Male Genital Mutliation bill in congress. Again.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:

And yes, I am against baptizing children for the exact same reason. I want the choice. With baptism it's not such a big deal, compared to circumcision, because they aren't cutting pieces of me off that I was born, but the idea still rankles.

At least you're consistent

Going to school or daycare do not involve removing pieces of thier flesh.

Circumcision does not involve any removal of flesh. It involves removal of skin. There's a big difference! Skinning your knee removes skin. Cutting off your knee removes flesh. Absolutely NO meat is taken off The Captain when you're circumcised - only skin!

Cutting off part/all of thier foreskin is a choice that will affect them for the rest of thier life that they had no say in.

So is about half a million other acts that parents inflict upon their children. But they do it anyway. Cause that's what parenting's about: setting up your child for the rest of his life.

You're making health based arguments on an initial discussion of religious overtones and meanings. I thought it was purly a religious reason for doing this. If it isn't, doctors has shown there is NO medical reason or justification for doing this to a child, so why still do it? Because you don't want to educate your kids on how to clean themselves? Because you want to make sure his g/f, wife, boyfriend, whatever has, in your opinion, and aestecthically pleasing penis to look at? Those reasons sound awfully selfish to me.

Stop skimming my posts. I never made any claim for physical health benefits. I only spoke about spiritual health. I also discussed my personal preferences when it came to something like, oh, say, smell... but I was not the one who connected that to mediciene or physical health (I think it was shihonage who connected the smell to bad hygenie). The most I said was that I thought circumcised guys tended to be cleaner down there. Certainly not a grand health-based claim - just my own personal observance. If the example I provided of a parent giving their child shots against their will confused you and somehow made you think I was arguing circumcision was neccessary to physical health, then please, feel free to disregard it.

I thought the Jews and Christians/Catholics used the same God. The only difference (that I know of) is one of the three doesn't think Jesus is f*cking metal. Or am I misinformed?

Duttybrew wrote:
Moreover, as long as your Mom's Jewish, you're born a Jew. The religion considers you Jewish. So, my son will be Jewish, regardless of whether I circumcise him or not. But because he is Jewish, he has duties to God to fulfill, and it is my responsibility to help him fulfill his mitzvoh when he cannot. Part of the deal of being a male Jew is getting your foreskin partially removed. Are you this adamant against baptism? If you are, then you are being consistent. If not, then I ask why not?

Ok, so what am I? My mom came from a christian family, but did the full conversion to Judaism for her first marriage. She got divorced and married my father, who is catholic. I was baptised catholic and circumsized (though I think it was done at the hospital). So, can I still kick it with God or what? And if so, which God?

You were baptised Catholic, so I think you'd technically be a Catholic. Although, because your mom is a Jew, you could also claim being a Jew, too. For instance, if your Mom was Jewish, but you were an atheist, then you are an atheist Jew (kind of strange, isn't it? That's the boat my mom's in.)

In any case, I think your bases are covered. Why, though, were you circumcized at the hospital if your parents later planned to baptise you Catholic? Do Catholics circumcize too, or was it because Dr. Spock told them to?

Jesus was definitely f*ckin' metal. Probably because he was circumsized

I think they did it just because that's just what is done in hospitals back in the day. Kind of a odd question to my parents.

KaterinLHC wrote:

Jesus was definitely f*ckin' metal. Probably because he was circumsized ;)

That made me smile and chuckle.

Circumcision does not involve any removal of flesh. It involves removal of skin.

Technically skin IS flesh

And then there's that whole 'Jews for Jesus' group. Those guys are a cult.

A rabbi explained the 'why the penis?' thing to me by saying that the penis is something that a guy thinks about every day. Just like eating kosher, it's a constant reminder of your devotion to god. Guys, how much of your day do you spend not thinking about food or sex? Like an hour total? Maybe? If you just splashed water on the kid's head he'd forget about it the next day and never think of it again. Jews are all about constant reminders of their faith and rules and such.

When my son was born, I wouldn't let him out of my sight until we left the hospital, because I didn't trust those bastards not to snip him, despite the fact that I universally rejected it.

I'm not Jewish, I'm not Islamic, and there is no reason for anyone to operate on my child without a medical reason.

circumcision became common in America because people though it would stop little boys from masturbating, and it was forced on black men to lower their sex drive and stop them from "raping the white women". Here's some history and here's the google swarm.

If you ever seen how they do a circumcision, (a real one, not a bris) and you're still all gung ho for it...man, I don't know what to say. How anyone could think strapping their kid down and doing that to them without painkillers is a good thing is beyond me. It's horrifying to see one done, it's heartbreaking, and I saw many many woman and men back away from the procedure when they saw how barbaric it really is.

In my mommy-me group discussions, there are 5 out of 20 boys who had botched circumcisions. Apparently, that failure rate is common. The person who claims "I"ll slice my kid and anyone who doesn't is a bad parent" rant is willing to accept a 1 in 5 chance that her child will never have a "normal" penis.

Me, I figure if Nature gave men a foreskin...there's probably a reason. If it becomes problematic, just like an appendix, it can be removed later...but preemptively cutting off a part of someone's body surely seems beyond my rights as a parent.

If your covenant with god demands that you sacrifice a part of your child, well...far be it from me to get in the way. But I don't have the same covenant, and I wouldn't worship a god who demanded it...so demanding that everyone else follow the modes of a desert god for no apparently good medical reason seems a bit presumptuous.

Also, I spent my formative sexual years in Europe...so uncut men seem pretty normal to me.

Duckideva's post makes me want to clarify some things. Not that it was directed at me, specifically, but it made me aware of some assumptions I might be making about what I was saying.

duckideva wrote:

If your covenant with god demands that you sacrifice a part of your child, well...far be it from me to get in the way. But I don't have the same covenant, and I wouldn't worship a god who demanded it...so demanding that everyone else follow the modes of a desert god for no apparently good medical reason seems a bit presumptuous.

Agreed. Before this thread, I had no idea it was so popular and common for non-Jews/Muslim/Orthodox boys to get circumcised. As much as I prefer circumcised penises, I don't see the point of a non-Jew/Muslim/Orthodox getting one, either. To me, the only reason to do it is because your religion requires you do. Why follow the dictates of my religion when you've got your own perfectly working one? I just want to make clear that in this thread, I haven't been trying to convince anyone to go out and circumcise their boys; I've been trying to explain and defend my religion's practices against claims, for instance, that we engage in "ritualistic cult surgery".

duckideva wrote:

If you ever seen how they do a circumcision, (a real one, not a bris) and you're still all gung ho for it...man, I don't know what to say.

Just to be clear, I've been talking about the Jewish variety of circumcision. That's all I can really speak for, since its really the only one my family and I have any experience with. I have no leg to stand on when it comes to the secular variety.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:
Circumcision does not involve any removal of flesh. It involves removal of skin.

Technically skin IS flesh :)

Okay, fine, Mr. Technical-Helmet. Skin's flesh. But skin != meat. There's no hunkin', meaty chunk being taken out of the penis. Just some extra skin. At least in the Jewish variety.

Mix, I like your rabbi's explanation. It's an interesting take on the subject, and certainly a relevant one.

*edit: Damn, I like arguing the finer points of religion. This has been much more fun than arguing about, say, Iraq.

so demanding that everyone else follow the modes of a desert god for no apparently good medical reason seems a bit presumptuous.

Eh? Who demanded that?

While you're free to circumcise your kids or not, there should be no law passed to prevent it. There are hundreds of similar rituals involving some sort of physical symbol in religions all over the world.

There really isn't too much secular reason for circumcision, I've heard it said it promotes health, but never looked at any numbers.

thing to me by saying that the penis is something that a guy thinks about every day. Just like eating kosher, it's a constant reminder of your devotion to god. Guys, how much of your day do you spend not thinking about food or sex? Like an hour total? Maybe?

A whole hour? Yeah right

duckideva wrote:

circumcision became common in America because people though it would stop little boys from masturbating

Boy, does that ever not work.

If you ever seen how they do a circumcision, (a real one, not a bris) and you're still all gung ho for it...man, I don't know what to say. How anyone could think strapping their kid down and doing that to them without painkillers is a good thing is beyond me. It's horrifying to see one done, it's heartbreaking, and I saw many many woman and men back away from the procedure when they saw how barbaric it really is.

Bingo. We were shown the "steps" of the procedure in my Human Sexuality class, and I was suddenly very glad that my parents had decided against that one. That just looks scary. The only thing worse that I've seen is a subcision, now THOSE should be illegal. One of my anthropology professors demonstrated one during a class on sex using a banana, every guy there let out a collective "ahhhhhhhh!" or "owwwwwww!" and even the girls were just shocked and freaking out. Of course, that was the same professor who told us he slept naked and had a thing for grooming his wife.

circumcision became common in America because people though it would stop little boys from masturbating

Well, that didn't work....

EDIT: Hi, I'm Buzzvang, and I'm a filthy skimmer.

(damn Podunk beat me to it)

KaterinLHC wrote:

I've been trying to explain and defend my religion's practices against claims, for instance, that we engage in "ritualistic cult surgery"

(*grin* Yay! An indirect quote! )... And you have been doing an admirable job! The only problem is that as long as you argue the benefits of the circumcision as 'spiritual' then you will never escape the ritualistic cult surgery label in my opinion(!). I cannot for a moment believe that the childs spirit is closer to god for having an incision made in the skin of their penis. Not even for that brief moment of piercing pain when blade first severs the tender nerves. God may hear the cries of the infant as it's voice shrieks out in pain, but I doubt that he will look upon the scene with the eyes of a proud parent.

Also, many hospitals in the United States performed circumcisions on newborn men by default. Sometimes even after being expressely forbidden. My mother went into the hospital armed with the information her friends and private doctor had given her about hospital proceedures and refused to let me out of her sight the entire time I was there. My dad was with me whenever she couldn't be. She recalls two instances where the nurses tried to whisk me out of the room to perform the procedure and acted surprised and shocked that my mother didn't want me 'corrected.'

All her other children were born in Germany.

Rezzy wrote:

(*grin* Yay! An indirect quote! )

An indirect quote? I was under the impression that I was quoting you directly.

Rezzy from Page 1 wrote:

But simply stating that if I had been the victim of ritualistic cult surgery, placing ridged scars on my thighs spelling out "Property of GAWD."

Anyway, I'll respond in more detail tommorow - for tonight, I have Lunatic Pandoras to conquer.

Rezzy wrote:

Also, many hospitals in the United States performed circumcisions on newborn men by default. Sometimes even after being expressely forbidden. My mother went into the hospital armed with the information her friends and private doctor had given her about hospital proceedures and refused to let me out of her sight the entire time I was there. My dad was with me whenever she couldn't be. She recalls two instances where the nurses tried to whisk me out of the room to perform the procedure and acted surprised and shocked that my mother didn't want me 'corrected.' All her other children were born in Germany.

I'm serious when I say that I didn't let him out of my sight...when they took him for weighing and whatnot, I made the Duck go with. I really didn't trust them to not snip him.

I think this is officially the longest post on GWJ about penises...

I like Shihonage's take on the matter: let the kids decide for themselves during adolescence. Circumcision is a common male coming-of-age ritual in cultures the world over. It's sort of like how defying curfew or slashing tires function in a modernized society... but different, because you're defying your penis, and slashing your penis. Being sympathetic toward the view that a person's praiseworthiness is -- or at least, ought to be -- dependent upon their own voluntary choices, I would be impressed by any who chose to undergo the procedure later in life as a symbol of their transition into adulthood; for although they may lack a prepuce, they've got balls enough to compensate. And balls count for a lot, let me tell you!

For similar reasons, I'm unconvinced by the argument from religious tradition that the procedure should be performed upon infants. Children do not get to choose their religion (or anything else, for that matter) in any meaningful way until such time as their capacity to rationally evaluate their various and relevant options arrives. For a man to claim that a circumcision he received as an infant has its origin in and is justified by his religious beliefs strikes me as dubious, since the operation transpired at a time when he had no religious beliefs at all. If religious devotion is a matter of one's own capacity for rational decision-making (and I fail to see how it, or any other mental conviction worthy of praise or blame, can consist of anything else), then circumcision can only ever be meaningless to the child, excepting insofar as it may serve to confirm for him the devoutness of his own parents.

However, although I remain unconvinced by this (and indeed, any) argument from religious tradition, I also don't think it's that big a deal. I was circumcised as a baby, and I turned out okay. Right guys? Guys?

Lobo wrote:

However, although I remain unconvinced by this (and indeed, any) argument from religious tradition, I also don't think it's that big a deal. I was circumcised as a baby, and I turned out okay. Right guys? Guys?

You're not strange it is everyone else that is weird.

That's why I tell my self.

KaterinLHC wrote:

An indirect quote? I was under the impression that I was quoting you directly.

I guess... Unattributed! How about that? An unattributed quote! 'course, your follow-up blew that distinction out of the water. *sigh* Time to revise my resume(with a squiggly) again.

KatherinLHC wrote:

Anyway, I'll respond in more detail tommorow - for tonight, I have Lunatic Pandoras to conquer. :)

I look forward to your response, but must warn you about a couple of things. First: My work language filter has refused me access to the site while at my job. So, take your time! And Second: I am a godless heathen. The rituals and beliefs of those 'with faith' seem strange to me. Unless we can come up with a rational justification for pre-cognitive circumcision on individuals which doesn't involve a leap of faith (;)) we just will not be able to come to terms on this issue.

With that said I DO believe in freedom in expressions of faith. While the child of a devout couple could be argued as both an innocent and a participant in the ritual/ceremony of circumcision, your stance would be influenced by the layout of your faith. MY mind requires me to draw the line at "Willing Participant" for any religious ceremony. Without that important piece any religious significance is lost to the 'victim/participant.' Seen as a participant the ceremony is one of spiritual importance, defining a close relationship to God and his commands. Seen as a victim the ritual forces a grown man to take a knife to an infant while the parents look on.

I hope this is making sense. This is being written while in the throes of Insomnia and I really should make a pot of coffee because I'm going to have to be at work in 2 hours.

In summation: You are free to choose. God Bless America. (BTW the bill will never pass. Going uncut is just too.... European!)

EDIT (That european comment seems out of place. Let me try this: Many politicians are parents. Parents whose sons have been circumcised, either by choice or because of lack of knowledge about the alternatives. To pass this bill into law would be to aknowledge that they may have allowed their own children to be mutilated. An admission of guilt.

This will never happen.)

duckideva wrote:

In my mommy-me group discussions, there are 5 out of 20 boys who had botched circumcisions. Apparently, that failure rate is common. The person who claims "I"ll slice my kid and anyone who doesn't is a bad parent" rant is willing to accept a 1 in 5 chance that her child will never have a "normal" penis.

You must come from a group of very unlucky parents. The numbers our pediatrician expressed to us were basically statistically impossible to have a screw-up (in terms of long-term problems) with the procedure.

Our son came back from the procedure asleep, and hasn't shown a single adverse sign. Seeing how I come from a VERY large family, and every boy that I know is circumsized, I can't think of a single screw up (and that would be the kind of news that gets around).

Lobo wrote:

Children do not get to choose their religion (or anything else, for that matter) in any meaningful way until such time as their capacity to rationally evaluate their various and relevant options arrives.

The only argument I have is the one I presented before: children do not get to choose a lot of things about their lives - their parents choose for them until they are capable of choosing for themselves. A baby does not have choice in what religion he's born into, yes, but he does not have any choice over when he gets to eat, where he gets to sleep, where he's taken, who he's pawned off on when the parents need a night to themselves, either. Really, the only thing a baby has control over is his pooping habits. A parent makes all other decisions for him.

The life of a child is one of decisions being made without personal control - and I don't see this as a bad thing. You make good choices for your child in the hopes that your child will learn what good choices are, and make them accordingly when he or she is able. Circumcision is just another one of those choices. If a mother pierces her babies ears (which is done often), is she also committing a moral outrage?

Anyway, I think the reason my explanation here isn't doing it for most of you (especially Rezzy :)) is because many of you are, at best, agnostic - some, atheist. Just as I can't understand how anyone could ever come to the conclusion that there isn't a God (and believe me, I've tried - I almost minored in philosophy!), I have trouble convincing you all that there is a God. Both beliefs, by the way, require massive leaps of faith, since if there is a God or there isn't - we can't ever know for sure. But, the belief that there is a God, that God and God's people chose each other - that's what I see as the cornerstone of all Judaism. We build so many rituals around remembering the Covenant because it was the most important moment in our collective history.

Whether you buy into the literal truth of the Bible, or you believe (like I do) that its mostly metaphorical - the myth of Abraham making the pact with the one God is the one of the foundations of our faith. You can believe that there really was a guy who almost sacrificed his kid and then God came down, white robes and all, and said "Dude, what're you doing? I was totally joking. Let's stop this nonsense once and for all". Or you can believe that the myth is an allegory for the choice Jews made to abandon the rites of the past and worship only one God... Either way, its one REALLY important moment in Jewish history, and we like to commemorate it. Alot. One of those ways we commemorate it is by circumcision (I posted farther up the thread religious commentary as to why circumcision, specifically). But to say that we can't or shouldn't circumcise is to say we can't or shouldn't memorialize this most crucial moment in our past - it's effectively dictating how we can, and cannot worship. And that's against Amendment the First.

We cannot know, of course, whether our children are going to decide to continue our faith. But we choose to assume that they will; after all, slicing a little bit of foreskin off has never prevented or even hindered anyone from leaving Judaism, of course. Parents assume things about their children all the time: that they're going to like dinosaurs, that they're going to be scientifically minded, that they're going to take care of themselves, or even that they're going to be heterosexual, etc., etc. You work with these assumptions until the child can either a) prove otherwise or b) choose for themselves.

Anyway, I think at this point, I'm going to shut up with the long explanations. I feel like I've said all that I know on this subject and have done the best I can to defend what I consider a holy rite. I'd be happy to discuss it further in PMs with anyone, but I don't want to repeat myself on the board when there are plenty of other people with opinions out there(and perhaps someone who can explain circumcision better than I). I think there's just a fundamental difference in personal philosophy here.

But before I go silent - one last thought: if circumcision was really all that bad, do you really think a male-dominated religion would have kept it as a rule for thousands of years?

duckideva wrote:

I'm serious when I say that I didn't let him out of my sight...when they took him for weighing and whatnot, I made the Duck go with. I really didn't trust them to not snip him.

They mostly don't do it at the hospital nowadays, at least based on what I've been told by OBs, pediatricians and the like.

sheared wrote:
duckideva wrote:

In my mommy-me group discussions, there are 5 out of 20 boys who had botched circumcisions. Apparently, that failure rate is common. The person who claims "I"ll slice my kid and anyone who doesn't is a bad parent" rant is willing to accept a 1 in 5 chance that her child will never have a "normal" penis.

You must come from a group of very unlucky parents. The numbers our pediatrician expressed to us were basically statistically impossible to have a screw-up (in terms of long-term problems) with the procedure.

It could just be that medical care in Texas is statistically much sh*ttier than the national average.

I figure if Nature gave men a foreskin...there's probably a reason.

That pretty sums up my stance on the subject.

KaterinLHC wrote:

The only argument I have is the one I presented before: children do not get to choose a lot of things about their lives - their parents choose for them until they are capable of choosing for themselves. A baby does not have choice in what religion he's born into, yes, but he does not have any choice over when he gets to eat, where he gets to sleep, where he's taken, who he's pawned off on when the parents need a night to themselves, either. Really, the only thing a baby has control over is his pooping habits. A parent makes all other decisions for him.

I think you're quite right about this, but the point of my objection was not to say that circumcision is bad because it's an imposition on the child; rather, it was specifically to say that infant circumcision can only be religiously meaningless for the child, and is therefore unjustifiable on religious grounds.

KaterinLHC wrote:

Both beliefs, by the way, require massive leaps of faith, since if there is a God or there isn't - we can't ever know for sure.

I must object to this deployment of the word "faith." Faith is a nonrational belief in a proposition P in spite of evidence in favor of not-P, or that P and not-P share an equal probability. The theist has faith because she believes that God exists, in spite of the absence of evidence. The atheist, on the other hand, disbelieves in God in the same way that she might disbelieve in Bigfoot or the Tooth Fairy -- that is, owing to a lack of evidence in support of the proposition. (And let us not forget that extraordinary claims do require commensurate evidence.)

The only alternative to the above distinction is to suppose that every belief that we cannot verify with 100% certainty must also fall under the category of faith. This would in fact imply that everything we believe constitutes an act of faith. To conflate "faith" with "belief" in this way would rob the terms of any meaning that they might otherwise have held. Even most theists would object to this practice on the grounds that it denegrates their faith, since faith is generally reckoned by theists and atheists alike to be a very special mode of thought completely unlike belief in the greenness of grass or the functionality of doorknobs.

More at the Skeptic's Dictionary and Wikipedia.

Am I the only person amused by someone logged in as 'sheared' talking about his circumcision? Twisted.

Mixolyde wrote:

Am I the only person amused by someone logged in as 'sheared' talking about his circumcision? Twisted.

I was wondering the same thing!

Lobo wrote:

I must object to this deployment of the word "faith." Faith is a nonrational belief in a proposition P in spite of evidence in favor of not-P, or that P and not-P share an equal probability.

I'm not back - not really... I just wanted to clarify I wasn't using the word 'faith' by itself. I was using the idiom "leap of faith", defined by www.dictionary.com as:

leap of faith:

The act or an instance of believing or trusting in something intangible or incapable of being proved.

In which case, it is a perfectly valid turn of speech in my paragraph. Degenerating an idiom into its separate constituent words generally leads to unintended consequences when it comes to meaning, generating confusion for which I apologize creating. Nobody's doing any jumping when they take a leap of faith, nor are they faith-ing about in the true dictionary or textbook meaning.

By the way, I think I am going to 'deploy' words more often. Onomonopeia, deploy!

You will forgive me then, I hope, for presuming that your use of the word faith in a paragraph explicitly concerned with matters of religion, and in a sentence concerned only with the foundations of theism versus those of atheism (and not with the nonexistence of solid foundations of all human knowledge) was meant to refer to something other than an epistemological quandary.

In which case, I should still find reason to quibble with any claim you may or may not have made ( ) that theism and atheism both suffer from equivalently "massive" epistemological difficulties. For even the most hardened epistemological skeptic yields to the appearances of the world as she perceives it; and she does not suppose that there are any necessarily and ultimately hidden unobservables at work in the universe. If skepticism is the only conclusively justifiable epistemological position, then wouldn't it follow that the closer one's position adheres to skepticism, the more justifiable that position must be -- and therefore, the lesser the leap of faith required? The alternative seems to be to suppose that all errors are equally flagrant, simply by virtue of their being errors; and that theism and atheism are in some way equally at fault, in spite of the fact that the difference between the natures of their faults in relation to the fixed point of skepticism is apparent.