Discuss the global inequality between female and male circumcision
(Bell, 2005). She argues that the assumption that all
circumcised men achieve sexual pleasure while all circumcised women are unable to reach it
is illogical and linked to the Western concept of sexual pleasure (Bell, 2005, p. 138). Opposing
female circumcision solely because it deprives women of sexual pleasure, while male
circumcision continues to be widely accepted, is contradictory and unfair.
Currently, it is not reasonable to compare female circumcision with male circumcision and treat
them as similar procedures (Bell, 2005). The reason for this is that Western sexual discourse,
by comparing the clitoris to the penis, has come to believe that there is no surgical procedure
that could be equivalent to female circumcision except for castration in men (Bell, 2005, p.
135). Consequently, these comparisons have led to the development of new and widespread
views that a female circumcision is a form of mutilation and sexual violence that is worse than
male circumcision (Bell, 2005).
The studies supporting male circumcision have historically focused on promoting and
legitimizing it, rather than objectively studying the biological changes that occur in the male
body during sexual arousal (Bell, 2005). This emphasis on male circumcision was influenced
by inherited cultural ideas about the nature of the male sexual activity, which prioritize
ejaculation and semen production over the importance of the foreskin in male sexual pleasure
(Bell, 2005, p. 127).
Unlike female circumcision, male circumcision has not
received significant attention from liberation movements or become a public health issue.
Nicht die Beachtung, die es verdiente.