The History of FGM & Sexual Repression in the West

by Jay Kaplon

Samuel-Autuste Tissot was a Swiss physician of the 18th century. He is perhaps the first to use “science” as a method of speaking out against masturbation and sexual desire, but surely the most influential for later generations. Today he’s more known for his works on migraines, but was also a prolific doctor who wrote on different diseases between the poor and rich, and also the “effects” of sex.

His main work against sexual desires is L’Onanisme. In it, he claims to have proven masturbation as a cause of both temporary and permanent effects including blurred vision and eventual blindness, gout, headaches, perception and memory loss and eventual madness or dementia, even muscle and nerve damage. His works against sex were so influential it would shape movements and views even to this day.

Sylvester Graham is best known today to the public by Graham Crackers. To this day vegans, organic dietitians, and other all-natural supporters praise him by name for his views on keeping food natural and also for his anti-meat views. Few though will praise his other views or his reasonings. Graham was an avid member in the America’s anti-sex movement.

He believed that animal products like meat and milk were the cause of lustful feelings. He believed that impure thoughts were stirred through them, and any animal product would have to be had in moderation. Even spices were evil to him. He was a firm believer that masturbation was the cause of several health problems including blindness and epilepsy.

According to him, all “impure” thoughts, desires and actions were caused almost entirely by diet. His publishing was so influential that Oberlin College enforced the diet on the campus for a brief period. He would also come to work with another figure in sexual repression: John Harvey Kellogg.

John Harvey Kellogg is perhaps the most extreme in the West’s anti-sex mindset. While Tissot and Graham were more influential and publishing, Kellogg was one to enforce action on both girls and boys; some even today are living with the effects. Most know Kellogg by Kellogg’s Cereal brands. This cereal was inspired by the Graham diet, which Kellogg heavily praised and encouraged, saying that cold and grainy cereal would help to curb impure desires and thoughts such as masturbation which to him was more dangerous than incest.

His writings stated that sexual acts and masturbation were causes of some cancers, incontinence, impotence, epilepsy, dementia, and even insanity. The horror of mutilation of children can be found in his works Plain Facts for Old and Young, and Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease.

When referring to masturbation, his “treatment” for girls and boys included tying their hands with rubber straps, chastity belts, cages over the genitals, even sewing genitals closed. Mutilation to both boys and girls was also recommended in the form of circumcision. He recommended that the operations be both painful and memorable in order to associate pain or even punishment with the idea of sex. He encouraged the doctors to traumatize the children. He recommended complete clitoral removal by means of cutting, or even by burning and dissolving with carbolic acid.

The works of Kellogg affect the West to this day. The practice of FGM can be found encouraged in medical texts as late as the 1970s as a method of curbing impure thoughts, though it mostly fell out of practice by the 1950s. Male circumcision has almost entirely fallen out of Europe and Australia, though the United States continues the practice of male cutting today.

There are still many mutilated victims of the anti-sex movement to this day, both men and women. One American victim of FGM who speaks out today: Patricia Robinett. Patricia Robinett is the author of The Rape of Innocence: Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision in the USA. There are many women like her alive and well to this day, each with a story to tell. It is a dark reality check and a reminder that even in a “civilized” and “advanced” society, there are still horrifying and barbaric practices to be found.

She can be found in the FGM awareness groups on Facebook and also her blog. Articles, books, and websites for further reading:

Samuel-Autuste Tissot: L’Onanisme
John Harvey Kellogg: Plain Facts for Old and Young
John Harvey Kellogg: Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease
Patricia Robinett: The Rape of Innocence: Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision in the USA

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Patricia has now made a website for information about simple yet very effective methods of releasing fear and trauma, as well as a community forum designed for peer support and coaching from professional helpers. So if you were cut or know anyone else who has been, or know a vet or someone with depression — please tell everyone. You can find it all at AuntiePatricia.com.

What are the longterm effects of circumcision?

A factor that is rarely considered in the circumcision discussion is its longterm effects.  What happens down the road when the baby becomes a child and then a teen, a man, a husband and father — a citizen of the world?  What comes after circumcision is not a pretty picture.

Where do you think all the yelling and punching and kicking and pushing come from in the only three cultures that circumcise their young (Jewish, English-speaking Christians, Muslims)? The rudeness and lack of empathy? Laughing at the misfortunes of others? Misogyny?  Lack of compassion? Or conversely, timidness, avoidance and withdrawal? Sexual dysfunction and incompatibility with the opposite sex? Preoccupation with sex and violence?

A circumcised child is taught in a nonverbal way that nobody cares about them. No one protects them. They were taught that life on planet earth is not fair, that you’d better just get with the program and not cry, not complain, because nobody’s going to hear you or help you anyway.  Do not expect love. Do not expect kindness. And do not give love or kindness to others, because you were denied them and you don’t have them to give. In fact, rejoice when others are hurt.

I speak from experience. It happened to me.  i am a WASP female, born and raised in Kansas.  FGM used to be big business in the USA.  MGM still is.  Yet I don’t see a big distinction between the two — all children who are circumcised are traumatized… either gender, at any age, wherever they are located on the globe. Circumcision ruins lives.

I am a Clinical Hypnotherapist and have worked with a lot of people on a lot of different forms of trauma. Preverbal, unconscious trauma is the worst form of trauma. Until the mind releases the fear, the person will forever after try to communicate their angst through various means that appear to others to be “irrational”, such as through night terrors, sexual fetishes, violence, sabotaging relationships, etc. They were hurt — and they hurt others.

Circumcision is not based on anything resembling logical, rational, reasonable thought. It induces a state of hypnosis, induced by trauma. Trauma begets trauma — generation after generation. Abuse begets abuse — generation after generation. When abuse is socially sanctioned, then abuse is demanded.  Blood ritual sets up a hunger for blood. Advocating for and performing circumcision are forms of “acting out” the abuse. Guilt compels repetition. And so it is passed on. Much healing is needed.

African model and author Waris Dirie says: “Female Genital mutilation has nothing to do with culture, tradition or religion. It is torture and a crime.” She is right, yet I say the same is true of male circumcision.

There is no demand from God for circumcision in the original story of Abraham — read The book of J. Circumcision is not from God, but from man. Jewish scholars know this. Jesus, who understood Judaism well, said, “Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs).”

Who would cut a child’s healthy genitals if was not already an established practice?  No one.  No one would cut any child’s genitals.  If a doctor or other authority figure was to suggest it, loving parents would take their child into their arms and run as fast and as far as they could in the opposite direction.

Those who advocate circumcision suffer from Munchausen Syndrome… for profit. They are advocating unnecessary harm to healthy genital tissue. And that harm is not limited to the body; it also affects the mind.

Circumcision is, in short, child abuse.

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Patricia has now made a website for information about simple yet very effective methods of releasing fear and trauma, as well as a community forum designed for peer support and coaching from professional helpers. So if you were cut or know anyone else who has been, or know a vet or someone with depression — please tell everyone. You can find it all at AuntiePatricia.com.