Re: Female mutulation

> probin... yes, who are the genital police who decide
> what is correct, what will 'get in the way'?

The culture dictates that all should be removed

> a clitoris would have to be quite large to get in the way. LOL

True, but I believe that there were actually significant problems encountered in various Christian missions to North Africa where quite a significant proportion of the girls brought up in orphanages there from birth had real practical problems with intercourse becuase of the size and configuration of the clitoris. And like any other part of the body, there's an enormous variation in size between individuals.

> probin... yes, the foreskin of the clitoris and the
> foreskin of the penis are similar. that is how i
> discovered my loss... i was told the male & female
> were identical except for size... so i looked.

Yes, but the thing is that if you look at a woman with a small clitoris it can be difficult to see how it all works. And I think that a great many women have simply never understood that, either. After all, you can't see your own properly, except in a mirror (well, I mean a woman can't see her own in the same way as a guy can!:-)). And I very strongly suspect that many or even most women have never really pulled the prepuce right back to expose the glans. It's much more likely that a woman with a bigger clitoris will be more conscious of it and more likely to have explored and understood what's there.


> i now wonder how many women in the US have undergone
> this surgery and don't have a clue it happened to them.

I've no idea and I'm not sure I want to think about that :-(

Maybe part of the way forward on this issue, which in the Western world is largely confined to the US, is to try to educate women about the structure of the clitoris and help them appreciate it more fully and help them understand how the structures of the clitoris relate very closely indeed to those of the penis. Women who understand the pleasure that an intact clitoris with a prepuce that can be fully retracted can give are not nearly so likely to want to deprive their sons of comparable pleasure.