Bowers learned the clitoralplasty procedure from Dr. Pierre Foldes, a French doctor who pioneered the technique. He performs the surgery and trains fellow doctors despite receiving death threats. The procedure reshapes the anatomy and restores pleasurable sensation in 80 percent of patients.

The story is just as much about Dr. Bowers’ patients as it is about her. Sila Folow, who is from Mali, was 8 years old when a group of elderly women held her down and, using a sharp blade, cut out her clitoris and most of her labia. Unsatisfied with the results, they cut her again three weeks later. “They really got her good,” Dr. Bowers lamented as she operated on Sila. Sila moved to the U.S. as a teenager and married an African man when she was 20. Now Sila’s mother, who was also mutilated as a child, hopes to have the operation too.

Bowers performed a clitoral operation and plastic surgery for a woman named Ngozi, whose labia were entirely cut away when she was a baby.

“Now when I look at myself I feel like a woman,” says Ngozi, who says she has even experienced orgasms for the first time in her life. “It’s beautiful, I just love it, it feels like you’re melting. Before it irritated me when my husband tried to touch me, now I reach out to him.”

Mariam, a woman who was circumcised as an infant in Mauritania, was a patient of Dr. Bowers. “When I cross my legs or sit in a certain way, I feel something,” she says. “It’s kind of exciting. You keep wanting to do it.” I can’t help but smile at those gleeful comments.

The primary source of referrals to Dr. Bowers is an organization called Clitoraid. It also helped to fund Dr. Bowers’s training under Dr. Foldes. According to its mission statement, Clitoraid focuses on connecting women with trained surgeons in order to “create real, long-lasting changes for women who have been forced to experience clitoral excision or genital mutilation against their will.” It also provides financial aid.

Dr. Bowers performs these surgeries free of charge. “As Dr. Foldes has said, you cannot charge money to reverse a crime against humanity,” she says. What a profound and beautiful sentiment. Dr. Bowers and is a hero to these women and, as this older piece highlights, to her trans patients as well.

Via Aaron Landry @ Flickr.

Last week, Becky drafted Senator Al Franken (D-MN) to Team Womanity, and yesterday he proved his worthiness yet again.

You might remember the horrific story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who, while employed in Iraq by KBR/Halliburton (the companies are now two separate entities), was brutally, horrifically gang-raped by a number of her co-workers.  She has pursued legal action against the company for failing to ensure her safety (one might even say by ensuring her victimhood), but a clause in her contract stated that all legal claims–including those regarding sexual harassment and assault–be resolved through arbitration.  While that system seems okay on paper, once you do a little research and realize that corporations are the ones hiring and paying the supposedly neutral arbitrators, and that the vast majority of arbitrated cases are decided in favor of the corps, you realize it’s a giant screw job for workers masquerading as justice.  In any case, a recent decision from an appeals court means that Jones will have her day in court (and we will be watching).

Although Jones is Texan and thus not one of Franken’s constituents, he sponsored an addition to a federal defense spending bill that prohibits the U.S. government from awarding contract to firms who use arbitration to resolve claims like sexual misconduct, assault, and discrimination.

Despite the trollish grumbling from a number of free-marketeers worried about the awful, boner- and business-killing effect of the amendment, it passed yesterday 68-30; Sens. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Arlen Specter (D-PA) did not vote.  All 30 “nays” were cast by Republicans.  Anyone surprised?  You can see how each senator voted at the U.S. Senate site (thanks to SarahMC for the link!), and weigh in your praise or shame with your elected officials.

And if you’re a Minnesotan–or hell, even if you’re not–you might consider contacting Sen. Franken’s office to let him know you appreciate his efforts on behalf of Jamie Leigh Jones and women and workers all over the U.S.:

Do yourself a favor and go read this story.  We all need some good news, and some inspiration to do whatever it is we can do to make the world safe for women.  Dr.  LeRoy  and Mary Lou Carhart are gifts.