You may keep your sidearm.
They are more convincing to me than ‘our culture dictates’, but that’s me. YMMV.
This really sounds like your equating ‘having a foreskin’ with ‘having a disease’. I can’t see any line of thought that would make them remotely comparable. Of course you treat disease where you can. Being cut is not a disease cure, nor a direct prevention of anything. It is a potential net benefit, possibly, someday, sometime. Maybe. This isn’t anywhere nearly enough justification, when weighed against the rights of the child.
Also, what I object to is the automatic assumption that that is what is occurring in the minds of parents when they take this decision for their child – it isn’t.
Not breastfeeding your child doesn’t affect a physical characteristic of the child nor does it remove something the child once had and no longer does; I think this is comparing apples and oranges, especially as there are suitable and equivalent alternatives.
In what way are they NOT the same? The only way I can suggest is that the latter is carried out with consent, the former is not.
Again, this is apples and oranges; a child has a more fundamental right to have his body left intact (until he decides otherwise) than to be fed a particular type of food in infancy (as long as he is fed a suitable alternative food).
How many of those North Americans had this procedure done BEFORE any Jewish children had it done? The origin of the procedure far precedes the existence of the US. It’s already been discussed how aspects of ‘culture’ first come to predominate and then perpetuate through habit.
One other thought –
A more suitable analogy than breastfeeding, in my mind, would be to one of corporal punishment. This is something (possibly) that ‘reasonable people can disagree’ on, as to “spare the rod” may well “spoil the child” and all that. It may be considered a moral imperative or a parental duty to smack your child for misbehaving, but many disagreed and the rights of the child not to be smacked were deemed to outweigh the rights of parents to discipline in this way, and the act was subsequently deemed (at least partially) unlawful.
Usually talk of the health benefits of circumcision is answered with “…but the incidence of [your negative outcome here] plummets with good hygiene.”
For most of the history of America, and of the world, we did not have “good hygiene.”
It’s a good answer for a shower-a-day world, but that’s not the world as it’s always been. Even prior to the superstition that daily bathing was unhealthy, I don’t think it’s ever been the norm prior to (roughly) the present day.
So, sticking to this narrowest point without regard to a “pro/con” decision for the larger question, I think it’s likely that this aspect of “culture” could come to predominate other than through habit. Perpetuation may be another story.
Since scientific reports on the subject range from “male infant circumcision isn’t harmful” to “male infant circumcision works as a prophylaxis against higher incidence of STDs and penile cancer,” perpetuation may also (still) be by some mechanism other than habit. But that’s the present conversation (whether circumcision does anything good, or more to the point, enough good that it’s worth doing “just in case.”)
No, I am merely pointing out why “evolution” isn’t a good argument.
Sickle cell anemia is a genetic condition that is thought to have evolved as a prophylactic to endemic malaria.
In short, it is an evolutionary adaptation that makes perfect sense. When conditions change (that is, when endemic malaria is no longer a factor), the adaptation ceases to make sense.
This is in answer to your argument that if evolution dunnit, it must be for the best. Not necessarily!
Don’t understand. My argument is in no way dependant on knowing what motivates parents. I would never assert that I know that.
Disagree. Not breastfeeding your child is alleged to have several physical effects on a child, not least of which is altering its immunity system.
I suspect that most people would consider their immune systems a more significant part of their body than a flap of skin on the end of their penis.
They are NOT the same for two reasons, having to do with the fact that the penis is an organ that develops into maturity:
(1) The operation is an exremely minor one on an infant, and a reasonably significant one on an adult; and
(2) The effect on nerve development, scarring, and sensitivity is allegedly different when the operation is performed on an infant, as opposed to an adult.
Hence, it isn’t really ‘the same’.
The point here is that, allegedly, bottle feeding isn’t equivalent alternative food. The distinction you are attempting to draw around “fundamental rights” makes no sense. A child that is starved of appropriate nutrition has its “rights” impacted far more than (say) one taken to the dentist to have its teeth cosmetically altered to look nicer. A parent that did the former, we would all agree, is a bad parent, worse than the one that did the latter, even though it is the latter who violated your “funamental right to have the child’s body left intact”.
Sure the origins of the proicedure are ancient, but it is quite absurd to argue that North American Christians adopted the procedure by simple cultural diffusion from Jews and Muslims! That isn’t what happened at all.
What happened is that, based on the medical science of the day, North American policy makers around the beginning of the 20th century came to believe that the procedure had all sorts of health benefits. Many of those benefits were situational (having to do with the standards of hygene at the time) and others were exaggerated or based on what is no discredited medical thinking (for example, Dr. Kellogg - of corn flakes fame - promoted the practice, in part, as a “cure” for mastrubation - as well as a host of other health benefits). It is this, and not aping Jews and Muslims, that explains NA adoption of the practice - parents were following the best medical advice of the day.
Hence, bu the 1960s, the medical literature reversed itself and came to claim that there were no health benefits to the practice, but by that time it was well established in the culture.
Then, in the 1990s, the medical literature reversed itself yet again, and came around to stating that, yes indeed, there were health benefits to the practice. Hence the official statement was modified to that posted upthread (and which is the most sensible position): that given the state of medical science, requiring everyone to do it is not recommended - but nether is preventing anyone from doing it. Rather, parents should be given an objective account of the benefits and drawbacks and allowed to make up their own minds.
Genital mutilation is genital mutilation whether it be a female or a male, whether it reduces sexual pleasure or increases it, it’s still genital mutilation. If FGM didn’t effect a the pleasure of a woman or enhanced it, would there still be outrage about it? If the answer is yes, why would this be different for a male?
The simple answer is that when you describe something as “mutilation” you are making an implicit value judgment as to its worth. No-one calls going to the dentist to get some purely cosmetic oral surgery done “oral mutilation”, right?
So before one can classify whether a procedure is, or is not, truly “mutilation” one should do a little cost/benefit analysis.
FGM has no positive health benefits for anyone, hence it is a lot more reasonable to label it as “mutilation”, and get outraged about it. It is all negatives.
Serious answer? Probably not. If the typical implementation of FGM were as routine, safe, low-trauma, and non-debilitating as male circumcision, it would probably not even register on the outrage-o-meter.
And I was merely retorting that ‘for cultural reasons’ wasn’t a good argument either. To be fair, I don’t think I went so far as to suggest that because of evolution that ‘it was for the best’, just that is isn’t specifically unnecessary and thus can not be considered of no worth - I would suggest that an infant’s foreskin can help protect the glans from infection (meatitis), amongst other things (such as self-lubricating during sex) and therefore does have specific evolutionary uses.
Although, I’m happy if can leave aside both of those (cultural or evolutionary advantage) and see where that leaves us – proving the procedure has real, tangible, positively proven medical benefits, as if not, I would be in favour that it not be done, cultural norm or not.
From here…
From here…
Bolding mine.
I just don’t see that the medical case is made for those in favour quite yet, if the risks of the procedure are currently to outweigh the benefits. And I read once - not sure how accurate a figure this is - that something like 18 out of every 100,000 kids die during the procedure - that has to be a HUGE consideration and factored into any possible risk:benefit analysis.
Incidently, I would suggest that, if we looked hard enough and had acccess to an unlimited research pot, we could find 50 things in the human body that we could remove or tweak that may reduce our exposure to certain disease or may increase our survival rates if removed early after birth, but none of them will ever make it to a discussion on a message board as they don’t have the cultural backing of this particular picadillo. 
This looks like a false equivalence to me – are you suggesting that babies that were not breastfed, but bottlefed only, were automatically ‘starved of appropriate nutrition’? I think that’s a harsh conclusion. Starving your child is obviously a huge neglect (can’t see anyone disagreeing there), but not providing breast milk is not at all the same as ‘nutritionally starving’ your child. Feeding a kid McDonald’s every day because you can’t be bothered to cook fresh food is going to have a far greater impact on their health. Neither scenario can really be compared to optional dentistry work, which, incidentally, if undertaken by a parent on behalf of a child for purely for aesthetic reasons, I would also be against.
As an aside, for my own curiosity - how popular ( or not ) is Brit Shalom? Thanks.
My argument never was that we should allow it for cultural reasons.
My argument is that we should not use the coerceive power of the state to make the decision on behalf of parents, no matter what their reasons.
The argument is that it does not rise to the level of concern that would require criminalization. That’s all.
You left out the mos significant part of the quote, for me, which is this:
Emphasis mine.
This is essentially what I have been arguing.
The NHS statement is, I believe, not the state of the art these days; the literature has moved on. My understanding is that recent discoveries have boosted the potential benefit side. I suspect that “most” would now say that the benefits outweigh risks, albeit both benefits and risks are small.
To reiterate, the issue isn’t whether the decision to circumcise or not is the “right” one (though it could be). It is, rather, what those who do administrative law term “the right to be wrong” - whether the choice ought to be left up to the individual parent/doctor combo, or strictly enforced by the state.
To my mind, this is clearly, based on the evidence, a decision which the state should not be sanctioning with criminal penalties. It is an injustice to treat a parent who, having made the decision (possibly after reading the medical literature) to circumcise because they thought it was in the child’s best interests, as functionally the same as aa abuser who assaulted his or her own child with a punch to the face.
So? Treat each case on its own merits.
I do too. I am not myself claiming that bottle-fed is abusive. I am merely stating that someone could, with plausibility equal (in fact, greater) to that of those arguing for criminalizing cirumcision, make that argument.
Hence, I think that those supporting the German Court are making a “harsh conclusion”. Harsher, in fact, that those “lactivists” who would be happy to prosecute bottle-feeders.
Really? Children have been removed from parental custody for allowing excessive obesity. Are you of the opinion that children should be removed from parental custody for having purely cosmetic orthodontia performed on their kids?
To my mind, feeding your kids McDonalds very single day is by far worse that some teeth-straighening, which I have trouble classifying as all that “bad” in any way (assuming the risks are slight).
To summarize: I dislike the current trend towards extremism in judging parental choices for their children, of which circumcision is merely an example. The default out to be not using the criminal law to decide such matters unless a good case can be made on objective evidence that a certain choice is truly harmful - not that a certain choice is “correct”.
The article claims some 40 rabbis in America will perform it. There are some 6 million or so Jews in America.
So I am going to guess “not very”. Though I must admit, I’ve never heard of it before. Nor have I ever heard of “humanistic Judaism”.
None of which is an surprise, Judaism is not centralized and there are hundreds of varieties of Jewish groups.
I too am a gay male, circ’d at birth and have plenty of experience with both varieties of cock also and my experience is nothing like yours.
Dunno how common it is, but my (wife’s) synagogue does it (though the rabbi in question doesn’t appear to be on the list).
My synagogue also has the chief of surgery from the local hospital as moyel, if you’re of a more traditional bent. One’s mileage may vary.
And if you did have trouble with being uncut, you could - as a consenting adult - decide to get cut.
MGM has no positive health benefits either.
Serious question - have you read the thread?
This is admittedly outside the subject of this thread, and if the moderator wants to kick my posting out or if Malthus and MyFatChequeBounced do not feel like answering I will not be offended. But I am in awe of how people like the above-named have apparently endless amounts of time to write reams and reams of replies to replies to replies to replies disecting every blessed point, “denying that you said what I meant you said that I meant to say that is not substantiated by what you claim I said.”
Are you guys unemployed, or retired, or what?
Also, do you not feel that once the broad positions on a subject have been stated and counter-stated, a discussion like this ends up being an analysis of minutiae that bores and confuses everyone else who can’t even remember what you said he said that you claimed that he meant to say?
Suppose it were done with pain killer in a sterile environment and only involved removing part of the labia and not the clitoris. You think it would be considered ethical, routine surgery in the U.S. like circumcision is?
I doubt it.
Circumcision is accepted only due to culture. We’re used to it. It’s not rational at all.
Some of it, but not all of it.
I imagine there was debate about this. Now you know which side I stand. I’ve done plenty of reading about it already.