SIMILARITIES IN ATTITUDES
AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT
MALE AND FEMALE SEXUAL MUTILATIONS

Hanny Lightfoot-Klein

Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 9-11, 1996.

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Female genital mutilation has become increasingly recognized as ritual child abuse in many countries of the western world. Male circumcision tends to be shrugged off as being in no way comparable to this gross mutilation. This presentation will point out the similarities in trivializations, misconceptions and rationalizations as applied to unjustifiable, medicalized infant male circumcision in the United States and ritual genital mutilation of girls in Africa.

[The complete paper is published in Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy, New York: Plenum Press, 1997 (ISBN 0-306-45589-7).]

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Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, M.A., is a cross-cultural sexologist and clinical supervisor of the American Board of Sexology. She spent the greater part of six years in the Sudan doing field research on female genital mutilation and has published extensively on the subject. Her groundbreaking book, Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey Into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa, received a book award at an international sexology conference in 1991.

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