Conversation

People talk about some very weird and very private stuff at Starbucks. Sometimes I sit here with my headphones on, but no music, so they’ll feel more free to talk.

This afternoon’s edition was a rather impassioned argument about female circumcision, also known as “female genital mutilation.” This, for those of you who have managed to avoid hearing about it thus far in your lives, is a spectacularly barbaric practice in which the clitoris is cut out at or around puberty … and that’s the least damaging version. There are more extreme versions too … in which the external genetalia are removed, and the opening of the vagina is sewn mostly shut to ensure “purity” for the girl’s eventual husband.

In the best cases, the victim merely loses a great deal of sexual function and the ability to achieve orgasm. Sometimes they get infected and die.

Please, please save me the trouble of going ballistic on you: Don’t make the pedantic comparison with male circumcision. If you can still achieve orgasm, and were never at risk of severe infection and death from the procedure, you’re not in the same ballpark, okay?

Shockingly, right here in Seekonk, MA, we had a guy (big, African looking man) who was in favor of it as a “traditional, cultural practice.” He was being soundly torn to pieces by a white woman who seemed to be a physician of some sort. I was stunned that we still have anyone around here who would stand up in favor of this kind of crap. I really wanted to go over and just start hitting him … but she was doing fine.

This is why we need to lose the cultural prohibition about questioning “cultural” or “religious” beliefs. We need to question everything, and figure out what other absolutely obscene and barbaric practices we’re countenancing in the name of “tolerance.”