A Short History of the Institutionalization of Involuntary Sexual Mutilation in the United States

Abstract

For the past 130 years, the American medical industry has been involved in the business of removing part or all of the external sexual organs of male and female children. While the origin of sexual mutilation among prehistoric primitive peoples is a matter for theory and speculation, the origin and spread of sexual mutilation in American medical practice can be precisely documented. Seen in the proper context of the entire scope of Western history, the modern American enigma of institutionalized sexual mutilation is an historic aberration of profound significance and degree, one that could never have been predicted, and one that perhaps could not have been avoided.