The debate ignores this, but honesty would acknowledge it.

Fill in the blank:

“I didn’t feel nervous, because I had spent years watching how the cut was done,” [Amina] Khidir remembers. “And my              was a baby at the time, too small to understand what was happening. That’s the best age to do it.”

The missing word is daughter.

Asked about the specifics of the procedure, she covers her face with her loosely worn headscarf. “I cut about a quarter off,” she says.

How do we (correctly) label females as victims under that logic, yet males subjected to identical logic and outcome are not victims, but rather the beneficiaries of compassionate parents?