Circumcision

[jedusor]

I can't believe this is even debatable. I can't believe that in a society we consider civilized, I have to actually present a structured argument against cutting off pieces of babies when they're born.

Comments

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

There are religious and cultural practices I am willing to refrain from expressing an opinion about no matter how much I object, because they're not my religion/culture and they don't affect me personally, and I'm trying to be less judgmental of others in general.

Deliberate wounding of children is not one of those practices.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I...really find myself unable to really deal with this, because the way you're wording it comes across as very, very hostile and skirting over the complexity.

If you're being by-the-book technical, I can't argue that circumcision is a wound. But at the same time, it isn't. The practice originated as a permanent, effective way for a minority group to distinguish themselves from the world around them, and doing so is still important to us. It's one of the oldest traditions in my culture, and the way you're describing it sounds, very much, like an attack on something held very close and valued.

It gets into the issues of a group setting itself apart, and continuing to do so. And there's no way you can say that doing so isn't important anymore - we're still the target of hatred and violence and ignorance. We hold onto our traditions and rituals because that's what we had, and what we still use to keep ourselves intact as a people.

If I want to be by-the-book technical too, it's not when they're born, it's eight days later, and it's sacred enough that if that day falls on the Sabbath, that's when you do it. The ceremony and ritual around it is the mark of when that child enters the rest of the Jewish people. It's part of what makes that child a Jew.

Argue all you want against secular circumcision, and best of luck to you with that, but the amount of trouble you're going to get arguing against religion probably won't be worth it.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying any of that is untrue. I'm saying that nothing, regardless of context, excuses genital mutilation. I don't expect to change anyone's mind; I just find it incredibly depressing that it's even an issue of contention.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I saw someone compare circumcision to female genital mutilation as the difference between piercing the ear, and piercing the eyeball. That's quite a bit closer to how I'm approaching it.

The only way I can conceive of circumcision being referred to as genital mutilation is, again, going to a by-the-book definition. Which, in the context I'm using to approach the idea, doesn't apply. You can't say things like that and expect people to not be wildly offended. To say that nothing excuses it is for me to hear that your worldview is the only possible one in which you think people can engage.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I don't expect people not to be offended. I know perfectly well that there are people who are offended by the opinion that babies should not have body parts cut off. That's what I'm saying is a sad thing.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you for your pity.

[gerald_duck]

It's right to be very, very hostile to circumcision; it's wrong in every respect at every level.

The foreskin is a useful part of the body (it protects the glans from overstimulation and desensitisation that damage sexual function). Removing it is harmful; people who advocate circumcision for secular reasons such as hygiene are mistaken.

It's an unnecessary and painful medical procedure. Like all medical procedures, it carries risk — especially when it's often carried out by clerics who have little medical training.

It's performed on babies that are unable to give informed consent.

You speak of a "permanent, effective way for a minority group to distinguish themselves"; it is evil and wrong of you to want any such thing, to seek to permanently mark a child in such a way: what if they choose a different faith once they're old enough to make such decisions for themselves? Why should they forever bear the mark of yours? What gives you the right to do that to a child?

What if a family wanted to get an inverted pentagram tattooed on their newborn baby's buttocks? Are you OK with that?

Hold on to traditions and rituals that impose no long-term harm on the unconsenting, by all means, but don't mutilate babies who have no choice in the matter.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

inverted pentagram tattooed on their newborn baby's buttocks
Because if a barber cuts off your hair, the next thing you know, he'll be chopping off your limbs!

In no particular order:

1. The mohel trains to do the specific procedure. To say they have little medical training is in all probability technically true, but that's like saying you need a degree in engineering to change a bicycle tire. It's something they know how to do.

2. So what if my theoretical son wanted to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ or Buddha? Would he really be that mad at me for taking off his foreskin? If he's motivated enough to convert out of the faith he was brought up in to follow another, he'd be able to understand the reasoning behind the circumcision - because he'd be able to understand the importance of ritual and practice in his life.

3. Thank you, ever so much, for resorting to such base language like "evil and wrong," which effectively allows me to see you're not at all desiring to talk to me as a person, and lets me dismiss you.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Because if a barber cuts off your hair, the next thing you know, he'll be chopping off your limbs!

That's a ridiculous analogy. Circumcision and tattooing are both much more invasive than a haircut and less invasive than limb amputation, and furthermore, if either of them is more invasive than the other, it's circumcision. So I ask again, would you be okay with families getting their infants tattooed with religious symbols at birth?

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

Quick response to 2) - er, he might become an agnostic or an atheist, too. Alternatively, maybe, while understanding commitment to ritual and tradition, he (or we) will feel that there are rituals that violate rather more important principles.

There are support groups for people who are angry and deeply upset about having been circumcised.

[gerald_duck]

Hair grows back; foreskins don't. You're proposing a permanent mutilation of an infant in the name of a transitory faith.

Also, it doesn't hurt when you cut someone's hair, nor risk infecting them. If a semi-trained practitioner cuts hair the worst that happens is the victim looks stupid for a few months.

Yes, the mohel is probably fairly well trained — in the USA at least. Though it's interesting to note the somewhat hyperbolic reaction when Sweden made this mandatory. Also, it's a procedure that carries risk. Although that risk is very low, if it were happening to me I know I'd rather it took place in a hospital with an intensive care unit at the ready.

If your theoretical son had been circumcised and converted to Christianity or Buddhism he'd be right to enormously resent your having impose the symbology of your faith on him forever. I know several people who feel tainted by having been baptised in their youth, and that doesn't even leave a permanent outward sign. If you really think an adult Christian would be happy to bear the outward sign of another faith, why are you so hung up on circumcision anyway? Why not just give your son a rosary? After all, he understands the importance of ritual and practice in his life, right?

The problem with symbols is that they're symbols of something. If you, as an adult, impose a symbol on an infant for life, by the time they've grown up there's a pretty good chance it's a symbol of something unrepresentative, maybe even objectionable.

Your point 3 is utterly nonsensical. Suppose, for example, that you had proposed murdering idolaters; I hope you at least agree that that is evil and wrong. Suppose I said so. That would not be base language on my part; it would not mean I was "not at all desiring to talk to [you] as a person"; it would give you no right to dismiss my views out of hand.

What you are proposing is evil and wrong. I chose my words carefully. Yes, indelible and painful rituals for marking the children of the tribe did have a place three or four thousand years ago, but so did enslaving the infidels; the World has moved on. Now, the social contract is that you respect people who don't want to follow your faith, and those of other faiths respect yours. Respecting your faith is emphatically not the same thing as allowing you to do whatever you like in its name.

PS

[gerald_duck]

It is also entirely possible the hypothetical child would remain a Jew but still be unhappy about having been circumcised as an infant. Either because they value having an entire penis over the more fundamentalist precepts of their faith, or because they agree that it was wrong for it to have been imposed on them when they were too young to know what was happening, let alone express an opinion about it.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

But at the same time, it isn't.

I'm afraid you are wrong. It is a deliberate amputation of a richly enervated portion of the body without knowledge or consent, often done with no anesthesia, and with healing made difficult and more painful with the repeated application of waste material, sometimes resulting in infection, further amputation and sometimes even death. There's no way you're going to be able to say that this is not a wound. Defend it as your "intact" tradition, but be honest enough to embrace what you are defending: an irreversible, intentional, non-consensual wound that causes a significant amount of pain and ultimately decreases sexual pleasure.

Slavery, stoning of women, and tearing out beating hearts were all somebody's traditions. Just because something is traditional doesn't mean we cannot apply compassion, intelligence, free will, and reason to the situation to find acceptable alternatives.

There is no arguing against religion, because an argument involves logic and balance, while membership in a religion requires blind faith and submission. If a religion wants to survive in a changing environment, it changes itself (hence, enlightened Jews who do more symbolic rituals instead of amputation).

In this day and age, it is indeed a barbaric practice. I'm not arguing. I'm just calling it like I see it.

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

...dude. If people died from the ritual, we wouldn't still be doing it. If it was as harmful as you make it seem, we'd have stopped doing it a long time ago.

Of course it's irreversible! That's part of the point! Are you even considering where the tradition came from? Or why? Because it sounds to me like you're not, which doesn't earn you any points in my book.

Slavery, stoning of women, and tearing out beating hearts
Again with the jumping to bizarre conclusions to make your point. How is human sacrifice at all analogous to what we're talking about? Is the taking of a human life equal to a small piece of skin? If so, why?

Amputation is, frankly, not the best word you could use in your argument. It refers to medical procedure, not religious ritual.

So Jews that don't follow every single rule set down are more enlightened. By that logic, since I sometimes wear polyester and touch rabbits, I'm more enlightened than those Jews which do not. Right. The Jews and Christians and Catholics and Muslims and Amish who wrestle with their beliefs and ideologies all their lives aren't enlightened. The debates about the nature of God that my religious authority figures go through to try to figure out what and why they believe in mean nothing.

Thank you for effectively reducing what is one of the most important facets of my life - my family's culture and history - to a "barbaric practice." If this is how you raised your children, no wonder they can't accept anyone having any faith.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

Gotcha - I'm surprised that you'd use the "slavery, stoning of women and tearing out beating hearts" argument, and hannah's right to call you out for it. Do you really think those are comparable?

Not sure if hannah actually knows you - but I do, and I know you raised great kids (at least the one I know) and are a great mom and while I don't necessarily agree with all your choices I certainly respect you as someone making them. That said, I think this part of your argument and Julia's is pretty disingenuous.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

I was using hyperbole to make my point. Granted, those aren't applied during childhood (except slavery). Perhaps footbinding, neck rings, and lip plates are better examples? But those are done in the name of beauty, not religious faith, so then again, maybe not.

I don't think stoning and circumcision are directly comparable, no. For that matter, I don't consider female and male circumcision comparable, either. But I do think they are all at different points on the same scale: violence enacted upon a person in the name of faith, with no escape for the victim.

I realize that my ideal of each person having as much autonomy over their own body as possible, even at an early age, is at odds with the mainstream. But you're right, I shouldn't have escalated the violation imagery to that level right off the bat... it was unnecessary and I apologize.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

It's one thing to carry faith. It's quite another to force it upon someone else without their consent.

So you say some Jews already pick and choose among the religious rules, and don't seem to find a problem with it. If some older rules are considered useless in today's world, why can't another one fall by the wayside without the collapse of the entire belief system? You can't have it both ways... demanding adherence to some rules and claiming irrelevance of others.

If the way I raised my children lowers the tolerance of violence in the world, then I happen to believe I've done my job well.

Incidentally, I'm not attacking you personally. I'm engaging in a debate with you. Can you understand that there's a difference?

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

If people died from the ritual, we wouldn't still be doing it. If it was as harmful as you make it seem, we'd have stopped doing it a long time ago.

But they do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#Complications_from_circumcision) (final paragraph, NSFW images). Admittedly not many, but the list of other complications is, well, I wouldn't want to put somebody at risk of that lot without strong medical evidence that it would somehow make them better.

[canadianpuzzler.livejournal.com]

Complications are possible with any surgery, and the more involved the surgery (and the more vital the organs on which the surgery is performed are), the likelier and more dangerous they are.

I would not be entirely surprised to discover that the mortality rate from teen and adult non-therapeutic plastic surgery is at a level comparable to circumcision. (I don't know how to go about finding the statistics, however.) And while there is informed consent to the surgery from the patient, consent is often provided under significant psychological pressure from family members, friends, or society at large.

At least with circumcision, there is no long-term psychological pain involved. So which is more barbaric?

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

At least with circumcision, there is no long-term psychological pain involved.

That's not true.

A few quotes:

"The forcible amputation of a
part of an unconsenting child's healthy and functional genitalia,
regardless of gender, clearly has consequences on healthy sexual
and emotional functioning later in life. Many men are living with
these consequences and may not connect these problems to their
circumcision or are too embarrassed to talk about such issues."

"He added that masculine self-image, as well as
shame, denial, repression, and fear of ridicule are factors that
inhibit men from acknowledging their circumcision harm to themselves
and discussing it with other men."

"Dr. Odent also cited
infant circumcision trauma as being counter-productive to a healthy,
nurturing newborn environment. He stated that such early genital
trauma has undoubtedly damaging, but as yet unstudied, lifelong
effects."

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Look, I'm sorry, I've been staying out of the discussion of the facts of circumcision, since the actual issue of circumcision isn't why I got angry at Julia, and in many ways these details are a distraction.

But this is too much. In a word: it's bullshit. This is a biased survey done by someone with an agenda, rather than a neutral scientific study. And those quotes are so exaggerated as to be melodramatic.

"Many men are living with these consequences and may not connect these problems to their circumcision or are too embarrassed to talk about such issues"—let's see now. "Many"? How many? And: this is a classic case of an undisprovable claim; if I say, for instance, that circumcision had no negative consequences for me, an adherent of the survey can claim that it did and I just don't know about them (or am denying them).

"infant circumcision trauma [is] counter-productive to a healthy,
nurturing newborn environment. He stated that such early genital
trauma has undoubtedly damaging, but as yet unstudied, lifelong
effects"—once again, it's undisprovable. I don't think my newborn environment was non-nurturing, but how can I prove it wasn't? Indeed, how could the parent of a circumcised three-week-old prove that the child's environment is nurturing, especially when the circumcision proves that it's not? And the claim that there are "undoubtedly" lifelong effects, even though we have no idea what they might be, is about as rationally convincing as an appeal to a Divine Creator who said so.

Once again: I'm not really per se all that interested in arguing the pros and cons of circumcision. But to be honest, Gotcha, I'm seriously disappointed to see you invoke unprovable assertion and circular reasoning as if they're genuine arguments.

[gerald_duck]

"If it was bad we'd have stopped doing it a long time ago" is an obviously flawed argument, regardless of what the "it" is.

Our state of knowledge and understanding continually advances; so too do medical practice and ethics. If you don't like slavery or stoning as examples of things that were done for millennia but that we now realise are wrong, what about leeches, flat Earth, sexual inequality, killing twins at birth, trepanning, torture, and so on?

If it comes right down to it, what about not circumcising? People had avoided circumcising their young for many millennia when Abraham came along. If people died from not being circumcised, they would have been doing it; if being uncircumcised was as harmful as you make it seem, they'd have started circumcision a long time ago.

[gerald_duck]

People keep creating analogies between circumcision and other obviously bad things. You keep countering that these analogies are unacceptable because circumcision isn't as bad as that.

Your reasoning fails, however, to demonstrate that circumcision isn't bad at all. Agreed, circumcision isn't as bad as those other things, but it's bad nonetheless.

You seem to be admitting yourself that the only thing distancing circumcision from all that other stuff is the degree of the wrong, not the nature.

[gerald_duck]

There is a place for theological debate, granted. However, there is also a place for saying that something is wrong whatever the precepts of any particular religion might think.

This has to be the case. We no longer live in theocracies, so the rule of law has to trump religious principles. If you think that's unreasonable, you should think carefully about how and why you're protected from others' religious beliefs. Either you think we should revert to a mediaeval-style bloodbath, or your arguments implicitly rest on a presumption that your particular religion is somehow more special and sacred than anyone else's.

[canadianpuzzler.livejournal.com]

The rule of law has to trump religious principles

The rule of law did trump religious principles in the former communist bloc, and if I'm not mistaken, even the secular thinkers there were deeply unhappy about it. There was no place there for saying anything was wrong unless the state said there was. Individual freedom has to trump the rule of law unless the rule of law exists to preserve and enhance individual freedom.

We live in a free society. That's why freedom of religion is enshrined in our law, and it is that same freedom of religion that allows you to choose "no thanks" instead of having religion forced upon you.

If you think it's unreasonable for others to be free to practice their religious beliefs even when you think that it is wrong for them to do so, perhaps your arguments implicitly rest on a presumption that your particular brand of non-religion is somehow more special and preferential than anyone else's religion is.

(And I should mention while I'm here that not only do you claim to know both my thoughts and my arguments before they are presented to you, your either/or is a false dichotomy.)