Whoa, whoa, whoa everyone! Now we were doing good here so far, back and forth, trading observations, and after 8 pages, still avoiding a flame war. For a highly charged thread that's a pretty good record. Let's see if we can get back to that real quick. I'll start.
^ My major question is: "What are you still complaining about" and yet you explained things I don't ask for...Circumcision does not concern me in a single millimeter. I never circumcise or cause it to any primate.
- Bohemienne
Okay, now I'M the confused one. I think I thought you meant one thing when you meant something else...could you elaborate what you meant and how I got it wrong?
The males still have sensitivity; I've heard of no circumcised male who's posted so far complain about their sexual sensitivity. A woman with a removed clitoris gets no sensitivity back does she? I don't see any women in the West who subscribes to circumcising males throwing their male babies off cliffs-do you?
Okay I see where I messed up on the sensitivity argument now. YOU were saying that you've heard no complaints by circumcised men about the sensitivity they HAVE, and I thought you meant you've never heard a man complain "man I wish sex could be better!" That was my mistake. But at the same time, if you really liked sex (man or woman) and found out you only had 30% of your full sensitivity, wouldn't you be curious about the missing 70%? Wouldn't you ask "Hey...why don't I have that 70%? What happened?" And, depending on your answer, is your opinion on THAT answer in any way influenced by cultural/religious attitudes toward sexual pleasure?
Where I disagree with you on this point seems to be that you think that a 70% sensitivity loss in men is okay, but not even .01% loss in women is acceptable. That confuses me as to why men don't matter so much, especially since men and women agree with you on the FGM argument for the same reason.
Does intent really invalidate equality?
You're going around the world again and it comes back to the same point-intent! What was the INTENT of the parents who had their little baby boy circumcised as opposed to the tribal leaders and fathers who make pre-pubescent girls get their clitoris' whacked off and their vaginas sewn up?
The intent you're referring to (in boys) could be sanitation, religion, and even aesthetic; sometimes all 3 are considered, but oftentimes parents tend to reflexively decide on it for cultural acceptance and that's as far as they think about it. In FGM countries, there are probably a fair share of that going around--likely in modernizing countries--where aesthetic could be the deciding factor over religion and gender roles. But you would very likely say to them "looking like all the other girls IS NOT A REASON to hack off their vulva!"
About the cliff-throwing part. I'd be very careful of blanket assumptions about every FGM procedure being a Snidely Whiplash intent of evil; I doubt every cutter wakes up thinking "YES, ANOTHER DAY OF CUTTING VAGINAS! OH I LOVE OPPRESSING WOMEN!" When it's everyday culturally accepted practice, some of them likely run on autopilot, and think about it the same way, much like the circumcisers over here; they're probably as inured to the flailing and screaming of the girls as surgeons are to infant boys over here. To speculate that everybody who does FGM is a villainous misogynist reveling in their dominance over women is dangerously dismissive of the effects of cultural conformity. But I agree with you that it's a sign of cultivated sociopathy.
Well, I guess you can say that the girls get some portion of the "procedure reversed" on their wedding night (with or without anesthesia). But if a man really wants his foreskin back, there's a possible solution as well right? And it doesn't require knives, razors, or whatever sharp object you can come up with.
Now there's a good point about the restoration thing, because the subject and data is new, and the results aren't complete yet. So far it's popular with circumcised men who want to restore their missing foreskin from their procedure after birth. I've yet to hear it done both ways. To do that we'd have to have a collection of uncircumcised men with no complaints about their sensitivity agree to be circumcised, try out their new sensitivity, and then agree to undergo restoration. That way we can chart the progress and the patients and the effectiveness of the restoration. In my estimation it doesn't because as far as I and science as a whole knows, you can't just regenerate nerve cells like that. What I think is happening in the restoration process is the remaining foreskin at the head or epithelial tissue at the penile base is being stretched out to cover the area and the nerves get stretched along with them.
There needs to be research done to see if restored foreskin is real foreskin or elasticized epithelial tissue.
However, I would point out that you would probably not accept an FGM version of this if it existed. if it were hypothetically possible to non-surgically restore labial tissue with a variation of the foreskin restoration technique, I imagine you would still say "That doesn't make a difference. Just because you can reverse it doesn't make it alright to lop off a girl's clitoris!" Well you just argued that it is okay to do that to a man for the same reason. Does good intention make a difference? The people who do FGM think they have good intentions too.
Twenty years ago, very little choice. Today, if a parent doesn't want their son circumcised, they sign a paper and it's over and done with.
There have been cases where this has been ignored: parents sign the "do not circumcise" checkbox and get their baby back with no foreskin. That's why I rail against the routine part so much. If the procedure is so commonplace, people work on autopilot and can overlook that selection and don't realize the parents didn't want it until it was too late. What do they say? "Oops, my bad? Count your blessings, at least he'll feel something."? its the irreversibility that makes it a problem. But if it were no longer routinely performed this mistake could be avoided.
You also mention the parent having the right to make that decision for them because of their age. Parents have to make the best decisions for their kinds because the child is too young to make the decision themselves. Usually these decisions are life-death situations where long-term affects on their life and quality of life are taken into account.
Since a foreskin is not lethal by itself, it doesn't pose an imminent threat of death, I question whether a parent should have the right to make that call. If a parent is properly informed, they will be able to care for the uncircumcised penis just as well as a circumcised one.
After all, if your son wants his ears pierced at 8, you can tell him "No, not today. If when you get older you want them pierced then you can." So why can't you let him make the same decision about his foreskin when he's older? As
Scruff pointed out, you took that choice from him.
As odd as it is to agree with
Mister Scruff on anything, we both share the same point: it's the 1)irreparable damage DONE to 2) an unwilling infant 3) without anesthesia that makes it horrible, just as it does on a young girl. But because the girl is cut for oppressive religious/moral purity/aesthetic reasons, she is mutilated, but because the boy is cut for religious/hygiene/aesthetic reasons, his is not mutilated because the former intentions were evil, but the latter intentions were good.
So does this mean kis that horrible things are okay to do if they have a benign intention behind them?
So if I understand
kis' point in a nutshell it's this: A boy and a girl have a major portion of their homologous (matching) genital tissue carved away without consent or anesthetic, removing massive portions of their sensitivity. Now the intent, health statistics, and memory loss, make it acceptable for the boy; the intent and memory consideration and health statistics make it unacceptable for a girl. So intent, memory and health concerns change everything.
Can we justify doing any other painful, violating things to anybody else if they won't remember anything? Can we rape a comatose patient, can we take nude photos of a drunk girl, can we pull a man's rotten tooth from his mouth he blacks out from drinking? Does having GOOD intentions make it okay?
Maybe it'd be best to ask kis directly: If FGM were done FOR ANY OTHER REASON THAN THE INTENT YOU MENTION (let's say cosmetic reasons or cultural aesthetic)...would you still object to it and why? And why would that criteria not apply to men? Would it be because the health concerns, as low as they are, somehow trump the other issues that cause circumcision and FGM to otherwise resemble each other?
You did say that the 2 genitals were different and I agree with you but I point out that these differing organs of differing functions are THE SAME TISSUE. The tissue they cut off from a boy is similar to the tissue they cut off of a woman. Now, you either disagree with that, or you believe that the similarity doesn't matter....right now I'm not sure which.
I suppose that I'm interpreting kis responses as "gender changes everything. Boys are not girls so you don't give them the same considerations." If I'm right, that attitude violates the basic tenets of the principle of gender equality and "All men are created equal" in American value systems. If it is wrong (or oppressive) to painfully excise tissue and permanently remove massive amounts of sensitivity on a non-consenting girl regardless of memory loss, then shouldn't it also be equally abhorrent to do the same to the boy for the same reasons (especially if the same tissue is in play in both cases?). If it violates freedom of choice and the sanctity of the bodily temple in girls, shouldn't it also violate the same in boys? or does being a boy remove your from that kind of thinking?
Does being a boy mean you can't be a victim of genital mutilation because of intention and hygiene--2 motives that were irrelevant defenses for FGM?
