural defenses, an oyster crisis team has found." • Bacterial vaginosis, a common vaginal infection, can make women more likely to contract HIV, perhaps due to chemical changes in the vaginal canal. • Incarcerated women in Afghanistan find that keeping their children with them in prison, despite the health risks, is safer for the children than giving them to an orphanage. • Pregnant Australians are having a difficult time finding a job since many prospective employers view pregnancy a hinderance on their business. • Miss USA (you know, the one who fell this year) admits to having plastic surgery done to her but only advocates it to "enhance what you have." • Elissa Steamer won the gold medal for women's skateboarding at the 2008 X Games and is quickly becoming one of the top female street skaters around. • Tinkerbell will be given a starring role in a new DVD film from Disney as they begin to create a Fairies franchise similar to their Princess franchise.

Bikini Bottoms Now Promote Genital Mutilation Awareness • Romanian Court Says Penis Worth $800K

Maria — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Bathing suits in Barcelona now feature hygienic protectors in swim bottoms that feature a picture rusty razor blade that sits right under your ladyarea to raise awareness about genital mutilation. Wow, genius and kinda gross. • Josef Fritzl is apparently writing his memoirs while in prison, much to the horror of his daughter/rape-victim for 24-years, Elisabeth. • Mothers who give birth to unexpected twins are more likely to be depressed and anxious after pregnancy, however women who conceived with IVF or other fertility treatments are usually less blue. • This one is for the dudes: having sex less than once a week will increase the likelihood of developing erectile dysfunction.

• A journal for plastic surgery says that 98% of women who have breast reconstruction after an elective mastectomy are satisfied with their surgery. • Children conceived with a sperm donor should be told at age four about their origins to lighten anger and shock at their parents. • A Romanian court ordered that a surgeon pay a 33-year-old patient whose penis he had accidently severed during an operation $795,000. Yeah, that is a big "uh oh." • More Penii!: A Portuguese couple continue a tradition of manufacturing 2-foot penis-shaped ceramic bottles that is said to have dated back to the 19th century. • A baby's smile can create a "natural high" in the brains of mommies. • A South African woman with a "soft heart for animals and a tart tongue for most everyone else" runs an animal shelter in Abu Dhabi. • The General Synod, the governing body of the Church of England, is set to debate over the issue of appointing female bishops, sparking a debate between traditionalists and progressive members of the Church. • Swiss researchers suggest that same-sex transplants should be performed after they found an 8% chance of rejection when a male kidney was given to a woman. • The Monday after a three-day weekend always sucks, so here is a cute video of a bunny opening up an envelope with his own paper-nomming!

Evil Gyno Graeme Reeves Brutalized 800 Women Before He Got Caught

Moe — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:30:49 EST

You know what I'm sick of writing about? GENITAL MUTILATION. Seriously, another day in February = another story about women getting their clitorises brutally cut out of their vulvas. Why is the media so obsessed with covering the 'bad news' of women are getting their labias sewn shut when it never seems to chronicle the billions of women who go through life with perfectly intact vaginas? But hey, it's not my news judgment that feeds this blog, so I might as well let you in on the latest re this guy, Graeme "I'm going to take your clitoris, too" Reeves. To recap: Graeme Reeves is a former OB-GYN who liked to put women under anesthesia, then remove parts of their vaginas. Sometimes he'd get carried away, and remove other organs while he was at it. A woman died at his hands and another woman got cervical cancer, which he ignored, and today it turns out his various hospitals had actually fielded complaints from 800 women! What sort of primitive barbarian society would tolerate such atrocities?

Oh yeah AUSTRALIA. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get this either. Violent misogynists all over seem to be slipping by unnoticed! I think I am going to go back to sleep now and have some really nice dreams.

Dr. Graeme Reeves, The Sickest Man Alive

Moe — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:00:24 EST

I was all set to write a really uplifting post on why men use war as an opportunity to rape women when I came across a story of an Australian guy who did not have any sort of backdrop of dehumanization or trauma or anything like that to blame; he's just fully, comprehensively, independently jawdroppingly evil. His name is Graeme Reeves. He was an OB-GYN. One of his patients wanted to have a small pre-cancerous lesion on her labia removed. As she slipped into unconsciousness from the anesthesia, he leaned in and whispered:

"I'm going to take your clitoris too."

Huh? I know it's pointless to ask, but why???? Well, Graeme Reeves was not your garden variety Law & Order psychopath; he is a murderer who left dozens of women permanently injured. He removed their organs for no reason, he ignored the cancer growing inside a woman's cervix for no reason, and way back before any of this, in 1996 he withheld antibiotics from a dying mother against the pleas of nurses so that she eventually died for NO. REASON. How the fuck did this happen? Was none of this considered to be a crime?

Well, uh, no. Graeme Reeves does not appear to be in jail. And although he is clearly a sick sick sick sick sick sicko, hundreds of colleagues managed not to see or notice anything about this behavior or reputation or files or employment history that warranted a second look. What is that about? The "patriarchy" as one blogger ventured? Or a collective case of "I must have imagined that"? Can you even regain composure long enough to ask?

Look Away Now, For The Love Of God [The F Word]
Medical Rape Culture and collegiality [Hoyden About Town]
Who Watches The Doctors? [NineMSN]
Dr. Graeme Reeves [Australian Parliament Website]

You Wanna Be On Top

Slut Machine — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:30:00 EST

There's a whole new dimension added to this upcoming cycle of America's Next Top Model—genital mutilation. According to Us Weekly, one of the contestants, Fatima, has quite a horrific past. Growing up in Somalia, she underwent a female circumcision, and then two of her sisters were murdered before she fled the country at age 13. That's nuts, right? We're kinda inclined to say, "Tyra, she's been through enough! Don't you dare tell her to ever 'make it fashion,' and just let her win the damn fake modeling competition." [FourFour]

Clitoral Circumcision Will Make This Baby "More Beautiful In The Eyes Of Her Husband"

Anna — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:30:00 EST

"When a girl is taken — usually by her mother — to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals."

That sentence comprises the first 45 of over a thousand words devoted to female circumcision in Sunday's NY Times. (Sorry guys, this is the last of our Blue Monday-type stories for today.) According to Lukman Hakim, a (male) chairman of an Indonesian foundation that sponsors mass circumcisions, the benefits include the "stabilization" of a female's libido and balancing "her psychology".

The article, written by Sara Corbett, also features a series of upsetting photographs by Stephanie Sinclair (a slideshow, including the newly-circumcised, teary 9-month old girl pictured above, can be found here). Asks Jezebel reader Elizabeth: "What kind of person can stand there and photograph little girls screaming while parts of their genitalia are removed? This isn't a question of religion, or yearning to understand another culture more — it's recording barbarity with an objective lens, which somehow makes it okay."

A Cutting Tradition [NY Times]
Inside A Female Circumcision Ceremony [NY Times]

Clitoral Mutilation: Not Just For African Girls

Anna — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:28:25 EDT

Everyone loves a clitoris, right? Well, not really! Yesterday our favorite old-magazine-article blog Modern Mechanix posted a piece on 'the female penis' from a mid-1960s issue of the journal Sexology and sparked a mini-debate within the blog's community after one reader intimated that clitorises are immodest, indecent, and therefore un-Christian. (That reader won't be reading the blog anymore, she says!) Anyway, the article — from January 1964 — doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know (Clits get bigger when stimulated! They have cute hoods and like to draw back under them, "like a snail into its shell") except, um, maybe this:

Girls born with an enlarged and unslightly clitoris usually prefer to have it removed, for the sake of feminine appearance.

Uh, what the fuck??? We're aware that the 1960s weren't exactly known for tolerating freedom of expression or celebrating differences among, you know, blacks, gays, or women, but genital mutilation in the name of 'beauty'? We thought that was more 21st century!!!

The Female Penis (Jan. 1964) [ModernMechanix]
Earlier: For 2 Grand This Man Will Plump The Inside Of Your Pussy
Pimp My Vadge
Chlorine For Your Cooch

We're Beginning To Look A Lot Like Barbie

Anna — Tue, 29 May 2007 10:08:15 EDT

A leading British medical journal has released a report slamming the increasing demand for "designer vaginas" and warning that plastic surgery to the female genitals carries a risk of decreased sexual response. Fueling the demand for such procedures? Unrealistic images of female genitalia in pornography, women's magazines, and... the fashion industry.

Patients who sought genitoplasty "uniformly" wanted their vulvas to be flat and with no protrusion, similar to the prepubescent look of girls in Western fashion ads, they found.

The fashion industry can be blamed for many crimes against women, but plastic vaginas? We don't think so. Unless, of course, designer Tom Ford has some sort of collaboration with Mattel in the works.

Top Medical Journal Blasts "Designer Vagina" Craze [Breitbart]
Designer Vagina Surgery Growing Because Of Porn [Bloomberg]
Earlier: Pimp My Vadge
Related: Prank Call To Barbie, Part 2 [Zug]