I suppose that isn’t the worst analogy of something that is pointless/non beneficial, yet slightly risky; I suppose I could argue that the injury rate with circumcision is actually 100% (I do still believe it qualifies as ‘harm’), but I don’t think there’s much point.
God, you are a moron. Acording to your logic, triming a fingernail and amputating an arm are analogous.
Jesus, that’s fine that you feel that way. I support it. Benifits of using a car:greater than the risks. Benifits(if any) of circumcision:not greater than the risks. For you, this is a valid value judgement. SO WHAT? It might not be for others, and you don’t get to tell them that it’s not.
Tell me, I am curious. Do you support those anti-fur people who run up to strangers and dash their coats with paint, ruining them? How about members of the ELF who destroy other people’s SUVs because they think nobody needs an SUV. How about protestors who physically intimidate or attack people going to an abortion clinic?
These are all examples of people doing the exact same thing you are doing here with circumcision: Trying to force their opinions on people who do not share them. It’s disgusting, and frankly you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
catsix, whether deliberately or not, you’ve completely misconstrued my statements. I’ll try to summarize: I suggested that a cultural practice has some inherent validity on account of its being a cultural practice. However, any practice that’s harmful must weigh the value of human culture in general against the specific harm posed by the practice. There is virtually no harm done in circumcision, frankly, so the fact that it’s a practice of the USA is enough to make it acceptable.
I don’t see how you can argue this analysis without saying that cultural traditions have no inherent value (and thus, human culture itself is without value). Either a practice is part of a culture that has some inherent value (because I, for one, believe each society is special and inherently worthwhile in some way) or there is no weight whatsoever to tradition or culture.
Your continual comparisons to various barbaric practices don’t make the slightest bit of sense, since I suggest weighing the value of something simply as a unique aspect to a culture against the harm it poses. Bride burning and female genital mutilation are cultural practices, and that in itself entitles them to be viewed with some eye towards their inherent value. However, they are also terribly, terribly harmful to those who are subjected to them. So in the end, my analysis would say that they’re bad. The comparison to circumcision is nonsensical in the light of that analysis.
You, in comparison, are willing to throw out circumcision on the basis of that one kid in a hundred thousand who is unhappy about it, or else you define ‘harm’ in some way as to include ‘harms’ that don’t bother the ‘victims’ in any way whatsoever. So, by your reasoning, either cultural practices have no value in themselves, and the slightest harm posed by a tradition to the smallest portion of its participants is enough to justify throwing it out, or all these boys who’ve been circumcised are hurt, and they just don’t recognize it - somehow, Weirddave down there is wrong to feel perfectly happy about his penis.
No, you have seen plenty of evidence as to these benefits, you just dismiss them because they don’t apply to you personally. Some parents see making Junior look like dad as a positive thing. Or making Junior look like the other kids. Or eliminating the concern of hygiene, or (given that in much of the US, clipping is by far the norm) making Junior’s wang not scary to potential sex partners.
You may see all of these as minor concerns, and I wouldn’t argue, but your total dismissal of them indicates that you feel you have some perspective that lets you decide whether a parent in justified in how they raise their child. I say we only get to debate that when the harm caused is demonstrable and significant. And your focus on the miniscule portion of guys who are unhappy or hurt in the process demonstrates quite clearly to me that the harm is not significant.
You’re putting yourself in a position of moral authority over every parent. I say we only get to do that when the circumstances are particularly dire. If you consider yourself so above reproach, and so impartial, that your own views are adequate reason to tell parents what to do with their kids, then there’s really no basis for argument here.
Those are all very nice things. So can I assume you also would prohibit any parent from exposing their child to their religious beliefs at all until the kid hits some age of consent? Children are unwittingly raised in all sorts of wacky religions, with no say whatsoever, and it’s only a small minority who ever manage to ‘recover’ totally.
Yes. Because an enormous number of Jews are desperately angry about being circumcised. The vast majority, no doubt. Zev and Cathode are just lying about it!
Who is JDT, and why does the fact that one guy in a hundred thousand decides he wants his foreskin back mean every parent has the right to raise their kid how they want taken away? I mean, you haven’t touched on Chotii’s example regarding breastfeeding. The harm caused by formula feeding is pretty well-known. Are you also willing to say baby formula should be illegal?
All things that are done with the deliberate intent of hurting the child, and with that as the unavoidable result. Since most cut guys are fine with it, you can’t claim that they’ve been hurt. Changed, yes. Hurt? No.
And why so black and white, anyway? What’s wrong with looking at something and weighing the benefit of a cultural tradition - you know, those things that culture is built on? the things that mark each culture as separate from the others - against the harm it causes? The fact that people circumcise their kids, and both parent and child are happy with the decision later, is a benefit, and for you to ignore it totally is utterly indefensible.
There is benefit in cultural tradition inherent in the fact that it’s cultural tradition. Most cultures do things that seem bizarre to outsiders, and look bizarre from the inside if you examine them enough. The reason we can agree that these particular traditions you named are bad is because they have the inevitable result - rather than a one in ten thousand chance - of hurting the kid. You weigh the benefit (it’s a cherished part of their culture) versus the harm (it involves burning women alive because their families didn’t pay dowry.) Sure, the benefit is small enough in comparison to the harm in this case that it’s easy to see why bride-burning is bad. Circumcision doesn’t yield the same result when you subject it to analysis.
No one said it does. All sorts of traditions suck. What’s your point? I said being a tradition gives any practice a certain validity. If the practice poses a signficant harm, then that validity is outweighed by said harm. You haven’t even advanced the notion of proving that circumcision is harmful to any but a vanishingly small portion of men. Sure, their feelings are valid. But the tiny risk doesn’t outweigh a parent’s right to practice their religion as it commands, or to carry on a cultural tradition. You may view yourself as someone worthy of making everyone’s choices for them, but you’re not.
Don’t know much history, do you? Chastity belts were tremendously uncommon; there were a very few made, and they’re only known because even at the time, the concept was hysterically funny to a lot of people - if a man did put his wife in a chastity belt, it meant that he was so lacking in virility that she would go looking for anyone else as soon as she had the chance.
Thank God for our first amendment rights, then!
None of those things is so easily avoided as to just not cut off part of their penis.
Why should I?
Coding error. Didn’t mean to say that.
Back to the female circumcision thing for a moment then; for the folks doing it, it is also a value judgement. So we should tolerate it?
Nope, those things are examples of damaging property and injuring people; the opposite of what I’m advocating.
Heh. One of these debates.
I wonder if those up in arms about male circumcision are just as angry about pediatric orthodontia.
I don’t remember being circumcised, and it hasn’t worried me for a second in my life … but I distinctly remember many painful and humilating episodes dealing with orthodotic surgery, braces, and a horror known as a “monoblock” - all very much against my express will, and for the dubious benefit of nicer looking teeth (in my parent’s opinion).
My parents must have spent ten thousand dollars on this … some of it totally worthless (example: after trying to wear the ‘monoblock’ for a couple of nights, I gave it up forever - and just pretended that I wore it; the orthodontist nevertheless reported steady improvement! :wally ) are they, in your opinions, as wrong to give me nicer looking teeth as they were to give me a nicer looking dick?
But, other than the restoration crowd, I don’t hear circumcised men complaining and saying they wish it had never happened.
Without evidence that the crew of the tug a hoy aren’t the only men who are ‘upset’ about being circumcised, I see no reason to assume otherwise.
Other than possibly convincing a few Christian parents not to circumcise by talking to them face to face, just what would you do? I won’t say that the US will never ban circumcision, but certainly it won’t happen in our lifetime.
No. I find the idea of laws banning the practice of my religion frightening. My neighborhood is filled with Jews who fled the USSR as soon as they could. A few have told me how wonderful it is that they are free to practice Judaism here. One told me how he had memorized the friday night service, because you could be killed for having a prayer book. Now, he and his wife, can walk proudly to the synagogue. Doing that back in the Soviet Union would have resulted in the police being able to whatever they wanted to him-beatings, torture, life imprisonment, or simply killing him.
Yeah, now here we see the worst part of the moralistic preaching on the anti-circ side. I’m disappointed in you, Mangetout, you usually seem so reasonable. What you’re saying amounts to a statement that the vast majority of American men who are circumcised are wrong when they say they’re happy about it. Somehow, your opinion about their penises is more important than theirs!
So, if you don’t hear them, they don’t exist? They are out there.
Again, they may not be talking to you about it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I had no idea that they existed until I started discussing the subject and then asking my close male friends about it.
I see no reason to stop working toward that goal by discussing the issue with all kinds of people and attempting to persuade them that the procedure is unnecessary and harmful simply because a law might not exist in my lifetime.
It’s still possible to practice your religion without being allowed to alter other people’s unconsenting bodies in order to assert a faith they don’t even know if they will ever have.
[batshit insane mode]
YOU HAD NO ABILITY TO GIVE CONSENT! YOUR PENIS IS MUTILATED - YES, MUTILATED - FOREVER! IF YOU FEEL YOUR PENIS IS FINE THE WAY IT IS, YOU’RE WRONG! THE ONLY PENIS THAT’S ACCEPTABLE IS THE ONE THAT CONFORMS TO OUR STANDARDS!
[/batshit insane mode]
What about my pediatric orthopedic surgeon? He caused me pain and humiliation without my consent (hell, against my explicit wishes when I was a kid) without even any justification of faith!
Go get him, tiger! 
I think you’re putting words in my mouth there, and I am realising that the issue isn’t as cut[ahem] and dried as I first envisioned it, but I wouldn’t either describe my argument as moralistic, or argue that someone is wrong about how they describe themselves. I’m not quite sure how you made the leap to that idea. Please could you expand?
Cite? Or does your moral authority extend to being able to provide factual information too?
Catsix, your saying it doesn’t make it true.
Actually, no, that’s not the case.
See? No uncertain terms: Jews gotta get their babies cut. The covanent between G-d and the Jews is the central feature of Judaism, and part of it says that they must circumcise their sons when they’re eight days old. So no, no they can’t practice their religion without circumcising their sons. You got a problem? Take it up with Moses, sweetpea.
Once again, your saying it doesn’t make it so.
If every boy who is circumcised is harmed by it, then the ones who grow up to say they like their penises just fine, and that they’re happy about it, are somehow wrong. The fact is, many men feel that they were not harmed by circumcision, and you’re implicitly stating that they were. Hence, that their own feelings about their penises are invalid. And we wouldn’t want to claim anyone’s feelings about their penises aren’t valid, would we? As Weirddave and Miller before him said clearly, they feel that they not only were not harmed by circumcision, but that the implication that they were is insulting. I don’t see a way to interpret your statement in which this isn’t the result.
No, it is not. Not if you are Jewish. You have just shattered one of the cornerstones of the entire religion because of your own obsession with something that almost all of the people who’ve had it done consider a total non-issue.
Jesus, you’ve got chutzpa, telling Jews what they believe, what they can believe, how they should believe. If i were Jewish I’d be furious right now. What’s next? Are you going to demand that Christians should stop taking communion because the cannibalist imagry is "sick’, or that Muslems should no longer fast during Ramadan because they are harming their bodies by doing so? Where the fuck do you get off, anyway?
Hey, I tried again with cites, but she won’t believe that Jews are required to circumcise their kids. Why? Because it contradicts her worldview. Same thing with all the guys who’ve had it done and just don’t care. They’re wrong about their own penises. Why? Because they’re contradicting her worldview. And how do we describe people like her? I’ll give you a hint. Two words, one starts with a “B”, the next starts with an “I”.
Cutting the penis is physically harming it - now it may well be the case that individuals so harmed grow up to like it just fine that way, and genuinely too (and so suffer no emotional harm), but they have been physically harmed nonetheless. To insist that their acceptance/liking of the situation makes it not an act of harm is about as sensible as saying that their acceptance/liking makes it not an act of cutting.
Well look at that, I’m automatically insane because I don’t think that freedom of religion is absolute.
Guess it was just flat out wrong of the government to force the Mormon church to renounce the idea of plural marriages and to prevent Muslims in the US from practicing the same.
I guess none of the anti-circumcision arguers get as riled about pediatric orthodontia … as none have responded.
Way I see it, you have three choices:
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To be as angry about the one as about the other;
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To state why the two cases are fundamentally different; or
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To admit this is about an obsession with penises.