Photo by Flickr user DJOtaku. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Tumblr blogger STFU Fauxfeminists passes along the following comment following a series of posts about penile circumcision. I'm passing it along too because it makes a point that seems to be increasingly difficult to get across. Emphasis mine.

I know there were a million other things wrong with the male circumcision ask that you needed to address, but I think it should be pointed out that every time someone starts a question with "why don't feminists do X" they should do a Google search to see if it actually is true that no feminists do that. Plenty of feminists are against male circumcision; I feel like there are probably more than who are for it. We're just not into false equivalencies to female genital cutting.

Source: STFU Fauxminists!

Speaking personally as the victim of a botched, unauthorized circumcision initiated by a nurse against my mom's and my (pediatrician!) grandfather's direct order that I not be circumcised, I'm still on board with this.

Heck, despite the fact that I'm personally opposed to male circumcision of all sorts I'm still on board with this!

Male circumcision is generally a bad, stupid idea and when it's done on people who are unable to consent (particularly to gratify the esthetic, habitual, economic, or even "religious imperative" urges of third parties) it's not just bad and stupid, it's bad, stupid, and wrong!

But even in my case, where the consequence of my genital mutilation included considerable sensation loss I gotta say there's a false equivalence between conventional female and conventional male genital mutilation.

How can that be? I'll tell ya.

The stupid, sullen, class-obsessed nurse who caused me to be circumcised against my family's wishes nevertheless would have been appalled that I lost sensation over much of my penis and would have been thankful to know I at least retained a couple of "good spots." Because loss of erotic sensation in men is never the intention of male circumcision.

The intention of female "circumcision," however, is absolutely and unapologetically the complete erasure of erotic sensation in women.

In other word my circumcision was considered botched because I lost some sensation. A woman's circumcision, on the other hand, is considered botched if she retains even partial erotic sensation.

Does any of the above make male circumcision right, ok, tolerable, or anything less than bad, stupid, or wrong? Duh no! It's still completely bad, stupid and wrong.

But anybody who thinks either the intention or the result of routine male genital mutilation is equivalent to routine female genital mutilation is... well.. bad, stupid, and worse-than-Todd-Akin-and-Paul-Ryan wrong.