‘Believe it or not’: the medical framing of rectal foreign bodies

Abstract

Medical and lay attention to and intervention for rectal foreign bodies, the presence of an object in the rectum most often via insertion through the anus, has long been a source of humour and suspicion in both medical and public discourses. How do the ways medical providers write and talk to each other about rectal foreign bodies shape and reflect understandings of gender, sexuality and the (im)proper use of the anus and rectum? This paper examines the medical literature on rectal foreign bodies to shed light on the ways in which medical providers frame rectal foreign bodies. It develops a set of six frames that demonstrate how the medical literature on rectal foreign bodies (re)produces a variety of normative assumptions about and sociocultural values concerning bodies and sexuality, danger, shame, deception, mental illness and medical professionalism. It concludes with a discussion of how these framings of rectal foreign bodies might potentially contribute to the ongoing stigmatisation not only of rectal foreign body patients, but of non-heteronormative sexualities in general.

Keywords:

• Rectum
• foreign bodies
• disease framing
• heteronormativity
• medical practice
• medical literature

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the people who provided input and feedback on this work, including Mark Nichter, Jill Fleuriet, Victor Braitberg, Emma Bunkley, Brittany Power and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments.

Notes

1. I use the term ‘heteronormative’ to refer to the implicit view of cisgender (i.e. non-transgender) reproductive heterosexuality as natural and normal to the extent that it is the assumed default subject position. For more on this topic, see Rich (1980), Warner (1993), Katz ([1995] 2007), Sullivan (2003), Boellstorff (2004) and Dean (2014).

2. The type of ‘framing’ used here is not the same as the concept is used in linguistics. Aronowitz developed the concept of framing as a way to avoid the baggage attached to ‘social construction of disease’, which he argues can include ‘a style of dated cultural relativism, a lack of common sense, and a reflexive opposition to biomedicine’ (Aronowitz 2008, 2).

3. Interestingly, the chapter on foreign bodies in this early proctology textbook, which includes a discussion about rectal foreign bodies inserted through the anus, appears just before the chapter titled, ‘Sodomy (Pederasty) and Rectal Onanism (Rectal Masturbation).’.

4. An in-depth discussion of trends in this literature must be taken up in a future publication.

5. Except for the ‘danger’ framing, which has remained steady over time, all frames are increasing in frequency over time.

6. Due to limitations of space, this issue of public discourses of rectal foreign bodies must be taken up elsewhere.

7. I thank the anonymous reviewer for bringing this article to my attention and also pointing out the embeddedness of these kinds of framings even in literature meant to reduce their prevalence.