Becoming a woman in the 1950s

[mindstalk]

http://blinkytreefrog.livejournal.com/80660.html

(From 2005, so old news for some. Nicked from James.)

Comments

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. How to convey to teenagers social norms without brainwashing them. Always a toughie!

[mrs-feltner.livejournal.com]

thank god i did not have to try to figure myself out in the 50s. jesus.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Figure yourself out? But there was a manual telling you all about you!
>)

Female Circumcision

[slow-war.livejournal.com]

I am kind of amazed that female circumcision was an option in the 50s.

Re: Female Circumcision

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Scary, yep. Author belonged to a something of Medical Evangelists.

edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting


C.F. McDonald wrote in a 1958 paper titled "Circumcision of the Female"[41] "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 symptoms as "irritation, scratching, irritability, masturbation, frequency and urgency," and in adults, smegmaliths causing "dyspareunia and frigidity." The author then reported that a two-year old was no longer masturbating so frequently after the procedure. Of adult women, the author stated that "for the first time in their lives, sex ambition became normally satisfied."

http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=6

By the 1950s advocacy of female circumcison (meaning excision of the clitoral hood) had become a rather fringe preoccupation, but the the idea was not entirely dead.

http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=45069