Originally Posted by
pole_smoker
An interesting fact is that there is very little difference between female circumcision Types I and II (which are the large majority of female circumcision) and male circumcision.
Both remove ~80% of the nerve endings of the genitals, both are practiced on non-consenting children, and both are done for religious/cultural reasons.
The strongest advocates of female circumcisions in countries where it is practiced? ...Are in fact women. They do it for the same reasons that men circumcise their boys in the West ("it looks better", "it's cleaner", "it was done to me", "your private parts will look just like your mother's or other female relatives", "that's what we've always done to all girls in our family", "it prevents disease", "it's our religion", "it's our culture")
The only reason female circumcision is considered "worse" is because the majority of it is practiced in unsanitary conditions (as is, coincidentally, the male circumcisions practiced in these countries). But in Egypt, Indonesia, and Malaysia, female genital mutilation is done in a sterile and modern hospital, just like male genital mutilation is done here.
It all just comes down to culture, but in the end, both female and male genital mutilation (FGM/MGM) are both wrong, and both are mutilation because the unfortunate person who has them performed on them has no choice in the matter of having his or her genitals mutilated.
Also there are people who are born intersexed or what used to be called a hermaphrodite and many of these people they too have had their genitals mutilated or were assigned one gender by a doctor or surgeon when it was not their choice, and they wind up having the genitals or sex organs of both genders but identify as both or one or the other.
There's also the case of the boy in Canada who was cut and his penis was severed, and he was raised as a "girl" and then later once he found out what had happened he killed himself.
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