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

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

I skipped this when I first saw it, because there were already about 100 comments and I didn't have the time. I still don't, really, but references to it keep popping up on my f-list.

I wasn't offended by your vehemence of opinion or that it dropped out of thin air, because you are a college undergraduate and this is the kind of discussion that comes up in such circles... I refer both to the dark ages when I was in college and stayed up all night arguing with my Communist housemate as well as more recently when my daughter would call me with Unshakeable Opinions.

Also, I don't get so offended, because I am used to these deep disagreements with family members. My Catholic mother thinks I am going to hell for being an atheist. My born-again Christian father thinks my mother and I are both going to hell. I think all religion is delusion, but we are all deluded in one way or another and everyone believes in at least one impossible thing before breakfast, like the Alice in Wonderland character. We tend to not speak of these things anymore at family gatherings as it will not get anywhere but Bad. So I learned to just say OK to whatever my daughter's latest Opinion was.

Maybe the way you said this would make also just say OK to you if you said something in this vehement manner to my face, because it's not worth getting into it, but it doesn't feel like vehemence to me as your own journal entry. It would be different if it were expressed in an lj community that didn't exist for the purpose of anti-circumcision. I guess some other people, though, feel uncomfortable with it.

There are lots of things my friends post about doing that I would never do, that I wouldn't tell anyone even if I did them, or that I think they're stupid just plain WRONG to do, but I don't have to wake up next to them, so whatever, it doesn't bother me.

FWIW, before my daughter was born in 1984, I discussed with the doctor what to do beforehand in case she was a boy. I believed in non-mutilation, but the books I was reading had differing opinions... infections if the boy didn't clean up well, lessened sensitivity as a possibility... The doctor told me that he thought there were pros and cons either way, and that he recommended that whatever way the father was, the baby should be the same way so that he had less problems in the normal trying to grow up to be like dad. I didn't have a partner then, but it seemed likely that my eventual partner would be circumcised.

As it turns out, I did marry a circumcised Jew, and it is highly unlikely we will ever have a son, but we would probably not circumcise him if we did; I give us more credit at being able to explain differences now than I did myself at age 21 and confoozled.