You are arguing against a strawman of my position. I do not hold any of the positions you are claiming i do. Again, I am of the opinion that medically unnecessary circumcision (or the vast, vast majority of circumcisions performed in the U.S.) are not right and should end as a practice in my country. Traditions do not trump medical knowledge and necessity. I’m not “explaining away” anything, nor am I pretending that both are not uneccesary, barbaric practice (just one). “Barbaric” is subjective and i would use that term to describe FGM but I wouldn’t use it to describe MC. But again, there is no real objective truth as to what constitutes “barbaric”, so i would just not even use the word, simply to avoid any tangled messes of opinion.
I only and singularly take issue with the (false) equivalence between the two practices shown repeatedly throughout this thread (if not by you then many others) in the attempt to paint one practice with the tainted colors of the other practice. Circumcision is wrong and enough of a collective societal concern, it does not need to have the waters muddied by intertwining the issue with a larger, more wicked, insidious practice that is more of a global atrocity than a national one.
Well, if you read rat avatar’s linked article, you saw that among the Rendille people of Kenya the practice of fairly drastic FGC is completely typical (though it’s practiced on late adolescent/postadolescent young women getting married, not preadolescent girls) and a source of pride to its subjects, and that its incidence hasn’t decreased between 1996 and 2015, despite international health workers trying to discourage it.
FGC in Indonesia is performed on about half of female infants, AFAICT, and has had steady popular support (and increasing “medicalization” as a routine part of obstetric procedures) despite government efforts to ban it. But note that most forms of FGC practiced in Indonesia are much more minor/symbolic than, say, the clitoridectomy practices among the Rendille, generally involving temporary scraping or pricking that produces no permanent changes in the genitalia.
Here’s a WHO Bulletin on the prevalence of FGC in Egypt, though it has a lot of information about FGC in other African societies as well.
I think I kind of lean in this direction too, but I think there are anti-Muslim undertones to it as well. I can definitely see how someone can be against circumcision. It’s not necessary and arguably has a mild health risk. I just don’t get why someone would be rabidly and violently against it without there being something else going on. Whether it’s anti-Semitic, or anti-Muslim or just anti-religion in general I can’t say, but it’s a strange thing to get really upset about unless it’s a dog-whistle for something perhaps a bit more sinister.
As an analogy, I find it gauche to see babies with pierced ears. I don’t find it necessary to call their parents tools of Satan and advocate destroying their cultural beliefs. Latinas pierce their kids ears-I don’t care for it, but I can also leave well-enough alone. It’s their culture and the kids aren’t being abused in a meaningful sense, so at most I might verbally say, “You can probably wait.” Going to the polls to outlaw it or to heap vitriol on their heads strikes me as a grave overreaction bordering on injustice.
Back to circumcision, I can only speak as someone who was circumcised when I say I’m not living in a Hellscape of misery because of the decision. Honestly, I don’t even think about it. I think that’s a pretty typical outcome for people who were circumcised, so I’m not exactly sure why there’s a need to take to the barricades and begin spilling blood in the streets unless there’s a particular brand of blood that you want to be spilling that has little to do with the procedure and more to do with who is performing it.
A penis can be “disfigured” and still work “just fine”. In the case of your brother, his “mutilation” didnt deprive him of any body part, limb or bodily function (well, with the exception of being deprived of the ability to create smegma, but I digress) but it did disfigure his body in the sense that it arbitrarily and needlessly took parts of that body away that reduced it from its intended, original natural state, without the consent of the victim. Or at least that’s what i imagine would be said.
I think you need to define more specifically exactly what you mean by the “more wicked, insidious practice” that you refer to. Certainly, I personally would not consider the forms of, say, Type IV FGC that have no permanent effect on the genitalia to be more “wicked” or “insidious” than male circumcision. But I don’t know what percent of all FGC practices worldwide fall into the “no permanent physical harm” category.
Ya it is easy to not care about male circumcision if you aren’t one of the men where who happened to have the procedure go horribly wrong.
The point is it also wouldn’t have been a problem if it had never been done, but ask David Peter Reimer who was reassigned as a girl and raised female after a botched circumcision. Oh ya, you can’t ask him because he committed Suicide.
While circumcision resulting in penis amputation is rare it is a real risk for a procedure that is primarily preformed due to fashion or the fetishes of a bronze age god.
One has absoltely no medical benefits while the other does (however unjustifably small those benefits may be in re to the procedure itself). Also, when i said one was more “wicked and insidious”, I was speaking of the (I dont remember the proper term) more involved, full-scale FGM and not the more harmless types. I apologize for doing exactly what I’m railing against by using the tainted colors of one practice color those of related, but distinct practices.
Quit building the straw-man that there is an equivalence in the intensity of the effects then.
The social reasons and hypocrisy is similar and this is a thread about male circumcision. The followers of yahweh are by far the most common adherence to these practices for both genders outside of the US where it seems merely to be fashion based.
Note that the historical reasons of reducing a persons sexual pleasure may have been the historical reason for this and it DOES impact men.
Hand waving away the negative effects as being unimportant is used to justify this mutilation on both sides. The fact that female genitalia mutilation is more awful doesn’t mean that male genitalia mutilation is not also bad. The justifications used are very similar for both practices and in that way they are very much related.
Christians don’t circumcise religiously (except in Ethiopia-don’t ask me, I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of Ethiopian Christianity.) Historically, they have been opposed to it as a pagan practice. Americans have picked up on it, but it has nothing to do with religion. Officially nearly every single denomination is agnostic on the practice although in Southern Africa many still do consider it paganism and verboten.
Following up somewhat belatedly on this point: I’m not trying to claim that there’s more than a very small percentage of Jews today (about 2% at most, as previously noted) who actually abstain from infant male circumcision. But I’m not convinced that that means that the remaining 98% are necessarily “really, really attached to the practice” or that it “would likely be among the last of their traditions they’d give up” based on “several thousand years of history”.
For instance, take a closer look at the remark in the survey of Israeli parents that I quoted above:
That’s nearly a third of parents who don’t sound “really, really attached to the practice” of circumcision, given that they personally “would prefer to forgo it”. Not all of those parents surveyed were Jewish, but given that the survey site was an Israeli parenting portal, it’s reasonable to infer that a large majority of them were. So just because almost all Jewish parents of boys continue the practice of circumcision doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them are ideologically committed to it.
I’m also doubtful about claims that large supermajorities of Jewish communities throughout history have always supported circumcision. I have seen claims that, for instance, circumcision is practiced by only about 40% of the 20,000 or so Jews in Sweden (though I have no idea where that source got that figure). And certainly there was a significant decline in circumcision rates in ancient Hellenistic Judaism, as described in the Book of Jubilees (15:33-34).
So, while I wouldn’t describe Jewish support for circumcision as “a mile wide and an inch deep”, I think it would be fair to call it “nearly as wide as possible although perhaps narrowing slightly, and of varying depth depending on which Jewish community you’re talking about”.
Ok, for the most part, im not disagreeing with your position. But FGM is not the problem on a national scale that it is on an international scale. The inverse is true for male circumcision, its not the problem on the international scale to the same extent it is on the national scale. So it seems to me that coupling the two issues together making fighting either of the two that much more imprecise, unfocused and ultimately ineffective. Why do we have to talk about FGM when discussing the problem of pointless male circumcision in the U.S? How does it advance the anti-circumcision movement? I am willing to be persuaded but as of yet I’ve seen nothing offered that changes my thinking. For some reason, my mind is likening this to the whole debacle of the notion of “if you’re white, you’re racist” or redefining “racism” to mean “white privilege”. How does coupling the concept of white privilege (a valid concept) with being racist/racism (obviously a valid concept) help dismantle either problem in our society? It makes me question the motives of those using those tactics to further their causes.
That subject becomes complicated, even seen by some sects as being contrary to the Christian faith, with some groups who placed a bigger emphasis on yahweh being more likely to practice it. This is why I avoided iterating between Muslims, Jews and Christians.
As I said it was precise, as it is the Yahweh sections of the books that relate directly to this interest in foreskins.
Yahweh was the god who is deeply obsessed with foreskins, not El etc…
Start a thread about it then, vs trying to block discussion about it in a thread about FGM. You are doing the same thing that men’s rights advocates do, co-opting a discussion.
Male circumcision is 20% in the United Kingdom, to 45% in South Africa, to 80% in the United States, to over 90% in many Muslim-majority countries. I don’t know what you consider “world wide” but this issue does need to be addressed and it doesn’t need to be addressed at the expense of other concerns.
But it may be useful to address the roots of both in locations where both genders suffer childhood mutilation as the justifications tend to have similar roots and may benefit from common concerns like basic human rights.
It’s not that complicated. Christians who practice circumcison religiously are a ridiculously small minority almost completely living in north east Africa. Copts encourage it because they are surrounded by a Muslim majority although even they wouldn’t say it’s required and Ethiopians (and by extension Eritreans) do it. That’s it. We’re talking maybe 2% of global Christians. There are probably more atheists that circumcise for health reasons percentagewise than Christians that do it for religious reasons. We actually had a controversy about it in the first century and it was resolved pretty firmly on the side of ‘not necessary.’ The vast, vast majority of circumcised people are Muslims, by far. As a percentage of their population, it’s Muslims and Jews. Bringing Christianity into it is muddying waters to make it seem like the attack is less racist than it really is (and it should be noted that the very few Christians that religiously circumcise are also brown people, so that’s of note.)
Hey, we’re lucky that circumcision isnt a Christian tradition, given the chokehold the Roman Catholic Theology has over a huge segment of U.S. healthcare. If Catholics believed in circumcision, it would be mandated in 8 out of 10 hospitals in the country. We’d never get rid of it. Religion trumps medical science. Tis the American way.
Why do you accuse me of trying to block any sort of conversation? I’m simply responding to various posts and opinions in this thread that i dont see eye to eye with, with the hope to ultimately align those disparate viewpoints with my own. Im certainly not averse to being educated. I just want responses to my posts to actually be responding to what i post. And i thought this was a thread about circumcision? Not FGM?
ETA: and i never said MC wasnt an international issue. What i said was it wasnt an issue for the most part in other parts of the world as it is in the US. In those Muslim countries with 90% rates, does the practice receive any sort of similar social/human rights scrutiny as it does in America?
In Anglican countries it is often used as a class indicator which is also used as a socio-economic weapon or indicator.
While not as toxic as pure racial bigotry like the anti-Muslim camp that often hijacks these discussions I think it is a bit of a stretch to claim that the British Royal families preference for the practice is completely separated from the Anglican Church. That claimed royal divinity blocked a prohibition on religious grounds like some Christian sects.
The Xhosa and the British royals use it as a power differentiation, and just like race, which is a social construct not based on fact, the effects are very real.
This is part of the reason you won’t see the same ban in the UK as you do in say Germany. The complications greatly outweigh the small benefits on UTIs etc… and the similar social identities and pressures push it.
The American practice really probably is based in 20th century American Eugenics. epidemiologists were trying to explain why Jews lived longer than other groups of people picked up on the practice and being based on UK law and the royals acceptance of the practice as a class identifier probably happened.
I think long term cultural changes based on facts is what will change both practices over time as religious and cultural traditions tend to block movement based on human rights.
I do agree that it is often used as a topic for debasing groups that one does not belong to. But just look at this thread where rare, minimal advantages are used to ignore the very real impacts.
In the US the porn industry also helps perpetuate this myth but I have no idea on how to help there.
In general admitting that these are due to archaic social norms will help IMHO, as in general in all countries and for both genders the facts about the negative impacts are hidden by both pop culture and biased studies which seek to maintain the status quo.
I think you need to define more specifically exactly what you mean by the “more wicked, insidious practice” that you refer to. Certainly, I personally would not consider the forms of, say,