CaptainF
The Professional Poster
Is this a joke post? I think you are all just jealous because women like guys who are cut more than uncut guys.

Is this a joke post? I think you are all just jealous because women like guys who are cut more than uncut guys.
Implying they're similar in any way.
They are quite similar. In many ways. How can you not see this?
What is the essential difference between that man saying he won't accept a wife with intact genitals, and an American woman saying she won't accept an intact husband? Nothing.
It's become a national pastime for Americans, condemn the genital cutting of girls thousands of miles away, while gleefully cutting the genitals of our sons.
To not think they are similar in many ways is simple cognitive dissonance. I suspect many people simply don't want to confront the painful reality of the situation, and so choose to believe falsehoods like this.
Check out the thread I posted in The Chamber about male genital cutting to discuss this further, please.
I don't know, I can't think of a worse gimmick...
Female and male genital cutting are far more similar than they are different. Both are considered beneficial for reasons of "cleanliness" or "health", both are practiced by doctors, both can lead to serious physical and psychological complications, both have origins in controlling/reducing sexual pleasure, and both are totally unnecessary procedures that inflict tremendous pain on the infant/child.
Male genital cutting is more or less as common as female genital cutting in Africa, and is performed under the same horrific conditions. Boys and girls are frequently held down against their will, to have their genitals cut by someone with no medical expertise, often times with such crude instruments as sharp pieces of glass, and no anaesthesia. The difference is that the UN considers one to be barbaric and atrocious, and considers the other to be a beneficial public health measure. Disgusting hypocrisy.
All genital cutting inflicted on infants is unethical at best, barbaric and torturous at worst.
Saying male circumcision is anything like female circumcision is like equating abortion to murder.
Yeah, I'm not sure you know what you're talking about if you're seriously trying to compare having the foreskin cut off, as painfully and crudely as it may be done outside of a hospital, to, almost never by doctors to my knowledge, also without anaesthesia or a sharp blade, cutting off the clitoris and the labia minora (inner vaginal lips), and immobilizing the girl long enough for the labia majora (outer vaginal lips) to "heal" shut. Or, in some cases, cutting off most of the labia majora as well and fusing whatever flesh is left. Which, of course, needs to be cut back open - or, hey, usually just jam a penis into the too-small remaining opening, do that for a few months and you can rip most of it open without cutting - when someone decides it's time for sex, sex that is guaranteed to be painful whether or not she's willing. Not just less pleasurable, but painful, and not just for a while, for life. And hey, if she gets pregnant, she gets to have the rest of the "seam" cut or ripped open when it's time to give birth - and maybe cut up and fused back together afterwards, if she was lucky enough not to bleed to death first.
I'm not as familiar with circumcision as you seem to be, so maybe you can tell us how often circumcision causes sometimes-fatal bleeding or acute infection,
or persistent urinary tract/system infections and lifelong urinary incontinence and lifelong painful urination,
or cysts in the genitals,
or whether it's possible for a man to enjoy sex without his foreskin.
Maybe you were only referring to the removal of the clitoral hood, which, sure, that seems comparable (although it almost never stops there).
I acknowledge that I'm talking about some of the worst cases, but they aren't rare. Only if entire penises are being cut off can you even begin to compare the two. And yes, cutting off babies' foreskins is bad.
Note, "circumcision" refers exclusively to the removal of foreskin from a penis. What's done to girls cannot be called circumcision.
Saying male circumcision is anything like female circumcision is like equating abortion to murder.
So, you're just repeating to me what you already said, and what I already disproved.
You have no argument.
The equivalent would be to amputate a male's tip, which is mutilation regardless. It's equating mutilation to mutilation, not apples to oranges.
Neither do you. The world ain't black and white my friend, there are gradients.
Getting an ear piercing is also mutilation, I've yet to see a crusade against that.
Check dat grey area.
So would you oppose ear-piercing of infants?
What you describe (infibulation) is indeed much more drastic and invasive than the average male circumcision. However, infibulation is only performed in 15% of FGM cases world wide. The other 85% is comprised of Type I mutilation (removal of the clitoral hood) and Type II mutilation (removal of the clitoris and some labia menora) both of which are certainly comparable to male foreskin amputation, given that the male foreskin is essentially the male "clitoris".
In many parts of the world, FGM is also performed by doctors in a clinical setting, such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
Many men have experienced an almost total inability to enjoy sex as a result of circumcision. Circumcision leads to keratinization of the glans penis via exposure to air and daily irritation. The glans is a mucous membrane that is meant to be an internal organ shielded by the foreskin, and without a foreskin begins to harden and callous itself as a response. Thus, nerve endings are buried beneath these callouses and become insensitive. On top of that, there's the fact that the foreskin contains approximately 20,000 nerve endings and comprises in the average adult male 15 square inches of tissue, approximately the size of an index card. Some men have had such "tight" circumcisions that merely getting an erection is a painful experience.
Of course there are some men who have undergone circumcision that can enjoy sex, just as there are women who have undergone infibulation that can also enjoy sex. Doesn't make either of them ethical in any way.
As referenced above, infibulation is the rarest form of FGM in the world, according to the WHO.
There was a reason I used spoilers.
Spoiler :
Yes, I'm describing the worst cases. So are you. "Only 15% of cases" all of which have horrible intended effects, let alone side effects? I'm embarassed for you for trying to downplay that.
Of the lesser cases? Either you are deliberately distorting facts, or your ideas about female genitalia are not based in reality. I'm not sure which is the more charitable assumption so I won't try to guess.
Type I is typically the removal of part or all of the clitoris, according to the WHO removal of only the clitoral hood is unusual. Removal of the clitoral hood is comparable to removal of the foreskin of the penis. Removing part or all of the clitoris is comparable to removal of part of all of the head of the penis. The procedure that can be compared to circumcision is described by the WHO as "very rare". They don't even describe Type III as "very rare".
When a girl is taken usually by her mother to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals. Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girls genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where shes given a small, celebratory gift some fruit or a donated piece of clothing and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.
These photos were taken in April 2006, at the foundations annual mass circumcision, which is free and open to the public and held during the lunar month marking the birth of the prophet Muhammad. The Assalaam Foundation runs several schools and a mosque in Bandung, Indonesias third-largest city and the capital of West Java. The photographer Stephanie Sinclair was taken to the circumcision event by a reproductive-health observer from Jakarta and allowed to spend several hours there. Over the course of that Sunday morning, more than 200 girls were circumcised, many of them appearing to be under the age of 5. Meanwhile, in a nearby building, more than 100 boys underwent a traditional circumcision as well.
According to Lukman Hakim, the foundations chairman of social services, there are three benefits to circumcising girls.
One, it will stabilize her libido, he said through an interpreter. Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.
Female genital cutting commonly identified among international human rights groups as female genital mutilation has been outlawed in 15 African countries. Many industrialized countries also have similar laws. Both France and the U.S. have prosecuted immigrant residents for performing female circumcisions.
In Indonesia, home to the worlds largest Muslim population, a debate over whether to ban female circumcision is in its early stages. The Ministry of Health has issued a decree forbidding medical personnel to practice it, but the decree which has yet to be backed by legislation does not affect traditional circumcisers and birth attendants, who are thought to do most female circumcisions. Many agree that a full ban is unlikely without strong support from the countrys religious leaders. According to the Population Council study, many Indonesians view circumcision for boys and girls as a religious duty.
Female circumcision in Indonesia is reported to be less extreme than the kind practiced in other parts of the globe Africa, particularly. Worldwide, female genital cutting affects up to 140 million women and girls in varying degrees of severity, according to estimates from the World Health Organization. The most common form of female genital cutting, representing about 80 percent of cases around the world, includes the excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. A more extreme version of the practice, known as Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, accounts for 15 percent of cases globally and involves the removal of all external genitalia and a stitching up of the vaginal opening.
Studies have shown that in some parts of Indonesia, female circumcision is more ritualistic a rite of passage meant to purify the genitals and bestow gender identity on a female child with a practitioner rubbing turmeric on the genitals or pricking the clitoris once with a needle to draw a symbolic drop of blood. In other instances, the procedure is more invasive, involving what WHO classifies as Type I female genital mutilation, defined as excision of the clitoral hood, called the prepuce, with or without incision of the clitoris itself. The Population Councils 2003 study said that 82 percent of Indonesian mothers who witnessed their daughters circumcision reported that it involved cutting. The women most often identified the clitoris as the affected body part. The amount of flesh removed, if any, was alternately described by circumcisers as being the size of a quarter-grain of rice, a guava seed, a bean, the tip of a leaf, the head of a needle.
At the Assalaam Foundation, traditional circumcisers say they learn the practice from other women during several years of apprenticing. Siti Rukasitta, who has been a circumciser at the foundation for 20 years, said through an interpreter that they use a small pair of sterilized scissors to cut a piece of the clitoral prepuce about the size of a nail clipping. Population Council observers who visited the event before the 2003 study, however, reported that they also witnessed some cases of circumcisers cutting the clitoris itself.
Any distinction between injuring the clitoris or the clitoral hood is irrelevant, says Laura Guarenti, an obstetrician and WHOs medical officer for child and maternal health in Jakarta. The fact is there is absolutely no medical value in circumcising girls, she says. It is 100 percent the wrong thing to be doing. The circumcision of boys, she adds, has demonstrated health benefits, namely reduced risk of infection and some protection against H.I.V.
Nonetheless, as Western awareness of female genital cutting has grown, anthropologists, policy makers and health officials have warned against blindly judging those who practice it, saying that progress is best made by working with local leaders and opinion-makers to gradually shift the public discussion of female circumcision from what its believed to bestow upon a girl toward what it takes away. These mothers believe they are doing something good for their children, Guarenti, a native of Italy, told me. For our culture that is not easily understandable. To judge them harshly is to isolate them. You cannot make change that way.
Everything else you are trying to compare is significantly more damaging, including the Type II that you... god, I don't even understand how you could seriously try to compare the removal of foreskin to the removal of the clitoris or labia (type II includes the removal of both labia), let alone anything beyond that.
That's all very terrible, but what I bolded undermines the whole thing. I have never met a circumcised man that doesn't enjoy sex. FGM is very deliberately intended to make sex at a minimum unpleasurable, at worst outright painful. What do you suppose the percentage of circumcized men who don't enjoy sex is? What about women whose sex organs have been stripped of all the sensitive parts?
A more accurate comparison of male infant circumcision as it occurs in American hospitals would be female infant circumcision as it occurs in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei.
A more accurate comparison of female circumcision as it occurs in Africa would be male circumcision as it occurs in Africa.
Male and Female Genital Cutting
Similarities:
- about 100 million procedures have been performed on current populations
- The procedure is unnecessary and extremely painful.
- it can have adverse sexual and psychological effects
- it is generally done by force on children without anesthesia
- the practice is supported by local medical doctors
- pertinent biological facts are not generally known where procedures are practiced
- the procedure is defended with reasons such as tradition, religion, aesthetics, cleanliness, and health
- the rationale for the procedure has been connected to controlling sexual pleasure
- It is believed to have no effect on normal sexual functioning
- the practice is accepted and supported by those who have been subjected to it
- the decision is controlled by men
- the choice may be motivated by underlying psychosexual reasons
- critical public discussion is generally taboo where the procedure is practiced
- the procedure can result in serious complications that can lead to death
- the effects are hidden by repression and denial
Differences
- FGM is performed under worse operating conditions
- FGM has several forms and is typically much more severe
- FGM is often a prerequisite for marriage
- FGM results in more apparent adverse effects
- FGM is performed on people of a wider range of ages
"Viewed quantitatively, the extent of genital tissue destruction in the overwhelming majority of ritually mutilated women far exceeds the physical damage found in circumcision. On a qualitative level, however, we are dealing with one and the same thing."
-Hanny Lightfoot-Klein
What you need to take away from this is that no matter what complications may arise from trained practitioners removing boys' foreskins, you're going to lose your audience by comparing it to FGM. I agree with you that circumcizing infants is wrong. When you say something as outrageously inaccurate as it's just as bad as FGM I can't take you seriously anymore and neither will anyone else with facts supported by reality and any familiarity with female genitalia.
Call them both terrible. It's wrong to take a knife to someone's genitalia without their consent. But that is where they stop being comparable. And if you try to make the broad comparison then that is where informed people will stop listening.
you are obviously very upset that you were circumsized as an infant, and nobody wants to take anything away from your suffering, but please note that with your equating of what happened to you to female genital mutilation you are doing exactly that to others. (take away from their suffering.)
what happened to you was not ok. it was a bad thing.
but you have to accept that there are things that are done to others that are even worse than what happened to you. it doesnt make your pain any less real.