The FGM debate thread?

your first point, what the heck are you talking about? men have nipples because of the fetal development process. and in terms of "cleaner" we could all cut our ears off because we get wax in those folds in our ears, does that mean we should cut them off? we definitely should if we're willing to cut off our pleasure-inducing penile skin like you're advocating; what are ears in comparison to that? nothing. and masturbation for me as an example would be impossible without a foreskin, I doubt you'll be able to sympathise seeing as a) you have no idea what it would feel like, and b) you already have your mind set on the favouring of MGM. and again, the removal of the clit hood would be "pointless" but so what? MGM is pointless but people still do it and claim it is done for legitimate reasons when it's not

your first point, what the heck are you talking about? men have nipples because of the fetal development process. and in terms of "cleaner" we could all cut our ears off because we get wax in those folds in our ears, does that mean we should cut them off? we definitely should if we're willing to cut off our pleasure-inducing penile skin like you're advocating; what are ears in comparison to that? nothing. and masturbation for me as an example would be impossible without a foreskin, I doubt you'll be able to sympathise seeing as a) you have no idea what it would feel like, and b) you already have your mind set on the favouring of MGM. and again, the removal of the clit hood would be "pointless" but so what? MGM is pointless but people still do it and claim it is done for legitimate reasons when it's not

Ears provide a useful function, the foreskin doesn't. You've been shown a study which proves it makes no difference but you're refusing to believe it

stop referring to it as MGM, if it was cutting off the penis then yes, but is is not

masturbating without a foreskin is perfectly possible. and 'm.g.m.' as you call it is done for medical purposes too; f.g.m. certainly isn't.


it's not a study. it's a meta-analysis that has looked at over 35 studies. but no, the whimsical intuition of this guy clearly beats scientific rigour


this, the equivalent to f.g.m. for a male would be to have the entire glans removed.

You're claiming why do men have foreskins if they're not needed. There are several body parts that aren't needed

Ears provide a useful function, the foreskin doesn't. You've been shown a study which proves it makes no difference but you're refusing to believe it

Why the hell would masturbation be impossible without a foreskin? I know plenty of circumcised guys, most of them masturbate...

Cutting off the clitoral hood doesn't provide any benefits such as cleanliness or reduced disease transmission

stop referring to it as MGM, if it was cutting off the penis then yes, but is is not

and just like I've said before, I didn't say it would be impossible to masturbate forever, I said that in order for masturbation I'd have to wait until my penis head hardened as a response to the new environmental pressures, meaning that it would lose sensitivity. any man with a foreskin will know that before the foreskin is even remotely detracted from the head during child hood, the penis head will be literally too sensitive to touch, that's because it's never been exposed or pressurised, and if a child had been circumcised, obviously this wouldn't be the case because their penis heads would have had years of exposure and thus hardening. so therefore, it is clear that this study probably tested only individuals from each came, opposed to getting people to report during the period of being uncircumcised, and then reporting again after being circumcised.

and if you really think the foreskin isn't needed then really you're making a mockery of this issue - foreskins were evolved for similar functions as the eye lid - for protective purposes, and as well as "keeping the glans moist, protecting the developing penis in utero, or enhancing sexual pleasure due to the presence of nerve receptors" which are obviously evolutionary developments to aid the ability of males to reproduce. the fact that a girl is arguing that the foreskin is useless really just goes to show how she will never understand seeing as she doesn't have a (uncircumcised) penis. it's like me saying that the clitoral hood is useless - it's ridiculous, and even more ridiculous to say that it should be removed when it has evolutionary necessities. and in terms of cleanliness, if you shower or bath and you pull back the foreskin, then that split second each time a person washes will save a man his sexual/anatomic integrity. and in terms of STDs/STIs, what about condoms? getting circumcised will reduced the spread of STDs by about 1% while condoms will reduce it by about 99%. and to circumcise a baby not only for something they aren't going to do (only if they are an adult will they have unprotected sex so they should wait until then when they can weigh up the pros and cons themselves, if there are even any pros but whatever) but it is violence and against freedom and human rights/dignity. a huge part of the issue of FGM is that it hurts to have it done, considerably. and that's the same part of MGM that I'm suggesting here.

and you probably know "many circumcised guys" (how you came about to even know that is pretty odd) that were *always* circumcised, or had to wait until their penis head desensitised.

and again, technically, it would make the clitoral area cleaner without the clitoris, which would block the area from being able to be cleaned more fully. so what? that's not my argument, the cleanliness argument to justify mutilation is yours!

and a considerable amount of FGM isn't cutting of the clitoris, it's cutting out the "inner lips". seems just like the cutting off of the foreskin to me - those pesky lips would simply "get in the way" of sex and cleaning! [sarcasm]

Yes, you clearly know better than a meta analysis.

I don't particularly think the clitoral hood is useful either. I have no desire to go around chopping people's clitoral hoods off, but that is not what people mean when they talk about FGM. Yeah well done, back when no one wore clothes and their bodies were exposed all the time

Condoms do yes but being circumcised helps

Why is that weird? I have several friends who are guys from religions where it's pretty normal to be circumcised, I've been around for guy talk..

How does not having a clitoris make it cleaner? Again the comparable would be cutting off the cock not just the foreskin..

You do realise women can choose to get their lips shortened because it looks better and makes sex easier? If that proceedure was done under anaesthetic, and left the clitoris alone, I wouldn't really have a problem with labiaplasty being done

and just like I've said before, I didn't say it would be impossible to masturbate forever, I said that in order for masturbation I'd have to wait until my penis head hardened as a response to the new environmental pressures, meaning that it would lose sensitivity. any man with a foreskin will know that before the foreskin is even remotely detracted from the head during child hood, the penis head will be literally too sensitive to touch, that's because it's never been exposed or pressurised, and if a child had been circumcised, obviously this wouldn't be the case because their penis heads would have had years of exposure and thus hardening. so therefore, it is clear that this study probably tested only individuals from each came, opposed to getting people to report during the period of being uncircumcised, and then reporting again after being circumcised.

and in terms of STDs/STIs, what about condoms? getting circumcised will reduced the spread of STDs by about 1% while condoms will reduce it by about 99%.

masturbating without a foreskin is perfectly possible. and 'm.g.m.' as you call it is done for medical purposes too; f.g.m. certainly isn't.


it's not a study. it's a meta-analysis that has looked at over 35 studies. but no, the whimsical intuition of this guy clearly beats scientific rigour


this, the equivalent to f.g.m. for a male would be to have the entire glans removed.

it might 'dullen' the sensitivity of the head, but this clearly doesn't impact upon the pleasure derived from sexual activity (which is, by and large, computed in the brain anyway).

right, two of the 35 studies were high-quality, large-scale randomised-controlled trials. i'm assuming you don't know what this is, so i'll explain:
both studies included group of c. 2500 men. half got circumcised, half didn't. they were asked about their sexual pleasure, sexual dysfunction, etc. at baseline (i.e. when both groups are uncircumcised) and then at 6 monthly intervals for 2 years post circumcision. no statistically significant difference was found between the groups in either trial.

several other studies are surveys with men who have undergone circumcision as adults, having previously employed their uncircumcised penis for sexual activity. again, no statistically significant difference.

you see, when scientists conduct meta-analyses, they do have to cover their bases, or it doesn't get published (at least not in the journal they'd like). your super-duper alternative explanation has been covered at length in the study.

if you don't 'buy' this then you literally cannot be reasoned with. it might 'dullen' the sensitivity of the head, but this clearly doesn't impact upon the pleasure derived from sexual activity (which is, by and large, computed in the brain anyway).

edit:

you do realise that in countries where millions of people have a.i.d.s., this could make a pretty substantial difference? 1% in the medical world is no scornful figure.

you do realise that in countries where millions of people have a.i.d.s., this could make a pretty substantial difference? 1% in the medical world is no scornful figure.

if you remove the sexual nerve receptors from the penis then obviously you'll have less of a sexual sensation, so of course dullening the penis, as it would suggest, takes away the positivity of it to a relative degree. whether it is that significant to cause problems is subjective but clearly it eventually (not at first) desensitises the sensation that that part of the body is supposed to have in terms of its evolutionary development and its impact on our relative ability to climax

Also. 1% may be a substantial margin, but does it warrant such an extreme practice for it to be achieved? Again, I think that decision should be completely down to the person whose genitalia it is.

right. ignore the reams of data i present to you and focus on the relatively insignificant last sentence.

when you remove nerves from something, oftentimes the nerves that remain become more sensitive or react in a way so as to compensate for the loss. this is why procedures for severe, chronic pain in which sensory nerves are severed often only work for a limited period of time..

you never told me where you found the information about the study, because it certainly wasn't on that link, so again, it doesn't serve to satisfy. and are you arguing that second paragraph for circumcision? I thought you said it dullened the penis?

1) I'd listen to that analysis if it's methods were transparent; all it said was "we found at *insert result*" - I know they had a sizeable sample group on each side but so what? how did they use them? I'm only suspicious because the result seems deeply absurd
2) for one thing you're agreeing with my point then - hypothetically speaking, if the hood of the clitoris is useless, that doesn't suggest that we ought to mutilate it. and what are you talking about? back when we didn't wear clothes? that wasn't what I said - the fact that clothes brush against parts of our genitals means that it eventually causes the desensitisation of those parts.
3) condoms do the whole job! if you're wearing a condom (as most people would for sex if I'm to sensibly assume) then what point is there of the foreskin? babies don't spread STDs, as I stated before, so again I have no idea how it is justified to do it to a child who may turn out to be abstinent
4) and again you've perfectly proven my point - these people you know were always circumcised so not only would they not understand the betterment of the foreskin but they inevitably had their penis heads become less sensitive or else masturbation wouldn't be possible
5) because if we're talking about the functioning and the cleanliness of the entirely of the vagina, the clit being removed would make it easier to clean because there wouldn't be anything blocking any part of the region. I'm not advocating that we cut off the clitoris, I'm simply transferring the logic.
6) they choose to get their lips lengthened? a) consent is a justified way of doing something like that, having it done through force is not (e.g. child MGM) and b) how does this relate to what I said?

Let's assume (for the sake of argument) that there was the same amount of evidence as there is for male circumcision that certain forms of FGM that were analogous to male circumcision reduced STI's urinary tract infections etc. by the same rate that it does for male circumcision. Would that be an acceptable reason to make those certain forms of Female Genital Mutilation legal?

Because if it isn't then we very much have our answer on whether the male form should be legal as well.