San Francisco considering banning circumcision

[Jonluw]

Well? Which is it? Circumcision isn't a heinous act or my parents are awful monsters who should be severely punished for abusing me. Which one you want to stand by?

I don't know if you're trying to be sarcastic, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

No was being quite serious. There is no false dilemma only a very real situation. Look through the posts. You'll see people basically saying that anyone who does this to their child are barbarians and guilty of mutilating their children in some sort of perverted form of child abuse. So either my parents are child abusing monsters who ruined me or they aren't. You can't argue that "well.. from now ON, they would be." or "I mean some OTHER people's parents."

It's a simple thing. Yes or no. Are my parents monsters or not? Can't have it both ways. You either think every circumcised child's parents are monsters (including any relatives or friends of yours) or you don't. There's no middle ground here to tip toe around, if you are going to take that stance.

Your parents were affected by the society they grew up in. You can't fault a person for following social norms no matter how despicable those norms are.

It's the same reason you can't call an old Aztek a monster for partaking in human sacrifice. You may very well disapprove of the practice, but the individuals involved aren't monsters. They act in the best intention.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

They're monsters in the sense that they did something to you when you weren't aware of the consequences..

I'm sure they're nice people and think the world of you.. but it's your.. y'know..

I'm curious.. what consequences? What have I lost that I miss? What did I lose other than the possibility of a choice that I might have made anyway later on? I lost many "choices" when I was a kid. I lose many "choices" today.

Eh, nevermind. Like I told Father Time, it's just too time consuming to engage in this sort of discussion any further. Nobody is going to change their minds or ideology here. Nothing to do but agree to disagree.

 

[moretimethansense]

Here's the thing from my perspective. If you are an uncircumcised man or a woman saying that it is morally wrong to perform circumcisions you might want to check your credentials right now.

Of all the circumcised men how many complain about it? Not too many in my experience. And don't even try to bring up "female circumcision" it is not remotely comparable. That is an example of men perpetrating a form of social repression on women. Circumcision is usually done because the parents genuinely believe it's in their child's best interest or for honest religious convictions that you have no right to deny.

Less pleasurable? Apparently women find sex more pleasurable than men... do you feel awful and wish you were born as a girl just because of that? No probably not. If it is less pleasurable it's not noticeable or worth mentioning.

And finally saying that you should only be able to choose to have it done at 18 is absurd. If it is going to be done it should be done when they are a baby and will have no memory of it. If it hurt I don't care, I sure as hell can't remember it.

I am in fact a circumcised man.

They tend not to complain because they don't know any different.
And yes, you most certainly CAN compare them, FGM is undoubtably worse but it is the same thing on a different scale, both prcedures remove a sizable portion of the recipient's genetalia because their parents decided that it would be the best thing for them.

Your damn right it's less pleasurable, not only do you lose a large section of sensitive flesh, you also tend to develop something like a callous on the tip of yuor penis further reducing sensitivity, whilst I can't compare my sensitivity to that of an uncircumsized male I can say with some degree of authoroty that for the amount of nerve endings in there it is far less sensitive than it ought to be.

As for the last part, allow me to pose a hypothosis: would it be acceptable for the parents of a child to give it a tatoo at birth?
After all unlike a circumcision a tatoo IS a purely cosmetic change, and carries an even lower risk of death to the child, plus this has the bonus that the child won't remember the pain of recieveing it.

 

[Jonluw]

As for the last part, allow me to pose a hypothosis: would it be acceptable for the parents of a child to give it a tatoo at birth?
After all unlike a circumcision a tatoo IS a purely cosmetic change, and carries an even lower risk of death to the child, plus this has the bonus that the child won't remember the pain of recieveing it.

That, and you get the funky effect of the tattoo growing over time, like one of those novelty rubber thingies that you put in water and then watch them grow.

You could make, like, a tattoo of a tiny pony, and then the pony grows up with the child. Awesome!

 

[BGH122]

It should be a right because: 1: It is a religious practice, 2: It can keep it from getting certain diseases, and 3: It makes sex more pleasurable

Your right with all of those..except with number 3. As something who is un-circumcised, I can say that's false.

Unless you've been both circumcised and uncircumcised during sexual activity (which you haven't, unless you've found some magical method of regrowing your foreskin) then you can make no such claim. The claim is true, but the justification isn't valid.

There's also extremely scant evidence that circumcision prevents any diseases. It was touted for a while that it lowered HPV and AIDS chances, but that's been disproved.

Also, I hate how there's a massive cry about female genital mutilation (clitoral hood circumcision etc), but no-one gives a fuck if exactly the same is done to a boy. Double standards really irk me.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Hmm.. the consequence of sex actually hurting a bit later on in life, decreased sexual pleasure..

Plus, some people say it looks like something (uncircumcised) you'd find in the soil or attached to a dog so.. you missed out on that opportunity (out of curiosity WTF is in their soil?!) y'know.. to look like a naked dog?

haha I've never heard of that?! I've never had anything missing, and since there's very little way to quantify whether having it is more pleasurable than not or vice versa unless you happen to be someone who had it and then had it removed as an adult (Someone earlier in the thread actually claimed to be one of these people and HE said it improved sex, so... it's hard to say.) I don't see WHERE I'm going to get "pain" from sex from.. it's not like my skin is skin tight around the head.. in fact, the older I get, it seems the LOOSER the skin gets to the point that at the rate things are going I'll probably have a semi-sheath again by my mid-40's.

Plus, quite frankly, I'd rather screw like a dog than look like one?

 

[moretimethansense]

As for the last part, allow me to pose a hypothosis: would it be acceptable for the parents of a child to give it a tatoo at birth?
After all unlike a circumcision a tatoo IS a purely cosmetic change, and carries an even lower risk of death to the child, plus this has the bonus that the child won't remember the pain of recieveing it.

That, and you get the funky effect of the tattoo growing over time, like one of those novelty rubber thingies that you put in water and then watch them grow.

You could make, like, a tattoo of a tiny pony, and then the pony grows up with the child. Awesome!

Now the rational person in me wants me to shake my head in disgust at the idea that anyone would even consider that it would be acceptable even as a joke.

The geek in me however wants to have a child just so I could try that out, probably a good thing that it wouldn't be allowed.

 

[Ampersand]

Should parents be aloud to mutilate their children to appease their imaginary friend. Probably not, frankly i'm surprised no one got on this sooner.

 

[Jonluw]

As for the last part, allow me to pose a hypothosis: would it be acceptable for the parents of a child to give it a tatoo at birth?
After all unlike a circumcision a tatoo IS a purely cosmetic change, and carries an even lower risk of death to the child, plus this has the bonus that the child won't remember the pain of recieveing it.

That, and you get the funky effect of the tattoo growing over time, like one of those novelty rubber thingies that you put in water and then watch them grow.

You could make, like, a tattoo of a tiny pony, and then the pony grows up with the child. Awesome!

Now the rational person in me wants me to shake my head in disgust at the idea that anyone would even consider that it would be acceptable even as a joke.

The geek in me however wants to have a child just so I could try that out, probably a good thing that it wouldn't be allowed.

Make Bronydom an official religion, and maybe they'll let you...

 

[LondonBeer]

Gee excuses for child abuse ? Awesome SF you go dudes ban that insane shit.

Circumsion does not make you a Jew so religion is out BTW.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Your damn right it's less pleasurable, not only do you lose a large section of sensitive flesh, you also tend to develop something like a callous on the tip of yuor penis further reducing sensitivity

I've never noticed any such lack of pleasure, and I pull quite a bit of the ol' wool, if you catch my drift.

I also have no such "callous" noticeable anywhere on the tip of my happy spelunker. And trust me, I've examined it many a time.

Fair enough.

...This is the last thing I expected.

I know what it's like to lose all interest in a debate though, so it's not much of a victory for me (no offense).

And since this is a parting shot, I'd like to say that I do like having a lot of freedoms but my general rule of thumb is "it should be fine until you harm people who didn't consent, after that it gets messy".

I'm also circumcised and I don't mind too much, although if I got to choose, I'd probably go uncircumcised.

I can agree with that, except for the uncircumcised bit. While I confess I'd have a bit of curiosity, I'm wholly comfortable with my streamlined member. If I could choose to modify myself, uncircumcision is the last thing I'd change. I'd probably prefer to be born white instead. Life would have been far easier.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Uncircumcised penises are creepy. Just sayin.

 

[Kurokami]

It's not the parents' penis. Let the boy reach age 18 and then decide.

Let's take it a step further, let's chuck all children into a big communist tub of abandoned children and let them develop exactly as they would like.

You have to grow up with your genetics, why should it be any different if you inherit religion and decide to alter it later in life? If you can't be proud of it than too fucking bad, there are plenty of other things that are comparable to this.