Not boys nor girls should be abused like this against their will and before they can consent to it.

Quit destriying boy's penises.

There was a case some years ago (maybe the last 10-15 years) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was a local doctor who performed a clitoridectomy at the request of an African couple.

There may be other U. S. cases, too, but this horrific one is (unfortunately) not first or last.

stop being an idiot: millions up millions of men have cirumcised penises, and very very very few would describe them as "destroyed." In fact, these same "destroyed" men, who have full sexual use and pleasure of their sexual organ, must feel okay about circumcision, because they allow the hospitals to do the same to their sons! Clinton recently described circumscision as the way to save Africa.

I'm not exactly pro circumscision, but the morons who compare this to FGM, are really just that...

morons!

I was thinking about this last night and wondering how it would be possible to prevent parents from mutilating their daughters here in the U.S. But how do you convince a parent from a culture that teaches that women without clitoridectomies are unclean, disgusting, and will never find husbands, that all of this is untrue? How do you counter deeply held cultural ideas of sexual cleanliness? Those are usually among the most closely held taboos and I'm guessing they are very difficult to change.

Maybe make them watch educational videos when they enter the U.S. about the awfulness they would be subjecting their daughters to, with documents of fistulas? This seems pretty useless, really.

Or, possibly, we could pass legislation making it highly punishable to perform a clitoridectomy on a minor girl, and then make it perfectly legal after the age of eighteen, provided that it is done by a doctor and after medical and psychological counseling and obtaining informed consent. Jail anyone who performs the operation outside of these bounds. I have a wide enough libertarian streak to think that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they like with their genitals, including cutting them off.

Anybody else have ideas for practical solutions?

"In fact, these same "destroyed" men ... must feel okay about circumcision, because they allow the hospitals to do the same to their sons!"

Okay, then let's try this on for size - "millions of infibulated women around the world must feel okay about their circumcisions because they allow their daughters to be infibulated too." My point is that lots of people follow local cultural practices without giving them too much thought. And frankly, it's easier to go with the flow than admit that your parents did something pretty terrible to you.

I don't think FGM and male circumcision are, for most children, equivalent injuries, but neither is a benign procedure. And they're not separable issues, either - there is no country in the world that practices FGM that does not also practice male circumcision. If an adult male or female decides to have his/her genitals cut, no problem. But these procedures are mainly done on children, who cannot consent and who don't require them for any medical reason. Just because we only do it to male babies under aseptic conditions doesn't make it okay - it's still on a spectrum of human rights violations, and it still hurts.

Circumcision is a procedure in search of a justification. The latest is this notion that it can limit the spread of AIDS in Africa. I get physically ill when I think about what will happen to Africa when millions of circumcised men think they can't contract HIV. I've read the studies, and I think they're methodologically and logically flawed. Consider for a minute that the U.S. has the highest circumcision rate of any country in the world outside of Israel. We also have one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world. If male circumcision even made a dent in HIV infection rates, we should have seen it here by now.

I don't have a fully formed opinion on male circumcision but I have two factual points:

1) you can't compare the situation of men in the developed world who, after having been circumsized, chooses to do the same to his son and women in the developing world have their daughters circumsized. The idea that both parties have an equal amount of choice in the matter relative to cultural coercion, social power, and family decision-making structure makes it an entirely faulty comparison.

2) I don't know where you are getting your HIV infection rates but no, the U.S. does NOT have one of the highest HIV infection rates either in terms of the percent of the population infected or in terms of absolute numbers. 95% of people infected with HIV live in the developing world.

Argh.... Misinformation on this *frustrates* me so much! I work in this area -- here's some perspective:

Approximately 1 in 200 people in the US is HIV-infected. This is not the lowest rate in the world, but it's pretty far down there.

In sub-Saharan Africa, anywhere from 1 in 10 to ONE IN THREE people are infected, depending on the country. The country I work with the most, Botswana, is one of those one in three places.

Male circumcision may help prevent HIV transmission not only on its own, but because condoms tend to stay on a circ'd penis better...

Complicated issues: Tradition, culture, religion.

Not complicated: Anatomy.

A clitoridectomy is the removal of a clitoris (organ).

A circumcision is the removal of a foreskin (piece of skin).

Are we freaking clear?? Though clitoridectomy has been referred to as "female circumcision," the phrase is inaccurate. To circumcise means "to cut around." The issue of circumcision is one for the parents of baby boys.

So call it a clitoridectomy or female genital mutilation or cutting. But please: do not equate or even associate the practice of snipping the foreskin of an infant with the practice of slicing off a clitoris (with an insufficiently sterilized knife, rock, or razor blade) of an adolescent girl.