Abstract
This paper explores how the local Muslims in a province in southern Thailand perceive the practice of male and female genital cutting. In order to understand the importance placed on these practices, a comparison is drawn between the two and also between the male circumcision and the Buddhist ordination of monks as rites of passage. Discourses on the exposure or concealment of male and female bodies respectively, witness to the relevance of both the local political-historical context and biomedical hegemony to gendered bodies. The comparisons evince the need to reflect upon the theoretical and ethical implications of studying genital cutting and focussing exclusively on one of the two practices rather than, as this paper claims to be necessary, considering them as inextricably connected
