>CB: I should have read it more carefully. I see what you mean.
>
>I think there are some places with unanesthetized male youth circumcision,
>which might give a closer comparison.
Recently I was talking to a woman who had, a few years ago, joined an orthodox Jewish community. She has two sons who had not been circumcised (their father is not Jewish and she wasn't into it at the time). To participate in the community fully, the boys would have to be circumcised so she gave the older one the choice. He decided to do it (he was around 11 or 12 years old at the time). We asked him what he thought now. He said it was the worst thing he'd ever gone through--and that was with anaesthetic.
Note, too, that most female genital cutting is done when the girls are prepubescent, whereas the 'barbaric western custom of male circumcision' is done normally before conscious memory kicks in. (This is more an indication of male supremacy to me than it is an indication of western enlightenment.)
Jenny Brown