OVERVIEW OF Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment - In the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, American physicians treated women and girls for masturbation by removing the clitoris (clitoridectomy) or clitoral hood (female circumcision). During this same time, and continuing to today, physicians also performed female circumcision to enable women to reach orgasm. Though seemingly paradoxical, the dual purpose of these clitoral surgeries reflects consistent medical ideas about the clitoris as a sexual organ. In recent years both the popular media and academics have weighed in on the rising popularity in the United States of female genital cosmetic surgeries, including female circumcision, yet these discussions often assume such surgeries are new. In Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment, I present a surprising history of surgeries on the clitoris, revealing what the therapeutic use of clitoridectomy and female circumcision tells us about changing (and not so changing) medical ideas concerning the female body and female sexuality.
The book is available through booksellers or through the University of Rochester Press at http://www.urpress.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14559
INTERVIEWS - I was interviewed on Chicago Public Media's Vocalo in December 2014, and you can listen to that interview here: https://soundcloud.com/vocalo/a-medical-history-of-female-circumcision-in-the-united-states
BOOK REVIEWS
On the blog Nursing Clio: http://nursingclio.org/2015/01/06/clio-reads-female-circumcision-and-clitoridectomy-in-the-united-states-a-history-of-a-medical-treatment/
THE USE OF FEMALE CIRCUMCISION TO PROMOTE FEMALE ORGASM - A link to an article I wrote for Pacific Standard on the use of female circumcision to treat a lack of female orgasm can be found here: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/female-circumcision-sexual-therapy-past-future-plastic-surgery-73229/
FEMALE CIRCUMCISION, CLITORIDECTOMY, AND AMERICAN CULTURE - Read a blog post I did for Nursing Clio on the history of the practice in the United States here: http://nursingclio.org/2015/01/08/female-circumcision-clitoridectomy-and-american-culture/