Quote:
Originally Posted by Il Duce
look, man, do you even know what procedures are involved?
male circumcision is just removing a useless piece of skin that sheathes the head
female "circumcision" involves removing the clitoris entirely, which is a bit like cutting off the shaft of the penis
2 totally different things
please do get your facts right
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Duce, are you sure YOUR facts are right?
The facts:
(1) The male foreskin is *not* just a "useless piece of skin that sheathes the head":
Quote:
Cold, C.J. and Taylor, J. R. (1999) The Prepuce, British Journal of Urology (1999), 83, Suppl. 1. 34-44
http://www.mgmbill.org/theprepuce.pdf
"The prepuce is a specialized, junctional mucocutaneous tissue which marks the boundary between mucosa and skin; it is similar to the eyelids, labia minora, anus and lips. The unique innervation of the prepuce establishes its function as an erogenous tissue."
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(2) Male circumcision in which the foreskin is removed parallels Type I Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
One variation of Type I FGM is when the female foreskin (prepuce or clitoral hood) is removed, using definitions of FGM given by the American Academy of Pediatrics:
Female Genital Mutilation -- Committee on Bioethics 102 (1): 153 -- AAP Policy
Different degrees and variations of genital cutting exist for both males and females. All are a human rights violation, in my opinion, when done on an underaged individual.
(3) Some studies have found apparent medical benefits to female gentital mutilation. You wrote earlier that "there are no benefits to female circumcision."
A Tanzanian study found that circumcised women had a significantly lower risk of HIV infection: Stallings, R. Y., and Karugendo, E. (2005) Female Circumcision and HIV Infection in Tanzania: For Better or For Worse, International Aids Society Conference
http://ww4.aegis.org/conferences/ias...5/TuOa0401.pdf
(4) Even when the exposed clitoris is cut off, in the severe form of Type I FGM, this is not as severe as cutting off a man's penis as women can still experience orgasms.
The reason this is true is that FGM leaves enough of the unexposed arms of the clitoris, which run on either side of the vulva, intact for women to still achieve orgasm.
See
Clitoris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for structure of clitoris: the clitoral glans (what you see on the outside) is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
See Catania
et al. (2007)
Pleasure and orgasm in women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), J Sex Med, Nov;4(6):1666-78, for evidence that females whose genitals are altered by clitoral head removal can still experience orgasm:
Pleasure and orgasm in women with Female Genital M... [J Sex Med. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI
None of these issues above gets rid of the underlying human rights violations when people alter children's healthy, functional genitalia. Changing children's ability to experience sexuality as they would have if they had been allowed to retain their natural bodies is wrong.
People should not be pricking, cutting, ripping, crushing, or removing parts of healthy children's genitalia! Also, I feel it is extremely wrong to subject children to unnecessary and severe pain through genital cutting.
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As for the question of what a man's sexual experiences might be like if he had not been circumcised as a baby:
I imagine that a male who lacks his foreskin is a little like a person who has had his outer ear (the auricle) removed. He can still hear (he can have an orgasm), but he is missing some of the sensitivity (no sensitive earlobes; can't gather as much sound), and the way he moves to hear (achieve orgasm) is altered to compensate for the losses.
I have read that circumcised men, in order to reach orgasm, need bigger motions, which can sometimes have negative ramifications for both the circumcised men and their partners. I want to get the full article of this, but here is an interesting abstract: