Can we hope to eliminate Female Genital Mutilation while we still allow Male GM (circumcision)

Great Debates
1

It’s boring today so I thought I would get a good old knuckle-duster going over The Skin.

I get the feeling that the anti-circumcision side is growing, judging by certain groups and web sites that are springing up opposing male genital mutilation (MGM) also known as circumcision. I have even seen some ridiculous sites, complete with anti-circumcision comics detailing the adventures of a blond super-hero named Foreskin Man. (I am not making this up, see: Foreskin Man )

A serious website, Doctors Opposed to Circumcision, https://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/ points out that under the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997) "No organ or tissue removal may be carried out on a person who does not have the capacity to consent under Article 5.

Unfortunately, the USA is not a part of this convention. Aside from the United States, no other major country in the world routinely circumcises its baby boys for non-religious reasons.

And yet, waves of immigration from Muslim and African cultures that mutilate up to 92% of their infant females, are hitting our shores. And these same cultures almost inevitably believe in circumcision as well.

So how are we supposed to approach this contradiction of legal circumcision and illegal female genital cutting? What kind of confusing mixed message are we sending to new immigrants?

Don’t bother telling me that circumcision and Female Genital Mutilation are too different to be analogical. FGM in some forms (such as removal of the clitoral hood) can indeed be very similar to MGM, and certainly no more severe.

But the point of my argument has nothing to do with the different forms of cutting into the genitals of a male or female child.

My question is: Why is it that male children can be subjected to circumcision without their consent, but girls are protected by law from genital mutilation?

Now I am going to make a statement that wil probably make you scream “anti-Semite” and ask me what my lampshades are made of.

But I believe that Jewish people (whom I love, respect and am related to) have undeniable clout in US politics and in the medical establishment. And I believe they see the anti-circumcision movement as thinly-veiled anti-Semitism, and with some crazies they are perfectly justified in thinking that.

But I also know that Jews are some of the most humanitarian people on Earth and that Judaism is a modern, pracrical and evolving religion. No Jew today would kill his neighbour for working on the Sabbath even though G-d commands it.

This is why I would like to ask my Jewish friends and relatives: Would you consider setting aside circumcision so that the Western cultures can have a logical, consistent position in the world-wide fight against child (male and female) genital mutilation. Can you join with the anti-circumcision movement to proclaim that human rights and the right to biomedical integrity of one’s genitals begins at birth?

2

Equating typical male circumcision with female genital mutilation is a grotesque travesty.

If male circumcision is unnecessary, then it should go. But the two are nowhere near the same.

3

OP, other than in your own self-inflated opinion, is there any linkage whatsoever? Do the proponents of FGM ever, EVER cite circumcision as support? Citation, please.

Otherwise, it just sounds like you’re trying to hitch your own pet cause to the righteous campaign to eliminate an actual ongoing problem. Which is pretty low, really.

4

I’m just glad the OP started this so we can* finally* debate this issue on the SDMB.

5

Coach nailed it in one, for me. :cool:

6

Very much NOT the same thing.

7

Can we hope to discuss FGM, ever, so long as men will be distracted by the chance to talk about their dicks, instead?

8

To be honest I’d rather discuss my dick because the very idea of FGM makes we want to vomit. It’s a horrible indefensible thing that should never happen ever that I don’t even want to have to imagine.

So, um, my dick. I use it to pee?

9

You must have missed these two paragraphs in my OP. Here they are:

"Don’t bother telling me that circumcision and Female Genital Mutilation are too different to be analogical. FGM in some forms (such as removal of the clitoral hood) can indeed be very similar to MGM, and certainly no more severe.

But the point of my argument has nothing to do with the different forms of cutting into the genitals of a male or female child."

Also, I could be wrong but I don’t remember saying they are “the same”.

Certain forms of FGM such as removal of the clitoral hood are fairly evocative of circumcision: the clitoral hood is similar to the foreskin and the clitoris itself is like the penis, except that it has no meatus and does not give out liquids like urine.

Other forms of female GM are much worse than circumcision.

Where they ARE the same is in constituting unnecessary cutting into the genitals of a helpless child who is not able to give consent, without there being an urgent medical reason to do so. It is a failure to recognize that human rights start at birth.

10

Where in my OP did I say they are the same?

11

Okay, I won’t bother telling you that FGM and circumcision are too different to be analogical.

However, I will tell you that upwards of 99% of americans consider FGM and circumcision too different to be analogical, and if any immigrants can’t handle that, then they can suck it. Much like how they’re going to learn that around these parts tipping is practically required, except with more horror and potential jail time.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t believe for one instant that human rights begin at birth. We don’t let people vote until they turn 18, and I even hear that some parents falsely imprison their children in their rooms! By any objective assessment of american culture, babies do not have the same rights as adults.

12

World Health Organization.

What would be the male equivalent of this?

So it appears you need to be told they are different. Extremely different.

13

Manda Jo, I am not talking about my dick. What I am pointing out is that we cannot logically tell an immigrant woman from a Muslim or African country that it is wrong to take a knife to a baby girl’s genitals when there is no birth defect and no medical urgency to do so, and then tell her it is perfectly all right if she has her baby boy’s foreskin cut from his penis when there is no birth defect and no medical urgency to do so.

14

I’m strongly opposed to all FGM in principle, and the typical form of FGM, as far as I know, is indeed pretty horrible. That being said, I was unaware of this until a friend who’d lived in Indonesia pointed this out, but not all FGM is equally bad. There are the really horrible forms we hear a lot about and then there are some comparatively ‘mild’ or ‘symbolic’ forms, which are apparently common in Southeast Asia. Some discussion of it here:

15

I know they are different and never said otherwise. Where they ARE the same is in constituting unnecessary cutting into the genitals of a helpless child who is not able to give consent, without there being an urgent medical reason to do so.

If there IS an urgent medical reason to go in there with a scalpel, then parents are not only able to consent, I would say they are obliged to consent, on behalf of their child.

16

One of my favourite quotes:

“I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in the condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.”

Thomas Szasz, M.D.

In my case (born in 1948) the hospital did not even ask for my parents’ consent. Neither my mom nor my dad could remember being asked. They just arrogantly decided for me that I would not want my foreskin.

17

Begbert: You find circumcision easier to stomach than FGM, do you? How would you like to see a real medical circumcision on YouTube? Go ahead, I dare you. Put the sound up so you can hear the baby. It is not “normal” crying like for a tooth or a loaded diaper. It is a cry of terror and sheer agony. I have to admit I couldn’t finish it.

18

Dude, I wouldn’t watch an appendectomy either; that doesn’t make appendectomys evil. Female genital mutilation is done for reasons that are completely indefensible. Medical circumcisions as are done today out of rote habit and a vague idea that they’re medically helpful. Not remotely the same thing.

I also wouldn’t watch a C-Section - and I consider those pretty medically indefensible most of the time. I think less of them should be done. Why aren’t you using C-Sections as the pillar to build your analogy on? Unlike this FGM thing it wouldn’t immediately paint you as a wrongheaded sexist idiot, and it would also add some much-needed novelty to your argument.

19

For starters, proponents of FGM have quickly adopted the expression “female circumcision” when they talk about Female GM. They much prefer it to terms like “cuttting” or “mutilation” because they know that the US at least gives circumcision a free pass. So yes, they do make use of circumcision to support their cause.

20

I didn’t say every human right begins at birth, now did I? If the voting age is 18, then it starts at 18. But your right to genital integrity, your right not to have some brainwashed asshole come at you and cut pieces of your genitals to please an invisible God or social custom . . . . . . .THAT starts at birth. It should have been MY decision whether I wanted to have a foreskin or not. That decision was taken from me.