Medical professionals often have the final say in deciding what counts as a “defect.” Often, their decisions exceed the bounds of medicine, addressing bodies that may deviate from “normal” or “average,” but do not actually cause\u00a0medical problems.<\/p>\n
An alternative might be to allow the patient to decide if his or her\u00a0body is\u00a0acceptable, but in doing so they risk allowing people’s deeply subjective and often dysmorphic perceptions of their own bodies determine whether they undergo a risky procedure.<\/p>\n
Is\u00a0there another way?<\/p>\n
Pediatric surgeon Norma Ruppen-Greeff and hers colleagues thought so<\/a>.\u00a0Pediatric physicians often correct\u00a0hypospadias: a condition in which\u00a0the meatus, or opening of the urethra, doesn’t\u00a0quite make it to the top of the penis during fetal development, such that the urethra exits the penis somewhere along the shaft. This is generally corrected surgically, but physicians found that some men returned to them as adults with concerns that their penis still appeared abnormal.<\/p>\n Instead of dismissing men’s concerns\u00a0or jumping with a knife, they decided to\u00a0ask women if they\u00a0noticed. They had 105\u00a0women fill out a questionnaire and rate which aspects of\u00a0penile appearance were important to them. And, lo and behold, the shape and placement of the meatus was the least important. No need for\u00a0surgery, plus they can reassure the guys that they’re okay.\u00a0(Someone should\u00a0follow up and ask\u00a0gay and bisexual men; anyone for an awesome senior thesis?)<\/p>\n This is a great way to measure\u00a0the sociocultural value of a surgery. Whereas we’re used to\u00a0thinking about surgical issues as psychological (someone wants it) or medical (someone needs it), these physicians asked\u00a0a distinctly sociological question. They measured\u00a0how penises are widely perceived and which parts are socially constructed as important. That’s a pretty neat way to incorporate sociological realities into surgical practice.<\/p>\n Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Medical professionals often have the final say in deciding what counts as a “defect.” Often, their decisions exceed the bounds of medicine, addressing bodies that may deviate from “normal” or “average,” but do not actually cause\u00a0medical problems. An alternative might be to allow the patient to decide if his or her\u00a0body is\u00a0acceptable, but in doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,230,2103,2091,2087,252,675,693,293,23647],"class_list":["post-67527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-cosmetic-surgery","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-healthmedicine","tag-psychology","tag-public-opinion","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-social-problems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/162.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67750,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67527\/revisions\/67750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}