# Infant genetal mutilation is a blood sacrifice to the demon Yahwe. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 10, 2018, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321 "2018-11-10T20:59:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/221 "2018-11-15T00:44:37Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > OK, if you want to get into the history of it. The first major circumcision advocate was a guy named Peter Remondino who was writing in the 1890s. You can actually read his book at Project Gutenberg ([The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present, by P. C. Remondino, M.D.](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23135/23135-h/23135-h.htm#Page_161)) - the 161 page is bookmarked because that’s where he goes into why we should circumcise. He begins the chapter by saying that Christians don’t circumcise and they are idiots for it. He then goes into great lengths explaining that Jews live longer than Christians and then attempts to explain away other environmental factors and lands on the fact that circumcision prevents syphillis and tuberculosis. He feels that it’s a vestigial gland that evolution left behind and leads to cancer among other things. He thinks that it failed to evolve properly so that humans should remove it to better allow the functioning of the penis. > > So, the ‘acceptance’ of it was not based on ‘Let’s get back to Yahweh’ religion, but rather a misinterpretation of evolutionary biology. Note I already called out this phase which was quite a while after the practice started to become more popular but is related to why it is still almost universal in the US. Peter Remondino was a well known advocate for circumcision but was not the first major advocate. But it is quite funny that you cite a book that spends pages and pages justifying that the post Jesus non-circumcised model should be dropped due to direct references to biblical passages and church celebrations. Your cite matches my claims far better than they match your argument. Random example… > [@](#): > > The early Christian Church celebrated and continues to celebrate the Feast of Circumcision, and history relates some strange events in connection with this circumcision. Having abolished and repudiated the rite, it would seem inconsistent that it should celebrate its performance on any occasion and consider such an event sufficiently memorable that its occurrence should excite the veneration of the church and be the means of exciting the pious zeal of the faithful. The strangest events in this connection are still more mysterious and incomprehensible, if not amusing, the only excuse for the occurrence being the greedy thirst for relics of any and all kinds that in the middle ages pervaded Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/222 "2018-11-15T00:57:54Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Your cite matches my claims far better than they match your argument. No, I don’t think so. Remondino is clearly trying to **construct** a pro-circumcision argument in Christian theology to counter the long-entrenched **opposition** to circumcision in Christian communities. That’s not at all the same as invoking an **existing tradition** of pro-circumcision thought in Christian theology. There wasn’t any such tradition. > [@rat avatar](#): > > False beliefs based on pietistic Protestant movements lead to an almost universal adoption of the practice in the UK and the US in the mid 1800’s The 19th-century circumcision movement was based on a fairly recent obsession with the alleged ills and dangers of masturbation and the medical superstition that circumcision would cure them. Not on any intrinsically theological preoccupation with the role of circumcision in Christianity _per se_. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/223 "2018-11-15T01:05:23Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No, I don’t think so. Remondino is clearly trying to **construct** a pro-circumcision argument in Christian theology to counter the long-entrenched **opposition** to circumcision in Christian communities. That’s not at all the same as invoking an **existing tradition** of pro-circumcision thought in Christian theology. There wasn’t any such tradition. > > The 19th-century circumcision movement was based on a fairly recent obsession with the alleged ills and dangers of masturbation and the medical superstition that circumcision would cure them. Not on any intrinsically theological preoccupation with the role of circumcision in Christianity _per se_. And this is different from the Muslim case or the Jewish increased amount of chop how? You are resorting to confirmation bias here, would you hand wave away the changes by Calvinism or the Anglicans in the same manor despite being similar in outcome? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/224 "2018-11-15T02:46:29Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > And this is different from the Muslim case or the Jewish increased amount of chop how? “Jewish increased amount of chop”? Are you trying to refer to the apparent (though not definitively proven) introduction of _periah_ or foreskin removal into Jewish circumcision rites during the Hellenistic period, as we’ve been discussing earlier in the thread? If so, here’s what the differences look like to me: **Jewish case:** Scripturally mandated religious requirement of circumcision, at least to the degree of foreskin trimming, starting in biblical times. Widely neglected due to anti-circumcision pressure from Greek and Roman cultures, and re-emphasized by religious leaders as a necessary part of religious identity, apparently accompanied by a more extreme version of the procedure (entire foreskin removal) that would make circumcision status unambiguous. Fundamentally a religious requirement although sometimes, especially in modern times, with additional justification from its medical benefits. Rejected by a small (though slightly increasing) proportion of Jews as not mandatory for Jewish religious identity, but this is generally seen as a heterodox position. **Muslim case:** Originally a cultural practice among pre-Islamic Arabs, subsequently identified with Islam because of hadith associating it with other practices for hygiene and refinement. Circumcision is officially considered obligatory or strongly recommended for Muslim religious identity in most although not all Muslim denominations, and the practice of circumcision tends to spread culturally/geographically with Islam. Circumcision rates vary within different Muslim communities but usually approach 100%. Typical age at circumcision and type of circumcision (amount of foreskin removed) also vary among Muslim communities. **Christian case:** Originally practiced by early Christians identifying as a subset of Jews, but resisted by converts from other cultures and officially declared in the early Common Era to be unnecessary for Christian identity. Remained customary in a few Christian sects but was not practiced by the vast majority of Christians worldwide up to the 19th century. Except in the few sects mentioned above, circumcision in Christian doctrine was portrayed, like Jewish dietary laws, as a commendable demonstration of submission to God among Old Testament Jews but superseded by New Testament teachings in the case of Christians. **None of these religious traditions are the cause of the medicalized pro-circumcision movement occurring primarily in the English-speaking world starting in the 19th century, and substantially reversed by the early 21st.** This movement was a cultural and policy phenomenon focused on public health, based on the supposed efficacy of circumcision in preventing STDs and other diseases as well as masturbation, not on circumcision as a religious-identity requirement. Of course, nobody’s denying that anti-masturbation attitudes themselves had a lot to do with traditional sex-negativity in Christian doctrine. But that is not the same as making circumcision an integral part of Christian religious identity, which didn’t happen even when the majority of English-speaking Christian men were routinely circumcised as infants. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/225 "2018-11-15T04:38:57Z")
> [@scudsucker](#): > > Speaking of blood sacrifices, a friend who was studying for her PHD got a very reliable supply of human stem cells from (parental consenting) little boy’s foreskins for her research. > > As for my own opinion, I am circumcised; I blame religion for that. **My** son is not. He can choose. Infant foreskins can also be cultured and used for skin grafts; within a few weeks, it grows to about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/226 "2018-11-15T07:34:12Z")
Kimstu: Sorry this reply comes 2 pages late, but I don’t have a Jerusalem Talmud handy at home. (However, it turns out that the same passage is present in the Babylonian Talmud, if the JVL had used that as the cite, I could have looked it up sooner.) Having checked out that source, I can only say that whoever wrote that is completely wrong, at least in attributing this to the indicated cite: > [@](#): > > After the \*Bar Kokhba revolt the rabbis apparently instituted peri’ah (laying bare of the glans), probably in reaction to attempts to “obliterate the Seal of the Covenant” by epispasm. According to Tractate Shabbat 19:2, circumcision and peri’ah became part of a unified process No word even remotely interpreted as “became” is present in the Talmud there, and talk of periah wasn’t at all connected to discussion of Bar Kokhba. There are two distinct subjects of discussion: One subject was which Biblical cite is the source for periah being part of the circumcision ritual, one Rabbi says Genesis 17:13, another says Exodus 4:25. Then later, it relates a law that according to Rabbi Juda, one who has had this “epispasm” procedure should not get “re-circumcised” (to restore the circumcised appearance that the epispasm had covered up) because it might damage his actual penis. To this, Rabbi Jose responds that in the Bar Kokhba era, many epispasm subjects got “re-circumcised” and all lived and healthily reproduced, so Rabbi Juda’s premise for his law is incorrect. That is the only mention of the Bar Kokhba revolt, it uses the term “milah” and not at all “periah” and it in no way suggests that the step of periah was only introduced then. I don’t know exactly who was the original source for attributing to the Jerusalem Talmud the notion that there is some linkage between periah and the Bar Kokhba revolt, but he or she was, at best, mistaken. > [@](#): > > But AFAIK, there is absolutely no secular medical code or secular law or physical health reason that validates the surgical removal of parts of the normally functioning genitalia of a minor girl. No accredited doctor in the US would be allowed to perform such a procedure and no law permits a girl’s parents to try to procure such an operation. If there is no identifiable pathological condition justifying the surgery, there is no legal or constitutional right to choose to have it performed on a minor child. On freedom of religion grounds, there does not have to be an identifiable medical condition to allow it. If there is a genuine belief by the parents that Allah is more pleased with a young girl who has had the procedure than with one who has not, then the spiritual benefit of Allah’s grace is the religious equivalent to the identifiable pathology that is the secular reason for allowing parents to decide on the surgery for their minor child. nearwildheaven: > [@](#): > > Infant foreskins can also be cultured and used for skin grafts; within a few weeks, it grows to about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. I know this from personal experience - my own brother was not circumcised on his eighth day because doctors said his foreskin might be needed for a skin graft (don’t recall the medical condition that might have required that). Once the danger of needing one passed, he was circumcised somewhere around his first birthday (don’t remember with great precision, I was only 7 years old at the time). ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/227 "2018-11-15T09:25:10Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > On freedom of religion grounds, there does not have to be an identifiable medical condition to allow it. If there is a genuine belief by the parents that Allah is more pleased with a young girl who has had the procedure than with one who has not, then the spiritual benefit of Allah’s grace is the religious equivalent to the identifiable pathology that is the secular reason for allowing parents to decide on the surgery for their minor child. Do you think it would be acceptable to tattoo a Cross or an Islamic Crescent on a child, as an expression of religious faith? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/228 "2018-11-15T09:57:57Z")
Blalron: > [@](#): > > Do you think it would be acceptable to tattoo a Cross or an Islamic Crescent on a child, as an expression of religious faith? Yes, I do. While I’m not aware of any Christian or Islamic sects that practice such a thing, I know that tattoos are a sacred thing in Maori (native New Zealander) culture, and if Maori parents felt that their children should have a sacred tattoo, I don’t think that a nation which has freedom of religion laws should be stopping it. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/229 "2018-11-15T10:41:45Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Yes, I do. While I’m not aware of any Christian or Islamic sects that practice such a thing, I know that tattoos are a sacred thing in Maori (native New Zealander) culture, and if Maori parents felt that their children should have a sacred tattoo, I don’t think that a nation which has freedom of religion laws should be stopping it. Can any parent then decide to carry out a medically unnecessary procedure on their child just because they consider the child will be, in some unquantifiable way, better off? What limits do you have and why? ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/230 "2018-11-15T11:30:07Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Can any parent then decide to carry out a medically unnecessary procedure on their child just because they consider the child will be, in some unquantifiable way, better off? > > What limits do you have and why? I wonder if it makes any difference to people’s moral intuitions that infants aren’t yet verbal. For example, if a parent wanted to forcibly strap down a 17 year old and circumcise them with no anesthesia, would that be okay? I suspect most people would be horrified by that. Yet doing the exact same thing to a baby is considered acceptable. On some level, are we not regarding infants are fully human, with full human rights? ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/231 "2018-11-15T11:37:29Z")
Maimonides seems to have [concurred](http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/maimonides/)with the point I made in post #230: > [@Maimonides](#): > > The perfection and perpetuation of this Law can only be achieved if circumcision is performed in childhood. For this there are three wise reasons. The first is that if the child were let alone until he grew up, he would sometimes not perform it. The second is that a child does not suffer as much pain as a grown-up man because his membrane is still soft and his imagination weak **[Note: Not supported by our current scientific understanding, infants feel pain just as acutely as adults]**; for a grown-up man would regard the thing, which he would imagine before it occurred, as terrible and hard. The third is that the parents of a child that is just born take lightly matters concerning it, for up to that time the imaginative form that compels the parents to love it is not yet consolidated. For this imaginative form increases through habitual contact and grows with the growth of the child. Then it begins to decrease and to disappear, I refer to this imaginative form. **For the love of the father and of the mother for the child when it has just been born is not like their love for it when it is one year old, and their love for it when it is one year old is not like their love when it is six years old. Consequently if it were left uncircumcised for two or three years, this would necessitate the abandonment of circumcision because of the father’s love and affection for it.** At the time of its birth, on the other hand, this imaginative form is very weak, especially as far as concerns the father upon whom this commandment is imposed. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/232 "2018-11-15T13:11:59Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Blalron: > > Yes, I do. While I’m not aware of any Christian or Islamic sects that practice such a thing, I know that tattoos are a sacred thing in Maori (native New Zealander) culture, and if Maori parents felt that their children should have a sacred tattoo, I don’t think that a nation which has freedom of religion laws should be stopping it. Copts in Egypt do. They tattoo a small black cross on the right wrist of babies (occasionally on the webbing or back of the hand, but the wrist is most common.) They do it because of kidnappings and forced conversions, particularly among girls. It is unfortunately a not uncommon practice to kidnap young Copt girls and force them to convert and marry Muslim men. Egyptian law makes it illegal for them to convert back if they escape their captors and a cross can be used to identify those trapped in these marriages. In earlier times (and it still seems to happen today to a lesser extent), pre-verbal children were kidnapped and raised within Muslim households as Muslims. Getting a tattoo of a cross shortly after birth prevented such things from happening. The tattoos are also used as security identification within churches as one method to prevent shootings and bombings. It’s typical to get them within a few months of birth. It’s not a religious requirement per se, but it is essentially universally practiced. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/233 "2018-11-15T17:22:51Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > That is the only mention of the Bar Kokhba revolt, it uses the term “milah” and not at all “periah” and it in no way suggests that the step of periah was only introduced then. > > I don’t know exactly who was the original source for attributing to the Jerusalem Talmud the notion that there is some linkage between periah and the Bar Kokhba revolt, but he or she was, at best, mistaken. I’ll take your word for it. However, I don’t think that contradicts the more general conclusion (which AFAICT is pretty mainstream among historians of Hellenistic Judaism) that _periah_ or complete foreskin removal was not a standard part of Jewish circumcision prior to the Hellenistic period. For one thing, the widespread practice of epispasm or “decircumcision” by stretching of the foreskin to restore an uncircumcised appearance among Hellenized Jews implies that there was some foreskin to stretch. A source I’m using to read up on this is Nissan Rubin’s _Time and Life Cycle in Talmud and Midrash_, but I don’t have an online link to it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/234 "2018-11-15T18:14:32Z")
The argument I’ve always been taught is that female circumcision has been shown to be clearly harmful, while male circumcision has not, and even has some (extremely minor) benefits. As such, I think there is definitely an argument that allowing one for freedom of religion purposes is okay, but the other is not. Freedom of religion is always balanced against harm to others in a free society: you could not use freedom of religion to defend human sacrifice, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/235 "2018-11-15T19:00:23Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > you could not use freedom of religion to defend human sacrifice, for example. If the sacrificial person is a consenting adult of free will and healthy mind, I don’t see the objection. Though, obviously, it’s unlikely that you’re going to find someone willing who also passes the “and healthy mind” standard. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/236 "2018-11-15T21:35:08Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The argument I’ve always been taught is that female circumcision has been shown to be clearly harmful, while male circumcision has not, and even has some (extremely minor) benefits. As such, I think there is definitely an argument that allowing one for freedom of religion purposes is okay, but the other is not. It depends on what kind of “female circumcision” you’re talking about, of course. As I’ve said, I don’t see any way to justify banning very minor and temporary forms of FGC such as lightly nicking or scratching the clitoral hood while simultaneously permitting male circumcision rites involving the complete and permanent removal of the foreskin. Foreskin removal is not “clearly harmful” only in the sense that most subjects’ genitals successfully heal from the physical trauma of it and the penis still works fine without it, at least according to most criteria. There’s a lot of other tissue one could surgically remove from the human body too under that definition of “not clearly harmful”. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/237 "2018-11-15T22:49:15Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > very minor and temporary forms of FGC such as lightly nicking or scratching the clitoral hood I know you frequently end up having to (unecessarily) repeat yourself in many threads, so im careful to couch this as a request only (i think its likely that somewhere in this long thread you’ve already answered this). But what exactly is involved in the “nicking or scratching” of the clitoral hood in the lighter forms of FGM? And what are/were the purposes of such incredibly minor, superficial procedures (at least they sound that way when characterized as “lightly nicking or scratching”)? When described that way FGM sounds about as traumatic as nicking oneself while shaving. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/238 "2018-11-16T01:31:10Z")
And speaking as someone who opposes FGM, I haven’t heard of people who actually DO those theoretically minor forms of it. I’ve only read stories of women who had their clitoris cut off, or worse. If there’s really some group that’s nicking the clitoral hood, or tattooing the labia, or some other minor form of FGM, I don’t have any strong objections. But I don’t think that’s what FGM usually means. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/239 "2018-11-16T01:34:46Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > And speaking as someone who opposes FGM, I haven’t heard of people who actually DO those theoretically minor forms of it. I’ve only read stories of women who had their clitoris cut off, or worse. If there’s really some group that’s nicking the clitoral hood, or tattooing the labia, or some other minor form of FGM, I don’t have any strong objections. But I don’t think that’s what FGM usually means. This has been my understanding of the matter as well. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2018, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321/240 "2018-11-16T01:54:08Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I know you frequently end up having to (unecessarily) repeat yourself in many threads No no no no, it’s fine, honestly. It’s only because sometimes people don’t— [_sniff_] don’t read my— my links. [_gulp_] That I’ve worked so hard to find. [_stifled sobbing_] No I’m all right, really, I’m all right. Yes. You were asking: > [@Ambivalid](#): > > But what exactly is involved in the “nicking or scratching” of the clitoral hood in the lighter forms of FGM? And what are/were the purposes of such incredibly minor, superficial procedures (at least they sound that way when characterized as “lightly nicking or scratching”)? > [@puzzlegal](#): > > And speaking as someone who opposes FGM, I haven’t heard of people who actually DO those theoretically minor forms of it. […] > [@Ambivalid](#): > > This has been my understanding of the matter as well. Oh _WUH HUHH HUHH WAHHHH_, [_gasp_] _BUH HUH HUH HOOO HOOO HOOOO_… Sorry, sorry!.. Better now, thanks. Anyway, from back in [post #142](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21320883&postcount=142), replying to [_choke_] **Ambivalid** : > [@Kimstu](#): > > [FGC in Indonesia](http://theconversation.com/female-genital-cutting-common-in-indonesia-offered-as-part-of-child-delivery-by-birth-clinics-54379) is performed on about half of female infants, AFAICT, and has had steady popular support (and increasing “medicalization” as a routine part of obstetric procedures) despite government efforts to ban it. But note that most forms of FGC practiced in Indonesia are much more minor/symbolic than, say, the clitoridectomy practices among the Rendille, generally involving temporary scraping or pricking that produces no permanent changes in the genitalia. From the linked article: > [@](#): > > Around 60 million women, or half of the women in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim majority, are estimated to have undergone FGM. […] > > The majority of those who had undergone FGM could not remember the process or pain when asked as adult respondents. Consequently, there was no evidence of immediate or long-term physical or psychological complications. […] > > The 2001-2002 Population Council study shows that much of traditional circumcision in Indonesia is limited to scraping, rubbing and piercing with a needle to produce a drop of blood. > > In contrast, in Africa the practice frequently involves partial or total removal of the clitoris (or the prepuce) and stitching to narrow the vaginal opening (infibulation). And then you… then [you promised:](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21320915&postcount=146) > [@Ambivalid](#): > > Thanks! Ill read up on these (and other) links. [_silent weeping_] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infant-genetal-mutilation-is-a-blood-sacrifice-to-the-demon-yahwe/824321.md?page=13)