Pardon me if I annotate:
And if you are a newborn to Jewish parents who, from the moment you have the capacity to think about things, don’t want to follow that faith, and didn’t want to have been circumsized, you will have been circumsized anyway, and you are just SOL.
Justify this.
Sorry I used italics to highlight my additions to Zev’s quote, forgetting that it would all come out in italics and make it all indistinguishable. I’ll try again.
You were the one who said above not once but at least twice that the reason that the onus was on the anti-circ crowd was that circ was not harmful. If the cap fits, wear it.
quote]You just made one point, then completely contradicted it.
[/quote]
No. When I said it was not harmful I was setting out the pro-circ argument, not suggesting I agreed with that argument.
No, I’ve never said that. Though, going by my experience of you so far, the fact that I have never said something certainly would not be viewed by me as something you are likely to regard as any bar at all to you attributing something to me.
All I have said is that all the other arguments put forward by the pro-circ crowd are furphys, as reference to FC as an analogy shows, and the only real one is how harmful MC is or is not.
The rest of your post is just your usual irrrelevant, straw man blather.
There IS no “justification” for the ways in which parents raise their children. So to ask for justification on just ONE item parents choose, well, why not just not allow parents say AT ALL in the raising of their children? We’ll go back to the days back during, what was it, the black plague?, when children were thought to be “little adults” as soon as they could survive without CONSTANT adult supervision eh?
Faiths, practices, rules are GOING to be followed in society. Not all people are goin to agree with all that a parent chooses for his/her child. And sometimes, most especially the Child won’t agree. Circumcision isn’t the ONLY thing that a child will find is a permanent fixture in his/her life *courtesy of his/her parents’ raising), with which he disagrees.
Most parents, barring the negligent abusive ones, will love and care for their children to the very best of their abilities. Parents who are Jewish, and those who circumcise are doing the same. Parenting out of love, duty and to the best of their abilities.
If you are a newborn anything, boy, girl, white, black, rich or poor, you will have been born into circumstances NOT of your choosing, and are pretty much SOL regarding your own choices until you’re 18 anyway. Physical changes aren’t the only changes a parent can put upon a child that then becomes permanent.
On some things, religion, the way a parent parents, lifestyle circumstances and so on, a person’s parents choose for them, and NOT just the physical, those things are still permanent, and they’re SOL and in for many many years of therapy anyway.
Things parents do/choose for their kids are often permanent, or near permanent. Some “good” some “bad” (and those terms are very subjective), but NONE are with our permission. Not one. We can buck the system by disobeying, but the decisions of our lives are made for us. What we eat, wear, go to school, where we live.
We are moved away from best friends and beloved places to live. Taken to church 5 times a week, brainwashed into believing what they believe, and trying to live with the guilt when we fail. Or balking at what they believe and ending up fanatically hateful on the other side of the coin, or at just withdrawing and giving up. What brought you TO whatever escape you pick is not of your choosing.
And ALL of it has the potential to put us SOL. So is the potential for something to be not of a child’s choosing and for him/her to be SOL about it mean that the parents should be banned from making said decision?
The method differs. The outcome differs. However, they are identical in this one irrefutable regard: they both remove erogenous tissue.
No one, no one at all, least of all me, is saying that FC isn’t magnitudes more drastic and destructive.
Crikey! I find that a little scary. The one person in [whatever large number] is not only sometimes unhappy or hurt, but disfigured or, in some case, suffers death, but the others are ‘OK’, so it’s alright? - If the others were transported to flights of ecstasy, I’d be closer to being convinced (although still not arrived there), but they’re ‘OK’, so it’s alright that the [admittedly small] minority suffered terrible harm?
You’re honestly unaware of any scenario in which some small minority suffers harm, but the product/service is continued in light of the benefits/whatever it offers to a majority?
Ever seen a prescription drug commercial where the announcer lists all those side effects? Ever, say, been to a carnival where someone threw up on the rollercoaster?
Hell, they still sell peanuts and peanut butter at the grocery store, don’t they?
Seriously. As has been previously noted, there are hundreds or thousands of scenarios, at least, where potential harm to an individual (up to and including death) is judged by society to be outweighed by potential good to a majority (as innocuous as enjoying a peanut butter sandwich or a ride on a rollercoaster) and the institution is allowed to continue.
Little league. Jungle Gyms. Fast food and tobacco, if you want to get into the big leagues.
I’m struggling to think of a good example where something causes discernible and terrible harm to a small proportion of unconsenting individuals, while at the same time, not actually resulting in any significant benefit to the majority, but rather resulting in ‘meh, OK’. Perhaps you can help?
A couple things.
To build on **Chotii’s ** statement, one other similarity between FGM and MC is the bullshit rationalizations given as reasons for doing it. In both cultures people say that intact genitals are disgusting and will repel potential mates, that they are dirty, and that terrible medical consequences will follow if the surgery isn’t done. I’m not saying the practices are equivalent, but there are similarities.
The points made about parents being able to subject their children to risk in other areas makes me reconsider whether the government should intervene to stop this practice. I’m going to have to ruminate on it a bit.
However, I will say that there is one big difference between the examples cited (sports, vaccinations, etc.) and MC. Circumcision is in and of itself a permanent harm. A vaccination involves a temporary harm (breaking the skin with a needle) that heals quickly. Sports involve risk of harm, but are not inherently harmful. Ah, as I said, I’m going to think about it.
CanvasShoes, the author of that first link seems to be just as loony as the loonies on the anti-circ side. He’s allegedly an M.D., but still espouses the discredited (and idiotic IMHO) theory that infants can’t feel pain like adults. He ignores the fact that the indefensible theory of masturbatory insanity is what made circumscision popular, and generally seems interested in scaring and misleading parents into cutting their sons.
Obviously the Rabbi has a bias. Would any argument sway a mohel from believing that MC is safe and harmless?
The quote from the third citation is revealing - notice that a risk for phimosis is premature retraction of the foreskin, something that ignorant physicians are often guilty of, due to their inexperience with intact boys.
Finally, the AAP task force statement is very carefully worded. Notice they say, “Newborn circumcision has potential [i.e., theoretical or subject to much debate] medical benefits and advantages as well as [demonstrated] disadvantages and risks.”
Frankly, I think a lot of physicians pussyfoot around the subject because they don’t want to incur the wrath of Jews. If this wasn’t a religious issue, I think the practice would be more clearly discouraged by the medical community. (Lest anyone think I’m anti-Semitic, let me assure you I try to respect religious people, but think that all religions are equally full of crap.)
You’d never convince a mohel that removal of the foreskin is, in itself, harmful. You might be able to convince him that his tools or methods could be improved.
In his Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody, Charles Panati lists medical circumcision with such medical practices as purging, bloodletting, and the four humours. He concludes by speculating that we’ll eventually go back to circumcision only being practiced for religious reasons.
I agree with him. A legal ban is unnecessary. It was a brief medical fad. It’s pasing. In time, the vast majority won’t care that it’s available because they won’t want it. Jewish and Muslim parents will continue to have their sons cut whether it is legal or not.
Ok, so far I’m confused: you acknowledge that FGM is far more harmful than male circumcision (and threaten to scream louder if anyone points it out again). And yet, the fact that they are both (in your view) harmful justifies comparing them, and essentially regarding them the same way. I say this because you use the repugnance most people in this country hold for FGM as evidence that circumcision is also bad.
Then you claim that yes, the amount of harm caused by FGM in comparison to circumcision is relevant, but you never state why because you still find it a perfectly good analogy to circumcision.
Forgive me, but I find your positions here to be self-contradictory. If you feel I’m misrepresenting what you say, please explain the misrepresentation. I come to conclusions regarding what you believe, and I do it without intending to misrepresent you. I don’t see any strawmen in what I’ve written, nor do I see any consistency in what you’ve written. Either FGM and circumcision are both harmful, and the amount of harm caused is irrelevant in comparing them because any harm done to a kid is wrong, or else one is dreadfully more harmful than the other, and it is relevant, and your analogy falls apart.
I certainly can’t argue with either of your statements (and I must again apologize for having confused you and catsix. You’ve been a paragon of reason as far as I can tell.)
But again, I at least determine the morality of an act by comparing the harm it causes to the benefit it causes, and while I don’t see circumcision as beneficial, I believe that some parents do. I know this smacks of moral relativism, but if some mother feels some need for Junior’s wang to look like daddy’s and those of the other boys in her locker room, then circumcision is providing her some minor benefit. Naturally this seems silly to me, but I’m not comfortable dismissing her reasons out of hand - the benefit is small, but as far as I can tell, so is the risk. The fact that there is some potential for harm doesn’t mean that an action is inherently bad - it’s only when there is no justification for it, or the justification is less than the benefits. I’m not willing to say that because I don’t share Mom’s beliefs, her justification is irrelevant.
And when I’m walking down the street, there’s an [admittedly small] risk that someone driving down the road will lose control of his car and smash me into the side of a brick building, causing various humors and gooey bits to squeeze out of me and pool on the sidewalk below.
I got no benefit out of his driving the car. And even the most responsible driver, with a functioning car, could still experience some kind of malfunction that would send him careening into me. The absolute best-case scenario is that he drives past me and I’m unharmed.
Some small risk is inherent in everything we do. People subject themselves, people nearby, and even their children to the risk of death - constantly! The magnitude of the risk is the difference between what we see as perfectly normal and what we see as negligent or worse. I don’t see why absolutely zero risk is the requirement for circumcision to be acceptable, while we don’t hold anything else to the same standard.
Again, the vast benefits of car use outweigh the small risks of accidental injury (at least most people would see it that way). Please remind me again about the vast benefits of circumcision?
Only if it’s a Good Humor truck.
And the vast benefits of Little League baseball, or riding the Cyclone, or recreational fishing, or any of the other activities that we allow our children to participate in with significantly higher risk than circumcision are… what?
Zev Steinhardt
I wasn’t aware that children were made to do those thngs entirely in the absence of their consent.
But what difference would that make that it would “incur the wrath of the Jews?” We don’t care if anyone else is circumcised or not. To us, it’s strictly a matter for Jews (a position I’m fairly certain that Muslims take as well [that it’s strictly a matter for Muslims and that they don’t care if anyone else is cicrcumcised]). Why would Jews (or Muslims, for that matter) make a big stink if everyone else is uncircumcised?
Zev Steinhardt
In the case of Little League Baseball (or other athletic activities) I’m fairly certain that there are children who don’t want to participate but do so because their parents want them to.
What about a major league baseball game. Everyone knows that in going to a game, there is always a small amount of risk involved (being hit by a thrown bat, ball, etc.) Am I abusive if I take my infant to the game without his consent? There are plenty of things that we do with our children (even without their consent) that carry small risks of injury.
Zev Steinhardt
I’ve never actually seen conclusive proof that these benefits exist, only speculations and ‘might lower the risk of’ type statements.
I don’t know why this idea bothers me, but the idea that a person is slated to a certain lot in life solely because of birth bothers the hell out of me. Maybe it’s due to my own childhood, in which I was born to parents who desperately tried to raise me in their religion, but when the time came for me to officially choose that religion, I was already an atheist. Perhaps that feeling is exacerbated by Jamie, who resents being cut in the name of his parents religion and further resents that he’s still claimed as part of it although he decided himself that he did not share those beliefs as a young child.
Lots of people go through something traumatic that they wish never happened, but they go on to be happy and productive people anyway.
And not all men who grow up to be upset about having been cut against their will can go through the long and arduous process of reconstruction, so to imply that only the JDT people are the ones who are ‘upset’ about it is disingenuous.
When those norms involve depriving a person unnecessarily of their right to self-determination regarding their own body, you’re damn right I am contemptuous. I despise female circumcision, foot binding, dowry-system arranged marriage, honor killing, and a whole host of other things. I have far less capacity to affect a change in those areas than I do in this one.
Being common does not make something right. Being tradition does not make something right. If that were the case, there are many practices that never would have changed. How many of us would be walking around with chastity belts on if society had stuck with the idea that it’s ‘common and tradition’ therefore no need for change exists?
I’m fine with their religion until it starts affecting the bodies of those too young to make a choice.
None of those things is so easily avoided as to just not cut off part of their penis.
Do you find this in any way frightening?
Does the fact that some parents want to circumcise their kids, and the fact that the vast majority of circumcised guys are fine with it, mean nothing? There’s whatever benefits parents see in circumcision, and I just don’t understand the attitude that because you don’t understand why someone would want to do something, it’s necessarily done for no reason whatsoever.