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Comment by DaveExeter | Hacker News Reader

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Less damaging???? It is way way worse.

I am not circumcised but I guess it does not stop you from getting pleasure from sex. It does with women.

Can you imagine your penis being slit along, live, when you are 7 yo or so? I am not taking about removing a bit of skin, but about craving into your penis with your family holding you.

This is something that proves that forced sterilization should be a thing for families that plan to do this to their children.

I think there are a lot of different versions of FGMs, from those as cruel as the one you describe down to the purely symbolic ones.

What kind of "purely symbolic" FGM do you have in mind?

Every part in women genitals is useful and removing it means problems down the road (as opposed to removing a foreskin where the damages are relatively benign - of course it is proof of a profound mental illness of the ones doing it on children in all cases).

I've read (a long time ago) a newspaper article mentioning a simple pricking of the skin to produce one drop of blood. A pure ritual with no practical effect. Not sure how widespread it is though, or if it's just a wishful thinking on part of some Western cultural mediation agency.

I must say that the only reports I know of (I am French) are those of tortures of children girls who have their whole clitoris excised by their own family. This is simply insane to me.

Any such ritual that subordinates someone to something is disgusting to me, though the one you described is indeed symbolic, at least it does not leave any physical traces (I do not know about mental ones)

“generally a less damaging version of what is done to men”

This is untrue. Male circumcision involves the removal of the foreskin (not the glans) while female genital circulation often involves not only removing the clitoral hood and inner labia, but the clitoral glans as well.

When you amputate the forskin, what do you think happens to the male glans?

Well - importantly, they continue to exist.

To reply, no - your eyes would not continue to exist if the eyelids are removed. Nor would your teeth if the lips were removed. You’re hyperbolic false equivalencies won’t win anyone over (and we have the same general stance on this issue!).

I'm aware, but that's not a legal or post-natal operation for them in most of the world. The paper and my inference are about infant trauma.

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