FtM genital surgeries forced on Indian children

Somath Cegem wrote:

This is a country where women will abort a child if it is a girl because not having a male child is a social stigmata, throw in stuff like this and india is gearing up for an epic population crash when the there almsot no women in the country of child bearing age.

What the hell is all this talk of a population crash? That's what mail-order Russian brides are for. Are you all new to the internet or something?

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

No, but they still dower females over there, so girl children are considered bad because they're guaranteed to be a financial loss.

(On a side note, I've always thought dowries as one case where the normal rules of supply and demand get twisted through at least five dimensions.)

No, dowries are actually pretty awesome (well, as awesome as you can get in a system of virilocal marriage). It was originally meant as insurance for a wife entering a new family, like Sakurelf said, but it's been twisted by patriarchal and--wait for it--colonial! influence into a weapon used against women. (I will spare you all a huge academic lecture, even though I took a class on this subject) but check out Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime for starters.

Malganis wrote:

That has nothing to do with what's happening here -- which is that these kids' rights are being violated in a pretty horrible way. These families and doctors don't need lessons on population control and family planning -- they need to realize that they're harming these kids for life, and they're violating basic human rights. There's an entire social mindset at work here behind this that needs to be taken down.

Wait, that "social mindset" wouldn't be similar at all to one where a woman is asking to get raped if she dresses like a slut...? Hm, patriarchy? I thought we took that down years ago in the good ole US of A!