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Objectivism and circumcision?

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This is one of the few issues I am not yet resolved on. As a Jewish person living in Israel I am obviously circumsized. Like the others who are circumsized and posted in this threat said, I also don't feel mutilated or hurt in any way because of it. If anything, being uncircumsized would probably place me in a more difficult position in life. For instance, my girlfriend, who is Jewish and has empathy towards religion/tradition, would have probably been dettered were I not circumsized. Also it would undoubtedly make me somewhat of an outcast amongst the people around me who would know my situation, being a very odd and rare thing. From everyone else, I'd be living in constant fear that they find out and how they'd react toward it.

That's why, if given the choice, I'd had chosen to get circumsized and glad that I were.

You could argue that how society reacts to something should not be a consideration in one's life. But it certainly is. I wouldn't choose to be an outcast for the sake of not getting circumsized.

Is it a primitive tradition based on religious reasons? Sure.

Will I circumsize my future baby boys? I am leaning towards yes. If I can save them grief later on in life, then I see it as my obligation as a future parent to do so.

Edited by Soth
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Soth, that is argumentum ad populum & antiquitatem. Performing needless surgery on the unwilling - those who cannot yet choose are to be automatically regarded as unwilling - is unjustifiable. Would you have their hair follicles permanently removed if baldness was tradition? Ears pierced? Tongue branded? Neck stretched?

An individual has the right to personal integrity, therefore needless and malicious/harmful surgery are to be regarded as identical, morally and legally. "It doesn't really make a difference" isn't good enough. You don't have a carte blanche on doing whatever you want to your childrens' bodies. Whatever is done must be positively justified.

Essentially you must prove that the child would almost certainly choose to have a circumcision, if given the choice, due to how beneficial/necessary it is. Much like, say, they would probably remove their ability to reproduce if not doing so would give them a mere 20% chance to live. In that situation the relevant procedure is justified.

How many adults get circumcised? Almost none. That should tell you what you need to know.

Edited by L-C
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Since three others have given their personal testimony, I'll give mine. I'm cut and I wish I'd had a choice about it.

I think it's symbolic castration to further invoke the slave morality of the ancient Jews. I hope nobody here needs a speech from me about how religion is designed to destroy a man's ego, to enslave his mind, etc. Circumcision is just more evidence of it.

As for pierced ears & tattoos, no child should have that done against their will either. Plus, a pierced ear is not a chopped sex organ. It would be more like cutting off a child's ears at birth. It's just useless skin, right?

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Some might find what Dr. Dean Edell, the radio talk-show host and long time critic of circumcision has to say: Circumcision: A Closer Look" by Dr. Dean Edell

I remember watching a documentary on female "circumcision" or female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice is done by women -- who had it done to themselves when they were young girls -- to young girls in what is considered to be an important rite of passage.

It is interesting how a practice, such as FGM or male circumcision, becomes acceptable and defended by those who have undergone it. The victims become the victimizers and the apologists for the practice.

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It is interesting how a practice, such as FGM or male circumcision, becomes acceptable and defended by those who have undergone it. The victims become the victimizers and the apologists for the practice.

Or maybe the poppies are too tall.

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An individual has the right to personal integrity, therefore needless and malicious/harmful surgery are to be regarded as identical, morally and legally. "It doesn't really make a difference" isn't good enough. You don't have a carte blanche on doing whatever you want to your childrens' bodies. Whatever is done must be positively justified.

There is no justification because it is religious mysticism. There is already a consensus here that religion is intrinsically anti-rational and it's unnecessary to reach this consensus by fixating on one single custom and demonizing it into something it is not. You don't fight irrationality with irrationality.

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...it's unnecessary to reach this consensus by fixating on one single custom and demonizing it into something it is not.

I haven't mentioned religion. Unnecessary surgery against on a person without choice = bad.

It is up to you to prove that circumcision is so urgently necessary that you are justified in forcing it upon a child. It is not.

Edited by L-C
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I think the problem is a tendency to sanctify the phallus; equating even an inconsequential alteration as castration.

Isn't inconsequential a value choice best left to the individual doing the valuing?

Sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually.

--“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964.

But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment—just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!—an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value.

-- “The Meaning of Sex,” For the New Intellectual, 99

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The people who call for circumcision to be illegal are giving power to the government to prevent people from doing everything of comparable severity to their children. And since the bad consequences of circumcision are so rare (and no one here, no matter how passionately declaring that this is genital mutilation, offered any real evidence that children's lives are likely to be seriously impacted), you're pretty much giving power to the government over a massive ammount of things.

I think the power of government intervention into parenting should be limited to actual, demonstrable cases of abuse, abuse meaning that which will permanently damage a child.

Whatever is done must be positively justified.

Yep, that's exactly what Ayn Rand said. About government. About the citizenry at large however, she said the exact opposite: nothing has to be positively justified.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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I must say that I find it difficult to rise to these strong feelings evoked concerning male circumcision. As far as I recall, or just guessed, circumcision, like the eating of pork and other taboos, had some quite practical, hygienic rational backing it.

In the desert in those days, these measures were quite likely a life saver. Then it became justified as a commandment of God, and the rest was history.

Considering that religions of all sorts have been (or are) in the business of cutting off heads and other extremities; and what they have 'accomplished' in everything else, means I can't get too excited about a foreskin or two.

Now I think I'd better take my mutilated body, and slink out of here...

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The people who call for circumcision to be illegal are giving power to the government to prevent people from doing everything of comparable severity to their children. And since the bad consequences of circumcision are so rare (and no one here, no matter how passionately declaring that this is genital mutilation, offered any real evidence that children's lives are likely to be seriously impacted), you're pretty much giving power to the government over a massive ammount of things.

I think the power of government intervention into parenting should be limited to actual, demonstrable cases of abuse, abuse meaning that which will permanently damage a child.

Yep, that's exactly what Ayn Rand said. About government. About the citizenry at large however, she said the exact opposite: nothing has to be positively justified.

What about individual rights? Doesn't the government have the responsibility to protect the individual rights of the citizens?

I'd say it's a right to not have needless and senseless cosmetic surgery mandated on one individual by another. Or maybe you'd be fine with the possibility that any random person could molest or mutilate your body like that when you are not in a position to protect yourself.

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I think the power of government intervention into parenting should be limited to actual, demonstrable cases of abuse, abuse meaning that which will permanently damage a child.

Well, how are we defining permanent damage here? The fact that the foreskin is gone is permanent damage.

What if a parent cut off a large patch of skin on a child's arm for no reason? After a while, the skin would grow back, meaning no "permanent" damage was done. Should that be legal?

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I remember watching a documentary on female "circumcision" or female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice is done by women -- who had it done to themselves when they were young girls -- to young girls in what is considered to be an important rite of passage.

It is interesting how a practice, such as FGM or male circumcision, becomes acceptable and defended by those who have undergone it. The victims become the victimizers and the apologists for the practice.

As far as I know Female Genital Mutilation is practiced mostly by Muslims. As such you have to understand the underlying culture. Depending on the country, a Muslim woman is nothing without a man to marry her. If the men in a given region, social class, whatever don't deem an unmutilated woman worthy of marriage, that is incentive enough for a mother to mutilate her daughters on purpose to spare them, in her view, a fate worse than death. It's not entirely unlike honor kilings. The women who defend and/or apologize for this barbaric practice are not, in their eyes, either victims or victimizers.

Of course they are entirely wrong. A woman should not be the property of her husband, nor whould genital mutilation be an attractive feature. Those are the ideas that have to be fought, not the FGM itself.

This also shows how far apart circumsicion is from FGM. The former is at worst a minor annoyance, the latter is a deeply traumatic event that marks a woman as property forever. The former is wrong, but not egregiously wrong. The latter is an abomination.

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The word circumsicion really applies only to males. It may be considered mutilation, but not much more so than pierced ears. The circumcised penis is about equal to a pristine one. So circumcision, while done for wrong resons, is mostly harmless. Boys don't end up traumatized or having abnormal sex lives. Also it's done mostly by either doctors or people with some medical training, so the risks are very small. It's a minor issue.

So-called female circumsicion is different. Look it up online, as I don't have the stomach for discussing it. It can be appropriately called Female Genital Mutilation. It's done at an older age, it's painful, mostly carried out by untrained people with plenty of risks for infection, it affects the sexual experience adversely. It should be fought hard and it should be illegal to pergorm it on girls, with or without their consent (they wouldn't know juat what they'd be consenting to).

Please do not compare circumsicion to piercings. Piercings do not remove almost have the nerves of the ears. Boys end up with less feeling in their penis, but I guess that's not traumatising. It's only a minor issue if you feel parents have the right to mutilate their children for aesthetic reasons.

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Nature has left us, males at least, but likely females as well, with purposeless, useless bits of extra skin in our genital areas. It's a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmX6RdRNoqk. Besides, it has a long history and obviously hasn't caused any problems; there's no permanent damage. It's certainly not an egregious wrong; it's little different than piercing ears.

Too, if circumcisions are done in groups as a ritualized experience, it can be a

from boyhood to manhood. Who can be against boys becoming men?

If people try to forbid such procedures, who knows what else they'll be demanding in the name of the rights of children?

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I'd say it's a right to not have needless and senseless cosmetic surgery mandated on one individual by another. Or maybe you'd be fine with the possibility that any random person could molest or mutilate your body like that when you are not in a position to protect yourself.

No, I'm not fine with anyone doing that to me. In fact, if someone told me that I have to go to kindergarten and stay in a litle bench tomorrow, I would be very pissed. I'm an adult, so no one can make decisions for me.

Children, however, don't have the same rights as adults, because they lack the ability to decide for themselves. Instead, their parents make decisions for them. Not the government, their parents. Even though parents aren't perfect, the government should be limited to protecting children from real harm, which significantly affects their lives, since the government is even less fit to raise children than a couple 'o Jews.

The reason for this is exactly the same as the reason for all limits on government: the collective is neither qualified nor obligated to raise a child, but the individual parent is. The government should only step in if the parent is demonstrably neglecting his duties (of raising the child to become a viable adult), in which case they should lose their parental rights. Circumcision has not been demonstrated to prevent children from growing up into perfectly fine adults. In fact, you guys don't even seem to be trying to bring any evidence of circumcision hurting people.

Well, how are we defining permanent damage here? The fact that the foreskin is gone is permanent damage.

What if a parent cut off a large patch of skin on a child's arm for no reason? After a while, the skin would grow back,

Would it? I submit to you that no, it wouldn't. And the foresking being gone is not significant damage, because the foreskin is not significant. Skin on someone's arms is, and so is living your life without the extreme torture of someone skinning you alive.

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Nature has left us, males at least, but likely females as well, with purposeless, useless bits of extra skin in our genital areas. It's a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmX6RdRNoqk. Besides, it has a long history and obviously hasn't caused any problems; there's no permanent damage. It's certainly not an egregious wrong; it's little different than piercing ears.

Too, if circumcisions are done in groups as a ritualized experience, it can be a

from boyhood to manhood. Who can be against boys becoming men?

If people try to forbid such procedures, who knows what else they'll be demanding in the name of the rights of children?

Foreskin and the clitoris are not useless bits of extra skin. I'm not advocating rights of children, I'm advocating individual rights. Nobody has the right to mutilate or torture someone else, regardless of what society thinks or what rituals may be practised.

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Foreskin and the clitoris are not useless bits of extra skin. I'm not advocating rights of children, I'm advocating individual rights. Nobody has the right to mutilate or torture someone else, regardless of what society thinks or what rituals may be practised.

I assumed that my sarcasm would be obvious.

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Circumcision did, and still does, have some legitimate reasoning behind it. The concerns about hygiene and disease have some validity, especially when one considers some of the factors that scientific studies haven't necessarily addressed, like the effects that penile sensitivity can have on cleanliness.

The glans of young boys who are not circumcised can be much more sensitive to friction than the glans of boys who are circumcised (due to the fact that it is protected against friction by the foreskin), which can easily lead to avoiding washing, or to washing ineffectively, due the fact that washing can be very painful, even with something as delicate and seemingly frictionless as soap and water. Imagine having to wash your child's eyeballs with your finger or a soft washcloth, or asking him to do it himself. That's about the level of discomfort that uncircumcised boys can experience when their glans is washed, so you can imagine how they might resist washing.

Ineffective washing can lead to an accumulation of smegma, which has been suspected of being the cause, or a contributing cause, of a variety of ailments, including urinary tract infections and cancer. There have been studies on the issue, none of them conclusive as far as I've heard. Past studies have suggested a strong link between smegma accumulation and various medical issues, but some current studies suggest otherwise. As I understand it, the American Cancer Society currently believes that smegma is most likely not carcinogenic, but doesn't state conclusively that it has been proven to not cause cancer, or that its dense accumulation on the glans doesn't significantly but indirectly contribute to cancer or other diseases.

So, in short, there have been real concerns based on real medical issues. The fact that new studies may be leading to a better understanding of the exact value that circumcision may or may not have doesn't mean that actions based on the knowledge of the past were or are inappropriate.

J

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The reason for this is exactly the same as the reason for all limits on government: the collective is neither qualified nor obligated to raise a child, but the individual parent is. The government should only step in if the parent is demonstrably neglecting his duties (of raising the child to become a viable adult), in which case they should lose their parental rights. Circumcision has not been demonstrated to prevent children from growing up into perfectly fine adults. In fact, you guys don't even seem to be trying to bring any evidence of circumcision hurting people.

If a significant number of circumcised boys were experiencing and reporting chronic pain or dysfunction as a direct result of circumcision, that could be grounds for a ban. What is certainly not grounds is for someone to march into a police station and declare "I don't like what my Jewish neighbors are doing. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!"

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Cutting off the foreskin to keep the rest of the penis clean is like pulling teeth instead of brushing them.

We know that the foreskin is a normal, sensitive, functional part of the body.

When And Why Did Doctors In The U.S. Start Circumcising Babies?

Dr. Edell responds to various myths about circumcision in his article, which I mentioned previously, "Circumcision: A Closer Look"

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If a significant number of circumcised boys were experiencing and reporting chronic pain or dysfunction as a direct result of circumcision, that could be grounds for a ban. What is certainly not grounds is for someone to march into a police station and declare "I don't like what my Jewish neighbors are doing. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!"

It would have to be well above the number of children hurt in car accidents for instance, unless we're also advocating the government making it illegal to take children along on objectively unnecessary car trips. (like to church and back)

The obvious fact is: it is not. It would make more sense to let the government protect children from being driven around needlessly by their parents, than protecting them from circumcision. Not a lot of sense, but still more.

I assumed that my sarcasm would be obvious.

Your sarcasm is misplaced, since we're aguing against government bans on this religious ritual, not in favor of the ritual.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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