The Stars and the Cookie Jar

My surgery was decidedly not elegant. Nobody bothered to check if my urethra got put back in the right place (it wasn't, which makes it hard to give a urine sample, believe it or not) or whether my clit was off to the left a little (it is -- which might be why I came late to masturbation. Hehe. Came late.) It was just. oh, looks fine, it'll do the job --which I'm sure, always given the caveat of cultural relativism,  is what happens in the minds of those performing FGM in other countries. This is fine! This is the way we've always done it.

I think I still struggle with it because, aside from the purely logistical concerns (a narrow vaginal canal, a fixed, rigid cervix, and scar tissue that opens like, well, tissue) I feel like it wasn't .... respectful? Mindful? Something. That surgeon had a responsibility to me, and I think he/she failed. Yes, you're doing delicate reconstructive surgery, and you're busy, and maybe you can be forgiven if it's a little slapdash, right? You're trying not to add more to the physical trauma.

But you're doing it to a child who doesn't understand, has no say, and can't express themselves about it because they have no context. It is your job to think about the emotional as well as physical traumas of that child's future. Is that difficult? Does it take any longer to put things back in the right place? And the thing is, I'm pretty sure that long-ago surgeon didn't likely even think about whether everything was hooked up right because probably he didn't CARE. Twenty years later, I work perfectly fine for bog-standard, missionary sex. Sure, I could never deliver vaginally if I became pregnant, but there's a surgery for that, too.