Can we please talk about Male Circumcision?

[KaseyM]

It seems to be an undeniable truth that whenever there is a thread about, well anything to do with the inustices that women face in the world, it will usually turn back into a conversation about the injustices that men face in the world, one of them being male circumcision.

I get the impression that those coming on here saying "well what about male circumcision" in that lovely WATM way actually believe that feminists either a) invented male circumcision or b) approve of it.

So, just for the record and so that in future we can direct any further derailings to this can we state categorically once and for all each of our individual positions on Male Circumcision.

So I'll start: I disagree with it 100%.

Anyone else?

[FloraFox]

MGM? What the fuck?

[BasilBabyEater]

MGM?

[OvaryAction]

Flora and Basil Are you asking me what MGM stands for?

[FloraFox]

No, I can guess what it stands for. I'm am continually astounded at the appropriation of issues by MRAs.

[OvaryAction]

I'm not an MRA.

Surely mutilation is an appropriate title for the unnecessary and painful removal of a baby boy's foreskin?

[FloraFox]

No it's not appropriate.

That procedure has long been known as circumcision as accurately describes it - i.e. cutting around the foreskin. FGM used to be called "female circumcision" and was rightly renamed as the name is not correct and because the extent and impact of the FGM is not in any way comparable with circumcision. It is a repugnant attempt at false equivalence.

[OvaryAction]

But there are more types of male genital mutilation than just circumcision. For example Subincision which slits the entire underside of the penis open.

[FloraFox]

This thread is about circumcision which is widely practised. Subincision is an entirely different matter and does not justify appropriating FGM to apply to circumcision.

[stickysausages]

Subincision in increasing cases, is now being carried out in the name of body 'mods' by western men. Nobody, nobody is going to volunteer for FGM

[OvaryAction]

Ok, well I consider unnecessary circumcision to fall into the category of MGM.
Some people prefer to call FGM cutting or circumcision so as to avoid offending those who practice it. I personally don't agree with the terminology, as you do not agree with my use of MGM but it's impossible for everyone to agree with each other all the time.

I also think that it is perfectly acceptable to care about both issues and want both practices to end. I do agree that it's better to discuss them separately though, as clearly discussing the two together inevitably ends up with a competition over which is worse.

[FloraFox]

It's not a competition. FGM is worse.

[OvaryAction]

I do actually agree that it's worse in terms of the misogyny behind it, the degradation, pain and long lasting physical and psychological effects.

But I don't think that makes it wrong to disagree with mutilating male genitals. Or to call it that. For the individual involved they are still being put through unnecessary pain and having their genitals irreversibly changed by people they trust.

I personally am an active campaigner against FGM, I do not campaign against MGM (although I seem to have ended up doing so a bit on here!)but I do think it is an awful practice and should be banned.

[OvaryAction]

It's practiced in aborigine culture and I think parts of Africa. I don't know a lot about it either but have read briefly that it is performed on children aged around seven. I think the increasing practice of it on fully consenting adult males in the west is a bit of a red herring, because a seven year old child is not going to be choosing to undergo such pain in the hope that he will one day experience better sexual pleasure than he otherwise would have done.

Anyway, I feel as though my contributions are getting other posters' hackles up, which wasn't my intention so I'm going to bow out now.

Night all.

[FloraFox]

If you want to campaign against circumcision, fine. I won't juat as i won't campaign against piecing babies' ears. Calling it MGM is appropriative and offensive.

[ThunderbumsMum]

There is a lot of ignorance on this thread about what non-medically necessary circumcision usually is. Did you know, for example, that it is often carried out for cultural/religious reasons on babies, WITH anaesthetic, and the foreskin is NOT actually removed?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, calling it mutilation and declaring that it is always wrong is ignorant and hysterical. I think it is highly unlikely that most parents fail to consider the pros and cons of circumcising their sons and I'm sure for most if not all it is a fairly difficult decision, which based on what they think is best for their sons. Assuming parents decide to 'mutilate' their sons because they can't be bothered to think about it properly or they aren't as enlightened as you is, quite frankly, ridiculous, not to mention offensive.

[TreaterAnita]

WhentheRed I have to take issue with your suggestion that the purpose of mc is to leave men with a healthy functioning penis. The purpose is to comply with a doctrine dreamt up millennia before by religious leaders. Unless performed on medical grounds it has no purpose beyond that. Yes the intention is to leave the man with sexual function, which distinguishes it from fgm, but I know of at least one case where a child died following male circumcision carried out at home by a nurse, and another where twin boys were lucky not to bleed to death at the hands of a retired orthopaedic surgeon who hired himself out to do this (yes, he botched them both).

To suggest, as someone did up thread, that mc is equivalent to piercing a baby's ears is ludicrous. It is the removal, in children entirely without consent, of a part of their anatomy that they will never regrow even if they decide in adulthood that they'd quite like it back.

My son was born with v mild hypospadias, which is where the urethra doesn't come out at the very end of the penis. His was so mild that he didn't require surgery for the hypospadias itself, but his foreskin didn't form properly and we were advised to address that for cosmetic reasons when he was a baby. We were told that the options were circumcision or reconstruction and very strongly advised, by NHS consultants, that we should opt for the latter, even though it was a more difficult procedure (which we did, and they did an excellent job).

I agree however that mc is not a feminist issue, it's a human rights issue, but then so is fgm. I would not expect my husband to care less about the latter because he has different genitalia himself.

Just to be absolutely clear about my position, I do think that fgm is worse than mc in terms of the effect on victims as a whole, but then I also think that beating a child to death is worse than hitting them occasionally with a cane, but I don't think either is acceptable. If we are going to say that the genital mutilation of a child is unacceptable then we need to apply this across all instances, male or female. There will obviously be resistance to this, because mc is a very established practice among some communities in this country, but we are getting there with physical punishment of a child, which seems to be less and less acceptable. The risk, of course, is that it is driven underground and more children are put at risk at the hands of unqualified practitioners, and that's a difficult argument to address, but that doesn't mean that it should be condoned.

[Onesleeptillwembley]

Surely removing a part of a child for no medical reason IS mutilation. People that agree with this mutilation can call me hysterical and ignorant. Frankly the insults of an uncaring cruel person just don't hold any weight with right thinking people.

[TreaterAnita]

Just to add to my post, circumcision in the UK has no purpose beyond compliance with religious doctrines (generally, though I accept that some parents may seek it for other cultural reasons) and I accept that it is advocated in areas of high HIV prevalence to reduce levels of infection, though I would suggest that reducing the influence of the RC church and encouraging use of barrier contraception would be even more effective.

FloraFox if you want to make the ear comparison, they try cutting off the end of the earloab rather than piercing it. You don't need that bit of skin, they might have made a neat job if it, but I'm pretty sure you'd consider that to be mutilation.

Thunder can you provide some kind of link to this type of male circumcision where they don't actually remove the foreskin? Given that it means 'cutting around', and the medical definition is the surgical removal of the prepuce, I don't think a child has been circumcised if it hasn't been cut (off).

[TreaterAnita]

Ear lobe, not earloab.

[ThunderbumsMum]

treaterAnita there is a slash to the frenulum and the foreskin rolls back but remains. It is a traditional non-medicalised circumcision.

onesleeptillwebley

[Onesleeptillwembley]

Not me advocating slashing innocent children.