close button
Switch to Iranwire Light?
It looks like you’re having trouble loading the content on this page. Switch to Iranwire Light instead.
Society & Culture

A Light Bulb Moment on Ethics and Sex Toys

October 9, 2014
Shima Shahrabi
5 min read
A Light Bulb Moment on Ethics and Sex Toys
A Light Bulb Moment on Ethics and Sex Toys

A Light Bulb Moment on Ethics and Sex Toys

 

A video of a light bulb being extracted from the vagina of an unidentified woman during surgery has gone viral on the internet, shared by an estimated 500,000 people across Persian-language social networks, helped by the hashtag (#لامپ) on Twitter. The voyeuristic response to the YouTube clip has led to widespread discussion online about medical ethics and the need for access to safe, specialist sex devices in Iran, with thousands of comments being posted on Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber.

The footage, which is two minutes and 25 seconds long, features a woman’s vagina surrounded by green sheets. In the background, a doctor is heard asking for forceps and then attempts to extract the foreign object. The surgical team discusses the importance of ensuring the light bulb remains intact so as to not seriously injure the patient. The video ends with the doctor successfully removing the 100-watt bulb. The patient’s face is not shown, and neither are the faces of the doctor or nurses. According to reports, medical students leaked the video to social networks.

Iranian gynecologist Dr. Ghazal Kavari, saw the video, and told IranWire she has come across the phenomenon before. “Not long ago I had to remove a glass cup from a woman’s vagina, but I first saw this kind of thing when I was at medical school working in the gynecology ward. A young woman had tried to pleasure herself using a spray can. You come across these types of things in general surgery as well.”

Dr. Amir Hossein Karimi, a general surgeon at the Modarres hospital in Tehran, says he had also seen similar cases, having had to remove anything from fizzy drink bottles to TV remote controls and spray cans from the rectums of his patients. He says he has dealt with about 15 such cases over the last four years.

“Usually when a foreign object is stuck inside a vagina, it is a gynecologist that performs the surgery but if something gets stuck in the rectum via the anus it is a general surgeon who performs the procedure,” Dr. Karimi told IranWire.

Dr. Kavari explains why the medical team were worried the bulb would break inside the vagina. “If it had broken it would have ruptured the walls of the vagina and potentially damaged the opening to the womb and the intestines,” she says.

When Dr. Kavari removed the glass cup, it remained in one piece but she once treated a patient who had a broken bottle stuck inside his rectum. “The patient had tried to extract the bottle himself, which meant it broke and ruptured the rectum. I then had to sew the colon back together,” he says.

Dr. Karimi believes some of his patients, who are all men, generally over the age of 55, suffer from mental problems and need to see a psychiatrist. However social media users contest this, arguing that it is because sex toys are hard to access in Iran that people turn to unconventional objects.

 

Not a Mental Disorder

Dr. Kavari agrees that the lack of easily accessible sex toys is a significant contributing factor. “Not all patients are suffering from mental disorders,” she says. “They use these other objects because they can’t find specialist devices. These devices are not dangerous. They are safe and hygienic, whereas other objects are often contaminated. Not only do they carry germs but they cause abrasions in the vagina and in the opening to the womb, which then causes infections.”

“Masturbation is a universal phenomenon and isn’t unusual,” says Dr. Valentine Artunian, a psychiatrist at Tehran’s Roozbeh hospital. Statistics show that “all men and two thirds of women have masturbated at some point in their lives.” He is quick to point out that masturbation should only be regarded as a mental disorder if an individual cannot carry out their normal daily activities because of it.

The fact that an individual uses a dangerous object to masturbate should be taken into consideration, but “to prove mental disorder we need to take into account other factors as well. For instance, I can’t say for sure that the patient in the video is mentally disturbed or mentally healthy until I’ve spoken to her. Some people who masturbate with dangerous objects have mental disorders, just like in any other country. But what’s different in Iran is that here some people aren’t aware of the dangers these objects can cause and turn to them because they have no access to specialist devices.”

Countries around the world have witnessed instances of people masturbating with potentially dangerous objects. For example, in the United States, surgeons have reported having to remove objects such as corn on the cob, radio antennas, spoons, forks and spray cans from rectums and vaginas.

Along with social media users, doctors have weighed in to the debate about whether it is ever ethical  to post an explicit video depicting this kind of surgery. “Medical ethics tells me that as a physician I cannot disclose anything about my patient unless I have his or her permission or a court order forces me to do so, let alone display the patient’s sexual organs” explains Dr. Artunian. Doctors Karimi and Kavari also agree that streaming the video has no educational or journalistic merit.

“The patient is going to see the video and read the comments eventually,” says Dr. Artunian when asked about the video going viral. “Maybe others won’t recognize her but she’ll know it’s her. And this could be a significant psychological blow to the patient, so much so she may never go back to having a normal life. Publishing this is one hundred percent unethical.”

He adds, “I wish people would think about the person lying under those green sheets.” 

comments

Images of Iran

Today's newspapers in Iran

October 8, 2014
IranWire
Today's newspapers in Iran