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#41
10-21-2007, 02:04 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Report: Male circumcision cuts AIDS risk [/ QUOTE ] So what? Can't people make decisions like circumcision when they become sexually active? Why does it have to be done at birth when the infant has no choice in the matter? [/ QUOTE ] I'm glad it was done before I could remember it. [/ QUOTE ] Define necessary. I'm glad I had one. So you think it was necessary? [/ QUOTE ] 
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#42
10-21-2007, 02:15 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Report: Male circumcision cuts AIDS risk [/ QUOTE ] So what? Can't people make decisions like circumcision when they become sexually active? Why does it have to be done at birth when the infant has no choice in the matter? [/ QUOTE ] I'm glad it was done before I could remember it. [/ QUOTE ] Define necessary. I'm glad I had one. So you think it was necessary? [/ QUOTE ] [/ QUOTE ] Eh, this is how circumcision arguments always turn out. Circumcised guys are always like "I don't know, seems to be working out pretty good for me" and uncircumcised guys all say "ZOMG MUTILATION!" But it seems like the only arguments for infant circumcision are paternalistic, and I'm not a big fan of paternalism.
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#43
10-21-2007, 02:21 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
It is amazing how the red herring of a medical argument is presented to hide the primary religious/aesthetic reason for doing circumcision.
It is amazing that the human race didn't go extinct before the medical necessity of circumcision was discovered. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
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#44
10-21-2007, 02:22 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Its a cultural thing. Reading the responses here, one thing comes across very strongly: We can accept weird Western cultural things, but we reject weird third world cultural things. This forum is full of a heavy Western bias. [/ QUOTE ] Not really. East, West, North, South, children should not be permanently mutilated by anyone without a legitimate medically necessary reason to do so, like a gangrenous arm or something. I have little concern about what consenting adults do to themselves, however. [/ QUOTE ] So a culture has no right to self-determination but a person does?
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#46
10-21-2007, 02:31 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Its a cultural thing. Reading the responses here, one thing comes across very strongly: We can accept weird Western cultural things, but we reject weird third world cultural things. This forum is full of a heavy Western bias. [/ QUOTE ] Not really. East, West, North, South, children should not be permanently mutilated by anyone without a legitimate medically necessary reason to do so, like a gangrenous arm or something. I have little concern about what consenting adults do to themselves, however. [/ QUOTE ] So a culture has no right to self-determination but a person does? [/ QUOTE ] Sort of, I guess. The nature of my objection to the mutilation in question is that it is done on children who have no say in the matter. When a 'procedure' that will have life-long consequences is done on children, the burden should be on the one attempting it to show that it is in needed, needed in the medical sense, not the cultural. In general, I'm not a fan of 'culture' over individual choices, no.
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#47
10-21-2007, 02:32 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
It is amazing how the red herring of a medical argument is presented to hide the primary religious/aesthetic reason for doing circumcision. It is amazing that the human race didn't go extinct before the medical necessity of circumcision was discovered. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] I think most people understand that it was originally a religious/aesthetic motivation for performing circumcisions. I think most people would admit that it is STILL primarily a religious/aesthetic motivation for performing them. But as long as you can come up with a legit medical justification, then it doesnt really matter WHAT your reasons are, right? IOW parents are allowed to force their kids to go to church because that hasn't been shown to cause death or cancer. Parents arent allowed to prevent their kids from getting medical treatments or blood transfusions because that HAS been shown to lead to death. We allow parents to abuse kids in lots of subtle ways (and I'm using abuse lightly here, obviously) and we call it parenting. I think that from a legal standpoint it makes a lot of sense to err WAY on the side of "letting parents do what they want to their kids." That means you have to show that something unequivocally harms children before you can start stopping parents from doing it. I dont think this is the case with male circumcision but thats the point of the medical arguments. None of this has anything to do with whether or not a parent SHOULD do it. Its more about justifying the parents ego. I would never recommend that a parent get this procedure done on their child.
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#48
10-21-2007, 02:33 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Male circumcision most likely has positive (physical) side-effects. [/ QUOTE ] No. [/ QUOTE ] Net or at all? I think you can say it has no NET positive effects but the specific positive effects of preventing HIV transmission seem fairly solid to me.
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#49
10-21-2007, 02:54 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
But it seems like the only arguments for infant circumcision are paternalistic, and I'm not a big fan of paternalism. [/ QUOTE ] Weren't you arguing that "infanticide should be acceptable" (I assume you meant legal, not acceptable), that children have no rights and that they aren't people? If you don't care that the child is killed, what do you care if they are circumsized? It's fine to be against paternalism when it's adults treating other adults like children, but all of parenting is "paternalistic" by definition.
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#50
10-21-2007, 02:55 PM
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Re: Should female circumcision be legal in the US?
[ QUOTE ]
Sort of, I guess. The nature of my objection to the mutilation in question is that it is done on children who have no say in the matter. When a 'procedure' that will have life-long consequences is done on children, the burden should be on the one attempting it to show that it is in needed, needed in the medical sense, not the cultural. In general, I'm not a fan of 'culture' over individual choices, no. [/ QUOTE ] What makes this your choice to make though? The choice to force a culture to adopt a cultural practice cannot be seen as anything but an invasion and should not be done lightly, IMO. I think this is an important point that is missed in AC theory.
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