Finger Pricks and Blood Vials: How doctors medicalize 'cultural' solutions to demedicalize the 'broken' hymen in the Netherlands.
This paper provides new perspectives on the scholarship on medicalization and demedicalization, building on an ethnography of hymenoplasty consultations in the Netherlands. By examining how doctors can play an active role in demedicalization, this paper presents novel insights into Dutch physicians' attempt to demedicalize the "broken" hymen. In their consultations, Dutch doctors persuade hymenoplasty patients to abandon the assumed medical definition of the "broken" hymen and offer nonmedical solutions to patients' problems. Drawing from unique ethnographical access from 2012 to 2015 to 70 hymenoplasty consultations in the Netherlands, this paper's original contribution comes from closely examining how demedicalization can be achieved through the process of medicalization. It investigates how Dutch physicians go even further in their efforts to demedicalize by medicalizing "cultural" solutions as an alternative course of action to surgery.
Anthropology Department, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1114, McMillan Hall, Room 112, One Brookings Drive. St. Louis, MO 63130, USA; Department of Sociology, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: sayuand@wustl.edu.
Sherria
S
Ayuandini
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000379:methods; D065246:Culturally Competent Care / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006924:Hymen / Q000601:surgery*; D062528:Medicalization / Q000379:methods*; D009426:Netherlands / Q000208:ethnology; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology / Q000639:trends; D012746:Sexual Abstinence / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*
Demedicalization; Hymenoplasty; Hymenorrhaphy; Medical anthropology; Medicalization; Sexuality; Surgery; The Netherlands