Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4, Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
The recent article “Circumcision is ‘most potent’ method against HIV infection,” (Japan Times, February 24, 2007) is good news, but also bad news and it sends up a red flag warning. Although female circumcision (female genital mutilation) is widely condemned as a human rights crime there is no corresponding condemnation of male sexual mutilation and just no resisting the widespread cultural urge to sexually mutilate boys. And now these medical findings about the advantages of male genital mutilation in the fight against AIDS seem likely to fuel the fire of condoned mutilation - especially in America where it seems to be a pathologically popular behavior. Regardless of the veracity of the scientific results from the reported Kenyan and Ugandan studies, I feel that I ought to take up the cause of female circumcision in the name of sexual equality and anti-discrimination.
In any event, I feel that the title of the article is misleading. Certainly intelligent sexual behavior in the first place is a “more potent” method of fighting the spread of the HIV virus than expanding male sexual mutilation programs in the second place?