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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps unrelated, but there's the large problem of unaddressed spousal abuse that victimizes men. Self-reported data from here in Canada[0] shows that men are more likely to experience spousal violence overall, albeit roughly half as likely to experience sexual assault or a serious beating.

But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].

The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.

0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...

1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html

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>>But there are no shelters for men in most provinces

People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters

Violence against men by women isn't socially considered violence.

Similarly, circumcision is not regarded with the disgust and horror as FGM is.

I spent valuable credits in my degree arguing that it should be. Clearly I didn't make a good argument, as I didn't get a good grade ;)

Interestingly, both reduce the pleasure for women.

In all fairness though, these don't really seem comparable considering that FGM is only done to reduce/eliminate sexual pleasure for females and that's not the case for male circumcision.

It literally is done to reduce sexual pleasure. Circumcision was popularized in the US as a way to stop masturbation, which doctors believe was responsible for various social and medical problems.

From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:

> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.

>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.

You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision. No, it's not that hard to wash the weewee properly. No, most men will not suffer problems. The adult world outside the US isn't having massive health problems over the lack of circumcision.

>You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision.

No you can't. Do you think circumcised men don't fully enjoy sex? Where did you get that idea from?

You said "reduce/eliminate". It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.

I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.

Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

>It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.

That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.

>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.

There are several variants of FGM, and not all involve removal of the clitoris. The most benign forms involve a symbolic pin prick that is certainly less damaging to the genitals and future sexual pleasure than removal of the foreskin. And yet all types of "female circumcision" are literally referred to as mutilation, and considered bad. Will you argue in favor of allowing the pin-prick variant for baby girls, since you support a more traumatic operation for baby boys?

>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

It's called pilpul and he obviously will.

There are multiple types of FGM, one of them involves removing the clitoris and the other is extremely similar to circumcision.

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