Talk:Circumcision

Nicely balanced start

I wonder if there should be either a disambiguation, or text here, about what I hesitate to call female genital mutilation, which is the usual term in medicine. Without prejudice to issues of male circumcision, even the "mild" forms of FGM are much more radical.

As far as health benefits, other than HIV, there is data for reducing human papilloma virus transmission, causing cervical cancer. I do not know of any work, however, that considers the risk-benefit there in populations where, variously, the non-universal HPV vaccine is used widely, and, for that matter, in populations that have regular cervical cancer screening.

Howard C. Berkowitz 17:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The other wiki calls it 'female genital cutting', which is an obvious attempt to placate those who say it's just another part of culture. I suggest an article/disambiguation called genital mutilation that covers both female and male, with links to female genital mutilation and circumcision. John Stephenson 18:07, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

When possible, I prefer to stay with formal indexing. Medical Subject Headings of the National Library of Medicine does have circumcision as the primary term, with all the others as synonyms (well, genital mutilation, female). Howard C. Berkowitz 19:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I think we should probably talk about female genital mutiliation rather than 'cutting'. To require non-emotive language for all topics doesn't seem like a particularly good idea - we don't talk about 'unwanted sexual action', we talk about rape. "Female genital cutting", as a phrase, has the same feel as "enhanced interrogation", "collateral damage" and various other bits of newspeak. --Tom Morris 20:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree, although I must grant that "mutilation" is a subjective rather than neutral term. "Modification", "removal", something else...? But "cutting" is banal. Aleta Curry 20:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)