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I went to an entire conference at DC about this. There are plenty of people speaking against it. Unfortunately, there are also louder voices and more powerful politically voices that are speaking for it. I can rant for ever on it, but I won't. Breaks my heart :(

check out also http://www.cirp.org Excellent page on the issue.

when my son was born we decided not to continue that particular tradition

and whereas the tradition continues, it is becoming somewhat less prevelant due to the simple fact that fewer insurance companies are not covering because it is regarded as "unnecessary"

It's talked about allll the time... and there's many groups dedicated to stopping it.

What's wrong with it?

Maybe I just don't see it as a big deal because I wasn't circumcized as a child.

my son isn't circumcised, because i do see it as genital mutilation. you'd be surprised at the flak we've gotten for that decision. oh well...we did what we thought was right.

People do speak out against it, Dave. However, if you're comparing it to female genital mutilation, the comparison is largely fallacious. For even the most minor of female genital mutilations, the comparative equivalent for the male would be for the entire head of the penis to be removed, not just a small piece of skin cut. And in the States, the baby boy is in a medical facility, and no one is telling the parents that the boy must have this done when he is twelve years old in order to preserve his virtue (such as happens with the girls). No one is cutting him open with rusty pieces of metal and sewing him shut with thorns and telling him this will make him more desirable by marriage.

I wrote a paper last semester on FGM--a sum of over fifty pages upon the topic, citing sources and speaking to experts. Every expert in the field states the equating male circumcision to FGM is a huge misconception that causes more harm to the cause of FGM. As I said, even the most minor of FGM practices--what the Amnesty International brochure on the topic deems as a Stage I cutting--would entail the entire head of the penis to be removed to be remotely equivalent.

My husband is circumsized and I asked him how he felt about MGM and he said, "WHAT!?"...To him he isn't mutilated. He thinks parents that have their kid's ears pierced is CBM. Of course, we had our son circumsized at birth in '84 at the doctor's advice. It was still part of mainstream America then. I wouldn't do it today, but I don't think my son feels like he has been mutilated. I don't think it's as routine as it used to be.

Logan's father and I had a huge, long-drawn-out argument on the subject when I was approaching his due date. Richard was circumcised, and wanted Logan to be, also. In the end, I managed to simply put off the decision long enough that they discharged us without the procedure. I haven't regretted it for a moment, and even Richard got used to the idea. My daughter's ears or anything else will not be pierced until she asks for piercings, and I don't see why I should make a decision to permanently remove or change a part of my boys' bodies without their input, either. If they want to be like their fathers, well, they can ask me later.

I think, respect given to the physical differences between the two, you're unintentionally dealing with what is still the very sensitive feminist issue -- i.e., an act against a woman's worth in a given society can not be equivalent to an act against a man by the default of an oppressive history. (A habit I don't happen to agree with, but, common it is, and not entirely unfounded I suppose.)

It reminds me of the well known campaign built up surrounding the statistics regarding the number of women who are domestically abused each year in the U.S., which never mentioned that reports show an equal or greater number of men who are abused. The same goes for the long time it took between the acknowledgement of the anorexia problem in the U.S., and the acknowledgement that it's not only girls who become anorexic.

One of my pet peeves, though -- the amount of time spent dealing with past history over present reality, and the amount of time spent worrying about the pure accuracy of lines drawn rather than doing something to erase the end points of the lines.

my hubby is un-cut, and he has never had any problems... we have talked about it and if we have a baby boy someday, he probably be uncut too