Fair comments, Boo! I think you're right to say the Rabbi and the parents who didn't allow their son to get chemotherapy are extreme, and therefore arguably bad, examples.

Rather, what I was saying about the horrible 'traditions' that are tolerated in Africa are fairer. I'm not comparing FGM to male circumcision at all, but they're both traditional practices and one of the reasons they continue - in the deserts of Africa and the hospitals of America - is because it's the status quo.

"It's what happened to my parents when they were born etc. etc" and fluffy medical or social reasons (FGM is advocated because it supposedly stops a girl being promiscuous. Male circumcision was originally advocated in the 19th century to discourage masturbation.)

Or the worst: "It looks nicer."

That one really annoys me, and it's used to defend both.

In both examples, you're not even REALLY allowed to even talk about it on 'home territory.' In America, if you argue against male circumcision, you're at risk of offending parents who've already had the procedure performed on their child. Similarly, in Africa, the WHO have been forced to rename Female Genital Mutilation at 'Female Genital Cutting' to avoid offending African parents and shutting down conversation about the procedure at all.

Maybe I won't change anybody's mind with this thread, but it is something that's positive to talk about, whatever your opinion.

Sorry, Sir, but it is you who are incorrect about foreskins and the contraction of HIV. Here is a direct quote from the CDC website, on this fact sheet: link

"Several types of research have documented that male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV acquisition by men during penile-vaginal sex."

Whatever the merits of anything else said in this thread, being circumcised does indeed reduce a man's risk during unprotected penile-vaginal sex.

That being said, condoms, when used correctly, offer far more protection than does circumcision.

"And a women who has had a 'clitectomy' can still be sexual being - there's the g-spot and the labia etc."

To me, that would be like saying "Let's just cut off the penis. I mean, you still have a prostate."

Labia =/= sexual organ. Many women can't or don't have g-spot orgasms. The clit is an extremely important aspect of a female's sexual life, and it's unfair to say that there are "ways around it".

I would just like to point out that the age of consent is eighteen, not eight. Just because they're eight years old doesn't mean they fully understand what they're agreeing to. Yes, they have much more say than a newborn, that goes without saying.

I agreed to something when I was eight years old, because I was "old enough" to understand. Honestly, now I regret it. I had no idea exactly what I was agreeing to then, and I wish I would have waited a few years to make a more informed decision.

FGM and religious circumcision are still different. FGM is a social construct made to keep women "faithful." It really does not have a medical basis, it's just a patriarchal construct used to keep women beneath men (I'm not trying to be a feminazi, that's just the way it is). If there ARE medical benefits to FGM, any at all, I would like to know them.

Whereas religious circumcision, like most religious practices, arose for a practical purpose: they didn't have the sanitation we have nowadays, so it was healthier to have the foreskin removed for easier cleaning. Just like they were told to only eat animals who chewed their own cud or fish who had scales and gills, because obviously, if they can put their own food back through their bodies and survive in the water they breath, they're most likely not poisoned and are therefore safe to eat. As time went on, of course, these practices took on a religious significance; in Islam, for example, circumcision marks you as a true follower of Allah, and you are rarely considered a "true" Muslim unless you are circumcised. It's similar to Baptism in many Christian sects: it arose from, basically, the need to bathe to keep yourself clean.

FGM has always been used to prevent promiscuity, whereas the reasons for promoting male circumcision have changed throughout the years. The concept was not original in the 19th century (where they advocated all kinds of crazy things to prevent "sexual deviance", btw, including the removal of the clitoris to prevent female masturbation a la FGM, so I don't know if that century really counts as a sane one).

I agree that it's silly to circumcise a child just because you think it'll "look nicer" when they're older, but I really can't rag on sanitary circumcisions performed for religious purposes.

Hi Miss Kiss This,

In discussing this with more and more people, I do agree that the example I gave was a bad one and it's probably impossible to find a direct equivalent, even hypothetically, between surgery on a little girl's genitals and male circumcision. WHO list Type 1b circumcision (the removal of the clitoral hood) as a physical equivalent, but even that's not the case as it involves 'digging around' and is a far more traumatic procedure.

That's why I tried to preface all this as HYPOTHETICAL.

A lot of scholars suggest using mammary glands as a better equivalent. If a little girl comes from a family with a strong genetic disposition towards breast cancer - is it fair to remove her mammary glands at birth to 'protect' her from a 50% chance of having breast cancer later in life.

Well, considering I'm not a very religious person, I DO rag on sanitary circumcisions performed for religious reasons. I don't see why the 'religious' reasons give a carte blanche to do something that violates the genital integrity of a child.

Do you equally support an individual's 'religious freedom' to openly discriminate against gay people because the homosexual lifestyle contradicts their interpretation of the Bible?

'Religious freedoms' are only acceptable when they don't infringe on the freedoms of another person - including a child.

Hi Luscious Lily!

The reports the CDC using are unequivocal about the benefits in Africa. But America isn't Africa.

In the USA, 88% of male infections are from drug use or gay sex, neither of which circumcision prevents. The rest, as you pointed out, are more likely to be prevented by use of condoms than circumcision.

The CDC figures are useless. If circumcision REALLY reduces HIV infections, how come the USA (where 79% of men are circumcised) has a higher HIV infection percentage than, say, France, where 90% of the men are UNCIRCUMCISED and there is heavy immigration from Africa (from some countries with up to 15% of residents HIV positive.)

The CDC facts and figures are being taken out of context and are objectively useless.

I agree with you.

Luscious Lily: Those "facts" are not even proven to be correct. If you do not know statistics, then you cannot say whether those little tidbits of information are even relevant to this. Being circumcised has nothing to do with contracting a disease, I will say it again. Whether you're circumcised or not, you will contract a disease, like I said, if you are risky and have sex with people who have these diseases. You quoted something that didn't even make sense - how does circumcision have to do with getting a disease from someone? Do you honestly believe that if a person has a foreskin or not they will either get or not get HIV/AIDS from a person with the disease? It makes no logical sense at all.

If I have sex, vaginal, anal, or even sometimes oral (though not very common), with a person who has any STD, I will receive that STD from them. It doesn't even matter whether you have a penis or not. You can contract these STDs from a person if you have sex in certain ways.

Talking about this is not even relevant to the topic of getting circumcisions.

I honestly cannot believe that the CDC would have such obviously incorrect "research"- as they like to call it- on their site.

It's plain common sense! The foreskin of a penis does not even stay over the head of the penis when it is interacting in either anal, or vaginal intercourse. Saying that a foreskin reduces anyone's risk of contracting HIV is ridiculous.

Circumcision should not happen period to any child unless there is reasonable cause- i.e., treating disease. Other than that, it should be up to the child or young adult when they are mature enough (or at least of legal age) to know what is going to happen, what it is that circumcision does and other facts.

If somebody doesn't like gay people, I'm not going to stop them. I can't. They have a right to their opinion, even if I don't like it. I'm a religious lesbian, and they have a right to hate me for that. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but that's their right.

I'm talking about active discrimination - refusing to rent out your hall for their same-sex commitment ceremony, or refusing to photograph a gay marriage. Real life examples of people openly discriminating against people because of their sexuality.

The religious people argue that it's their 'religious freedom' to refuse to serve people who are 'sinful' according to their interpretation. Do you agree with that?

Because it strikes me that they were using the same excuse 60 years ago to hang 'No Coloreds' signs on their restaurant doors (being black was interpreted by fundamentalists as 'the mark of Cain.'

Religious freedoms are all very well, until they actively contradict the freedoms of somebody else. Circumcision, as far as I'm concerned, does exactly that.

I've discussed my views on religion in a previous thread--it should be a few pages back.

PS: the people who put up "No Coloreds" signs were, 9 times out of 10, not racist because it was the "mark of Cain." They were racist because years of slavery and servitude taught them that African-Americans were inferior. White traders who stole slaves from Africa didn't treat them badly just because of "religion," they treated the Africans (and the Far Asians, who are not black, and the Indians, who are often lighter-skinned, especially in the north) as inferior because they lived in a way that was different from them entirely and, therefore, they considered them "animals," subhuman. "Oh, the women bare their breasts? UNCIVILIZED." In fact, many African-American slaves were devoutly Christian, and their loyal church following still exists. The racism was driven primarily by sociology; the collection of slaves and the colonization of many nations was not a Crusade.

PPS: it's probably more apt to point out that the "uncivilized" thing was just an excuse to profit off of other countries' resources. It always has been an excuse for human greed, and it always will be. "You don't wear pants? Well, then, we have the right to take over your country and enslave you."

Basically, people will continue to be assholes with or without religion's help.

Well, it is a VERY well documented fact that many/most of those who opposed desegregation and the civil rights movement identified as evangelical Christians. The Ku Klux Klan emerged from the fundamentalist Christian sects.

And having studied it extensively during my joint honors in history, I think it's worth pointing out that the major justification for colonization and imperialism was always to 'spread the word' of Christianity.

The fact that it was highly profitable and 'empire building' was either a nice bonus, the secret motivation for it, or just the reason it was embraced so enthusiastically.

But to pretend religion (the superiority of the Christian faith over all other 'savage' religions) wasn't given as the main motivation is objectively false.

The reason I have such problems with evangelicals claiming that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin today is because many of them 'justified' their vile racist ways in the 1950s and 1960s by using scripture to 'explain' why mixed marriages etc. were a sin. Their real motivation, as you correctly highlighted, was basic racism, bigotry and years of considering themselves superior to Africans - but that's not what many of them claimed.

That being said, while many evangelicals used their faith to defend their racist attitudes, it's arguable that the ENTIRE drive for emancipation arose from the devout (mostly northern) Christians who saw that slavery was a sin and hammered that home to regular folk until it stuck.

So religion represents both the best and the worst of the debate.

And before I get all smugly superior, being an Atheist, it's worth pointing out that so-called scientists and eggheads perverted Darwin's theory of evolution and an incompetent grasp of science to argue that blacks were 'genetically inferior' right up until the 1950s. We're not any better.

But that's all beside my point - that if male circumcision is wrong, it's utterly wrong to allow people to continue to do it because of their religion.

Interestingly, over a third of the anti-circumcision activists are actually Jewish! link

This is seriously one of the worst things I have ever read. I feel absolutely horrible for him.