Part Two: The (Male) Doctor Who Redesigned Vaginas

Robert is joined again by Courtney Kocak to continue to discuss Dr. James Burt.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what committing illegal surgery my nightmare obstetricians? How is that?
I mean, I was definitely an improvement over Tuesday's intro,
which was, well, that was pretty good. I thought. I
thought that got a lot of a lot of emotion out.

(00:21):
I got a hype on that intro for sure, Thank you. Yeah.
So Courtney Kossak returning for part two of the story
of Dr James Burt, the man who decided he could
to vaginas better. So happy to be back in honor
of this wonderful man, this this hero. Um, how are you?

(00:43):
How you? How you how you doing? As we roll
into part two, Courtney, UM, I feel I'm just clutching
my vagina tightly, just trying to keep it, trying to
keep it as God intended or whatever that means. You
gotta clutch it tightly because he's still out there. So
where right, just lurking around Florida retirement communities? Oh god, Yeah,

(01:06):
there's gotta be some retirement communities that they're going to
have some dark stories in a little bit. Um, but yeah,
you know, he's he sucks, And we're going to talk
about one of the more unsettling books I've ever heard of,
so when we last left our hero seems like the
wrong word. Dr James Burt and his fourth wife Joan.

(01:26):
They had co authored a book called Surgery of Love.
It was aimed at creating popular demand for his love Surgery.
I have attempted to find a copy of this book,
but as of yet I have been unable to do so. Thankfully,
significant details about it exists, both thanks to the book
The Love Surgeon and from a story and the Archives

(01:47):
of Sexual Behavior, also written by Sarah Rodriguez, who I
assume must have acquired a copy herself. The information I
found on this book makes me think that it must
be among the most offensively misogynist things ever written. It
is a fascinating mix of paternalistic chauvinism and creepily sex
positive pseudoscience. Chapter titles include graced for impact here after

(02:12):
titals include Okay, this one's gonna hurt. All right, I'm
gonna take a sip of zevia here that soothes the horror. Okay,
tighter Titus, That would have been an improvement. Courtney. Um oh, no,
I read ahead. It's bad. Yeah, here's the first title

(02:32):
I'm gonna read. There is no foreplay in ecstasy of
living and loving Colon only orgasmic loving. I don't even
know what The next chapter, optimal sexual Functioning is sexual
ecstasy beyond the wildest imagination of most people come up
but within reach of all exclamation point a lot of

(02:55):
random capitalizing in here, too. Love is most people have
been living it with their mates, will ultimately destroy their
sexual ecstasy. Oh my god, and my personal favorite, how
any man can make his woman into a seething, massive,
perpetual passion for himself, simm colin your own private sex

(03:16):
pot in your own private world. Shut up, Robert, that's
a chapter, Your own private sex pot in your own
private world. That's he should be canceled today, retroactively, he
should be. That's the that's the goal of this cancel
culture has finally come from the for for the love Surgeon.

(03:36):
It's bad, and there's a lot that's in that last chapter.
In particular, I think it really highlights the thing that's
never admitted. But his key to all this, which is jealousy,
and not just even jealousy that your wife might be cheating,
but that there might be other men who are a
better lover than you. That's what this is about right,
is like being able to feel like you're some porn
star dynamo um and surgically altering the body of your

(03:59):
partner in order to do that, because learning things is
for is for cooks. It's it's great. Did he ever
state that I would no, no, this you gotta read
in between, but like you don't title a chapter. Yeah,
that's bad. Yeah, your own private sex spot in your

(04:19):
own like the fact that like your own private world, right,
a world where there are no other men, where there's
no possibility of her taking another lover. She's so obsessed
with you and your dick. Um, That's that's what he's
saying there. You know, these are profoundly insecure, man, you
would have to be to do this. The book opens
with a biography of the authors, who write that they

(04:41):
quote manage the children still at home, two small boys
and their homes and Dayton and Veil. Their lives are
totally dedicated to each other, with their hobbies of travel
and skiing and writing secondary to just always being together
and pleasuring each other. Now, obviously James is prior marriages
and the allegations of a US against him are left out.
As you might get guess from that last line I quoted,

(05:03):
the whole book frames marriage is being first and foremost
about constantly fucking each other. Dr Birt is very clear
that he believes the key to a happy marriage is twofold,
incessant boning and a woman who is totally submissive to
her husband. In the book, he attacks what he calls
the quote current definition of love is defined by the
daily living habits of most people. The healthy variant of

(05:27):
this would be to recognize that the burdens of life
and modern society and raising children often cause couples to
lose sight of the joys of physical intimacy, and it
can be good to be reminded of that, right, That's
the healthy version of what he's saying. What he's saying
is that having lives outside of constantly sexually pleasuring each
other is a distraction from the only thing that makes
marriage worthwhile right and potentially a threat. Yeah, and a threat. Potentially,

(05:49):
anything that's not fucking um is a threat to the
only reason you would want to be with a person.
It's a very shallow view of intimacy. Now, it takes
a lot for me to say this book is too
pro sex, but this book is certainly too pro a
very specific and unhealthy kind of sex, and Dr Bert's view,

(06:10):
sex is the only thing that matters in a healthy relationship.
He urges couples to quote disregard previous definitions of the
word love in order to concentrate on what he calls
the ecstasy of living and loving. Bert advises the couples
reading his book to take absolutely every opportunity to touch
and fondle each other. He provides the example that if

(06:30):
a woman is cooking bacon in the morning, her husband
should go through her clothing to manipulate her clitterest until
she orgasms. The love surgery, he notes, will make this
breakfast fondling easier, as a circumcised clitterest would allow for
the woman to climax in a matter of seconds. This
makes it clear that again, the purpose of his surgery
is less about a woman's pleasure and more about making

(06:52):
it easier for the man to feel like a sex god.
He bragged that after surgery, a husband would be able
to bring his wife to orgasm with quote a blink
or two of his eyelashes. Oh my god, I'm just
in a perpetual cringe. It's it's very good Um, I

(07:13):
mean yeah. Bert goes on to write that every aspect
of daily living ought to be focused entirely around love
and physical loving. His surgery then, was so necessary because
biology got in the way of a couple fucking the
way and with the frequency that doctor James Burt wanted
personally to fuck. According to The New York Times, Bert's

(07:36):
book included this real banger of a line quote, women
are structurally inadequate for intercourse. This is a pathological condition
amenable to surgery. Oh my god, structurally inadequate. Did he
ever take a second to think it might be him? No, no, no,
this is not a man who spent one solitary second

(07:57):
of his life analyzing his own behavior. Also, do you
love how he just straight up redefined the word love.
He's like, actually, I've got some notes on love as well. Yeah.
Love is actually all this stuff about like partnering and
like you know, potentially like raising human beings or even
just like taking on the burdens and difficulties of life together.

(08:17):
It's just boning. It's just constant, constant banging. That's all
that it is. Yeah, it's very again, a very sad
view of and it's you know, this guy is raised
in a repressive sexual culture. You can see some of
what he's doing is kind of like a reaction to
the sex negative attitudes that he would have been raised with,

(08:37):
but he takes it in like an equally unhealthy opposite direction.
It's great. Yep. Burtas shares his readers in the book
that love surgery will turn any woman into a quote
horny little mouse. Love surgery was the magic key to

(09:00):
quote fixed women, both from the inherent deficiency of their
biology and from the strains of childbirth. He wrote that
having children made many women large enough to drive a
truck through sideways. As I already noted, he described their
vaginas as real clappers, by which he meant he had enough,
by which he meant he had enough room to clap
his hands in their vagina. Oh my, oh my god,

(09:24):
Mary and Joseph, what the fuck guy? You should have
gotten his medical lice and just taken away for that comment. Yeah. That.
I often think if we could replace our federal law
enforcement agencies with just a group of men and women
in suits who find people who are who say really

(09:45):
shitty things and just just walk up to them. A couple,
couple of couple of people in suits with briefcases walk
up to him like, are you such and such yeah,
and then just hit him right in the face in public.
That would be the comment that that would yeah, just
just a just a g man hitting him in the
jaw in the middle of a Denny's would have been
the right response to writing that you don't even yeah,

(10:07):
you can just oh my god, it hurts. It's it's
it's awful, it's a nightmare. Doctor Burt's version of intimacy
gives absolutely no time or consideration to the ability of
women to give themselves orgasm. He does not consider climaxing
to be a thing that couples work towards together either. Instead,
he seems to view orgasm as something a man gives

(10:30):
a woman. Bert wrote that men quote with their superior
physical strength should lovingly physically force their wives to have
multiple orgasms until she quote just can't stand it. If
she should demand that he stop and say that she's
had enough, Doctor Burt advises using physical strength to quote
force her to submit for quote further and further and

(10:53):
further orgasms. Dr Burt goes on to write that the
only difference between rape and rapture was salesmanship. Oh my
fucking god, somewhat. His first wife should have just taken
that straight to the courthouse. Yeah, rapists just aren't good salesman.

(11:18):
It's so horrible, a nightmare. I don't even have a joke. No, no,
what what can you say about that line? How can
you write that line without bursting into flames? It's amazing?
Great copyrighting though, great. Thank yeah, Look, the man was
a literary titan. The misogyny dripping from this book is

(11:43):
particularly clear when Dr Burt writes about his fourth wife,
Joan from the Love Surgeon quote. Although Joan Burt was,
according to the author Biographies and the Flap of Surgery
of Love, and accomplished actress and musician, and a sought
after professional and real estate with great artistic abilities. In
James Burt to view, a wife must give exclusive attention
in her private life to her husband in every and

(12:05):
all ways, and focus attention on his once needs, goals,
and face her children in the world at large. Is
a member of a loving couple, not as an individual.
A good wife, according to Bert, will never, at any time,
in any way in public or private, be critical or
demanding of her husband. Bert's emphasis if the husband wanted
his wife to gain or lose weight, dress a certain way,

(12:25):
or wear makeup, she should do so. Bert believed in
both their social and sexual roles, women were to be supine.
Oh my god, I would never have got I don't know.
How are you supposed to get married in this day
and age? Uh? You mean back when Bert's writing it? Yes. Oh,
if a man decides he's interested in you, you just

(12:47):
do whatever he says. Look, that's the beauty of Dr
Birt's but you don't have a choice. It's fine as
long as he's a good salesman. Uh, real piece of shit. Ye.
On the up side, there's no upside. Yeah. I was like,

(13:08):
where you're going with that, buddy? Is he still performing surgery? Oh? Absolutely?
Oh my gosh. You think he's gonna stop once he
publishes his book? Though this is the book is trying
to get more people to take it. He's decided to
go public with it. Right, he's an announcing that he's
doing his surgery. Dr Burt decided that this book, which
he hoped would help his love surgery be taken seriously

(13:29):
by the medical community, was a good place to brag
about how good he was at fucking his wife. And
I'm gonna quote from medical bag here. The book even
bragged that his wife was one of the doctor's most
successful patients and that quote. Joan has climax and elevators
from the same path Southampton, Princess in Bermuda to the
Kualima in Hawaii, more than many women do in their

(13:49):
entire lives. Basically, she she orgasms more on like cruise
ship elevators than most women ever do in their whole
lives because I'm sucking her in the elevators of all
these cruise ships. Oh, I fucking got and she got
the clip surgery. Yeah, yeah, he did. He did all
the stuff to her. Joan Burt also commented that her
husband had finally, for the first time, given women quote

(14:12):
the opportunity to enjoy sex. Oh my god, beautiful brainwashing
some ancient Roman ladies. I might introduce him to. Yeah. So.
According to The New York Times, Dr Burt also used
his book as a place to admit to the world
that he had been committing love surgery for years without
the consent of his patients. Quote in the book, Dr

(14:35):
Burt admitted to performing reconstructive surgery on many hundreds of
women without their consent, usually after the birth of a child.
The patient, he wrote, had not been informed that anything
more had been done to her than delivery and epsiotomy repair,
or yes, you had stitches with your delivery. This is
in fact outrageous, but it didn't seem that way to

(14:56):
an awful lot of people at the time. And this
is because the Nine Teams seventies was the era in
which informed consent in the medical context did not quite
mean what it does now. The existence of informed consent
as a legal term and a required precursor for receiving
a medical procedure only dates back to nineteen seventy one
and has only been official in a meaningful way since

(15:19):
nineteen seventy three. Even then it did not and again
people started talking about this. There were doctors in like
the late fifties talking about the fact that we need
to be getting informed consent, but it's not really mandated
until the early seventies, and even then they're using the
term conformed consent. You and I would not call what
most doctors were getting in that period informed consent. The

(15:40):
idea like now, when you say, like you need informed
consent to a procedure. It means patients or at least
the patients you know, representative in the case of like
a medical power of attorney, should have full comprehension of
the risks and consequences of a procedure before they can
be consented to have considered to have consented to it. Right,
you can't just tell someone what it's supposed to do.
You have to tell them what could go wrong, you know, like,
otherwise you're not really consenting. Early medical consent laws did

(16:04):
not do a good job and of ensuring the full
comprehension part. They were a huge step forward because now
surges and doctors had to at least get an okay
before agreeing to something. Um In the early days of
informed consent as a legal requirement, doctors would often just
hand waivers to patients and brusquely tell them you need
to sign this before I can give you the treatment
that you need. Right, you're gonna die unless I do this,

(16:26):
sign this paper without like they wouldn't actually tell them much,
you know, well, and he's doing all these like freestyle
in off label surgeries. Can you just do that ship
these days? Or does it have to be like this
is a standardized thing that we do. And this is
I mean you can do there are like less regulated

(16:47):
forms of um um uh cosmetic surgery in particular, so
you don't have to like you don't have to like
like get a bunch of doctors to sign off on
it necessarily, but you do have to inform them of
what you're doing, what it involves, in the risks of it.
And again there's still issues with this today. You know,
there's people who get uh breast augmentation surgery that aren't

(17:09):
adequately informed by by doctors even very like like prominent
doctors of like the consequences of that and how it
can go wrong because it's it's kind of a grifty
industry a lot of the but but it's better now,
right like because at least if you even if you
kind of get screwed over by a doctor who doesn't
inform you of the risks, you know you're going in
there for a surgery, as opposed to just like well,

(17:32):
I'm just gonna get a normal post pregnancy thing and
he moves your clitteress, you know, like it is it is.
Things have improved. Um yeah. Now we've already mentioned um yeah,
so in the nineteen fifties to the yearly nineteen seventies,
when James performed the majority of his love surgeries, it
was not uncommon for doctors to just do stuff to patients.
We've already mentioned that a psotomies were commonly performed with

(17:54):
that consent, as were the repairs. But even in this
lax environment, Dr Burt stood out it is one thing
to perform surgery considered necessary at the time without consent,
and that's not a good thing. But it's different from
performing experimental surgery on a patient's to change their genitalia
without informing them. There is a difference, right. It wasn't
normal to get consent for these kind of procedures in

(18:16):
the day, But also most doctors weren't doing what he
was doing, you know. M That said, the rather hazy
status of consent in the medical field in the late
seventies meant that doctor Bird's admissioned that he had been
performing love surgery on thousands of random people did not
have the impact you might expect. There were no criminal
charges filed, there was no mass campaign against his medical license.

(18:39):
This was an era in which a man seeking of
assectomy would often be denied because the doctor thought he
was too young. So like it's a different time in
terms of our attitudes towards these things. There's ay, we'll
talk about a little later. There is a feminist outcry
against his book, but it's not about consent um because
that's not really a big topic of discussion at the time.
It's starting to come one by the eighties. It kind

(19:01):
of is, but that's not that's not the main issue
they have with it. Initially, James threw everything he had
into a massive press campaign that followed the release of
his book. He actually put his entire practice on hold
to try and drum up interest in his love surgery.
From a write up in the Archives of Sexual Behavior
quote a month after the book's publication, the local Dayton
Daily News ran an uncritical article about the surgery under

(19:24):
the headline local doctor develops corrective surgery. In the article,
Bert claimed that nearly a hundred percent of the women
who had undergone love surgery were a static with the results,
and his wife and co author Joan added that her
husband had given women the opportunity to enjoy sex. The
book provided Bert within the surgery with increased exposure, and
in nineteen seventy six, he began offering it as an
elective for fifteen hundred dollars plus plus hospitalization costs. The

(19:48):
two hour long surgery required five days in the hospital,
at least a week of sitting on an inner tube,
and six to eight weeks without sex. Yeah, oh god,
it hurts. You know, it doesn't hurt. The products and
services that support this podcast won't cause you pain. They
always get informed consent. So if you play me out, uh, alright,

(20:21):
so we're back, unfortunately, unfortunatally, so sorry. These women who
are paying at least know what's going on, right, Yes, yes,
they do at least know what's going on. Um, you
can argue, I mean, there are arguments to be made

(20:42):
that he does not provide them with and he doesn't
provide them with really adequate information about the consequences of this.
But they do know that they're getting a surgery to
rearrange their vaginas. So that's something now that's not everyone
even in this period that he performs the surgery on
which we'll talk about, but he does now have people

(21:03):
who are consenting to it, so that's a forward. Now.
At the same time, doctor Burt started offering his love
surgeries an elective surgery. It was legal for physicians to
advertise their services, or at least not illegal, but like
it was, it was the kind of thing you would
get in trouble for. It was seen as a violation
of the sacred trust place in doctors, a commercial profaning

(21:25):
of the professionalism of the field. Despite this, Dr Burt
used to skill at manipulating the media to act as
a more effective ad blitz than any billboard. He hired
a New York City PR firm to publicize love surgery,
and he sat for interviews and Play Girl and on
the Phil Donahue Show. Quote The Playgirl article appeared a
year before Bert began offering love surgery as an elective,

(21:46):
and in addition to speaking with Bert, Murray also interviewed
several women who chose to undergo love surgery. The women
whose name Murray's, the author of the Playgirl article, received
from Burt, all raved about love surgery. One woman told
Murray sex was so natural now that she and her
husband no longer had to work at it, a sentiment
expressed nearly verbatim by another woman. A third woman told

(22:06):
Murray she easily enjoyed multiple orgasms, sometimes so strong she
nearly passed out. Murray interviewed women, including Bert's wife, Joan,
who told Murray that since having love surgery, she could
now count on climaxing during sex. Murray, notably impressed with
what these women told her about the surgery, considered it
two points in the article, putting herself on Bert's operating table.
Oh my god, thanks, playgirl. What we do is we

(22:32):
take this little carrot shredder and we filed down your
clip and then go to town on it. Yeah. So,
in nineteen seventy seven, a circuit court ruled that the
a m A could not restrict its members from advertising.
In nineteen eighty two, the Supreme Court upheld this ruling,
which is why the world of medicine works the way

(22:53):
it does today. James Burt was well ahead of the trend.
He was not the first doctor to remove the clatoral
hood in order to enable faster orgasms. He was not
the first doctor to offer vaginal tightening, but he was
the first doctor to go to the public and shout
the benefits of these surgeries. By nineteen seventy eight, he
claims more than two women had requested his love surgery
with their own informed consent sort of. As I mentioned

(23:17):
from nineteen seventy five on, surgeons like doctor Burt had
to get informed consent before committing surgery on a patient,
but the only sign that they had done so was
a consent form with their signature. One sociological study from
around the same period found that nearly forty percent of
patients who consented to various medical studies had actually known
they'd signed consent forms to participate in medical studies. The

(23:38):
Catholic Hospital doctor performed to surgeries at Saint Elizabeth started
requiring him to use a special consent form specific to
love surgery in nineteen seventy nine. Many of his patients
after that period claimed they either did not sign consent
forms or were not informed of what they were actually signing.
Many of his love surgery patients were women who came
to him asking for procedures to help with than continents

(24:00):
or post pregnancy repairs. Cheryl Sexton Dylan went to him
in nineteen eighty four, when she was thirty six. She'd
come in from minor bladder surgery and been recommended to
Hyster direct to me by her doctor, who sent her
to James Burt, from a write up in ABC News, quote,
well she was under the knife. He performed a nine
hour operation, relocating her vagina and removing her clatoral hood.

(24:21):
Dylan said she had no idea he would do more
than a standard HYS direct me. Dylan, who in nineteen
eighty four was a vocational teacher with three children, said afterward,
I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything
I had ever experienced, in places I couldn't understand. She said.
Even ordinary activities became impossible, sitting down, wearing pants, riding
a horse. Dylan could no longer have sex without excruciating pain.

(24:43):
Despite an understanding husband, her happy marriage eventually fell apart.
It's bad Cheryl did not initially know what had been
done to her. She confronted Dr Burt and asked him,
what have you done? He replied, what are you asking about.
It was not until she met with other doctors and
was examined that she learned she had been surgically mutilated.
In his press blitz and his book, James Burt presented

(25:05):
story after story of satisfied patients. When journalists would reach
out to him about his love surgery, he would connect
them to women who raved about his love surgery. Those
journalists never heard from Cheryl Dillon or from Janet Phillips.
In nineteen eighty one, she went to Dr Burt for
a His director and his directory meant to remove ovarian cancer.
It was a significant enough procedure that she stayed in

(25:26):
the hospital for eleven days after her surgery. As you
might expect, the time was a blur, but she had
strong memories of waking up several times to the site
of nurses around here, clearly upset. When she finally talked
to Dr Burt after her procedure and asked him if
he removed all the cancer, he replied, don't worry. Everything
is fine. You are going to be okay. But she

(25:47):
was not. For eleven days of uneven recovery, she was
in agony. Once she left the hospital, the pain came
with her. She had no control over her bladder. When
she eventually went to doctor Burt again and asked him
what had happened, he told her he'd tacked up her
bladder and that her muscles needed time to rejuvenate. This
did not happen. Instead, her incontinence caused chronic infections. She

(26:08):
went on antibiotics but every time she went off the antibiotics,
the infections would return. Eventually, desperate for relief, Janet went
to her trusted doctor again. She told him her vagina
felt raw, that she experienced intense pain through vaginal intercourse.
Doctor Burt responded that her husband must be bigger than
I thought. She thought this was peculiar, but Janet did
not yet suspect that a madman had rearranged her general's

(26:31):
genitals without her approval. Who would She asked Dr Burt
to recommend urologists, since he hadn't expressed any willingness to
actually help her. He warned her not to visit another doctor,
telling her I've already got you on the road to healing,
and warning that another less competent physician might tear his surgery,
which could cause life threatening hemorrhaging. Frightened, but trusting her doctor,

(26:52):
Janet continued to see Doctor Burt. After every visit, he
would hug her and pat her on the back. She
felt safe with him and believed him when he said
she was on the road to being healed. What the fuck?
This is so manipulative? Yeah, it's pretty outrageous. This went

(27:14):
on for three years, during what she continued to experience
agony and bleeding during sex. Doctor Bert advised her to
quote keep trying, even if it's painful. She could not
control her bladder and had to wear pads constantly. Her
incontinence grew worse, and by April of nineteen eighty four,
he recommended another round of surgery to quote take the

(27:34):
perineum down a bit. Dr Burt still insisted her complications
were normal, a result of her hysterectomy. By this point,
Janet's trust in her doctor had worn off. She stopped
seeing him in nineteen eighty four, but did not go
to another gynecologist until nineteen eighty five because she was
frightened she might bleed to death if he screwed up. Eventually,

(27:55):
when the pain got so bad that she couldn't stand
it anymore, she booked an appointment with gynecologist with a
gynecologist named Michael Clark from the Love Surgeon quote. Clark
informed Philips her clearess had been circumcised and there was
a good deal of scar tissue in the glatoral area,
that her labia had been removed, and that her urine
was collecting in a little pouch that resulted from the operation.

(28:15):
He also told Philips her vagina had been redirected. To
help her better understand what had been done to her,
Clark drew pictures of typical female genitalia and then contrasted
these drawings with her genitals. Years later, Phillips recounted how
she heard the gynecologist she saw in nineteen eighty five say,
as she cried in his office, that he did not
know where to begin with this mess. Oh my god. Yeah,

(28:40):
redirected her vagina. Vagina the pouch though, I think it
was that's the worst. Yeah. The book goes into significant
detail about the pouch and about kind of the way
like she's got constant infections. Um, nothing seems to work
on them. She's either just permanently on antibiotics or she's

(29:02):
always got an infection, just a nightmare. Um. And so
it was four years after her initial surgery that Janet
Phillips realized her problems were not complications from her hysterectomy.
She quickly made the decision to file suit against the
love surgeon. Yes, yeah, yeah, this is this is this
is where the come begins to upends. Yes. Uh. Throughout

(29:27):
this period, the early to mid nineteen eighties, James Burke
was busy himself. He had fought a series of legal
in pr battles to get Metropolitan Life Insurance and Blue
Shield to cover his love surgery as a necessary operation.
It was covered by insurance for a while. When they refused,
he failed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission,
claiming that love surgery was a matter of women receiving

(29:48):
equal medical treatment, an equal rights thing. Oh my god, Yeah,
when it comes in handy, Yeah, you'll perform a vasectomy
on a man, but you won't let me carry out
my experimental surgery that permanently damages people. This is Biggert
treat Yeah. Millions of dollars and thousands of aaginas were
at stake over the issue. To get insurance companies to

(30:08):
treat his love surgery like a real medical treatment, he
would have to convince the medical establishment that it was
a real medical treatment. Dr Burt spent much of the
late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties conducting a series
of studies and attempting to convince his colleagues to do
the same. Whenever a researcher was willing, Dr Burt would
connect them to all of his positive cases, the women
who had reported good experiences after love surgery. He wrote

(30:31):
his own reports and attempted to publish them, but journal
authors consistently rejected them. This did change in nineteen eighty
three when Dr Burt in a colleague Dr Shram, succeeded
in convincing a finished medical journal to publish his research
on the efficacy of love surgery. Now, this was not
a good study. He was only interviewing women that he
already knew had good experiences with it, right like there

(30:54):
was an actual survey of all the women he'd given
it to. But this study that he managed to convince
the journe only to publish claimed that after love surgery,
eighty percent of his patients and experienced and increased ease
of ability to orgasm and some of the most tortuous
and offensive logic and medical history. Doctor Burt attempted to
claim that this meant his love surgery would reduce domestic violence. Sarah,

(31:17):
oh yeah, part yeah yeah, Sarah Rodriguez reports quote. Burt
and Shram reported that the surgery had an additional benefit,
it reduced marital violence. According to their article, nearly of
those who participated reported wife beating before the surgery. After

(31:37):
the surgery, Burton Shram claimed there was a decrease. Oh
my fucking yeah. The only reason people are hitting their
wives is they're not having easy enough orgasms. That's it.
That's why domestic violence happens. It's these loose pusses and
these buried clips. It's one of the most offensive things

(32:03):
I can imagine putting to writing. It's bad. He's trying
to outdo himself each each time he writes a new
sentence on on paper, He's like, is this the worst
one in the English language. Let's try again. Not quite,
let me tweak it a little bit. He ought to

(32:24):
be His typewriter should have been taken away for darn
share his His typewriter should have been taken away. That
study aside, Dr Bird's love surgery had virtually no acknowledgement
in mainstream medical circles. Many experts decried what he was
doing as dangerous and ineffective. He continued to practice and
butcher for one simple reason. His love surgery was super profitable.

(32:47):
Made a ton of money for St. Elizabeth Hospital. Just
his practice in general, he made them a lot of money.
They knew because he published it. That he had performed
this surgery on several thousand women who had not consented
to it. And the worst part of well not the
worst part, but the most infuriating, the ironic part of
this is St. Elizabeth's is a Catholic hospital. That's what

(33:10):
I was about. It didn't allow abortions as elective surgery,
but it allowed this guy to rearrange vaginas without the
consent of his patient and defended him for years. This
fucking church. Catholics are low key the bastards of this one. Um,
the Catholic churches. I was raised Catholic, those guys, Oh

(33:34):
my god. Yeah, I mean I was raised episcopali in
which is just like Catholic with ten percent less shame um,
and I would take ten percent less less child molestation. Two.
Although my specific chunk of the Episcopal Church might like
literally the church I went to. So back in the
early aughts, the Episcopal Church appointed a gay bishop in California,

(33:57):
and it was like a big moment um for just
Christianity in general. Um. This acknowledgement from one of the
largest chunks of Christianity, the US, that it wasn't inherently
sinful to be homosexual and it was a chunk of
the Episcopal Church broke away ask and joined the African
Anglican Church because they were not willing to say that
gay people were weren't bad. Um, and my like the

(34:21):
actual building that I went to, and my pastor was
the guy who led that. Like, I got interviewed as
a kid by news networks walking out of like youth
group classes, um, like because we were like it was
my church leading the charge against this gay bishop. Um,
it's cool shit. Yeah, I was like twelve at the time,

(34:43):
maybe thirteen. I didn't really know what was going on, um,
because I was pretty brainwashed. But yeah, churches, it's good ship. Um.
You know what won't deny elective taking a church? Yeah,
I definitely won't take you to church. Capitalism is a
is a fundamentally a religious philosophy. Um, as long as

(35:07):
religion isn't profitable, it becomes religious when religions profitable. But
so I guess it. Dr Burt did make a lot
of money for capitalism. Let's not think too much about that.
Here's some ads. All right, we're back. Ah, we're having
just a real real good time talking about this charming fella.

(35:33):
There were calls to pull Dr Bird's license and to
stop the madness, largely from feminists, whose issue initially had
less to do with a lack of consent than the
fact that he framed his love surgery as necessary in
order to turn women into quote sexpots from a study
in the Archives of Sexual Behavior Quote. In June, the
Boston Women's Health Book Collective, the authors of the core

(35:54):
feminist text Our Bodies Ourselves, sent copies of a Medical
World News article about the surgery to an Ohio the
Surgery of an Ohio gaynecologist two and fifty women's health
organizations across the United States. It's part of their monthly
mailing to these groups. Along with their article, the b
w HBC enclosed a letter saying they were appalled by
the vaginal and clitoral mutilation recommended by Dr James C. Burt.

(36:18):
To suggest. The letter continued that women need vaginal surgery
because they do not have orgasms with each penile. Vaginal
intercourse is to inflict upon women male fantasies and assumptions
about female sexuality. The b w HBC condemned the surgery
is sexist, and with their letters, sought to pressure Burt
to stop performing it um. So again, there are obviously
in the right, but it is interesting that their issue

(36:40):
is not a consent thing. It's um. It has more
to do with just like how inherently misogynists the idea
of the surgery is right, which also valid point, perfectly
valid point angry feminists. One point. It does note that
like um, it is worth noting that, like yeah, like that.
That shows you just the fact that consent isn't there issue,
how little of a topic of discussion it is even

(37:02):
in the late nineteen seventies. In late nineteen eighty, he
took a job appearing on a weekly radio talk show
for an hour every week. His show, Love Doctor was
billed as an opportunity for listeners to hear his take
on sex, sexual and kind of collogical problems, as well
as his work in female reconstructive surgery. There was an
immediate outcry against this, but that's sort of what the

(37:24):
radio station had been banking on. They built him as controversial,
and press reports on his show repeated that word ad nauseum,
as if controversy was the apt term for people angry
at a man who reinvented vaginas and tested out his
new surgery without asking. Dr Burt told his new listeners
that traditional gynecology was deficient. Of course, this guy has

(37:46):
not met one structure or system that he didn't think
was deficient. Yeah, because he knows best, you know, he's
the love doctor. Throughout the mid nineteen eighties, medical outcry
against Dr Bert continued to build. A number of his
colleagues filed private complaints against him, but, as The New
York Times reported, most doctors and nurses were too frightened

(38:08):
of his influence to take any real action. Quote. Gynecologists
knew about doctor Burt's surgery and recognized it when they
examined his former patients. Doctors would say, Bert's done surgery
on you, hasn't he says Joey Martin, on whom he
performed his surgery. We've all had doctor Burt's patients, and
we've tried to undo the work he has done, said
doctor Robert Hilty, a gynecologist who was chairman of the
Department of Obstetstetrics and Gynecology at Cattering Medical Center in

(38:31):
Dayton for eighteen years. But we need the freedom to
openly criticize without fear of legal retribution. So again, these
guys are terrified because Number one, the hospital where a
lot of them work, is backing this dude. Number two,
he's got money, so he can destroy you. If you
come after him, he can destroy your practice. He's got
a lot of power. The end for doctor Burt began
when a number of his victims, women who had gradually

(38:53):
pieced together the truth of what he'd done to them,
started to make their voices heard. One of these women
was Cheryld Dylan. It took our out a year from
nineteen eighty five to fully understand what had been done
to her. After months went by with intense pain, she
decided to seek a second opinion and went to a
doctor at the University of Cincinnati. She recalled, he looked
at me and called in one of the nurses and said,

(39:14):
have you ever seen anything like this? He had repositioned
my vagina and circumcised me. The doctor said he had
never seen it anywhere except in African tribes. Dylan sued
Dr Burt and St. Elizabeth Medical Hospital for malpractice in
eight nineteen eighty five. She won by default, but got nothing,
as the good doctor had no asset she could easily garnish.

(39:34):
Dylan settled out of court with the hospital for an
undisclosed sum. Again he's done like the thing that people
with money do. Where you're able, you know, you know
how to hide your money and if you give you
that kind of guy. The end finally came for doctor
James Burt as a result of the sheer number of
women he abused. Like Cheryl Dylan and Janet Phillips, they
all gradually and fits and starts figured out what had

(39:56):
been done. One of the people who helped put the
pieces together was another much her doctor Bradley Busaco, an
obstetrician who would eventually see some one hundred and fifty
of doctor Bert's love surgery patients. His first encounter with
the bad doctors where it came in nineteen eight six
as the result of a referral from a lawyer representing
one of doctor Bird's patients. The Chicago Tribune reports that quote.

(40:17):
By the time she found Busaco, her attorney said she
had been rejected by Dayton doctors who did not want
to treat a patients of Birds, a powerful doctor in
Dayton medical circles. She was in pain from bladdering urinary
infections and from the friction of clothes against her genital area.
And now. At first Dr Busaco thought the woman on
his table was quote just a little off, but in
time he realized, with donning horror, what had been done

(40:39):
to her. It was not an easy decision for him
to go public against Dr James Burt. Doctors kind of
like cops, tend to support each other, and this was
even more common in the day, Like it was very uncommon.
There's this kind of white wall of science of silence.
You you support each other, you don't testify against each other,
you don't go up against another doctor. You're kind of
all in this together, right, That's this attitude. I'm sure

(41:01):
it's still pervasive today. It was even more so back
back then. But Busaco couldn't just sit back and let
this keep happening. He signed a complaint with the state
Medical Board that started the first official investigation into Dr
Burt from an article in the Chicago Tribune. Quote. After
much soul searching and consulting with his wife, Peggy Boussaco
decided he had a duty to help the women and

(41:22):
turned Bert into state officials. His decision was consistent with
his interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath, which requires that a
physician do no harm. I had talked with lie sam Bold,
this is the lawyer a lot of these women work with,
and told her I decided it would be very difficult
for me to live if I didn't do it, and
I told her I was going to cooperate with the
State Medical Board and with her. Busaco said the risks

(41:42):
were significant. Busaco and his wife stealed themselves for what
was to come. They knew they were challenging an unwritten
code among medical professionals. Doctors don't turn on each other.
I was only thinking that this was a clear moral decision.
There was no gray area here. Peggy Busaco said Doctor
Burt was guilty of monstrous acts. And I didn't see
that we had a choice. I guess I really felt
we were on the right side and it was a

(42:03):
clear choice. And I never thought there would be that
many negative repercussions, but there were. Dr Burt immediately sued Busaco.
He started pushing his influential connections earned from a long
career of making a lot of money for the hospital.
A Mount Washington plastic surgeon wrote an open letter criticizing
Dr Busaco. Doctors he worked with would take him aside
in private and advise him to drop the case, saying

(42:24):
he'd made a mistake. A high up official at the
university where Boussaco taught warned him that his job was
on the line if he continued. Yes, he goes like
it's a significant act of moral courage for him to
do this. It is not an easy thing. Um quote.
I had heard from several physicians I knew well and
respected who told me I was doing the wrong thing.

(42:45):
Busaco said. The worst thing that could have happened is
I could have been blackballed, probably that physicians would not
have referred patients to me for second opinions. He told
his wife that they might have to leave home for
a new state if things went badly. But then in
n the news media caught up to the fact something
deeply fucked up was going on with the love surgeon.
CBS ran a major investigation. They interviewed Dr Busaco, who

(43:07):
agreed to speak in the hope that it would warn
other women away from receiving this surgery. CBS also talked
to Cheryl Bilan, who went into gruesome detail about her
experiences on national TV. She told the world, we have
to stop this man. I don't want to die young
and have my daughter go to the same doctor. When
he was reached for comment, James Burt called the report
a conspiracy of lies, but by this point he was

(43:30):
unable to fight further. Doctor Burt had made the nineteen
seventies equivalent of more than four hundred thousand dollars per year,
but following the decision of Love and Sure Of insurance
companies to stop covering love surgery, his income fell substantially
from the love surgeon quote. Rumors of Joan and James
Burt's debts began to be more than speculation. In late
September nineteen eighty, a local art Gallleries sued the couple

(43:50):
for not paying for a bronze sculpture and two paintings
delivered to the Burt home in January nineteen seventy nine.
The Bert's contended that the pieces were left at their
home on an approval races. The gallery contended, and the
court agreed that the Birds needed to pay the galley
six thousand, two dollars and fifty cents with interest for
the art. In nine one, James Burtt filed for bankruptcy,
but it was dismissed um because he he was they

(44:14):
thought he was making too much money, like he was
trying to he was filing for bankruptcy, but they knew
he was just hiding assets, right, Like he's making less
money now he's having problems, but he's also like clearly
lying about his assets. Could we just say those women
that started the P two movement, they're the heroes of
this episode. Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely. Yeah. Um, you know,

(44:40):
the the women who like went went to bat against
this guy, the lawyer who collected all of these different
cases and pursued it so doggedly. The one doctor who
finally decided to Yeah, I mean, and a lot of
doctors made private complaints, but like what makes Busaco noteworthy
is he did he decided private wasn't enough. You have

(45:01):
to go public with this, you know. Um, yeah, all
of those people. And it's also it says a lot
that it took all of those people for sure, guy down. Yeah,
it's it takes a lot. It makes me think of
like today, I mean, I don't know, like obviously this
is a super wretched version of events, but like people

(45:21):
doing experimental ship like that today, or like those weird
laser vaginal tightening things like what's going on there? Yep, yep.
To make ends meet and to cover his growing debts.
Dr Burt Smith the early nineteen eighties teaching his love
surgery to other doctors, all while attempting to gaslight his
patients and fight off the first lawsuits brought against him.

(45:42):
By the number of lawsuits and the number of verified
victims had risen to several hundred. One malpractice suit against
him included thirty three women who said they'd never consented
to genital reconstruction. Here's a selection of quotes from some
of these women right now. I feel I've been raped.
I thought I die. The pain was unlike anything I
had ever experienced. In places. I couldn't understand the way

(46:05):
I was deformed. I couldn't have sex. I ended up
going through three different corrective surgeries. You're raised to trust
your minister, your policeman, and your doctor. He was the
one with a degree on the wall. He knew medicine
better than I did. I didn't think he would hurt me,
and I don't know why he did that unless he
hates women. Oh that's the most damning thing of all. Yeah,

(46:27):
I mean, why else would you do ship like this
you know, I don't know. Yeah. In December of the
Ohio Medical Board label Burt grossly unprofessional and charged him
with forty one violations of ethics. The board said that
he regularly caused permanent physical damage due to his experimental
and medically unnecessary surgical procedures. In January of nineteen eighty nine,

(46:50):
Dr Burt surrendered his license in order to avoid a
medical board hearing that might have uncovered information even more
damning than the stuff we've talked about today. He almost
immediately declared bankruptcy over his inability to pay them more
than twenty one million dollars in malpractice lawsuits filed against
him for medical bag quote. Even after surrendering his medical license,
brit maintained his innocence. He blamed his situation on an

(47:12):
unjustified crucifixion and an avalanche of yellow journalism. He insisted,
my medical practice has been conducted with great concern for
the welfare of women. There are a lot of women
with problems involving vaginal intercourse that are either not being
adequately addressed or not being addressed at all. His son
also came to his defense at the time, reporting there
are hundreds and hundreds of doctor Burt's patients alive today
whose marriages and lives were dramatically improved by his wholesome

(47:35):
restoration to their fully functioning sexual responsiveness, which most of
those patients had previously enjoyed earlier in their marriages. That's it,
that's all. He got no jail, not saying he's got no.
He might still be alive and in Florida. I think
it is no. No, she left him. He might have

(47:55):
got married since, but she left him money. Yeah. But
also she's kind of a bastard. Yeah, she is. She's
she's terrible too. UM's not, she's not as terrible. She
hasn't execute but maybe she had a mote. You know,
she's like in her thirties, she has this come to

(48:15):
Jesus moment. She's like, you know, yeah, people could change,
Jones can change, can change. And the fact that he
kind of took her when she was so young one,
it's not great. You know, it's better than marrying a teenager,
but not by a whole lot. Um. I'm sure she

(48:35):
she was not. She didn't have money. All all the
money was his. He performed his surgery on her. You know,
it's a messy. I'm sure. My hope is, yeah, that
she actually recognized that she had been party to something
terrible and that's why she left as supposed to just
being like, well this is over, time to like roll
out something new. I don't know. I wish her the best,

(48:58):
but I also wish that she has some understanding of
how she contributed to these arms. Yeah, so how you
feel in Courtney, I'm unclenching my vagina, letting it know
that it is safe to come back out. Yeah, he's
old enough now that even if he gets out of Florida,

(49:19):
he's pretty slow. He's not he's not going to catch anybody.
Oh god, Yeah, you can probably take him down with
like a solid whack from a broom. His bones have
got to be brittle as hell by this point. We
have what you know, he should go out with the surgery.
We have a special surgery for you, Dr Burt. We're
gonna take your anus and put it where your mouth is. Yeah.

(49:41):
We've decided your body was not properly designed for all
of the ship that you spew out of your mouth.
So we're just going to redirect your your digestive system
out of your mouth. Um, We're adding an extra tongue too,
so you can really enjoy the results of the surgery. Here,
Sign this, yes, Sign this. Yeah. How's everybody feeling? We

(50:05):
all be all goods? Yeah. I found this after because
I was doing the There was a comment during the
Kellogg episodes because we were talking about like cli erectomys
um and how common they were in like the early
nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds as a treatment for a masturbation,

(50:25):
and I someone had asked me, Miles asked me how
common it was, and I said, basically, you know, it
seems like it was pretty common, and I wanted to
like double check that. Anyway, I wound up on the
Wikipedia page talk about cli erectomies in the United States,
and it was like this guy existed and he thought
he could rearrange the vagina and it involved cutting the
clitteress um. And I was like, that sounds like a

(50:46):
fucking story, and my god, it was sure was Yeah,
can you imagine just your clint being so exposed, like
like a light socket just when anything. I mean, I
can't imagine it in any way, but it's it seems
like he had a lot of bad ideas. Yeah, it

(51:07):
seems terrible. Oh man, good stuff, Core, you got any
pluggables for us? Well, if that didn't completely turn you
off of sex, head on over to Private Parts Unknown podcast.
I co host with Sophia Alexandra, a delightful, hilarious person,
and we have positive conversations about sex. Check it out.

(51:32):
Do that it's deliful and not horrifying. Like this makes
your agency back? Robert, you want to enter? Want to
enter podcast? No? No, I don't, Sophie. He's Robert Evan.
You can follow him on Twitter at I right, okay,

(51:52):
you can follow us at bastard spot on Twitter and
Instagram and we'll be back next week with another horrible tale.
I mean, we could just we could just keep off
wordly podcasting for days. We could try to break a
world record, Sophie, we don't have to end this now.
I'd really rather not, but like go off, well, you know,
gosh it, I don't have anything else, Sophie, I don't

(52:14):
have anything else. Then awkward And to the podcast. Sweet
listeners made flights of angels singly away from the Love Doctor.
H h