I'm a circumcised male, so can I be less inclined to care about male circumcision without being sexist?
Sure. Stop caring about female genital mutilations.
Yeah this sums things up nicely I believe. I mean, I am not sure whether I am going to circumcise my (future) son if I ever have one (I have a daughter) but I certainly am not going to chide my good Jewish friend who recently had a baby boy and had him circumcised. Even if I disagreed, for male circumcision, we are talking about a fairly personal and private family decision for most people.
Think about that last sentence, where you mention it as a "personal" decision.
A personal decision for who? The doctors? The parents? The extended family?
Circumcision on infants is NEVER a personal decision of the infant. It is always something forced upon them, and it is always painful and traumatic.
Given that infant circumcision deprives men of an essential sensory organ without consent of the infant, it is a human rights violation, pure and simple.
A measured discussion regarding medical benefits vs risks is different than a hyperbolic campaign comparing it to female genital mutilation, which is preposterous comparison.
Female and male genital mutilation are far more alike than they are different. This is the simple truth.
Comparison table
In SF a group recently tried to outlaw circumcision in City hospitals and the laws proponents went on a similar outrage binge; the measure was soundly defeated at the polls.
The measure didn't appear at the polls. It was taken off the ballot by a judge, and then Jerry Brown passed a measure that bans banning circumcision.
Democracy, for the loss!
In the worst cases, intercourse becomes extremely painful. So extremely painful versus not pleasurable... and hey, you've still got your prostate.
Sex is also very painful for many circumcised men as well, who have had too much skin removed, who experience the effects of keratinization, or who suffer from penile skin bridges/adhesions.
(I don't think it's really useful to compare them anyway.
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Comparing them is useful because it helps Americans to see how all genital cutting is a terrible, painful cultural anomaly with the same justifications and rationales.
It is a harmful procedure, it's just not one so bad that those who had it done to them try to perpetuate it, perhaps to self justify or perhaps because it's not the biggest deal in the world.
But remember, religious freedom ends at forcing itself on others. We wouldn't accept 7th century Islamic freedom to convert others through forcible invasion, would we? Nor should we let someone's religion allow them to impose their violence (and it is violence) on someone else.
So it's not like circumcision is the devil, it's just that we shouldn't do it to non consenters.
There's a whole lot of self-denial among circumcised men, just like with circumcised women.
No one in this country wants to admit that we've been committing a tragic human rights violation on generations of men, almost as a matter of afterthought.
And that is very sad.
I'd need to know just what circumcision means to Jews before I comment on religious freedom. If it's something like baptism where without it, you won't be considered pure in the eyes of god, then I'm kinda hesitant to ban it.
I think to a non-religious person, an ideal world would be one in which parents didn't pass on their religion to their kids from birth. Rather, the kids joined the religion as the grew. You know, choice v indoctrination. But let's be honest, that's not the world we live in and the idea seems like a pipe dream. So are we going to deny parents the right to raise their kids in their religion? Cause that's what denying circumcision would be tantamount to.
Then again, for Christians, it's just a cultural thing that's done to us because it was done to our dads and it was done to our dads by our grandfathers. 200 years ago, I don't think most of our ancestors did circumcision. I remember it being a 1800s thing, perhaps to dissuade masturbation?
Why do people keep bringing up religion? Religion should have no bearing on medicine or ethics, both of which circumcision goes against.
If we're going to allow people to cut their boys on the basis of religious rights, why are we disallowing people to cut their girls? That is favoring one religion over another, and has no place in a secular society such as ours.
And yes, Dr. Kellogg was the one who supported male circumcision on the basis of curing masturbation. He also advocated female genital mutilation for the same purpose, and female genital mutilation including clitoridectomy was widely practiced about 100 years ago in the United States. Female circumcision in the United States was actually insured by Blue Shield until 1977.
I don't actually care if Jews are allowed to cut their infant sons.
But you care a whole lot if Muslims and African tribal religions want to cut their infant daughters.
Why the sexism?
As I've said, I would support a ban on circumcising those that cannot consent. But an exception must be made for the Jews that are going to do it anyway so that it can be done as safely as possible.
As I've mentioned again and again, the AAP a few years ago briefly considered allowing FGM in this country for that same rationale: to do it as safely as possible.
We should not be accommodating human rights violations, even if they are in the name of a religion.
Simple yes, but entirely contrary to the OP.
Circumcision is a "a horribly abusive, damaging form of torture," and "one of the most horrifying things anyone could see."
Unless you're like me and willing to see the abolition of responding to evil with force, it seems that a far greater retaliation is necessary. Trials would need to be conducted, several thousands of them in the United States alone. If the United States is actually sanctioning the torture of the majority of it's male population, revolution seems the natural reaction, and justified, if revolution was ever justified anywhere. The rest of the world probably should place sanctions on the United States and other nations which continue the practice.
"Imagine that you are resting comfortably, perhaps with a dearly loved person you enjoy being physically close to, when a few strange people enter the room and proceed to pick you up to carry you away. You protest and struggle, but they are stronger than you are. They take you to another room where they remove your clothes and strap you down on your back on a table. You try to free yourself, but the only part of your body that you can move is your head. All this time they continue to disregard your protest. Then a man enters, and after seeing that you are securely restrained, he uses a clamp, knife, and other instruments to cut off a piece of highly sensitive, specialized tissue from your genitals. The procedure lasts for about fifteen minutes. Your screams are ignored. Notice how you feel.
This visualization is similar to what happens to a male infant when he is circumcised.
From the perspective of the infant, it is an act of violence. Circumcision causes extreme pain and trauma, behavioral and neurological changes, loss of an important body part, reduced sexual pleasure, potential psychological problems, risks of surgical complications, and unknown negative effects.
The foreskin would become in the adult about twelve square inches of highly erogenous and protective tissue that forms a movable sleeve to facilitate intercourse and enhance sexual pleasure.
There are no proven medical benefits, and no national medical organization in the world recommends circumcision."
-Ronald Goldman, Ph.D
Circumcision, even if not intended to be torturous and tramatic, is experienced that way by the baby.
Surely it's also a violation of freedom to deny parents the right to pass on their religion to their children, no? 'cause that's the alternative.
The real violation of freedom is violating the freedom of the baby to decide what he wants to do with his body.
Don't you think?
There's a lot that parents have the right to do that would be infringing on another's rights -- the child in this case. That's part of the idea of a parent. So for something that falls into an ambiguous grey zone for me, like circumcision, I'm inclined to keep the status quo.
There is no ambiguous gray zone. Circumcision is an injury to the penis by definition that reduces penile size and function.
There's also the fact that circumcision ALWAYS causes pain to the infant, even if anaesthesia is involved, because anaesthesia wears off too soon and the wound continues to fester in a diaper filled with feces and urine weeks afterward.
There is also considerable evidence that circumcision greatly disrupts the process of bonding between mother and infant son.
There is no "ambiguity". Circumcision is wrong.
