Should there be laws to protect kids from religous inflence?

[Cairber]

I think where it comes to the circumcision debate, a lot of people confuse "Well I don't feel too bad about having been through it" with "Are they saying there's something wrong with me?" It's like an unintentional kneejerk response to an assumed dicksult. However, it's really just a debate about a surgical procedure and the medical issues for and against.

And I think it goes the other way too--there is an amazing amount of outrage from people against it for more reasons than the medical questions about botched unnecessary surgeries and so forth. I almost feel like this is a debate that women should figure out on their own because men seem too heavily invested in it. I don't understand the emotional quantity to it at all, but if it's got no medical reason then it should stop, right?

There is a lot of truth here. It has gotten to the point where our rule of thumb for helping mothers convince their partners to leave the son alone is to tell them to leave the "sexual" arguments out of the equation until they have tried the others (risks, pain, breastfeeding problems, etc). We have just seen too many times where bringing up studies and other evidence concerning the sexual sensitivity and function of the foreskin has made the partner even more soldified in their plight to cut the child.

[Rye]

I think where it comes to the circumcision debate, a lot of people confuse "Well I don't feel too bad about having been through it" with "Are they saying there's something wrong with me?" It's like an unintentional kneejerk response to an assumed dicksult. However, it's really just a debate about a surgical procedure and the medical issues for and against.

I hear from circumcised proponents of circumcision that they're fine and like the look of their penis, therefore it's not "disfiguring". This is obviously false, of course, it's the permanent removal and scarification of tissue, though apparently some members of the population seem to prefer it.

And I think it goes the other way too--there is an amazing amount of outrage from people against it for more reasons than the medical questions about botched unnecessary surgeries and so forth. I almost feel like this is a debate that women should figure out on their own because men seem too heavily invested in it. I don't understand the emotional quantity to it at all, but if it's got no medical reason then it should stop, right?

Well, I dislike people stealing skin from unconsenting babies, personally. I would sure as fuck hate for someone to come and do it to me while I was asleep some night, for instance. The argument basically boils down to when it's okay to surgically alter a healthy child that can't consent.

[Darth Wong]

To both of you, I'm not saying that your claims are unjustified, just that a prompt of "Don't you wish ___" does prompt people to say "No, I'm not bothered by it" like Lazerus did. So when it turns into a battle of emotions, people will fall on both sides in defense of their own wang.

The problem is that the "I'm not bothered by it" argument is totally meaningless as an ethics argument. One could use it for just about anything. This is not just a hypothetical proposition; I have personally seen it used in defense of beating a child with a stick, violent schoolyard behaviour, and even child sexual abuse (literally, victims who grow up to become abusers themselves defend their behaviour by saying that they were subjected to the same thing themselves, and they're OK).

[Covenant]

The problem is that the "I'm not bothered by it" argument is totally meaningless as an ethics argument.

Oh, I totally agree! Cairber got what I was talking about:

There is a lot of truth here. It has gotten to the point where our rule of thumb for helping mothers convince their partners to leave the son alone is to tell them to leave the "sexual" arguments out of the equation until they have tried the others (risks, pain, breastfeeding problems, etc). We have just seen too many times where bringing up studies and other evidence concerning the sexual sensitivity and function of the foreskin has made the partner even more soldified in their plight to cut the child.

Being able to target information in the way it's best able to get to the people who need it--the ones open to it--is important. I don't think a "it didn't bother me" arguement is a valid one. As we've all seen, people are quite willing to let themselves be mutilated, abused, or even enslaved if they believe that it's a societal norm and that by doing it they've somehow become part of an 'in' group.

I'm very much distressed when it comes down to "I want my foreskin" versus "it didn't hurt!" The "it didn't hurt" isn't an issue. The issue of outrage that I saw as of negligable use is the stuff that makes people go "My penis isn't mutilated! And my wife said it'd be icky if I wasn't! You're full of shit for making fun of my dick!" and makes people go "I'm going to have my boys circumcised too, just to justify what was done to me!"

And it seems to be specifically a male issue. Women seem, in general, better able to make a decision regarding this kind of surgery without the kneejerk reaction. I'll say that due to people like Carbier, I'd need to be presented with serious medical research for me to have a future sonc cut, since at the moment it seems unnecessary from what's been presented. Emotional appeals did not and still do not sway me (It's too late now, I might as well lament I was born male at all, not to be able to experience a clitoris) but if you remove the supposed medical benefit and make clear the quite real side-effects, it seems more effective. I just wanted to mention how unusual it seemed for people in the pro-bizarre surgery camp to dig in their heels more and more the emotional appeals, especially to sexual feeling, are made.

[Justforfun000]

Covenant Wrote:

And it seems to be specifically a male issue. Women seem, in general, better able to make a decision regarding this kind of surgery without the kneejerk reaction.

Actually you'd be wrong. Cairber is a very welcome exception to the norm. In fact, MOST women if polled, (in North America anyway), would give the thumbs up to circumcision. I've seen it far too many times. They bought the "cleanliness" issue hook, line and sinker. Of course some lazy uncut boys not washing themselves properly wouldn't have helped either...

But even esthetically, women have tended to side with the cut look. If there is any analogy to compare, it'd be similar to polling a large percentage of men that love the shaved beaver look. I've discussed it with many women and I've found very few that give two shits about foreskin. Most women aren't even particularly turned on by dicks anyway. It's a very weird dynamic that is quite opposite from men and their desires. Males are 99.9% of the time turned on by the physical attributes of their desired genitalia.

Women are all over the map. You can easily get a decent percentage that could care less about a man's penis but will happily list the turn-ons like muscular shoulders, beautiful eyes, gorgeous smile, etc.

So men are still the better ones on average to look at the issue from a comprehensive viewpoint. Hell, they should as it is intimately pertinent to them.

[Havok]

Actually you'd be wrong. Cairber is a very welcome exception to the norm. In fact, MOST women if polled, (in North America anyway), would give the thumbs up to circumcision. I've seen it far too many times. They bought the "cleanliness" issue hook, line and sinker. Of course some lazy uncut boys not washing themselves properly wouldn't have helped either...

To add to this one... My Mom sent my Dad out to sea early on in their relationship one time and said basically: "Come back cut or don't comeback." Now, my Mom can be pretty fucking stubborn, so he did it. If I still talked to the rat bastard, I'd ask him if he regretted it. Anyway, I asked her why when she told me the story and she just said it was gross. I'm sure being a Catholic Italian didn't help at all with coming to that answer.

[Cairber]

I think because women tend to be the ones researching routine hospital procedures for birth/aftercare and the added note that they are the ones given the circumcision consent and asked to sign it, the people we deal with are weighted on the female side.

With that in mind, my experience has been that it is more likely that, when a couple disagrees about the procedure, it is the woman not wanting it and the man wanting it done. However, this really doesn't say a whole lot about opinions...and I do think that, if polled, the majority of American women would probably still be for cutting.

(And, as a side note, I wish they would not give circumcision consent forms to every woman in labor they see at the hospital. Seems like solicitation of cosmetic surgery to me. Some hospitals make it part of the check in packet. What is your name? Prebirth weight? OBGYN? Number of previous pregnancies? Can we cut a piece of your baby's dick if it's a boy?)