Last year, a well-to-do woman (educated at RISD, owns her own brownstone in Brooklyn, career in fashion & entertainment, frequently featured in magazines-- for her feminist art) told me she considers male-circumcision to be insignificant.

She compared it to the ritual genital pinprick which was performed on her, shortly-after birth, when she was born in Indonesia.

She was the person I thought of, when I read that Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) had sponsored HR 783-- a bill assigned to committee on February 5-- the "Zero Tolerance for FGM Act of 2015".

"Zero Tolerance" is an easy answer to nuanced issues: no need to differentiate between nearly-undetectable traces of lesser drugs for personal use/ and hundreds of kilos of hard narcotics... when the Zero Tolerance wand is waved.

The World Health Organization classifies FGM into 4 categories. Type IV includes "symbolic circumcision"-- pricking or nicking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Classification

And, reading that wikipedia link, I realized that the same woman above had told me a relevant story. She had returned to Indonesia to attend her sister's wedding. Prior to the wedding day, she & sister had gone to a beauty spa. In addition to usual treatments, the staff offered a special vagina-tightening "wedding night" procedure.

Both sisters found the concept to be hilarious & volunteered to sit on chairs with a hole in the center, while a small pot of smoking mystery-incense was placed-below.

I'm sure it worked, for values of 'tight' which equal 'smoky' and 'dry'.

What I didn't previously realize-- was that these adults poor damsels were the victims of Type IV Female Genital Mutilation: "introducing substances into the vagina to tighten it."

Zero Tolerance!

In the UK, adult women who choose to get genital piercings are counted as FGM victims: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/women-with-vaginal-piercings-will-be-recorded-as-suffering-fgm-under-new-nhs-rules-10116464.html

Zero Tolerance!!1!

Male circumcision?

crickets