Jerry's Odd Corner of the Internet

barrelsoforanges:

As a feminist and a humanist, and an intactivist, I find it incredibly unnerving when people flying the feminist flag are so uneducated about male and female circumcision and seem to think genital cutting (so affectionately called circumcision when done to non-females & mutilation when done to females) of all children can’t be lumped together under one umbrella of human rights atrocities.  Genital cutting of ALL children is anti-feminism and a violation of human rights. 

Let’s chat about BODILY AUTONOMY, hey? 

Human beings have a right to healthy, whole, intact, natural-born bodies. No one has the right to modify the body of another human being without his or her permission, and without immediate medical indication, where proxy consent is necessary in order to save a person’s life or treat an imminent illness. Genital cutting of children prophylactically does not fulfill this requirement. 

Feminism recognises that women have been marginalised historically as a result of the gender hierarchy. This gender hierarchy is manifested in the genital cutting of male children, by separating boys from their mothers, denying mothers of their maternal instincts to protect their children and initiating them into a community of men through a violent rite of passage, marking them in the flesh and establishing their place in the circumcised male community. This is also an act of paternalism that declares the sexual identity of the group supersede the individuals rights to bodily ownership, and demonstrates  the FATHER’S role in the community by his willingness to place his OWN SON (his most prized “possession”) in harm’s way. Here is a great article that explains this gender, identity, patriarchal establishment through male circumcision. 

Finally, Feminism is about GENDER EQUALITY. One cannot believe it is ok to subject male and intersex children to non-therapeutic genital cutting, but not females. To do so requires a great deal of denial, an illegitimate comprehension of feminism, and cultural blindness. 

(via uncutting)