Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post
sorry to hear about your fathers passing,, mine who passed the other yr was also not circumsized ,,i know becuz i am a former nurse, i took care of him in the hospital and at home,, he luckiley never had any complications from his foreskin being intact,, as for cleanlyness issues,, its greatly and hotly debated in the medical comunity, just like infant ear piercing apparently lol, who is to judge such things other than the parents and the society they live in, i mean really, what about things like female circumsision?? wtf right? but the Masai in kenya used to practice it regularly despite many girls dieing from the process, its not my cup of tea thats for sure, it feels wrong to me, but i am not going to say they are full of crap or anything for doing it, infant ear piercing , if it was so terible, would have a law or too concerning its preformance by now ,,,wouldnt it?

Sorry, I've got to jump in here at the comparison. There is a major difference between a debate about removing a bit of foreskin and what happens in genital mutilation. The young girl isn't 'circumcised,' she has her entire clitoris excised and, sometimes, even the labia minor is removed as well. Additionally, some of the surgeries include sewing shut the vagina, leaving only a narrow opening for menstrual blood to flow out. The procedure is usually not done in a sterile setting within a hospital but is performed in back alleys and back rooms leaving the young woman to suffer infection and, occasionally, death.

Further, it is not performed for hygienic reasons or for women to show that they are part of a covenant with God but to control women's ability to feel pleasure. It is justified by a cultural tradition that holds that women who are not mutilated like this are likely to lose their virginity outside of marriage and be promiscuous and, even worse, masturbate.

As far as laws against it, most African nations now do have them (Uganda being the big exception). Unfortunately, the illegality has pushed the procedure underground. The one bright spot is that education to end early and forced marriages is also resulting in a lowering of female genital mutilation rates.

Sorry if my response comes across as preachy but I am appalled when the two are held as the same thing. Instead of circumcision, it is more accurate to call it castration.

~getting off my soapbox now~