[BuddyQ]

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Its a cultural thing.

Reading the responses here, one thing comes across very strongly:

We can accept weird Western cultural things, but we reject weird third world cultural things.

This forum is full of a heavy Western bias.

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Not really. East, West, North, South, children should not be permanently mutilated by anyone without a legitimate medically necessary reason to do so, like a gangrenous arm or something. I have little concern about what consenting adults do to themselves, however.

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So a culture has no right to self-determination but a person does?

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Sort of, I guess.

The nature of my objection to the mutilation in question is that it is done on children who have no say in the matter. When a 'procedure' that will have life-long consequences is done on children, the burden should be on the one attempting it to show that it is in needed, needed in the medical sense, not the cultural.

In general, I'm not a fan of 'culture' over individual choices, no.