I’m touching the third rail here, but I think there probably is a nuanced comparison to be made that considers the different forms of FGM (including the prevalence of the most minor forms – involving making small nicks or pricks in the skin – which are less invasive than male circumcision) along with its prevalence globally (30% of men are circumcised while 5% of women have been subjected to FGM).
There’s also the legal/societal/neglectedness comparison: FGM is widely condemned and illegal in most countries, with prohibitions extending across jurisdictions (in some countries it’s a criminal offence for citizens to have FGM done in another country). Compare male circumcision, which is legal nearly everywhere.
These issues are of indeed difficult to talk about. And I admit that I haven’t been very friendly in this discussion so far. Apologies for that.
Even with nuance, the difference between FGM and male circumcision seems staggering to me. Here’s an example of a study that estimates a 3% life quality loss due to FGM. Over an entire life, that amounts to more than 1 QALY lost due to the mutilation. Granted, there are less severe forms… but I find 1 QALY a horrifying amount.
Male circumcision on the other hand has positive effects as well as negative. I don’t want to downplay the negative effects… but circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
[am stepping back from this thread now as it’s getting a bit distant from the original post and I don’t wish to derail it]
Quite horrifying, I agree. But scale is notable here: 6 times as many men are circumcised, so if the quality of life lost was 0.5% then the total lost utility is the same between the two groups.
And given that some number of circumcisions go wrong, leading to loss of sensation, pain during sex, rarely partial or total amputation and other forms of suffering (“the constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain,” writes one individual with PTSD from the suffering from his botched circumcision), 0.5% overall seems really not hard to fathom.
The benefits are minor (your comments elsewhere about better sexual performance are not supported by the literature), and not justified by the harms. This position has broad agreement from public health bodies. The UK’s National Health Service, and many other like it, made the decision decades ago to stop funding neonatal circumcisions for this exact reason.
circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
This just seems like post-hoc rationalisation (‘it can’t be bad because it’s legal’). I could just as easily say that laws on circumcision are thirty years behind laws on FGM.
More likely is that the practice plays a prominent role in Abrahamic religions and attempts by countries to outlaw it (there have been a few) fall foul of laws around freedom of religion. Several such examples here, see e.g. Iceland and Denmark.
I’m touching the third rail here, but I think there probably is a nuanced comparison to be made that considers the different forms of FGM (including the prevalence of the most minor forms – involving making small nicks or pricks in the skin – which are less invasive than male circumcision) along with its prevalence globally (30% of men are circumcised while 5% of women have been subjected to FGM).
There’s also the legal/societal/neglectedness comparison: FGM is widely condemned and illegal in most countries, with prohibitions extending across jurisdictions (in some countries it’s a criminal offence for citizens to have FGM done in another country). Compare male circumcision, which is legal nearly everywhere.
These issues are of indeed difficult to talk about. And I admit that I haven’t been very friendly in this discussion so far. Apologies for that.
Even with nuance, the difference between FGM and male circumcision seems staggering to me. Here’s an example of a study that estimates a 3% life quality loss due to FGM. Over an entire life, that amounts to more than 1 QALY lost due to the mutilation. Granted, there are less severe forms… but I find 1 QALY a horrifying amount.
Male circumcision on the other hand has positive effects as well as negative. I don’t want to downplay the negative effects… but circumcision is probably legal nearly everywhere because these effects are small.
[am stepping back from this thread now as it’s getting a bit distant from the original post and I don’t wish to derail it]
Quite horrifying, I agree. But scale is notable here: 6 times as many men are circumcised, so if the quality of life lost was 0.5% then the total lost utility is the same between the two groups.
And given that some number of circumcisions go wrong, leading to loss of sensation, pain during sex, rarely partial or total amputation and other forms of suffering (“the constant discomfort of a genital injury creates a covenant of pain,” writes one individual with PTSD from the suffering from his botched circumcision), 0.5% overall seems really not hard to fathom.
The benefits are minor (your comments elsewhere about better sexual performance are not supported by the literature), and not justified by the harms. This position has broad agreement from public health bodies. The UK’s National Health Service, and many other like it, made the decision decades ago to stop funding neonatal circumcisions for this exact reason.
This just seems like post-hoc rationalisation (‘it can’t be bad because it’s legal’). I could just as easily say that laws on circumcision are thirty years behind laws on FGM.
More likely is that the practice plays a prominent role in Abrahamic religions and attempts by countries to outlaw it (there have been a few) fall foul of laws around freedom of religion. Several such examples here, see e.g. Iceland and Denmark.