The Most Offensive Thing You'll Read All Day

In response to a brief post discussing circumcision, several comments suggested that male circumcision was the moral equivalent of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM). This comment is pretty representative:

In countries where FGM occurs it is usually the women who perpetuated it onto their daughters, they often don't feel it was a violation. Heck in Indonesia it's done on neonates, just like males here. So how do they know what is missing? What reason would they have to stop it, they're fine. It's the same dance just a different tune.

Well, heck - it seems we have very different definitions of the word 'fine.'

Fortunately, Denialism Blog sets the record straight:

Independent of how you may feel about male circumcision, it does not normally, or even more than very rarely, lead to long-term medical consequences. FGM nearly always does. FGM is not usually as "simple" as a pinprick. And who performs it is irrelevant. If women are co-opted into torturing each other by the dominant male culture, that is most emphatically not a mitigating factor, but a sign of how deeply disturbed gender relations in the culture are.

Male circ is not a method of controlling males and their sexuality... FGM is always---always---a method of controlling women and their sexuality. It is almost always mutilitory (rather than symbolic) and leads to widespread female urogenital problems. Despite what the foreskin-worshipers may say, male circumcision and FGM are in no way equivalent.

I really appreciate having some male allies willing to point out the stupidity of the 'women are incapable of doing anything to hurt women, ergo if a woman does something then it must be good for womankind' argument that we see so frequently around these parts. I'm also going to have to agree with PalMD on his second point too, "Go ahead and argue the ethics of male circ on their merits. There is a reasonable discussion to be had. But leave FGM out of it."