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Comment by carrolldunham | Hacker News Reader

Female genital mutilation: the horror! what primitive tribal culture bound nonsense. Male genital mutilation: oh nono, it's for uh, health. no totally. - American people

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Please don't add nationalistic flamewar on top of religious flamewar. We're trying to stay out of the deeper circles of internet hell here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been posting flamebait comments repeatedly and we've already asked you once to stop. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this? We're trying for something different from internet default here, and as you know, going against entropy takes a lot of energy.

I agree with you, but let's not forget how female genital mutilation is enormously more destructive.

Often, but not always. And fully a third of the male population globally is circumcised; wouldn't surprise me if the overall burden is larger.

"overall burden" is meaningless utilitarianism. This is a procedure which harms individuals.

This talk [1] by Dr. Brian Earp is a good explanation of the confusion around this common claim.

[1] https://youtu.be/MXfjgPr-YsA

This is a common misconception, but, were it true, what relevance would it have to the question at hand?

But I've seen enough practitioners argue that's because somehow "it's not being done right".

Imo the sooner we outlaw both the sooner we can move on as a species, but maybe that's just me.

I'm sure most of us forgot, but thankfully there's always one in the crowd to point it out and remind us.

Europeans I knew were horrified to watch, after their son was born in the US, nurses scoop him up to do this. "Wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? ... Nonononono (are you crazy?)" Luckily they prevented it.

When/where was this? I had my son ~8 years ago and there was a form to fill out before the birth to agree/disagree to have one performed.

It must have been in the early 1990s. I think they were living in CA at the time, but it might have been AZ.

Circumcision and excision are not the same thing. Excision is like removing the head of the penis, not just skin.

There are forms of FGM that consist of removal of the clitoral hood. Those are pretty much exactly the same thing.

Yes, clitoridectomy would correspond to removal of the glans.

In practice, most FGM in the West happens under Islam and is symbolic: A small cut to draw blood, but no amputation. Still unacceptable, but actually less damaging than MGM.

Finally, do not be fooled by "just skin". First of all, it's a lot of skin. There are videos on the internet of African tribes performing circumcisions of adolescents. Watch one.

Second, it's full of nerve endings. The skin is a sense organ. You are removing as much as possible of that which makes sex feel good. To emphasize, this is not like the relatively insensitive skin of the shaft. That's the whole point.

If you're a man, if you pay attention you can get a hint of what you're missing. What's left of the inner foreskin after a circumcision is called a "corona" (as though it's a natural body part). Touch that. You will find that it is one of the most sensitive parts of your penis, arguably even more so than the glans. And if you are a (straight) woman, then I have just given you some important information about how you can still give your partner some (limited) sexual pleasure.

Thank for the tips but I'm complete.

Many forms of FGM are just cutting off the clitoral hood, equivalent to a male circumcision.

Yeah, it's really not the same thing. It's like comparing a botched operation with a decapitation.

How much skin would you be happy having removed from your daughter's clitoris before you'd consider it mutilation? Answer in cm².

The reality is that so much as a pin-prick or tiny cut (to draw a drop of blood or leave a small mark) is counted[1] and prosecuted[2] as FGM. If the word mutilation fits there, it certainly fits male circumcision.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-37819753

[2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/16/female-...

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