Nordic countries may finally ban circumcision.

[Loss Leader]

Except I don't think people have a problem with it as an adult, cosmetic body mod.

I have a problem with it as an adult procedure. The evidence shows that circumcision of adults or teens is higher risk than circumcision of infants. It also is more likely to cause a decrease in sexual pleasure or sexual disfunction. If it were done, medically it is far better to do it to an infant.

It is doing it to an infant, before it even has a choice about such things, that I think goes against free exercise of religion.

The free exercise of religion is that of the parents and of the parents on the child's behalf. Children cannot consent to anything, eight day-old babies least of all. Someone makes their decisions for them.

How anyone can claim that permanently marking someone for your own faith and culture is promoting free exercise of any sort is laughable.

Laughable is right. Your statement is downright silly. My parents marked me as an American by teaching me english as a baby. However hard I try, no foreign language will ever come as easily to me as english. In fact, studies suggest that I will think in my native language even if I speak another one. My parents have stolen from me any chance I have of being anything but a native english-speaker. When they refused to celebrate Christmas, they took from me that opportunity. When they chose to be kosher, they robbed me of the taste for bacon. No matter how hard I try, I'll never have the deep associations of family and holiday that come from, say, the smell of a spiral ham.

Parents make all sorts of decisions that leave an indelible mark on their children. Should they just stay mute and wait to see what language I want to speak as an adult? Of course not. Your argument is nonsense.

And despite all of the protestations to the contrary, I have not seen the penis of any of the Jewish people I have ever met. Yet somehow they could still be culturally Jewish. Shocking.

I was unaware that you possessed the ability to determine which exact religious practices bind Jews as one people and which are extraneous. How did you complete your study? Did you refuse to circumcise one Jewish population and do mandatory circumcisions on the other? What were the rates of retention across successive generations? Where were you published?

Or, perhaps, do you have absolutely no idea what combination of practices have allowed Jews to endure over the centuries?

 

[Rat]

Jews have been doing infant circumcision on their sons for 6,000 years and so far things have been going pretty okay by us. When exactly do you expect those "terrible things" to start happening? Will we have time for a quick bathroom break beforehand, do you think? It's hot out and we've been drinking iced tea all day.



No compelling reason for it except for the fact that it's, you know, a non-negotiable religious duty that Jews believe they have been commanded by God to perform. But hey, what's so great about preserving free exercise of religion? Lots of countries don't have that, and it's never caused them any problems at all!

Nope, cultural majority groups suddenly deciding to unilaterally outlaw long-established and apparently innocuous religious practices that members of an ethnic and religious minority universally regard as crucial to their continuing identity as a people could never lead to anything bad happening, ever. It's win/win, people!

Every time I came to write a response to this post, it had been rewritten. I don't think I've ever seen so many rewrites. Anyway, no. If it's wrong, then it's wrong, and I do indeed not care what individual religions think about that; if it's not wrong then it's not wrong, and ditto. In every case that I'm aware of, the religions affected have found some way to adapt to the laws of whatever country they're in. As I understand things, the reason that pre-stunning is disallowed in shechita is that the animal must be without a blemish, yet ear tags seem to be acceptable. I really hate to keep bringing this up, but FGM is a practice of ethnic and/or religious minorities, yet very few people have a problem allowing that it should be illegal, including those who support circumcision.

 

[Rat]

Parents make all sorts of decisions that leave an indelible mark on their children. Should they just stay mute and wait to see what language I want to speak as an adult? Of course not. Your argument is nonsense.

They do not prevent your learning another language, even if you may find it difficult to learn another (which most people don't if they're immersed in it, rather than learning from a book or similar). And it seems to me that non-circumcised is a natural state, while any language is not.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I have a problem with it as an adult procedure. The evidence shows that circumcision of adults or teens is higher risk than circumcision of infants. It also is more likely to cause a decrease in sexual pleasure or sexual disfunction. If it were done, medically it is far better to do it to an infant.

I was thinking more legally or ethically, but that is fine too.

The free exercise of religion is that of the parents and of the parents on the child's behalf.

You think the child wants to be circumcised or has some interest in it that the parents are recognising and fulfilling? No, it is the parent's interest.

Children cannot consent to anything, eight day-old babies least of all. Someone makes their decisions for them.

Within limits. They are called rights.

Laughable is right. Your statement is downright silly. My parents marked me as an American by teaching me english as a baby. However hard I try, no foreign language will ever come as easily to me as english. In fact, studies suggest that I will think in my native language even if I speak another one. My parents have stolen from me any chance I have of being anything but a native english-speaker. When they refused to celebrate Christmas, they took from me that opportunity. When they chose to be kosher, they robbed me of the taste for bacon. No matter how hard I try, I'll never have the deep associations of family and holiday that come from, say, the smell of a spiral ham.

Silly analogies are silly. In all your examples the parents are "robbing" you of nothing but a potential future state. And all of those are benign and inevitable (you will always be missing out on experiencing from childhood someone else's language, holiday, etc.). We are talking about fully optional body mods here. Literal, and at the distinct wish of the parent, marks.

As long as we are engaging in silly analogies, how about cutting off earlobes? Clitoral hoods? Pulling off toenails? Are these just parents making normal choices like every parent does? If cultures supported these as part of their identity, would it be in the child's interest?

Parents make all sorts of decisions that leave an indelible mark on their children. Should they just stay mute and wait to see what language I want to speak as an adult? Of course not. Your argument is nonsense.

If you write it like a strawman, yes, it is. Fortunately, teaching a child a language is not the same as the completely optional choice of removing their foreskin.

I was unaware that you possessed the ability to determine which exact religious practices bind Jews as one people and which are extraneous. How did you complete your study? Did you refuse to circumcise one Jewish population and do mandatory circumcisions on the other? What were the rates of retention across successive generations? Where were you published?

Or, perhaps, do you have absolutely no idea what combination of practices have allowed Jews to endure over the centuries?

Or, perhaps you missed my point, which was that I didn't see Jews dropping trou even at explicitly Jewish events.

But this mindset is frankly disturbing. Why should we be concerned about "binding" people to cultures? You believe that physically altering people will make those who would have left the culture stay? If anything I would say the concern should be the opposite.

 

[colander]

Every time I came to write a response to this post, it had been rewritten. I don't think I've ever seen so many rewrites. Anyway, no. If it's wrong, then it's wrong, and I do indeed not care what individual religions think about that; if it's not wrong then it's not wrong, and ditto. In every case that I'm aware of, the religions affected have found some way to adapt to the laws of whatever country they're in.

How do you suppose that Judaism will manage to adapt to a country making it illegal for them to fulfill their A#1 most important religious vow?

Or do you mean to say that they'll leave, as Jews passing through Sweden have tended to do since 1933, when Sweden initially instituted the laws that currently prohibit Jewish ritual slaughter? (For some reason, a bunch of countries in Continental Europe got really gung-ho about ending the terrible scourge of Jewish ritual slaughter animal cruelty starting around the 1930s. The weird thing is, most of those countries expunged those laws from the books in the years following the end of World War II. Wonder what that was about!)

As I understand things, the reason that pre-stunning is disallowed in shechita is that the animal must be without a blemish, yet ear tags seem to be acceptable.

That's real interesting and all, but what does your garbled understanding of Jewish halachic law have to do with circumcision?

I really hate to keep bringing this up, but FGM is a practice of ethnic and/or religious minorities, yet very few people have a problem allowing that it should be illegal, including those who support circumcision.

Gee. If I didn't know any better, I'd attribute that difference to the fact that the most common form of FGM would correspond in severity to cutting a man's penis clean off and is intended to completely cripple the recipient's ability to find pleasure in sexual activity, whereas circumcised men report the same levels of sexual satisfaction that uncircumcised men do.

But I guess that can't be it, can it?

 

[Rat]

How do you suppose that Judaism will manage to adapt to a country making it illegal for them to fulfill their A#1 most important religious vow?

Or do you mean to say that they'll leave, as Jews passing through Sweden have tended to do since 1933, when Sweden initially instituted the laws that currently prohibit Jewish ritual slaughter? (For some reason, a bunch of countries in Continental Europe got really gung-ho about ending animal cruelty in the 1930s. Most of them repealed those laws around 1945-ish, though. Wonder what that was about!)

Not all of them for the reason that your wearying sarcasm is implying, as far as I know. Sweden has, to the best of my knowledge, a Jewish population. But if we're going to engage in this, then yes, those who care about animal welfare obviously do so solely because they're secretly Nazis.

That's real interesting and all, but what does your garbled understanding of Jewish halachic law have to do with circumcision?

Not garbled, just perhaps incomplete. That's why I said "As I understand things", thus inviting someone to correct me if I had misunderstood. But to answer the question, it was an example of an apparent (to me) adaptation to legal regulation. It followed directly from the sentence preceding.

Gee. If I didn't know any better, I'd attribute that difference to the fact that the most common form of FGM would correspond in severity to cutting a man's penis clean off and is intended to completely cripple the recipient's ability to find pleasure in sexual activity, whereas circumcised men report the same levels of sexual satisfaction that uncircumcised men do.

But I guess that can't be it, can it?

So the only words that I needed to pay attention to in the sentence to which I was obviously responding were "apparently innocuous". If cultural majority groups suddenly decide to unilaterally outlaw long-established religious practices that members of an ethnic and religious minority universally regard as crucial to their continuing identity as a people and that aren't "apparently innocuous", that's OK? This is a genuine question, because this is why I opened with "if it's wrong, it's wrong"; I am not presupposing for these purposes that it is wrong, but if it is, then it is still wrong if it is a religious practice.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Always a good non-hypothetical to keep in mind:

The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral "pricking" procedure.

"We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world," said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.

The contentious policy statement, issued in April, had condemned the practice of female genital cutting overall. But a small portion of statement suggesting the pricking procedure riled U.S. advocacy groups and survivors of female genital cutting.

In the April statement, the group raised the idea that some physicians should be able to prick or nick a girl's clitoral skin in order to "satisfy cultural requirements." The group likened the nick to an ear piercing.

On Thursday the AAP stated the group will not condone doctors to provide any kind of "clitoral nick." The AAP also clarified nicking a girl or woman's genitals is forbidden under a 1996 federal law banning female genital mutilation.

Linky.

We don't even allow a prick for cultural reasons... for girls.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I don't see how a surgical procedure is more dangerous in adults than in infants. A slip of the doctor's blade on an infant, and there might not be a penis anymore. A slip of the scalpel on an adult, and the scar might be a few mm longer.

 

[kellyb]

Gee. If I didn't know any better, I'd attribute that difference to the fact that the most common form of FGM would correspond in severity to cutting a man's penis clean off and is intended to completely cripple the recipient's ability to find pleasure in sexual activity,

That's a myth. The most common form of FGC is essentially exactly like male circumcision:

http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/FGM-C_final_10_October.pdf

In the majority of countries that have included
questions regarding type of FGM/C, excision
of the prepuce (Type 1) is found to be the most
common. Only in Burkina Faso is excision of the
clitoris (Type 2) found to be most frequent.

 

[ABC10]

Furthermore, I am surprised and disgusted by some of the comments on this thread, could we please have a big "NO" to genital mutilation, which ever God this might serve, I hope this is not misunderstood to be a personal attack! But it could be.
Which brings to mind this, if God’s do not exist, have they chopped of all those bits for naught? Probably, almost certainly.

How about Allah? With 1.5 BILLION people who are followers of Islam, the % of males is probably about 1/2 that number getting snipped. That is a of chopping. Islam is #2 in religion and hardly a minority ethnic group. I see no reason to be concerned with the tiny % of Jews being circumcised when the followers of Allah are the big boys in circumcision plus, of course, throwing in a lot of the Islam women and girls for female genital cutting which is truely mutilation. Wonder if those Nordic Countries are concerned about that is their huge Muslim populations.

 

[Morrigan]

Laughable is right. Your statement is downright silly. My parents marked me as an American by teaching me english as a baby. However hard I try, no foreign language will ever come as easily to me as english. In fact, studies suggest that I will think in my native language even if I speak another one. My parents have stolen from me any chance I have of being anything but a native english-speaker. When they refused to celebrate Christmas, they took from me that opportunity.

That has to be one of the most terrible "analogies" I have ever seen. Teaching your child a language is mandatory for your child to function in society. You compare that to an arbitrary, optional, cosmetic surgery? WTF.

In any case, you can always learn other languages later as an adult, and you can certainly celebrate Christmas later as well. You can also eat bacon. But, as of today's medical science, you can't ever grow back a foreskin. So that analogy is a double whammy of fail.

Parents make all sorts of decisions that leave an indelible mark on their children. Should they just stay mute and wait to see what language I want to speak as an adult? Of course not. Your argument is nonsense.

It would indeed be nonsense if he had said anything resembling that, but the comparison is so tenuous that I'm not even sure if that falls under a strawman, a non-sequitur, or reductio ad absurdum.

 

[John Jones]

Perhaps so, but the Nordics are very susceptible to pressure from the Muslim lobby who also circumcise males and sometimes females. The Nordics are so taken with Circumcising Muslims that they invited them into their country to live with interesting results.
It is interesting that the males who sell SEX in porn are circumcised.

John Holmes - probably the most famous man in porn history - was uncircumcised.

 

[John Jones]

HUH???????????? Nope, that is not right at all. I am plain pro circumcision.

For anything other than purely cosmetic reasons?

 

[MaxMurx]

On June 26 2012 the Highest Court in the German city of Cologne declared circumscision of boys to be "assault, not justified by parental consent because of not being in the interest of the health of the child". The case came in front of the court after a Muslim boy after a cirumcision had severe bleeding and had to be rescued in an emergency hospital. The German Jewish community instantly accused the Germans of "repeating the Holocaust".

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama...s-religioesen-gruenden-ist-strafbar-1.1393536
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2012/06/28/beschneidung-5/

 

[Darth Rotor]

On June 26 2012 the Highest Court in the German city of Cologne declared circumscision of boys to be "assault, not justified by parental consent because of not being in the interest of the health of the child". The case came in front of the court after a Muslim boy after a cirumcision had severe bleeding and had to be rescued in an emergency hospital. The German Jewish community instantly accused the Germans of "repeating the Holocaust".

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama...s-religioesen-gruenden-ist-strafbar-1.1393536
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2012/06/28/beschneidung-5/

Was the trimming not done in a hospital by a qualified medical person? I wonder.

We got a briefing before our son was born on how it is done. I cannot understand how, absent the kid being hemopheliac, this very simple task turns into that in a medical facility.

Rusty: again, nothing cultural or religious about my parents' choice. It was the "medical conventional wisdom" of the time. While we are here, please do not toss in the red herring of FMG. Just go to any one of the links I provided to find the points on why the two issues are not the same.

I seem to recall that you were in at least one of those discussions.

From the engineering point of view, however, I do appreciate the "why does anyone bother" with trimming position on this basis:

If it ain't broke, why are you trying to fix it?

 

[ABC10]

John Holmes - probably the most famous man in porn history - was uncircumcised.

Don't know the guy or any porn stars. In any event as posted earlier, depends on where the movie is made. Most USAers male porn stars are circumcised while the European guys are more uncircumcised. When the Muslims take over the Porn Industry, all the males will be circumcised and the women will have suffered female genital mutilation.

 

[ABC10]

For anything other than purely cosmetic reasons?

Cosmetic, but far more importantly for penis and whole body Health.

 

[ABC10]

On June 26 2012 the Highest Court in the German city of Cologne declared circumscision of boys to be "assault, not justified by parental consent because of not being in the interest of the health of the child". The case came in front of the court after a Muslim boy after a cirumcision had severe bleeding and had to be rescued in an emergency hospital. The German Jewish community instantly accused the Germans of "repeating the Holocaust".

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama...s-religioesen-gruenden-ist-strafbar-1.1393536
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2012/06/28/beschneidung-5/

Will we be seeing the Germans take on their Muslim population? The Jewish community in Germany is almost non existent.

 

[kellyb]

Cosmetic, but far more importantly for penis and whole body Health.

If you want to call this "healthy":

Meatal stenosis is generally a direct consequence of
circumcision that is seldom encountered in uncircumcised men;
meatal calibre is known to be greater in uncircumcised
individuals. The incidence of meatal ulceration following
circumcision is from 8 to 20 per cent

 

[ddt]

Was the trimming not done in a hospital by a qualified medical person? I wonder.

We got a briefing before our son was born on how it is done. I cannot understand how, absent the kid being hemopheliac, this very simple task turns into that in a medical facility.

No, it wasn't done in a hospital. It's not entirely clear from MaxMurx' link, nor from this Guardian write-up, but it seems like it was done by a (Muslim?) GP. After two days, the boy began to bleed and was brought to the hospital, which then notified the police.

From the engineering point of view, however, I do appreciate the "why does anyone bother" with trimming position on this basis:

If it ain't broke, why are you trying to fix it?

Indeed.