Footnotes

• Competing interests None.

• Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

• ↵i Such an exploration is particularly useful when it demonstrates that, even conceding to opponents of a certain practice (some of) their empirical claims, the normative outcome remains unchanged.

• ↵ii In retrospect, I should have included a question mark next to the cost of reduced sexual pleasure in my table.

• ↵iii I argue that the greater health complications and more drastic reduction in sexual pleasure from female genital cutting can explain why that practice (but not male circumcision) is impermissible.3