Heh. I’m actually Reconstructionist.
Yeah, the Orthodox folks would have a MUCH stronger reaction to the suggestion than you did.
(high five)
And that proves… what?
You still strike me a clueless when it comes to understanding Jews in both general and in particular groups.
It proves that Begbert is not justified in implying that I might not even have heard of WWII. This is a ridiculous comment when you consider all I have read regarding Judaism, and regarding WWII and the Holocaust. I have even read the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, most of Mein Kampf (which few of even the most devoted Nazis could manage because it is so friggin’ BORING). I have never claimed to be an expert on these subjects. I am just saying that I have love and respect for Jews because I have familiarity with the religion and the people.
NOT an expert. Familiar with and respectful of.
Heh, the natural suspicion is that the person asking the question has no actual interest in “heroin addiction”, but merely wishes to smear “casual pot smoking” by association.
I’ll take it as a given that you believe this to be true. So listen to me.
You are not being respectful. Your proposal is incredibly insulting and disrespectful without limit. You do not understand the sheer, unadulterated arrogance of your request. You are asking Jews to stop being Jews.
You cannot be a friend to Jews while also asking them to toss their beliefs aside.
You have no right to do that.
You have no place to do that.
You do not get to do that.
This is true regardless of what you have read or where you have wept or how many Bar Mitzvahs you have attended. There’s no magical number of Jewish experiences you can have that suddenly give you the right to shit on our belief system and not expect us to take offense.
You will not find any Jews willing to engage in the argument you apparently want to have because we have no interest in convincing you of the merits of circumcision. It’s our thing. Circumcise your kids, don’t circumcise your kids. We don’t care and we don’t have any reason to try to change your mind. Do you think you’re the first person in history to suddenly think that the world would be a better place if only Jews would stop being so darned Jewish?
One more thing: if you ever find yourself compelled to list all the ways you have associated with/read about any ethnic group in an attempt to prove that you aren’t a bigot, stop and take a look at the neighborhood you’re in. You’ve probably taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Reevaluate yourself, Bubbe.
Maybe we have gone far enough down this path.
If you look at my OP, you will notice that all I ever asked was whether Jews would CONSIDER getting rid of what many people consider a barbaric ritual and unnecessary surgery. Later I added the suggestion that a symbolic substitute might be an option, such as a pin-prick to the foreskin.
For this I was called a pushy gentile, and ignorant. It was suggested I might not have heard of WWII let alone the Shoah (Holocaust). Words like “annihilation” were thrown around.
Anecdotally, my bother (who like me is circumcised), married a Jewish woman and enquired if he would have to undergo some kind of second circumcision in the event he decided to become a Jew. He was told that if he was already “done” a ceremony could be held in which a slight nick to the penis skin would be sufficient. So there is a precedent of sorts for the pin-prick idea.
I repeat my prediction that it will take CENTURIES to eliminate all forms of child genital mutilation, male and female. As near as I can see, the desire to cut into a child’s genitals to make him or her acceptable to an invisible diety is not going to disappear overnight. It comes from a deep, dark and I suspect very ugly and illogical part of our collective mind. It is an assumption that male and female children are born imperfect and must be made OK by blood, sugery, and pain and suffering. It is like the suffering imposed on people who are initiated into clubs, universities, etc.
The Phoenicians/Carthaginians used to offer whole living children to their gods by burning them. I supposed the Lord God of Israel demanding only circumcision is an improvement in this sense.
I asked if my Jewish friends would consider my suggestions, and they did. I thank them. I still think that as the power of religion wanes as humans become more educated and understand science better, religions all over the world will shrink and fall back.
And I think that Jews, with their wonderful traditions of compassion and practicality, may someday be one of the earliest and most significant break-throughs in the movement to send genital cutting rituals back to the dark, nightmare past to which we have already relegated the Inquisition, medical bleeding, and witch trials.
As you may guess, this is my last posting on this thread. Thanks for participating.
Jews don’t have anymore of a “tradition of compassion and practicality” than the rest of the western world nor are they “some of the most humanitarian people on Earth” in any meaningful sense. But at least this is “good” racism. :rolleyes:
Many? I’d say a few.
You have gone more than far enough
You got your answer. You didn’t like it and tried to engage in special pleading. Frankly, I found your posts offensive and I’m not Jewish. I found your posts offensive even if I, like you, am opposed to infant circumcision of any sort (other than medically necessary reasons, of course).
Right - after I mentioned it. Stop patting yourself on the back.
You were. You may not have realized you were that, or how offensive you were being, but when this was pointed out you just doubled down instead of stopping to consider what you had been told.
Stop, just stop, you’re starting to make me ill.
You have at best a superficial understanding of Jewish culture and you are unwilling to listen to actual Jews on this topic. You are just another pushy person of the privileged majority trying to impose his values on other people without consideration to those others because you are so very convinced of your superiority. You claim to have studied WWII and the Shoah but clearly you do not understand on visceral level what it is to have someone not only advocate the obliteration of your culture, your history, and even your physical selves but actually have a serious go at it.
Sorry, but once again, we have been comparing it to a version of FMG that isn’t horribly damaging. How many times will we had to repeat this?
Hmm, no. We are precisely disputing that the harm is “very minimal” to begin with. You’re begging the question, here. Taking for granted what you’re supposed to show. Basically you’re saying “since you’re wrong, you’re obviously wrong”.
And you think that this supports your position? The fact that what I believe is a bad thing is widespread should makes me less concerned about it?
It’s the other way around. The bad thing I’m talking about here is circumcision, not FMG. And pointing at the similarity between something that pretty much everybody consider as being wrong and this bad thing that pretty much everybody here seems to think is fine is intended to make people open their eyes and realize that if they condemn the first, they can’t be consistent and accept happily the second. That the exact same arguments are valid for both.
I’m going to keep asking the same question, after all maybe someday someone will answer it. Since you’re accepting that permanent genital mutilation on babies can be acceptable, what kind of permanent genital mutilation do you find acceptable for baby girls?
Irrelevant. Unless, again, you’d accept the importance of religious tradition as a valid reason to accept FMG, which, most likely, you don’t.
That’s too bad, but regardless how important it’s considered to be in your religion, if it’s a bad thing, it stays a bad thing, and shouldn’t be tolerated. If assaulting people was a very important part of Jewish religion, it should be banned. I don’t consider circumcision as a lesser offense than assault.
In fact, I’m convinced that there will eventually be bans on circumcision because it’s so much in conflict with values currently emphasized in the western world. Judaism will do what every religion (including Judaism) always did : it will adapt. Maybe replace circumcision with some symbolic minor genital scarification, or just bringing the knife to the genitals without cutting anything, or whatever. And after a couple generations, the wide majority of Jews won’t understand anymore why this was even an issue to begin with.
I predict you will be proven wrong. Jews are part of the western world, they share the western culture, they’re part of it. There’s no way they will ignore changes in this culture and say :“well, everybody now thinks that circumcision is barbaric, but somehow we’re totally isolated from these views and unaffected by this cultural shift and we all will keep thinking circumcision is fine and dandy”. Not going to happen.
You could argue that this cultural shift in the western world won’t happen, but that it would happen and that Jewish views won’t change at the same time (well…maybe with a delay and some resistance) isn’t going to happen.
There will be such extensive discussions, then.
So I am, so you are, and so everybody is. People have no issues with suppressing what they perceive as a barbaric practice, even if it’s considered a culturally important practice in another culture.
However, forbidding circumcision is in no way comparable with the Shoah, and banning it won’t result in the obliteration of Jewish culture, either.
This is why everyone is jumping on the logic of the argument as being completely disingenuous.
It’s a bait and switch, designed purely for emotional manipulation. The only reason you are mentioning FGM is because, in general, it is so very horrible.
Sure, FGM exists on a spectrum, and at one far end of the spectrum it isn’t horrible - it is trivial. Precisely because that very particular form is trivial, it is then comparable to male circumcision.
Your argument depends on folks mistakenly expressing the same amount of horror over those trivial forms of FGM, as they (quite rightly) express over FGM in general and then transferring that mistake over to male circumcision - and the charge being hypocrisy if they don’t.
In realty, it ought to work the other way around - folks ought to realize that truly trivial forms of FGM aren’t horrible.
What you can’t get around is that trivial is trivial, and you can’t make any convincing argument why folks ought to care about it.
Oh, and of course, what the parents feel doesn’t matter. Whether or not circumcision is allowed should be entirely based on the interests of the child and benefits for the child, not on the interests of the parents and the benefits for the parents. And I’m pretty sure that no 8 days old baby wonders how not being circumcised might impact Jewish culture.
Not going to respond to every point of the above, but…
My apologies, I should have said “Among reasonable people who base their opinions on actual data, the only debate is whether circumcision is trivially harmful or not harmful at all”. Feel better now?
I am not familiar with the various forms of FGM. If there is a form which doesn’t adversely affect sexual functioning to any significant degree, then I think parents should be free to choose whether to have their daughters undergo that procedure based on their religious or cultural traditions, or, really, based on whatever criteria they choose to use. Because, you know, making medical decisions on behalf of children is what parents do.
You go right on ahead being “convinced” that society at large will someday accept the views of the tiny crackpot minority you belong to. I’ll not hold my breath.
Absolutely not. Exactly the contrary in fact. I want people to reflect on why they are fine with one type of genital mutilation while being outraged by another type of genital mutilation.
Emotion is in fact against my side. People acting on emotion won’t agree with me because they have accepted circumcision as a perfectly normal practice, so they don’t feel strongly about it. They will possibly change they mind only if they think about it, and apply to circumcision the rational arguments they apply when it comes to FMG. If they are so convinced, then, they might begin to feel strongly about it.
Nope. Because it shows a cognitive dissonance. My arguments about circumcision are essentially the same people use about FMG (including the minor forms of it that people condemn too). I’m asking them why they don’t apply those arguments to circumcision too.
So, are you going to agree that those trivial forms of FMG should be allowed? Did you ever express this support for these minor forms of FMG? Will you in the future?
Not that I would be happy if you came to support both circumcision and clitoridal hood removal. I would rather have you oppose both.
You realize that I don’t agree it’s trivial, right? What allows you to decide what consequences on my sexuality, I should consider trivial?
Interesting. Are there any decisions which you* would* generously grant me the right to make regarding my child? I feed him a vegetarian diet; do you think I should be prohibited from law by doing that – or, conversely, compelled to do so? I chose to put him in a certain preschool rather than into one which practices a different educational philosophy. Is that OK, or should I be compelled to put him in the school which practices the philosophy that YOU feel is in the best interests of MY child? I sometimes let him watch more TV in a day than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends; should I have the right to make that decision? Or is it just stuff that only Jews do that qualifies as “barbaric”?:dubious:
Nobody is arguing that Malthus has the right to decide whether you should be circumcised or not. They are arguing that your* parents* had the right to make that decision, because making such decisions is exactly what parents do.
But you’re totally wrong. People are outraged by the level of mutilation, not “type”. Some people get all bent out of shape about piercing a baby’s ears. Practically everyone would be outraged over ear removal. And you’re asking us all to reconsider ear piercing since we’re all so upset about ear removals.
Un, you do realize that attempting to generate “outrage” is an attempt to generate an emotional reaction, right? 
That’s not the point: emotions aren’t of necessity “bad”; to certain things, “outrage” is a reasonable response. However, responding to the trivial with “outrage” is unreasonable.
Hence why I’m not arguing that you are wrong to “act on emotion”. I’m arguing that your argument is wrong because it attempts to manipulate an emotional reaction, by bringing FGM into the mix.
If they condemn the minor forms using the same arguments as used for condemning the non-minor forms, they are wrong to do so; just as wrong as you!
I repeat what has been said before about “whataboutism”. Here’s a pure form of it.
I know you don’t agree. What you are failing to do, is make any reasonable argument to support why (1) anyone would agree with your subjective opinion; and (2) why, as between you and someone else who disagrees with you, I should enshrine your peculiar subjective opinion into some sort of legal prohibition.
Those considerations ought to be based on objective facts.