Ok ill own up to failing to follow thru on my due diligence. 
However, I’m still unclear as to what the rationale or purpose is behind this “nicking or scratching” form of FGM. Why is it done at all? Why was it ever done? It seems truly and literally pointless, in the extreme.
Well ive now read thru both of those links. They were somewhat clarifying for me but not completely. The “nicking or scraping” forms of FGM are primarily performed in Indonesia while the more drastic versions are found in Africa.
The article did attribute the practice of these “minor” forms of FGM primarily to religious belief but didnt go into much detail. What is the nature of the religious belief that leads to be believing girls’ clitoral hoods need to be inflicted with extremely minor, temporary damage? That’s what i can’t wrap my brain around.
Good question, which IMHO applies to the tradition of male circumcision as well. Sure, we can retcon the practice of trimming or removing the foreskin as some kind of Bronze-Age-medicine preventive/hygiene approach, but it is not at all easy for me to understand the process of rationalizing it as a divine commandment.
As for the religious motivations for FGC in general, here are some remarks from a NIH article on FGC:
And specifically about Type IV in Indonesia:
So I guess we’re looking at symbolic perceptions of “cleanliness” and “righteousness”, possibly influenced by Islamic religious justifications for male circumcision? I don’t fully understand any of these arguments, but we need to remember that a lot of traditional cultures perform body modifications on childen as well as adults, and all of them have what they consider valid reasons for doing so.
Hmm, that link says:
I can’t get excited about the 24.3% that is just rubbing and scraping, not the 1.1% that is pricking and piercing, and probably not the 3% that is stretching. Parents do all sorts of stuff to their children without consent. They get them vaccinated, they chose what language(s) to expose the child to. They choose what to feed their kids, and how much, and what sorts of toys and tools their kids can play with, and… these are not things that can be undone, either. If parents are doing stuff that is culturally appropriate and not obviously harmful, you know, I think they are being parents…
The 22.4% excision (presumably of the clitoris) strikes me as obviously and significantly harmful, and that does concern me. The 49.2% that is “cutting” probably varies from minor cutting that is probably within the range of “not that harmful” that I’d be okay with, through more serious cutting that leaves real damage. But it’s hard to know from such a vague description.
Ok. It also says that the practice is more about the religious ritual than the cutting (or scraping) itself. If this is true, why the need to actually inflict any physical damage at all? Why wouldnt a ritual that is identical to current practices, just without any physical damage (replaced perhaps by more symbolic actions) not be just as acceptable? Just thoughts on the matter. Youve already been very helpful. I appreciate it.
ETA: this is in response to Kimstu’s post one post up from the post before this one. That post got in before i could post mine.
Eh, why don’t religiously observant people consider any particular ritual to be replaceable by “more symbolic actions”? Why don’t Christians taking communion avoid risks of oral bacterial/viral transmission by merely miming the action of drinking from the communion cup instead of actually drinking from it, for example?
That said, there apparently are Southeast Asian Muslim communities that perform purely symbolic equivalents of FGC (see pages 132ff. of this article, for instance) such as holding a peeled turmeric root over the clitoris and cutting the root instead of the flesh, or smearing chicken blood on the clitoris, or simply wiping it with antiseptic.
True. But Christian communion rituals seems like a questionable tradition to use as an example of religious customs that could stand to be more symbolic and less literal.
Those are very apropos peer-reviewed links. If I understand properly from the abstracts, these are estimated statistical deaths - those dying tend to have comorbidities. Perhaps that explains the vast difference in the figures cited.
Still, I take the anti-circ case more seriously now, as the potential cons are heavier than I thought.
You overstate I think. The article expresses disagreement with the AAP, which is normal science. My skim of the article suggested that while representatives of various medical societies may disagree with the AAP, no medical society has taken an official position in conflict with the AAP’s recommendation. So color me unimpressed. Most recommendations will have dissenters.
If you can find a foreign medical association with a different POV (and they very well may exist) let us know. Fighting ignorance and all that. For the moment, I’m sticking with the AAP’s cost/benefit analysis.
It could be some of the minor forms of it are a reduced form of FGM where the nearly-but-not-quite-entirely-symbolic nicking/scraping/rubbing is done in place of a prior, more severe form of FGM. There are people in Africa who, instead of trying to ban the practice outright (which doesn’t work too well, people being people) opt instead for harm reduction who try to convince parents to replace the more extreme forms with less damaging ones. Sometimes that works.
Or, it could be that it’s always been the very minor form of FGM and they refuse to eliminate that minor damage and drop of blood because to them it’s a vitally important part of the ceremony. Eliminate that and while you see no difference to them it completely alters the meaning of what’s being done.
But you could say “why do that?” about a lot of uncomfortable rituals people engage in.
Since female circumcision is illegal to perform, how would we ever study it to learn whether it has “benefits”? And if we did find there were benefits to FGM, would that suddenly make it okay?
Okay, wow. I guess it takes a lot to impress you. That Pediatrics article seemed like a fairly stunning rebuke to me, concluding that circumcising children is a violation of medical ethics! But I’ll give you more. Here’s a list (courtesy of Doctors Opposing Circumcision):
Nope. You are imposing your religion on someone who for obvious reasons doesn’t have one, and without his consent. That’s the opposite of freedom of religion. Killing freedom of religion would be preventing you, by your own choice and consent, as an adult, from getting circumcized.
Once again, if the commandment was instead to flog people you meet in the street, would preventing you from doing that be “killing freedom of religion”? You don’t have the right to flog or mutilate anybody, let alone babies, just because your religion says that you should. Protecting the bodily integrity of helpless babies against parents who somehow think they should have the right to mutilate them as they see fit because of their weird beliefs is definitely part of society’s job. And once again too, if this religious tradition was a newly imported one from some remote country, you’d have lost custody of the child and been sent to jail for child abuse, nobody would question it, and everybody would applaud, religiously motivated or not.
The fact that, in this day an age, in western countries, given our current moral standarts, ritual mutilation of infants is tolerated and a subject of debate is properly incredible. People, in particular progressives, who argues for allowing circumcision on religious ground must suffer from a massive case of cognitive dissonance.
That is not our view.
And the Muslims.
These threads always demonstrate why the Jews and the Muslims should make peace, as the totalitarian effacement of all deviation habits of the christian thinking have only been secularised, they have not in reality changed.
Who do you claim to speak for when you say “our”
I personally find the concept of physical branding at birth to be deeply entwined with totalitarian tendencies. Enforced physical appearance, enforced behaviour, enforced thoughts, enforced worship or praise.
My opposition to the enforced circumcision of children is not in any way “christian”. It stems from fairly mundane humanist and secular principles that mean I want everyone free to believe, worship, speak and act as they wish right up until the point where that has a material effect on someone else.
Those many men would make a big mistake.
There’s no doubt that women would tend to prefer a boinking of a “normal” duration over a 15 seconds one. But if you think that “longer” is always better, you’re sorely mistaken. Being unable to achieve orgasm within a “normal” timeframe and with a “normal” level of energy put into it due to a low sensitivity if the glans is a real issue, and in case you’d think otherwise, also for the female partner. No woman I have been intimate with has enjoyed being with a partner who lasts too long and/or has difficulties achieving orgasm. After a time, the prolonged “boinking” becomes not the slightest bit enjoyable, and the lack of pleasure of the male partner a concern. The only “solution” is for the man to give up trying to have an orgasm himself during intercourse, and in fact this won’t really satisfy his partner either, generally, since they generally take satisfaction in their partner enjoying himself too instead of acting like a living dildo.
Contrarily to what you think (and seem to find funny) women in general would prefer a partner who comes too soon over this. Which isn’t very surprising if you spend 5 minutes actually thinking about it. And this was exposed in the link I posted previously stating that both men and women have a marked decrease in their sexual satisfaction when the man has reduced sensitivity due to circumcision.
Actually, supporters of FGM have pointed at medical benefits, in particular reduced risk of contracting a STD, especially AIDS. I wouldn’t remember on what basis, but the claims are out there.
Then , tell me what your view is, about it? Do babies enthusiastically ask to be circumcised in order to properly follow god’s commandments, in your world? If not, then this religious practice is definitely imposed onto them.
Of course, muslims circumcising later have the fig leaf excuse that the kid can actually consent to the procedure (absolutely without any kind of peer, parental, social, cultural and religious pressure, I’m sure).
That’s not “Christian” thinking. That’s secular thinking in opposition of religious obscurantism.
One thing I’m uncertain about is whether this is because people are actually changing their minds in response to new information, or because the USA has a growing Hispanic population that doesn’t have a cultural habit of circumcising. I think there’s still plenty of reason to be depressed if the non-Hispanic white population is still circumcising at high rates. 
it is the typical western european totalitarian one-way thinking.
For this reason no religious minority can ever be safe among you.
You rebrand it “secular thinking” as you want.