Nicking is less than circumcision. Removal of the clitoral hood is probably the closest FGM to male circumcision
I agree with that. I'm not aware of any group of people who do remove part of the clitoral hood, but if they did that would be a close analogy for circumcision.
and then there are forms I think we'd all agree are much worse.
Practices that include cutting off the outer labia and/or removal of the visible clitoris. Sometimes even followed by sewing the vaginal opening closed. Often done with crude instruments such as razor blades or broken glass by people, often family, who are not medically trained.
And the worst part? Often done from late childhood to early puberty so the woman has a trauma that will stay with her for the rest of her life. Imagine a girl being held down, screaming, by several people while an elder digs her clitoris out with a razor blade?
The purpose? To sexually cripple the woman. They think it makes her more pure, less likely to be promiscuous, and more likely to stay with her husband instead of being attracted to another man.
So one lesser (including a host of variants) one about the same and some worse, but all viewed as injuries caused for no medical reason and therefore illegal.
This fallacy is called "conflation".
You lump circumcision with female genital mutilation because you do see a correlation with the absolute mildest form of FGM, and then you pretend that it’s just a coincidence that it’s now grouped with these really horrific practices.
It’s fallacious because circumcising a boy, cutting a bit of skin from the end of his penis, is absolutely nothing like holding down a screaming pre-teen so you can cut off her labia then sew it up.
Equating these things is fundamentally dishonest and does nothing to inform the debate.
I get that you're fine with it, it isn't that big a deal in most cases but can't you use your critical thinking skills to step away from your own personal experience and see that 'Well it usually doesn't cause any lasting trauma but it is pretty pointless so let's stop doing it'.
Disagreement with you is not evidence that I haven’t used my critical thinking skills.
You seem to reject analogies but how about say a custom had grown up to remove babies fingernails? Started as a religious, tribal thing but hey, dirt can get stuck under them and if you don't clean it out it could get infected or, even more likely, you may suck your fingers and the germs will get inside you. Much easier to keep your fingers clean with no nails and you've never really missed them, after all, your hands still work fine. Then you find out that huge numbers of people don't rip their babies fingernails out and they all seem to get on fine. Wouldn't you draw the logical conclusion that it's a bit pointless and even, dare I say it, barbaric?
Actually not a bad analogy.
