Bill calling trans healthcare “female genital mutilation” allows husband stitches for teenage girls
It’s the same people writing the same laws for the same purpose: gaining full control over sex and sexuality.
It’s the same people writing the same laws for the same purpose: gaining full control over sex and sexuality.
By Artemis T. Douglas and Jane Migliara Brigham
The ban on trans youth healthcare that calls HRT “Genital and bodily mutilation of a minor” - and which just passed the US House on Wednesday - has a loophole allowing for husband stitches to be performed on teenage girls after they have given birth.
Husband stitches are a medically unnecessary procedure done on women after childbirth to tighten their vaginas for the pleasure of men who penetrate them. These are almost always done without the knowledge or consent of the women involved.
The loophole that would allow this in the bill is almost a word for word copy of the same loophole from the federal ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) for minors. Just as with that statute, this bill would allow doctors to tighten a teenage girl's vagina without her knowledge or consent, as long as it is done after childbirth, when she is likely too exhausted to notice.
Here is the wording for the exception from the trans youth healthcare ban:
“(ii) in the case of female genital mutilation, performed on a minor in labor or who has just given birth and is performed for medical purposes connected with that labor or birth by a person licensed in the place it is performed as a medical practitioner, midwife, or person in training to become such a practitioner or midwife.”
And here is the exception from the federal definition of FGM
performed on a person in labor or who has just given birth and is performed for medical purposes connected with that labor or birth by a person licensed in the place it is performed as a medical practitioner, midwife, or person in training to become such a practitioner or midwife.
Within the very bill that calls trans healthcare a form of mutilation, there exists an exception to the ban on genital surgery which appears to be written to allow the type of FGM that is popular among the kinds of men who get teenage girls pregnant.
If nothing else, it shows that the writers of the bill were thinking of husband stitches while they drafted the legislation.
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All research on these procedures shows that they are detrimental to the physical and mental health of patients, leading to long term complications with no benefits for the patient.
This aligns with Admiral Brian Christine’s remarks at the HHS press conference yesterday. Admiral Christine gave the patriarchal game away when he said, “we need strong healthy boys and girls who will know the joy of coming together as one and starting their own family one day and if they are subjected to these sex rejecting procedures that will not happen.”
The entire anti-trans reaction, at present, is a patriarchal reaction empowered by reactionary sentiments regarding natalism and demographic shift.
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