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Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

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Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#161
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Full stop. Just as with female genital mutilation, male genital mutilation should be banned. For religious purposes this proposal should fit: https://www.google.com/amp/www.newsweek.com/fgm-compromise-n... That is a nick, not full mutilation.

That's not an argument, it's an assertion, one that does not address any points made above.

Yes, I make the assertion that all people, including defenseless babies, should be free from harm.

Now, the nick I leave as a compromise, b/c I do understand that this is a fundamental requirement of the religion as it is followed. This allows for religious practice to be followed with out mutilating the child.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#162

We tried this in San Francisco and it gets dragged into some crazy anti-religious fight. It's about the rights of the baby, not about some religion's outdated beliefs. Children should be free of mutilation, regardless of their religion.

Exactly. Religious belief isn't special, and it ought not entitle believers the right to mutilate the genitals of a child.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#164
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Full stop. Just as with female genital mutilation, male genital mutilation should be banned. For religious purposes this proposal should fit: https://www.google.com/amp/www.newsweek.com/fgm-compromise-n... That is a nick, not full mutilation.

That nick is the equivalent of male circumcision and is practiced by the Bohras, an Islamic sect. It makes a tiny incision for girls in the foreskin covering the clitoris and it is not clear that this reduces sexual pleasure in the future. It is very far from FGM which removes the clitoris etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawoodi_Bohra We have hundreds of years of data on Jewish males and how they fare after this…

Thank you for pointing out that the FGM nick actually has lasting effects. I was not aware of that, and it's not something that I support.

> The fact that it is considered a requirement in the Jewish religion for membership in the Jewish people plays a major role in the phychological well being of the child and adult, and as the parent comment has said this needs to be considered!

And it should be. It should be considered just like stoning is considered, and thrown out as against modern principles (in most places, sadly not all). It should be considered, just like homosexuality should not have you burned at the stake. This is no different.

I recognize that this is not a light decision, but it is a brutal act (with non 0% chances of horrible things going wrong) that has no physiological need.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#165
post #141
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does not mean that you have carte-blanche authority to do whatever crazy stuff your religion asks you to do And how shall we decide what constitutes "crazy stuff"? In Daniel 6:4-9, it was decided that it was unlawful to make a petition to any god or man except the king. In fact, this was done explicitly to provide an excuse to persecute Daniel. To help illuminate the issue, what if Hinduism required nose piercing a…

If a religion required nose piercing at 8 days that would be a mutilation, with some risks of additional harm, and no medical benefit (at the time it's done), and so it would be banned.

[deleted]

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MGM (circumcision) = FGM. You can lie to yourself and others but the person being mutilated is being denied a choice when their lives are not in danger.

I'm not aware of any adult women in a free society choosing to be mutilated, whereas it isn't uncommon for adult men to choose to be circumcised. That would seem to indicate that there is indeed a difference. FGM is evil, plain and simple. MGM/circumcision has interesting points on both sides, and while there might be a stronger argument against it than for, it's not strong enough to be a hill I'd choose to die on. B…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genital_modification_and_mutil...

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#167
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not overselling it since i did not attach a price tag. I said a change, not how much of a change. And yeah, i can entirely see how different people might not give a damn about any of this. Some might even benefit. Men who're not very sensitive would have more fun without the foreskin and the direct stimulation and might not even notice the loss of the nerves in the foreskin, men with very active glands might not…

Fair enough. I conflated your post with the ones comparing it to FGM Type II, talking as if circ'd penises are horrifically mutilated and barely functional.

Pondered it a little, and i think you might be misreading some people unintentionally. Maybe you mentally match FGM to mutilation as a whole, which most people don't, and react to them as if they did? Note how something can be in the same class as something else, but have a much lower degree of impact. When someone says mutilated they may not necessarily be thinking "horrifically" or "barely functional". Heck, many people consider ear rings or tattoos mutilation.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Other bad things happen so we shouldnt try to improve this Bad thing!"

I think the parent is just pointing out that the outrage seems a bit disproportionate. There are far more damaging things a parent can do that most people accept, whereas the actual effect circumcision has on your life is basically zero.

If that's the argument, I'm not convinced. We as a society try to influence the saner parts of what parent mentioned, such as values and pox parties.

Passing on genes, well we generally don't want to prevent that, because, contrary to forbidding circumcision, the cure would be worse than the disease.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#169
post #19

This is one of those topics where people have extremely strong opinions, yet the vast majority of people affected by this practice (circumcised males) have no opinion or even a favorable opinion of their circumcision.

Yup, all these sorts of threads get brigaded by MRA weirdos. It's such a weird hill to die on, none of the "victims" seem to care.

Yeah, cutting off bits of a child's penis is only something "MRA weirdos" could possibly object to. Come on.

Re: Norway's Progress Party calls for ban on circumcision for boys

#170
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question here is how many men born to Orthodox Jewish parents, when asked in adulthood whether they would have preferred to have been curcumcized at 8 days old or not, would have regretted it. And the answer is? Obviously the same is not true of people losing a finger.

You're moving the goal posts. Your claim was about productive and fulfilling lives and the implication that circumcision does not impair that. Regret doesn't factor into that and is a separate issue. Clearly you can have productive and fulfilling lives with or without regrets. Whether the lack of regrets is rational or merely a self-defense mechanism of the person's mind is another question.

The goal posts have been set by the original issue: whether circumcision harms the person or benefits them.

The main people who can answer that are adult males who were circumcized.

I am confident that if you asked 1000 religious Orthodox Jewish men whether they would have preferred to NOT have been circumcized at 8 days old and instead had to choose it later, an overwhelming majority would say they were glad they were circumcized that early. And they prefer that over never having been circumcized.

I would be hesitant to say the same about non-Jewish men. The reason Jewish men are happy about having been circumcized early is because (perhaps this sounds ironic) it gives them FAR GREATER CHOICE when it comes to their own community and membership in three thousand year old people, marriage and - above all for most religious people - serving God in the way spelled out in the Torah.

They can choose to leave the lifestyle or increase their observance etc. much more easily since one of the biggest challenges is already out of the way.

You can of course tell them they don't understand what real choice is, that this is stockholm syndrome and that religion is mass delusion.

But they may not agree and they collectively are ultimately the judges of what was better for them.

It is a different conception of morality and rights than the individualism that comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment

These ideas that a parent "knows better" because they - and millions of others - were in the same situation and are glad this was done, are valid.

It is a collective morality of a people. And again I would say that unless they believed that God commanded it, it could be possibly changed but as it is, when the vast majority of complaints are from the OUTSIDE of the community, perhaps the downsides far outweigh the upsides.

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