Thursday, December 14, 2006
Circumcision: No Time to Waste, for Men or Women
We wake up to the trumpet of good news: a new study shows that circumcised men run half the risk of HIV/AIDS infection compared to uncircumcised men. A campaign is already underway to get men to voluntarily get themselves circumcised.
But we should also be acting more strongly on what we already knew: that the practice of female genital “circumcision,” most often carried out on young helpless girls in unhygienic conditions without anesthesia, sharply increases the probability that they will contract AIDS.
Just how sharp is that increase? Well, it would be nice to know, wouldn’t it? Common sense tells us that the practice (which usually involves cutting off the clitoris and labia with a razor or knife, and then sewing up the bloody wound to leave only a small hole for urine and menstrual blood to flow through) makes a woman more vulnerable to AIDS infection because she is far more likely to bleed every time she has intercourse. Indeed, intercourse for young women who have been circumcised can be a nightmare, since the man literally needs to “break into” the vaginal canal, repeatedly opening and tearing the wound.
I'm very glad to learn that studies have been done on the benefits of circumcision for men in regards to HIV/AIDS. But if we’re talking about circumcision, it seems at least as urgent, if not more so, to give a push to the campaigns already underway to eradicate the practice of female genital “circumcision” of girls. How about some studies on the health risks of female "circumcision"?
It's estimated that two million girls each year are subjected to this life-endangering ordeal. We don't have time to waste.
It's nothing new that circumcision is supposed to be the cure-all for almost every major disease known to man (anything from masturbation and hip problems to cervical and penile cancer). For some reason, however, we have a yearly media conflagration about how wonderful the practice is because it cures the disease du jour. What we must understand is that the people doing these studies probably care a lot more about promoting circumcision than they do about fighting AIDS. What we also must realize is that female and male circumcision are one in the same. They are the mutilation of the sex organ. The foreskin, the female part of the man, the enclosure is cut away from the male just as the androgenous part of the female, the clitoris, is cut away from the woman. Forced infant male circumcision is just as much of a human rights violation as holding down a female and cutting parts of her genitals. It needs to be eradicated just as female circumcision does. Humans invented circumcision thounsands of years ago (not to cure AIDS!) and we've been looking for justification ever since. Forced infant male circumcision is just as much of a human rights violation as holding down a female and cutting parts of her genitals. It needs to be eradicated just as female circumcision does.
http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Abstracts.aspx?AID=3138
http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Presentations/ppt/3138.ppt
FGM cant be compared with circumcision, the former damages a girls sex life while circumcision is a benefit for both the male and female; it's cleaner, it looks better and the guy performs better (lasts longer) so both enjoy sex even more. The only concern around circumcision should revolve around how to make more men do it and how to produce an aesthetically pleasing result after circumcision.
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