Should mens' genitals be sliced up?

[NotAllThere]

The difference between FGM and circumcision is that FGM is about controlling women by curtailing their ability to experience sexual pleasure, and reinforcing the view that women exist solely for the sexual satisfaction of men and for producing babies. Millions of men have been circumcised, very few indeed have had any adverse reaction to it. The situation for women who've undergone FGM is rather different.

I'm not saying that circumcision is right, but rather it is a separate debate. The bringing together of FGM and circumcision, in my view, dilutes campaigns against FGM, and is a (fairly irrelevant) distraction.

Charlotte Proudman has shown that she's probably not really a very good lawyer, not because she responded in robust terms to Alexander Carter Silk, but because she resorted to the Twitterati. That, in my view, was unprofessional and childish.

[SueEllen]

I'm failing to see where there is a difference, except in degree.

There is a difference which you refuse to recognise because you are acting like everything is black and white.

I threw in stuff about getting my ears pierced for the first time to make the point that parents "abuse" their children by degrees.

Some have no serious side effects but others have long term mental and serious physical consequences.

Men who are circumcised still have a fully functioning penis, girls and women who under go FGM can have complications in every part of her reproductive life even before she has even become pregnant.

(Oh my ears are fine but they did cause my mother a lot of problems as I could only wear gold earrings. )

[Zero Liability]

There is a difference which you refuse to recognise because you are acting like everything is black and white.

I'm not "acting" like anything is black and white, in fact I have acknowledged multiple times that they are different in degree of harm caused.

Circumcision can lead to loss of sensitivity in the penis, reducing capacity for sexual enjoyment, not to mention that it can cause psychological scarring in some instances. Also, this entire discussion is in connection to what the lady in the OP said.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Men who are circumcised still have a fully functioning penis,

depends on what you mean by fully functioning.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Also, this entire discussion is in connection to what the lady in the OP said.

Precisely. She said that if men & women were equal men would have their genitals chopped up.

The reality is that hardly any women suffer it, relatively speaking, because it's almost universally accepted as barbaric.

Meanwhile boys suffer genital mutilation (the degree is really besides the point - it's significant enough and damaging enough to be worthy of 'mutilation') and this is almost universally accepted as being ok.

We all know without a doubt that a similar procedure done to little girls would not be tolerated.

So that is the relevant point.


That aside, I'm less bothered about which demographic gets it worse under what circumstances. All I care about is that people get it into their head that the concept of physical abuse applies to children as much as it does adults. Without that first principle the whole rest of the discussion about FGM or anything similar is absurdly lacking in credence.

Someone earlier said that talking about circumcision in the same context as FGM is bad because it dilutes the significance of FGM, etc. That's a very childish understanding of the situation. They're the same thing as robbing a house is the same as robbing a bank. That kind of relativism is precisely what nourishes the barbarism we see around the world today.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Nope.

If you tell people to stop cutting skin of their boys willies you will be called antisemitic and be given a lesson on the Holocaust if they are feeling kind or ripped to shreds otherwise.

Yeah, they;re precisely the savages i'm talking about. Stop pandering to superstitious abusers and the rest of the world won't see a contradiction when their morality is criticised.

Really... if pictures of the repercussions (and it's a big mistake to think that circumcision has none just because they are invisible - but that's besides the point) is really whats needed to convince people to stop abusing their kids, then the world is too ****ed to be rescued.

Luckily it's not what's needed.

[Halo Jones]

Lawyer who shamed barrister over 'sexist' LinkedIn email believes men make workplaces a 'repugnant world' - Telegraph “When women enter the male realm whether law, politics, or a construction site, they find themselves in a repugnant world in which their only means of survival is by undergoing a fundamental transformation leaving them with little opportunity to make any change.”

Actually having experience in this matter I can honestly say that construction has been the least sexist industry I have worked in.

Charlotte Proudman has shown that she's probably not really a very good lawyer, not because she responded in robust terms to Alexander Carter Silk, but because she resorted to the Twitterati. That, in my view, was unprofessional and childish.

+1

[d000hg]

Although being far more common so as to make FGM statistically insignificant - and yet this mutilation is not even questioned in the mainstream. It's male privilege don't you know.

I think the point being made which is valid in my opinion is that

if you consider circumcision to be like someone poking a child's eye out and FGM to be like someone poking both eyes out & chopping their legs off they both obviously constitute assault & ABH. Why is circumcision not treated as assault?

Circumcision isn't like poking a child's eye out though. Done as a baby it's pretty insignificant, and importantly doesn't screw the person up for life.

[meridian]

Circumcision isn't like poking a child's eye out though. Done as a baby it's pretty insignificant, and importantly doesn't screw the person up for life.

Apart from the dozen cases of herpes and two deaths

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/op...alth.html?_r=0

And how do you know that it doesn't screw a person up? Are there studies on the psychological effects of circumcision? Given the millions of men that have had this procedure done on them, even if less than 1% find some level of trauma in later life then that's still tens of thousands of men.

[d000hg]

Compared to what a baby boy goes through a week before the traditional Jewish circumcision age, we should be saying natural child-birth is the most severe form of infant abuse