kickyourass said:
As for the case of female circumcision, I think people's reactions are again, way out of proportion (At least in my experience). I mean I've met people who rant and rave over circumcision and yet don't even seem to know it exists for females. I've also met a few people who are just fine with male circumcision and yet if you even mention female circumcision they turn into the people I spoke against in the last paragraph.
It's a problem of definitions. The female equivalent of male circumcision would be trimming back or removing the labia, which is a primarily cosmetic procedure which some adult women choose to perform, and (usually only in third world countries) sometimes infant girls have done to them as well. Like most cosmetic surgeries, this is mostly harmless but kinda dumb, but if adults choose to have it done to themselves then what the heck, it's their bodies. (Having an adult choose to do it to a baby, however, would be wrong.) So this matches up with male circumcision on all points.
That, however, is not what is commonly referred to as "female circumcision". For whatever crazy reason, that term actually encompasses both the above as well as cliterectomy (partial or total removal of the clitoris); the male equivalent of that would be chopping off the entire glans of the penis, or the whole thing. It should go without saying that neither the male nor female forms of this should be committed to anyone, for any reason, and anyone that does so should be up on criminal charges.
tl;dr: if males or females want to get circumcised (the former true equivalence case, not the latter one), and they're adults and have properly understood what it all means, then whatever -- it's their body, they should get to choose, no matter how silly the choice. But it's not something that should be chosen for them without their input, especially since it's usually irreversible.