Is circumcision child abuse?

lounakin wrote: »

I had to have my daughter's tongue released from a tie, at birth there are no nerves and barely any blood vessels, you just snip and they don't feel it. Later, you need general anaesthetics. So yeah, prevention.

On this point, your daughter had to have a valid medical procedure for an existing medical problem. An intact penis is not a medical problem, nor is likely to ever be for the vast majority of adult men, so "prevention" is not applicable as a reason for routine removal of a highly enervated and functional part of the human body. The statement of "at birth there are no nerves" is beyond naive and unscientific. Do you really believe this?

Even within Judaism there are a minority of practising Jews who are against the practice and it's been debated before too. The founder of modern Zionism was against it and refused to have his sons snipped(though he was very much of a secular bent and fair play).

You will find that a lot of seemingly acts have, in fact, medical purposes.

Precious few, try naming a traditional surgical procedure that has a medical purpose. Cultures who practice female circumcision will also claim "advantages". Hell even some doctors in those cultures will have the gall to claim it.

You will find that there are millions of people on earth who do it nowadays ONLY for those purposes and not because of tradition.

Millions of people who do this(outside of the religous types) do it mostly because of tradition "we've always done it", to fit in culturally(EG the US) and that's about it. The "prevention" notion is just a way to back up such practices as it can be clearly demonstrated that "prevention" is not a valid medical reason in the western world(and is on the cusp of dubious elsewhere).

I also have to go by personal experience of people I grew up with an while you are totally right, these issues are not as common as a cold, I would still have it done to my son because I believe it may help him and prevent future problems and pain.

So you make a decision to remove a functional part of your sons body to prevent a single digits percentage risk? A risk that even if he were to be one of that small minority would be fixable, in most case by non surgical means? Makes zero sense and again IMHO sounds like justification of a mind already made up.

Just like I chose to vaccinate.

The two aren't even vaguely comparable. Well not unless you vaccinate him against west Nile fever, just in case like.

That said, if a parent refuses to do it to their child I have no problem with that. We all do our bit at preventing, we all do it differently

The Parent get out of gaol free card. Like I noted before, I can guarantee you that a mother* from a culture that practices FGM will trot out very similar arguments for their cultural practice, their sacred cow. Where's the difference, but for cultural worldview?

Yes, it definitely shouldn't be done systematically. Perhaps it's best to look at it case by case.

Here we agree. However ask yourself the question why it should be case by case and why can't that case by case basis be applied when a problem actually arises? If the case by case is down to the parents decision, I'd have issues with that. Why? Parents contrary to popular don't automatically know what's best. That's a myth. The number of utter fools out there who've reproduced and screwed up their kids is testament to that. Society and science should be in the driving seat for subjects like this, not cultural fashion, habit and religion.



*I say mothers as I've noted before, women are generally more the drivers of such practices at grassroots level. While there's minority of men at the top of cultures swanning about in funny clothes banging on about tradition/religion/culture, women are more often the standard bearers for cultural practice, especially when it concerns children. Take FGM. This is a practice aimed at mutilating and restricting women, yet it's the women who are more gung ho for it in such cultures. Educating the fathers has proven to be a waste, it's the mothers that need to be targeted. I watched a good documentary about a Muslim cleric who was fighting to stamp out the practice in some African region whose name sadly escapes. Brave lad. He was telling the men it wasn't an Islamic requirement and he found that they might agree, but that he was getting nowhere, as the women were out of the loop.

12gauge dave wrote: »

there are millions of circumcised men out there it has no negative effects on their quality of life in anyway if it was an operation that affected their quality of life when they are older id be all against it but it really isnt important in anyway?

I think we can all agree female genital mutilation has highly negative effects on sexual function and health. So how come the procedure is still being carried out on women by other women? Answers on a postcard folks.

it really doesnt matter guys and parents arent breaking laws in doing so:)

The list of downright stupid cultural practices and laws that we know see as Fcuking daft(tm) is a very very long one.


This subject and similar fascinates me. Culture and cultural sacred cows. How one culture - ours in this case - can look down even sneer at others for being not quite civilised, yet something pretty obvious as this subject is considered OK cos like we do it you'know. I find it interesting. Since Jews have been brought up in this debate from early on, I'll quote a Jewish bloke on the matter "Why are you pointing at the teeny tiny speck of dust in your brother's eye and fail to consider the dirty great effin tree trunk in your own?". Matthew, 2013 Wibbisan translation. That's the sound of the the lad from Galilee hitting the nail squarely on the head