Arguable. There are very significant differences in the intent behind the practices and outcomes. FGM is often performed on older children and young women to reduce the ability to experience sexual pleasure/encourage chastity. It can be considered "beautiful" which causes me to shudder. There are many horrific cases of women and girls suffering severe lifelong trauma and dying from infections around the world due to this practice.

Baby boys also have a risk of dying from the procedure, although it is a much smaller percentage. The procedure performed on males is not an effort to restrict them sexually, although it may also diminish some sensation for them later in life. I do know of one man who elected to have himself circumcised as an adult in the 1960s. He suffered from recurrent infections before the surgery and thought it was "dirty" not to be circumcised. As I understand, it was a very painful ordeal for him that was most likely not necessary. Social pressure drives people to do a lot of things that are awful and don't really make sense.

There are women who are cut with unclean knives and sewn together so they can only piss a drop at a time so they can be ensured virginal brides to be then torn apart by their husbands when they are wed, if they live that long. That is the horrifying crime that caused me to be interested in this subject, that people can be so ignorant and cruel to other beings this way. While the FGM case in point seems to be of a less drastic procedure, I don't believe there is a place for any type. Allowing the lesser form is still abuse. Allowing a lesser form of FGM segways to opinion of how much is still too much to cut. There is no suggestion that FGM is good hygiene. It is simply barbaric and unacceptable.