This can be seen in the southerly and easterly political and military expansion of Islamic regimes into sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Historian Frederick Hodges documents the almost spontaneous genesis of sexual mutilation in historic times in the United States at the hands of physicians, providing insightful clues about the earlier origins of sexual mutilation in prehistory. Parents who hand over their children to sexual mutilators generally do so because they believe that mutilation will improve the lives of their children. Powerful mythologies support these practices. Powerful taboos prevent dissent.
Some cultures use sexual mutilations as a tribal mark.
Some cultures use sexual mutilations as an involuntary initiation into a larger community of similarly mutilated individuals. Others use sexual mutilations as sympathetic magic or for alleged medical purposes imagined to protect the child. Some cultures do not know why they mutilate their children's sexual organs and do so only from force of habit. The majority of sexually mutilating cultures, however, use sexual mutilations either as a deliberately frightening test of pain endurance intended to strengthen the character of the victim or as a deliberate destruction of erogenous function. Older victims of sexual mutilation are likely to be mutilated as part of an initiation ceremony for which they are only partially prepared.