Commander Vimes Does Not Approve

If you are against female genital mutilation, but okay or apathetic to circumcision or male genital mutilation, you are a hypocrite. Here I am going to go over some of the arguments I have seen, and basically rip them apart.

“The girls didn’t choose to have their genitals mutilated.”

Neither did the boys. This bugs me for a number of reasons. For one, a little baby, be them male or female, has just about the same level of awareness of what is happening to them. Which is to say not much. An infant boy does not come out of the womb a fully functioning, talking human being, and then choose to get his foreskin chopped off. He comes out as helpless as an infant girl. It also plays on the human tendency to be more concerned for women than men, which is why I think it is used in the first place. The argument would make as much sense as saying “It happens to girls, and is therefore worse.”

“It is just a piece of skin.”

So is your nose, or your ear. Your arm is just skin, bone, and muscle. Also, it is a piece of skin that contains 20,000 nerves, or more than the glans. It is part of the penis, and chopping it off for no reason makes no sense at all.

“It is easier to clean when it is circumcised.”

Most infant boys are born with the foreskin fused to the glans. Cleaning it requires the same effort you put in to cleaning a finger, in that you just wipe the penis off. After the foreskin is able to retract, all you have to do is pull it back and clean underneath the foreskin with water (it is actually advised that you DO NOT use soap on the glans, much like how you should avoid soap on the vagina). My little brother and I were bathed together when we were younger, and I saw my mother teach him this. It took all of five minutes, or about 10 times shorter than it took her to teach him to wash his hair.

“It looks nicer.”

This one just creeps me out, not going to lie. What it says to me is that you are looking at your little baby’s penis in terms of sex, which is gross. You, as the parent, are never, ever, EVER going to use your child’s penis in any sort of sexual capacity. It is not your place to predetermine his sex life. Also, just because you like something does not mean your child will. And if you are using your child’s penis in a sexual capacity, or plan on it, you don’t need to be reading this, and you need to be locked away or never have children.

“My religion demands it.”

Your right to religious freedom ends where his right to an intact body begins. Religion demands a lot of things. If you flip through Leviticus in the Bible, it is full of demands for people to follow. Most people will not follow all of them. Religions do away with a lot of the things that no longer make sense, and this is one of the things that needs to go. Let your child decide if he wants to make his covenant with god when he gets older. His penis, his choice.

“As the mother, it is my right to choose.”

No, it isn’t. If you are using this argument, I sincerely hope that you are in the forefront of attempting to get FGM legalized, seeing that you seem to think that parents have some sort of right to their kids genitals. Your child is not your property, slavery is illegal.

There are certainly more arguments, but these are the ones people use before they start using bad scientific studies to back up their bigotry. If you have ever used any of these arguments, you really need to take a look at where you stand on this whole “equality” thing.