I see genital mutilation practices as all sharing the same roots. This stuck this idea in my head of a weed with 3 leaves: FGM, IGM and MGM. If you are not clear about what "IGM" stands for, it's Intersex Genital Mutilation. The intention is to show that we need to attack the roots, not the leaves.
The roots can be summarized to be:
- Control
- Aesthetics
- Economics
Control
Control started out as an attempt to rein in sexual drive (not that I think it works). However, it has expanded to include cultural conformity. I say this because people are being controlled by their culture by choice or their parents are desiring to conform to the culture they are in and/or they wish to control the conformity of their child. Being separated from the herd is a very powerful fear, thus, a very difficult root to pull out. I believe this fear is also what drives us to be ignorant about the topic - meaning, not wanting to learn about the practices for fear that we may realize that it's wrong.
Aesthetics
I hear that the preputially amputated penis looks better far too frequently. Once I learned about how the natural penis works, I just think it looks mutilated, but, when all you see is preputially amputated penii, it's understandable why people might think the more common penis is the better looking one. However, I also think that it's built into the female DNA because the appearance of the glans tells them that the male is ready for sex and women do not understand the feelings they are feeling when they see a penis.
It's very clear that intersex normalization or binary surgeries are frequently about aesthetics. Anything that does not fit the binary view makes people uncomfortable. And, understandably, parents want their child to be attractive to the opposite sex so they have a good chance at a love life.
Even if the intersex case looks normal from the external view, to a medical professional, if things do not look like they are used to under the skin, they may have an automatic belief that something is wrong.
For female genital cutting, this does not always apply since many cases, such as ritual nicks, there is no visible difference. However, there does seem to be cases where there is a desire for the labia to be trimmed.
The aesthetics connects back to control as there is a desire to look like peers. This leads to statements like:
- "They will be made fun of in the locker room."
- "They need to match."
Economics
While there is clearly many financial reasons for individuals to press forward with male genital cutting, there are also for the other two. Let me start with the many for male GC:
- The surgeons/butchers collect a paycheck.
- The sex lube companies sell more.
- The pharmaceuticals sell more erectile dysfunction drugs (i.e. Viagra).
- The cosmetics industry uses the very pure tissue from what is removed.
For intersex, the only thing I can think of is the paychecks for the surgeons.
For female genital cutting, there is the paycheck for the mohels (yes, they use the same term as the Jewish term for those who cut males). However, the economics seem to go very deep. Families often NEED to sell their daughters in order to feed the rest of the family. If their daughters are not fixed to make sure they are virgins, they may not be valued.
