Well, Dr. Dean Edell says that uncircumcised penises are more sensitive. That’s one disadvantage to a circumcised man. Some shrinks claim the early trauma may have psychological effects. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with me…wrong with me…wrong with me… 
And last, there is that overzealous doctor who may have created unnecessary shortcomings (so to speak). 
So you claim to be advantaged by this?
Whatever the answer, parents don’t choose to modify their son’s penis to make it look good. If they do, shame on them. If they do it so that the kid doesn’t encounter scared girlfriends or squicked-out locker mates, that’s another thing.
Circumcision is not about ornamentation, ear piercings are. All this off topic crap makes me angry. Few people can justify the behavior, yet many can make arguments that it isn’t barbaric.
Disproving a con, does not equal proving a pro. I might just quote myself for use as a sig line.
Nzinga, I understood you, & wondered why Guinastasia was thanking you.
I came from a fundamentalist background that probably wasn’t real hot on jewelry in general, so jewelry on infants seems odd to me. I guess if it’s stuck through flesh, they’re less likely to lose it, but it still looks a bit strange on some kids, a bit as if you’d given them eye shadow.
We are talking getting a kid’s ears pierced people. You go to the pediatrition, they do it in a few seconds, the kid may or may not cry, you get care instructions, you take care of the piercing, it looks pretty, people notice you have a pretty baby girl, she grows up, she asks for more earrings, she wears them, she goes to college, she gets a job, she meets a nice man, she gets married, she has a family, etc., and all the while she doesn’t have any memory or long lasting negative effects of the 30 seconds in which she got her ear pierced. It is not genital mutilation, it is not child abuse (not according to the State’s Code where I live), and above all, for the people that do it, it is not a big deal.
Non-southern-border- state people have a very odd way of looking at things, it is amazing that you guys get anything done in a day :rolleyes:
No circumcision is not about ornamentation. It’s about religion, which, when heaped on little people who haven’t yet achieved the abiity of critical judgement is also an abuse of adult power on the helpless. Babies are not property. They are not ornaments. They are a responsibility. It isn’t changing the subject to point out a different kind of mutilation practiced on babies.
Holy shit people! It seems that kids that get their ears pierced early on in life, are not as inclined to become crack whores as we thought!
The effects are not what I’m talking about here. The question is why do it?
Allow me to be an asshole for a minute. Ahem.
Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why? Why do it?
Let’s see the entire collection of reasons for doing it. Then we, that seek to impose our opinions on others can rebut them. Please list all of them, keep in mind that we’re not talking about the uses previously stated that were of a cultural nature.
Sorry, I see that you’d answered already. “It looks pretty.”
The next attraction will be people trying to advocate infant ear piercing. Give them some love, and watch them dodge the question!
Go!
You know what? You’re right.
Start a thread about circumcision. We can deal with that issue there. This thread is about infant piercing, in the ear specifically.
The circumcision comparison has been made, but there has yet to be a parent posting here, that had their kid circumcised for ornamental reasons.
Listen closely, the cutting of foreskins is not done by parents in order to make their kid’s dick look sweet. Forget the circumcision shit, because it has no place in this thread about ELECTIVE BODY MODIFICATION FOR THE PURPOSES OF AESTHETICS ONLY.
Ummm, are you on my side? I couldn’t tell. If you were supportive of my post: Thanks. If you are not supportive of my post: maybe I can lead you through how I decided to have my baby’s ears pierced to understand the why, why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why?
Time: 15 years ago
Location: Living room of a house in a place where a lot of people speak Spanish and have pictures of the Virgin Mary everywhere
Wife: What do you think of getting M’s ears pierced when she goes to the doctor on Thursday?
Me: OK.
I think that it’s fair to equate your statement of “ok” to “why not?”
Also, per your statement you did not decide to have your baby’s ears pierced. You just didn’t object. Your wife suggested the idea, and you said “OK”. If that’s your idea of deciding something, then maybe we have a miscommunication going on here. Where I come from, decisions are made, not just allowed to happen. You may have decided to not protest, but you certainly did not “make” a decision at all.
That’s what I objected to first. Piercing the flesh of a helpless baby for purposes of decorating her is abusive because it hurts the baby, just like piercing her flesh anyplace else with a needle, and its only purpose is to make the parent, not the baby, feel good. Then I compared it with types of mutilation applied to helpless ones for reasons other than deccoration. The similarity in both cases is the abuse of the weak by the powerfiul for reasons of their own. The argument was not about circumcision or ear piercing specifically. It was about abuse. Nothing should be done to a baby except for the baby’s own, not the parents’ good. Certainly the flesh should not be violated becaused Mama thinks it’s cute. Do you get the point now? The baby certainly does!
Because (at least in the case of ear piercings) a girl’s status is considerably more marginal and dependent than a boy’s. This remains the case, even in cultures where girls’ ears are not pierced.
At least, that’s my own opinion; there may be a reason to give which does not rely on the notion that boys and men have inherent value while girls and women must establish theirs, but I can’t think of one.
I’m sorry. I misinterpreted your direction in this matter. Please notice that I did not disagree with your assessment, but rather, I misunderstood the point you were making.
Our boy was born with very long hair and we had tons of white/yellow/green clothes. He got called a pretty girl many a time, and no offense was ever taken. I do have seen people huff and puff about it.
I am all for thinking of children as sexless until they hit 7 or even older. My girl plays with trucks all the time and my boy likes Barbie commercials on the TV (Both are too young for them, so none at home). Our boy is a total chicken, and our girl climbs on anything taller than a coin. We like them like that.
And I don’t call the boy “strong” and the girl “pretty”, I call them both “smart” and “good”.
That said, we cannot be blind to society having those biases and stereotypes. Are they good? we could debate that for ages. They do happen, though, and I feel I need to be sensitive to them.
Does the world need to change? maybe. I won’t do it myself, stepping on the toes of every parent I meet.
I put some value on my kids being adjusted to the society they are living in (Latino-American), and that means girls with earrings. If she ever grows up to resent that decision, I hope she also grows to understand my reasons and forgive me.
I find the position of earring as child abuse to be a very extreme position. I would be surprised if you held it but were more cavalier to poisoning them.
Re: Confusing genders…
The relatives I’ve seen huff and puff (or at least disappointed) about mixing genders are the relatives girl babies being confused as boys because of the lack of earrings. They went ahead and promptly put earrings on the baby to settle the matter.
Re: Nickel allergy, fragility of earrings…
The best quality earrings I wore when I was a baby, toddler, and child. None of that Claire’s crap until after I hit high school, and even then my mom disapproved of it. None of that cheap stuff for me (nor any other female girl). Just the highest quality gold earrings they could get (nothing less than 14K, over 18K preferred)… Perhaps someone is allergic to gold, but for the most part, parents and relatives give the little baby girls the fanciest safest earrings they can get.
And man, those things were a bitch to take out! I still have trouble with some of the latches, and I’m 24!!! Also, perhaps because I always had the earrings, I never felt them or cared for them, so I don’t remember trying to take them out until I was 7-8 (long after the instinct to swallow everything had ended). Oh yea, that’s one thing… Unless I’m wearing a big piece of jewelry, I don’t feel, and have never felt, the weight of my earrings…
That’s another thing? What other thing is it? I don’t have kids, but I’ve heard and seen lots and lots of conversations about whether or not to circumcize the boy, and “will the other boys in the locker room make fun of him?” is always a major factor.
You’re dead set against piercing baby girls’ ears for such a reason, but you’re willing to accept that it’s a good reason for circumcising boys? Am I understanding your position?
Well, at the risk of inviting a total highjack, circumcision being a volatile subject in my own experience…but then this is the pit still, innit?
At that risk, why do they do it then?
I think the medical reason has pretty much been done away with. And even the girlfriend/locker room thingie seems to be sort of passe, I think overall in the US circumcision rates are approaching parity, with less than half circumcised in the west and more than half in the tall corn states. So chances are that the the kids in the locker room and the girls who have seen one, have seen an uncircumcised one.
I sort of think they do it because everybody else does. I mean, my own sons are intact because their father is Dutch and wasn’t going for cutting bits off, and I had no strong opinion about it one way or the other. Which is I think more or less the reason most people pierce infant girls’ ears – whether it is for them a cultural thing or not.
I don’t consider it to be child abuse, per se. Just unnecessary and stupid.
Was it child abuse? What do you think is more dangerous/painful, a quick prick in the ear lobe or chopping off parts of your private bits?
I am not being snarky, it’s a sincere question.
Sorry Guin, you just keep digging yourself deeper.
Yeah, its unnecessary. And I don’t find it attractive. But when you take what is a cultural practice for entire groups of people and call it stupid (or trashy), I’m going to ask you why. Why is it stupid? It carries very little risk - less risk than a ton of things I did with my kids. Its a minor body modification (I agree, feeding them McDonalds is a worse body modification - one I’m guilty of in moderation - I also let my kids drink pop, which has zero redeeming qualities (well, maybe hydration if you push it), rots their teeth and adds empty calories to their diet) - a modification that most female adults will go through voluntarily (often multiple times) if they didn’t have it done as children. What makes it stupid? Is there a huge proportion of people out there that resent holes put in their ears as babies? (I know about the people who resent being adopted, and the ones trying to recreate a foreskin, didn’t realize there was a “my parents mutilated me when they pierced my ears” movement.) Other people find it attractive. They find it a cue to identify a child’s gender, which is more important in some cultures than in others. They find it an act of marking, of joining the community for a baby girl.
My daughter goes to summer daycare with a little black girl with cornrows. We had cornrows put in my daughter’s hair when we were in the Islands - not many. I don’t find cornrows terribly attractive. It can really hurt to get those tight braids in. It takes what seems like FOREVER to do a squirming child. Not something I really find necessary or attractive, but I’m not going to call them stupid or trashy. (I’m sure cornrows in small black girls help keep a tangled mess from occurring which probably is what makes them worth having a squirming child sit through braiding).
I’m a strange person to be arguing this. I’m pretty traditional when it comes to body mods - the most I’m comfortable with is one hole in each earlobe. I don’t like tattoos - me looking at a friend’s tattoo is a little like some on the SDMB looking at a baby - its about all I can do to say its nice and be polite - and I can’t even bring myself to do that with a nose stud (belly button rings I find damn sexy - if you never put it back in after pregnancy). I think people who put their little kids in Harley t-shirts are making a statement I’m not entirely comfortable with. And I don’t like earrings in babies (I don’t like those stupid elastic bow thingies either). But I have to wonder - why is something that is a near universal practice among Latinos in the U.S. (and extremely common among Blacks) “stupid.”