Stop Mutilating Children In Name Of Religion
By - Dean Van Drasek
There are few things worse than physical mutilation. Genital mutilation is not
the same as gouging out an eye or cutting off an arm, but it’s the same
thing on a smaller scale and there is no justification for allowing parents to
do this to their children. None. Ever.
Let’s get down to the basics. Cutting up children’s bodies is unjustifiably
wrong in any context you want to hold. It should be a decision left to them
to take of their own free will once they are legally an “adult” in whatever
culture they happen to inhabit. The preference given to religious practices
leads to some pretty ludicrous results. In many countries you can get into
legal trouble for spanking your child in public or in the home—but if you
want to mutilate their genitals? Why, that’s okay. How did we ever get to
this insane position?
How this abominable habit likely started is unknown. It probably harkens
back to some sort of coming of age ritual for both men and women before
recorded history. But if you ask my opinion, I blame the Egyptians for
making it popular. (There are many books out there about this subject if
you’re interested: consider “Circumcision: A History Of The World's Most
Controversial Surgery” by David Gollaher and “The Female Circumcision
Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective” by Ellen Gruenbaum.)
Circumcision Not Widely Practiced
No one knows exactly why the Egyptians started to practice this for men (it
might have been for cosmetic reasons, after all this is the culture that gave
us wigs, mascara, and perhaps rouge and perfume), but it may not have
been linked to religion and it does not appear to have been widely practiced.
Also, all early indications are that it was first practiced on adult males. There
is no reference, as far as I know, of Egyptians widely practicing female
circumcision at this time. The small Semitic tribes bordering on the Egyptian
realm were heavily influenced by this great and ancient power to the West
(Egypt had been around for over 1,000 years as a continuously established
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