Think they can't be compared?
Think again.
"The anthropologist Kirsten Bell similarly found that, when she drew comparisons between the two surgeries for her U.S. college students, the reaction was “immediate and hostile. How dare I mention these two entirely different operations in the same breath! How dare I compare the innocuous and beneficial removal of the foreskin with the extreme mutilations enacted against females in other societies!” (2005:125). Both these groups would appear to be in agreement with Doriane Coleman, who has argued that any analogy between the two forms of genital alteration “has been rejected as specious and disingenuous [since] traditional forms of FGM are as different from male circumcision in terms of procedures, physical ramifications and motivations as ear piercing is to a penilectomy” (1998:736). There we have the conventional U.S. view, which is echoed by the tenor of the commonly used terms: circumcision is no worse than ear piercing, whereas any form of FGM is the equivalent of penis amputation."
I can't tell you how many time I've seen females shouting "how would you like to have your penis cut off?!" as analogous to the removal of the clitoris. It ain't the same. The vagina still functions, and though it has much less, it still has some sexual sensation. Remove the penis, and there is nothing left to function. BOTH are barbaric and a disgusting violation of human rights, but the ignorance regarding both male and female genital mutilation is astounding. Especially when it comes to claiming the mutilation and torture of male infants and little boys is harmless, innocent, and even beneficial, when the same claims and violations are made toward females (wherever the is FGM, there is MGM), and the Western conclusion is "logical" appall and disgust.
We'll never convince them to stop cutting their little girls, until we stop cutting our little boys.
"The anthropologist Kirsten Bell similarly found that, when she drew comparisons between the two surgeries for her U.S. college students, the reaction was “immediate and hostile. How dare I mention these two entirely different operations in the same breath! How dare I compare the innocuous and beneficial removal of the foreskin with the extreme mutilations enacted against females in other societies!” (2005:125). Both these groups would appear to be in agreement with Doriane Coleman, who has argued that any analogy between the two forms of genital alteration “has been rejected as specious and disingenuous [since] traditional forms of FGM are as different from male circumcision in terms of procedures, physical ramifications and motivations as ear piercing is to a penilectomy” (1998:736). There we have the conventional U.S. view, which is echoed by the tenor of the commonly used terms: circumcision is no worse than ear piercing, whereas any form of FGM is the equivalent of penis amputation."
I can't tell you how many time I've seen females shouting "how would you like to have your penis cut off?!" as analogous to the removal of the clitoris. It ain't the same. The vagina still functions, and though it has much less, it still has some sexual sensation. Remove the penis, and there is nothing left to function. BOTH are barbaric and a disgusting violation of human rights, but the ignorance regarding both male and female genital mutilation is astounding. Especially when it comes to claiming the mutilation and torture of male infants and little boys is harmless, innocent, and even beneficial, when the same claims and violations are made toward females (wherever the is FGM, there is MGM), and the Western conclusion is "logical" appall and disgust.
We'll never convince them to stop cutting their little girls, until we stop cutting our little boys.