I learned what male genital cutting was in high school in health class. The teacher handed out mimeographed copies of pages from a textbook that had crude illustrations. He did this by mistake and hurriedly told us to ignore them, but the cat was out of the bag. Once I knew what it was, I began to think about it. I finally understood why other boys I knew over the years, particularly when I lived in England in the late 1960s with my family, looked different. A couple of years later, while one of my aunts visited, a news story came on the television about male genital cutting. She spoke up about how it could not be done to her firstborn son at birth because of complications following his birth, and that they never saw the need for it later. She had a second son years later, and he was left intact. I remember how pained my father looked when she related that to us. My mother was absent from the conversation, leaving the impression that she was behind it for my brother and me. As I grew older, I came to deeply resent what was done to me.

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