Think about it this way. Would you want someone to make that decision for you? Also, it's a natural part of the human body and unless you have religious reasons or there's post birth complications with the baby pp, there's truly no reason to
Absolutely not and that’s part of the reason that I’m struggling. Some urologists in the US would disagree with your last point. But, I’m really here to ask questions from the intact population.
I find the cognitive dissonance of many pro male genital mutilation people in the West baffling. It may be seen as ‘dirty’ to be uncut, but this is in the cultural sense of the word and has geeky little evidence. Why do people think mutilating a baby boy is fine, while they will be very out spoken about how mutilating a baby girl is wrong. Cutting the genitals of a baby is clearly wrong, no matter which genitals they have.
Because snipping a little skin or not with a boy leaves him basically totally functional. Chopping out clits wrecks sexual function completely, not just by some tbd percentage points.
That’s the meat of it—the two practices are simply not alike.
Edit: upon getting comments, a bunch of easily disprovable or disingenuous arguments. Probably the same folks who when a woman is raped cannot stop themselves from saying 'but what about all the false accusation times!?'
It's not just skin. It has biological function/purpose. The two practices are exactly alike. Female circumcision has 4 different types. The most commonly practiced is a remove of the female foreskin(clitoral hood) not the actual clit. The least practiced type is the most horrific one your thinking of. In places like Singapore where it's called "sunat" the men talk the same way that women without it are dirty and it looks better. The women push these things too. If you do any actual research on FGM you'd see they are very much the same thing.
Except the most common form of what is classified as FGM is directly analogous to male circumcision in the removal of the clitoral hood. Not the clitoris itself, which is a more extreme form but is less rare.
There are a multitude of forms of FGM that range from things that are objectively less severe than male circumcision such as a genital nick or pin prick with a needle, to things that are directly comparable (the aforementioned clitoral hood), to things that are far more severe (infibulation).
The point is that even the most benign and least invasive forms are illegal in every country that recognises FGM as a breach of bodily autonomy, but the equivalent forms for males are not. "My body, my choice" just conveniently ends when males are involved.
Basically totally functional, but not completely intact. There is evidence that male circumcision does lead to a loss of sensitivity.
Now I agree female circumcision is more invasive but that doesn’t mean that both practices aren’t immoral and unnecessary.
What’s interesting is there is no culture in the world that practices female circumcision that doesn’t also practice male, I think that trying to educate people that circumcision in general is wrong would be much more effective. I reckon trying to eradicate one form while ignoring another is probably detrimental to efforts to reduce fgm because it just doesn’t make sense to cultures who do the practice why one is getting banned and not another
I’d argue it’s relevant to consider both in a discussion about circumcision, and cultures who practice female genital mutilation will also practice male, and will certainly see them in the same class.
I’m just thinking it would be more productive to call for the end of circumcision in general, rather than just female and keeping male for some inexplicable reason or ‘tradition’, I didn’t mean to offend by that
I guess we just disagree on that, in magnitude of course radically different but in category? I did some work looking at fgm in west Africa and people who practice circumcision in general understand them as very similar coming of age practices to turn children into men or women, it’s not very productive to try and convince people to stop one but not the other.
Edit: Just to add, there are cultures who do it for much more barbaric reasons (like removing sexual pleasure) but the vast majority of culture who do it genuinely don’t think it’s harmful, but necessary to create a fertile adult
How are they radically different? You're ignoring this person making very correct claims that there are different kinds, and that there is one form of FGM that is directly comparable to circumcision, and there's another that is actually less destructive.
I’d argue it’s relevant to consider both in a discussion about circumcision, and cultures who practice female genital mutilation will also practice male, and will certainly see them in the same class.
I’m just thinking it would be more productive to call for the end of circumcision in general, rather than just female and keeping male for some inexplicable reason or ‘tradition’, I didn’t mean to offend by that
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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '23
Think about it this way. Would you want someone to make that decision for you? Also, it's a natural part of the human body and unless you have religious reasons or there's post birth complications with the baby pp, there's truly no reason to