Bolding mine.
Please do not put words in my mouth. I claim no knowledge on this subject whatsoever (regarding males or females), and my questions are not a reflection of my doubts, concerns, skepticism, or personal position, they are merely intended to generate discussion. As some have claimed that most adult males think their circumcision is no big deal, I thought that a relevant aspect to discuss. I have no idea what the actual studies on this subject reveal. Bringing those studies to light is part of the purpose of this thread.
Honestly, that kind of seems self-evident to me, unless there is very compelling evidence that it provides significant benefit. But since so many people who are vehemently opposed to circumcision equate the practice with FGM, I posed the question this way.
There are plenty of questionable practices that people just do without thinking about them. To use one less extreme example, declawing cats is pretty common in the US. I’m aware it is illegal in other countries (also curious: is male circumcision outlawed in most Western countries? Or just less common?) I was probably in my mid-twenties before I ever saw anyone say anything about declawing cats being immoral or harmful to a cat. I had no knowledge about the physical factors involved, it was just what you did – spay/neuter, vaccinate, declaw. Once I became educated, I decided not to declaw my cats. This is why these sort of threads are useful – people can educate themselves and perhaps come to similar informed decisions.
This is an interesting argument, but I’m not sure I’m convinced, because I see these issues as culturally and socially very dramatically different, therefore any solutions would have to be different. To use my example from the Pit thread, it would be like trying to ameliorate the prevalence and impact of male sexual assault and female sexual assault ‘‘in one go’’ when they really have very different root causes, impacts, and outcomes. Or to draw another example, it would be like trying to ameliorate male rape in the US at the same time as ameliorating male rape in countries with governments that use rape as a form of social control.
However horrible male circumcision may be, its purpose is not to control male sexuality. Its purpose is not to deny men the ability to feel sexual pleasure. I’m not really sure I understand, at this point, that it has any purpose at all. But at any rate, the approach to educating others must be different. You’re already at a -1 when you come barrelling into a thread about women’s issues because it’s a favorite tactic of misogynists to divert attention to themselves whenever we talk about the systemic oppression of women. I don’t believe that was your motive, it’s just a really common theme here.
But right now, we are talking about a men’s issue. So let’s do that.
[QUOTE=Schoggi]
Why does it matter what women want?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, women’s pleasure has jack-all to do with whether we should cut an infant’s penis. Agreed on that.
x-ray vision thanks for the clarification.