'Circumcision: cut the crap'

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2009-10-20 21:16

Article here. Excerpt:

'In comparing FGM with infant male circumcision, Epstein is seeking to establish a moral equivalency between the two. FGM is not just, as he writes, ‘an article of faith for international development agencies’; it’s also a moral absolute he want to cash in on, even to the point of referring to it by the outmoded term ‘female circumcision’ so that it sounds comparable to male circumcision. If FGM is seen as a violation of the human rights of women and girls and male circumcision is, as Epstein would have it, just the same, then anyone who circumcises their son is violating his human rights.
...
By counterpoising the ‘personal autonomy’ of an infant to the judgment of his parents, Epstein and others who campaign against circumcision reduce the relationship between parents and their sons to one moment; a moment that forever defines the child as victim and the parent as victimiser regardless even of what the boy himself thinks about it later in his life. Once a victim, always a victim.'

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Comments

McDermott says,

"There isn’t really overwhelming evidence for or against infant circumcision, which makes this issue quite unambiguously a matter of preference"

You could use the same mentality to justify female circumcision...so I assume McDermott does not object to, say, middle eastern countries that engage in that practice.

-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Wed, 2009-10-21 05:54

...when women give, by way of dismissal, this kind of underhanded endorsement of infant circumcision. Whatever happened to "my body, my business"? The author, a mother, probably feels a bit of guilt for having subjected her sons to it, and for her own peace of mind needs to downplay the proven negatives of the procedure.

Imagine a man defending the lesser forms of FGM in print!

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Submitted by Hunchback on Wed, 2009-10-21 08:48

....of a mans body should be removed?

How the fuck would she know what the effects of circumcision are on a man? Is she a cut hermaphrodite?

Not just men either though. In virtually every place on Earth that practices female circumcision, adult women are the ones who perform the procedure.

women just like to play God I guess.

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Submitted by Paragon on Thu, 2009-10-22 11:14