Is the gender issue really that valid, Nicole and harpgirl? Surely it skirts close to the argument that men are responsible for all that's wrong with the world. Yet some of those pro-life attitudes that Nicole attributed to men put me very much in mind of Mother Therese's interference in India, retrieving foetuses from skips but with no apparent interest in any lives saved.

Channel 4 in the UK recently ran a long documentary on female circumcision in Kenya, the horrific effects of which I had not fully understood. (It is widespread in Africa; the program just happened to focus on Kenya.) I was surprised to learn that women are the main driving force behind the survival of this cruel, and often disabling tradition - mothers, who have themselves been circumcised, yet who are determined to put their own children through the same trauma. The men, it seems, show no great enthusiasm for the custom, but seem to accept that its for mothers to decide.

Thanks for the kind words harpgirl - also for picking up (as hardly anyone has done) on the thoughts that prompted me to start the thread. And yes, I do tend to think of all fundamentalists as victims of brainwashing, and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions.