I did say in an earlier post that they were similar in that both involve genital regions.

True that the infant male has no control, but women subject to FGM are continuously victimized, repeatedly during their adult lives. Their sexuality is actively controlled by other people. There's a concrete social difference between being a male (and therefore in a high social standing) and being female (and by default in lower social standing in most parts of the world). With these social differences come differences in treatment.

I'm not actually sure why you're trying to draw such a strong connection between FGM and male circumcision in the first place. All I know is that whenever FGM is discussed, men always come out of the woodwork to proclaim loudly why male circumcision is just as bad and just as big of a problem. It's objectively NOT.

So if it's not a foregone conclusion, wouldn't we be wise to NOT continue hacking flesh off the genitals of infants?

I'm a new father and when my baby boy was born, I had all sorts of 'helpful' people offering 'advice' and trying to dissuade me from not having him circumcised. The majority of them were totally ignorant and offensive in the way they tried to enforce their 'beliefs' on my son. One in-law told me that babies couldn't get passports unless they were circumcised!

I come from Europe, where circumcision is very rare and most people I know consider it totally barbaric. I was astonished that it's practiced so often here.

My major problem with it is the fact that it's not consensual. Nobody can convince me that it's beneficial to rip the nerve-rich flesh from an infant's genitals without anesthetic.

I think I'm going to have to stop reading this particular thread, because it's a topic I feel so strongly about and I really don't want to get so worked up I say anything offensive to anybody!

I'm just amazed that in a supposedly sex-positive community, we'd condone removing part of a child's genitals - part that is so filled with nerve-endings that it could arguably affect the amount of pleasure they get from sex for the rest of their lives.

Remember - Dr Kellogg promoted circumcision to stop children masturbating. It was envisioned as a way of controlling people's sexuality and I would have thought everybody in this community would be against that.

In Dr Kellogg's "Plain Facts for Old and Young", he wrote: “A remedy [to prevent masturbation] which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed.”

and

“In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."

I completely and wholeheartedly agree.

You have managed to completely misunderstand or miss every single point I have made, and I really don't have the energy to go through it all again, sorry.

Your statements about my being sexist for making sure that the horror of FGM isn't underplayed are, however, hilarious.

Your statements about my being sexist for making sure that the horror of FGM isn't underplayed are, however, hilarious.

A very good suggestion!

I tried to quit this thread earlier, as I said I didn't want to say anything offensive! It's just toygirl2 REALLY got my goat with some of the stuff she said.

I think for my mental health, I should probably sign off on this debate!

You know, there are ways to present your side of the argument without belittling the person you're talking to.

Also, maybe you should think about the circumcised men out there before you go around saying they are not in touch with their "true" selves.

Lol!

Are you even wearing pants?

My husband is circumcised and he definitely thinks he's his own true self. I think that it's perfectly fine for you to have your beliefs about what foreskin can and cannot do - but I do not believe that men without foreskins are experiencing any less.

The experience of pleasure during sexual intercourse by circumcised and uncircumcised men is totally different, and therefore not directly comparable.

Among the reasons that men who are circumcised have less chance of getting a disease is; men who aren't circumcised have to continually clean in and around their foreskin very carefully. Human error means that chances of bacteria lingering are greater than if there was nowhere for it to hide.

As someone in the medical profession and who follows the research, I can tell you this topic is still very controversial as far as what is the best option.

Can you tell me, are you in the medical field, particularly research? If not, your opinion is just that, an opinion. And those who have a different opinion, theirs is just that, AN OPINION.

Please try to respect others beliefs if you expect anyone to take your argument seriously.

I have to reiterate what WeaponX said - male circumcision for reasons of 'hygiene' is like removing part of a woman's clitoris for reasons of 'hygiene.'

Besides, nobody's addressed the immorality of performing partial genital amputations on infants - they can't consent and if you've ever listened to their screams when it's being done, I'd interpret that as a 'NO!'

Let's all say it again, once more, with feeling: womens' clitorises are not removed for reasons of hygiene. This is what we like to call faulty parallelism.

(Sorry, Misanthrope...)

No, no! That wasn't what I was saying at all!

I was just trying to say that male circumcision makes about as much sense as a world in which American doctors remove clitoral material from infants for reasons of hygiene. It was a fictional comparison - obviously that doesn't happen in America (and in Africa etc, female circumcision tends to involve the brutal removal of much more genital tissue and for utterly despicable reasons. It wasn't a comparison to FGM either.)

but you're right - I said I'd stay out of this debate. Wrists dully rapped and I'm off to go and look at less addictive threads.

Correction: I'm against the circumcision of an infant. Just thought I'd specify.

As far as consent- it is THEIR child. Their choice.
I've had kids scream just as badly, if not worse, for their vitamin K injection as for their circumcision.
I'm not trying to argue your point, but most kids would reject anything painful- including vaccines, life saving surgery, etc.

If it's non-essential elective surgery, it's the child's choice (or rather lack of it.)

I just think uncircumcised penises are just unattractive to me. I dont like the way it looks. That prosthetic thing is weird to me, Ive noticed men more ashamed of being uncircumsized but maybe im worng. Ive never noticed anythng special about uncircumsised men but maybe they just didnt know how to work it.