Female circumcision is a very vague term that include removal of clitoris. This is akin to cutting off your penis (aka Lorenna Bobbit). Removal of the foreksin/clitoral hood is certaintly not the same thing as removing the penis/clitoris.
I personally do not think it is right for governments to dictate such a thing on parents. The precedent it sets would be akin to telling parents they cannot impose dental correction that forces young teenagers to wear braces for months at a time. This too is cosmetic and done before the person is 18.
If a city bans it, parents will just go elsewhere to get it done. It would be more effective if the city simply had better information campaign to give parents the arguments about it.
To me, as long as parents are perfectly comfortable with their decision and are willing to give their son the real reasons they had him snipped at birth, I am OK with it. But I am not OK if they "just" get it done and invent some excuse later on when the son asks about it.
Ifa parent leaves son intact to let him choose, and when he is 12, he decided he really wants to be cut, why should the city forbit him from getting cut ? Remember that males become sexually active between 10 and 12.
True: removal of the clitoral hood is the female equivalent of male circumcision. Both of them are inhuman genital mutilation, an outrageous violation of human rights (remember: infants are human beings with inalienable rights, too).
Still the abjectly ridiculous, completely false comparison of male circumutilation with dental braces...?!? Absolutely preposterous. Braces are indeed "cosmetic--circumcision is anything but
--it's a barbarous marring and mutilation of nature's perfect design. Circumcision removes one half, often more, of the penis' skin (in an adult, roughly 15 square inches, an area about the size of a postcard!). With it go the glans' protective and sexually important sheath, which contains the ridged band, the frenular delta, and something like 20,000 or more pleasure-specific nerve endings; in most cases all or most of the highly sensitive frenulum is removed. (Question: why do you suppose that the so-called sweet spot, that which remains when the frenulum is removed, is often the most sensitive location on a circumcised penis?)
Government dictating to parents? Would you repeal the government ban on female circumcision, perhaps? Parents have no right to make irrevocable, irrelevant decisions about their son's body. That is his prerogative alone--but not when he is ten or twelve. At those ages he is still a child without the capacity to grasp the full implications of circumcision and its obliteration of a major part of his sexual enjoyment as an adult. He is also too young to become sexually active, even if circumcised/intact status had any relevance--which it doesn't.
But you are, to be sure, entirely correct that this country is sadly in need of widespread and thorough information campaigns to educate everyone about the destructive nature of circumutilation. Most parents know nothing about the subject, and therefore rely on their doctors to make the decision for them. Sadly, too often those very doctors are ignorant on the subject themselves and simply follow tradition--or have a greedy profit interest in cutting children.
'Parents perfectly comfortable with their decision'?!? How about the comfort and preference of
the boy himself?!? ~ 'Willing to give their son the real reasons'?!? What would those
real reasons be? Health and hygiene are bogus pretexts for cutting--nothing more. And how in the world could parental "real reasons" compensate a boy for lifelong, irreversible mutilation and loss of more than half of his sexual sensation?!?
"Snipped" is an appalling euphemism, a word to soften and diminish the enormity of a
major physical amputation--an operation that often results in serious complications and, about 100+ times a year in the United States, death of an infant. Hair can be snipped--the foreskin is brutally torn loose from the glans and cut or clamped off.
You are also correct that if only cities criminalized circumcision, idiot parents would take their children (their victims, actually) elsewhere to be mutilated. And that clearly points up the need for a nationwide Federal ban also on the atrocity of male infant circumcision.....