Clitoral hood
The clitoral hood, or prepuce, is a fold of skin that surrounds and protects the clitoris.Removal or "splitting" of the clitoral hood is called "clitoridotomy" or "hoodectomy". It is one of the surgeries to which the term "female circumcision" is applied and perhaps the only one comparable to male circumcision, but isn't to be confused with other procedures such as clitoridectomy (removal of the clitoris itself) or removal of the labia minora.
When it is practiced today, it is usually an elective surgery intended to enhance the sexual sensitivity of the clitoris, and considered only in cases where the hood is overgrown or cannot be retracted.
From the late 19th century until the 1950s, it has been practiced not to enhance, but to control female sexuality, and was advocated in the United States together with more invasive procedures such as the removal of the clitoris and infibulation by groups like the Orificial Surgery Society[?] until 1925. Specifically, doctors performing or advocating the procedure were concerned that girls of all ages would otherwise engage in more masturbation and be "polluted" by the activity, which was referred to as "self-abuse[?]" [1] (http://www.noharmm.org/paige.htm).
Such views regarding masturbation are now widely discredited. Nevertheless, some doctors continued to advocate clitoridotomy for hygienic reasons or to reduce masturbation, even as other procedures were increasingly believed to be a violation of genital integrity, and as such, a form of genital mutilation. For example, C.F. McDonald wrote in a 1958 paper titled Circumcision of the Female [2] (http://www.noharmm.org/circumfemale.htm),[3] (http://www.courtchallenge.com/refs/fgm2.gif):
- If the male needs circumcision for cleanliness and hygiene, why not the female? I have operated on perhaps 40 patients who needed this attention.
The author describes how a two-year old was "cured" of frequent masturbation using the procedure. By the late 1950s, and especially after the "sexual revolution", clitoridotomy started to be advocated by some doctors to increase sexual sensitivity of adult females, so as to increase sexual pleasure. Performing the procedure on infants, however, is no longer advocated in the United States.
External link
- Medical Studies on Clitoral Hood Removal (http://www.geocities.com/hoodectomy/MedicalStudies.htm)
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glass. We ran to look, and there before us were the fragments of the
travellers.
This was the fate that we had escaped.
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the plain.
CHAPTER II
THE HACIENDA
"What are those?" said Emma presently, pointing to some animals that
they were two of the mules which the brigands had cut loose from the
hung to them.
"Can you ride?" I asked.
She nodded her head. Then we set to work. Having caught the mules
on the back of one of them, mounting the other myself. There was no
heard a voice behind me calling "senor." Drawing the pistol from my
upon an American ship, "Me driver, Antonio. My mate go down there,"
bad men.html">men, me run too, for presently they come look. Where you go?"
"To Mexico," I answered.
"No get Mexico, senor; bad men watch road and kill you with /machete/
live tell soldiers."
"Listen," said Emma. "Do you know the /hacienda/, Concepcion, by the
there to-morrow."
"Then show the way," I said, and we started towards the hills.
All that day we travelled over mountains as fast as the mules could
nothing more of the brigands, who, I suppose, took it for granted that
hut, where we contrived to buy some wretched food consisting of black
hovel made of open poles with a roof of faggots through which the
be more accurate, Emma slept, for my nerves were too shattered by the
my eyes.
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