For nearly 1000 years the little girls of wealthy Chinese families had their feet bent double, sometimes with bones broken, and bound that way, making them barely able to walk. The pain was exquisite. Some died. This condition was considered healthy and beautiful.

For many thousands of years, the little boys of a variety of cultures have had an integral part of their penis cut off, making them less able to enjoy sex. The pain is exquisite. Some die. This condition is considered healthy and beautiful.

In its most extreme form, footbinding was the wrapping of a three- to five-year old girl's feet with strips of cloth, bending the toes under the foot, breaking the bones and forcing the heel toward the front of the sole. This was known as the "golden lotus".

Originally, footbinding may have begun as a way of enforcing the imperial male's exclusive sexual access to his female consorts, ensuring their chastity and fidelity, but its impact extended far beyond these boundaries.

The freedom of imperial and palace women to move about was restricted.

As the practice became more common, it became customary to compress the girls' feet so much that women could only hobble about with difficulty, or had to lean on a wall or another person for support. Upper-class women became virtually confined to their boudoirs. Physically prevented from moving about freely and unchaperoned, they were unable to be unfaithful.

Tribal circumcision was often done by pulling out the foreskin and chopping it off, leaving a variable amount. About the second century CE, Jewish practice was codified to ensure that as little as possible was left. Modern surgical practice varies. It may have originated at a mitigated form of ritual castration.

A girl of a wealthy family was often given her first personal servant at the time her feet were first bound, to comfort her in her pain and sleeplessness, and carry her into the garden when it was too painful for her to walk.

In the Jewish ritual, the baby is given a sop of wine or sugar as a pacifier when he is circumcised. Modern surgical practice recommends anaesthesia, but this can only partially and temporarily alleviate the pain of circumcision.

Sanctioned by tradition and exaggerated over time, the practice was supported and transmitted by women. It was believed to promote health and fertility, although in reality, bound feet were malodorous and virtually crippling.

Santioned by tradition and exaggerated over time, circumcision is supported and transmitted by circumcised men and by women. It is believed to promote health and cleanliness, and variously, fertility. In reality the circumcised penis is no "cleaner" that the intact one.

The bound foot was described as aesthetically pleasing compared with the natural alternative, but complications like ulceration, paralysis and gangrene were not uncommon.

The circumcised penis is described as aethetically pleasing compared to the natural alternative, but complications are not uncommon, and can include gangrene.

It has been estimated that as many as one in ten of the girls did not survive the "treatment".

The number of boys who die from circumcision is unknown. Their deaths are likely to be attributed to the complicating factor such as anaesthetic, infection or haemorrhage, without reference to the circumcision that caused it.

Family harmony embraced the ideas of female purity and seclusion, and was paramount, especially since Neo-Confucian thinking glorified virtuous women and praised footbinding as the ultimate marker of civility - in spite of the Confucian ideal that precluded mutilation of the body.

Having a daughter with bound feet conferred many potential benefits both on the girl and her family, turning the biological disadvantage of being born female into a social advantage by increasing her opportunities for making a wealthy marriage.

In a society with a cult of female chastity, a primary purpose of footbinding was to limit mobility, radically restricting the means by which females were allowed to be in the world at large.

Circumcision was instituted to restrict sexuality, by preventing masturbation.

A little girl's feet were painfully and forcibly compressed just when she was expected to begin understanding the Confucian discipline of maintaining a "mindful body", giving the process meaning for her.

Tribal circumcision frequently is done at the brink of puberty; the boy's acceptance of the pain marking his transition to manhood.

An important aspect of the allure of the bound foot was its concealment. To be acceptable the feet had to be covered by binders, socks and shoes, doused in perfurne and scented powder, and then hidden under layers of leggings and skirts.

Circumcision arose in the west at just the time that the greatest emphasis was put on concealing the genitals.

Women also cared for their feet in strict privacy. They often washed their feet separately from the rest of their body to shield themselves and others from contamination.

One purpose of circumcision was to render the penis "maintenance free". Jewish boys were taught to urinate without touching their penises, something not practical if they were intact. Today in the US, the horrors of cleaning the intact penis are greatly exaggerated.

Only those privileged with the greatest intimacy were allowed to see the feet being cleansed and cared for, and women wore special bed slippers even when they were otherwise nude.

Much of footbinding's mystique flowed from this concealment of the physicality of the foot, imitating the requirement of privacy that society and family placed on the individual.

The silence around circumcision, reflecting the earlier silence around sex, has enabled it to flourish. Marriage manuals have been written in the US in which the possibility that a man might have a foreskin was not considered.

To some extent, footbinding was considered an aspect of female clothing or adornment, rather than body mutilation, as the body was not necessarily viewed as an enclosed physical entity.

Correct attire was regarded as the ultimate expression of Chinese culture and identity, differentiating the Chinese from "inferior" foreign neighbors while marking social and gender distinctions within Chinese society. Properly attired bodies reflected order and control, unadorned bodies and feet were visible signs of disorder and dangerous nonconformity. The person concered risked being associated with barbarian outsiders.

Besides signaling femininity and gender distinctions, footbinding functioned as a marker of national boundaries. In distinguishing the Han Chinese from other ethnic groups, it served as a reflection of cultural prestige due to its embodiment of Confucian ethics of civility and filial piety, a key to its enduring appeal.

For many peoples, circumcision has served as a marker of nationality or status. It is commonly regarded as more "masculine" and there are many cultures in which women will not have sex with an intact man.

For Chinese men, bound feet were associated with higher-status love and sex, carrying at the same moment strong connotations of both modesty and lasciviousness. Bound feet became a sexual fetish and were said to be conducive to better intercourse.

A widespread male fantasy was that footbinding caused its owner to have a highly-muscled vagina "full of wondrous folds", while the tiny appearance of the foot aroused both lust and pity.

Circumcision is alleged to make a man a better lover by enabling him to prolong intercourse. (In fact, the likelihood is that reducing the area of his erogenous tissue reduces his ability to control his sexual arousal.)

Chinese pornography of the past reflected a preoccupation with the feet. The men who adored them - "lotus lovers" - became the authors of the classics of brothel culture, which describe in detail the various shapes of bound feet and the erotic practices in which they could be employed.

Circumfetishists are fond of studying the varieties of circumcision, whether high or low, loose or tight.

In the Qing period (1644 - 1911), opposition began to emerge, although it was both belated and weak. The Qing ruling nobility, who were ethnically Manchu, attempted to prohibit the custom among the conquered Han Chinese.

In 1645, the first Shunzhi emperor mandated that footbinding be banned, but his successor, the Kangxi emperor, revoked the ban, apparently considering the practice too firmly rooted in custom to be amenable to imperial dissolution.

The practice continued into the 20th century, when a combination of internal Chinese and Western missionary-inspired pressures generated calls for reform and a true anti-footbinding movement emerged. It was formally outlawed in 1911.

Educated Chinese realized that it made them appear barbaric to foreigners, social Darwinists argued that it weakened the nation (on the basis that enfeebled women produced weak sons), and feminists attacked it because it caused women to suffer

The work of the anti-footbinding reformers had three aspects. First, they carried out a modern education campaign, which explained that the rest of the world did not bind women's feet and that China was losing face in the world, making it subject to international ridicule.

Second, their education campaign explained the advantages of natural feet and the disadvantages of bound feet.

Third, they formed natural-foot societies, whose members pledged not to bind their daughter's feet nor to allow their sons to marry women with bound feet.

These three tactics effectively succeeded in bringing footbinding to a quick end, eradicating in a single generation a practice which had survived for a thousand years. Young girls were thereafter spared the tortures of footbinding, although older women with bound feet may still be seen in China and Taiwan.

Nonetheless, footbinding abolished in a way that was both chaotic and unfair, with sloganeering and excesses of the anti-footbinding movement of the 1920's reminiscent of Cultural Revolution excesses, claiming many families as its victims.

Many circumcised men greatly resent being desribed as "mutilated".

Ironically, those with bound feet suffered once again as targets of this anti-footbinding movement by being forced to unbind their feet, an act only marginally less painful than the initial binding.

The beauty of bound feet was a value deeply rooted in the Chinese aesthetic and sexual psyche. Bound feet, and the women who had them, were considered beautiful and highly desirable, and natural, so-called big feet were considered ugly, as were the women who possessed them. To change such deeply held values, the patterns and feelings associated with them had to be inverted. What was beautiful had to be rendered ugly, and what was ugly, beautiful.

To destroy one and replace it with another, the perception of beauty attached to bound feet had to be destroyed, which in its extreme moments necessitated an assault on the women who had them. This almost-unreal process of change demanded its price, and the payment was often in the form of great individual suffering.

Footbinding is a bold issue, as for many Chinese people the practice is so linked to sex and sexuality that it makes them uncomfortable to discuss it and consider it seriously.

For others the topic is embarassing because it suggests a backwards or barbaric streak in Chinese Culture.

For men footbinding is troubling because it suggests not only that men are capable of perceiving a gruesomely crippled foot as an object of sexual pleasure, but that they are further capable of using their superior social position to coerce women to conform to a standard of beauty that is both deformed and grotesque.

For women, footbinding is unsettling because it reveals a willingness to cripple their own daughters to meet an aesthetic and criterion of social behavior defined by men.

In 1995 Chinese film maker Yang Yeuqing found great difficulty in making a film about footbinding since no one in China was willing to talk about it, and she feared that Chinese authorities would attempt to block the project.

Chinese movies about China prior to 1911 never depict women with bound feet and Chinese museums do not display the exquisitely embroidered three-inch-long shoes that women with bound feet were obliged to wear. At the October 1996 Arts of Pacific Asia show in New York City, Beverly Jackson, author of Splendid Slippers: Size One Narrow, exhibited her rare collection of 142 pairs of footbinding shoes, but had to field numerous complaints from outraged observers.

In 1995, Gump's department store in San Francisco tried selling pairs of the tiny antique shoes for $975, but was quickly compelled to dismantle the accompanying, display after receiving heated objections from customers.

Some day, Circumstraints^TM, Gomco^TM Sheldon^TM and Mogen^TM clamps and Plastibells^TM may be sold as antiques, to similar protests.

It is apparent that the subject remains a sensitive one. Approval for liberated feet is now unanimous, regardless of gender or culture.