San Francisco may outlaw circumcision.

blissed · 14-11-10 21:35:56

With no exceptions for the parent's religion. 7000 signitures are needed to put it on the ballet. Hope it happens and is passed.

Lloyd Shofield, the proposal’s author wrote:

It’s a man’s body and…his body doesn’t belong to his culture, his government, his religion or even his parents. It’s his decision.

http://www.byvideo.info/san-francisco-c … ber-video/

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olgutshotwilly · 16-11-10 22:27:18

It's a good thing Big Brother knows what is best for us. All praise Big Brother making our decisions for us.

It's not as if we should be able to think for ourselves or make our own decisions.

blissed · 16-11-10 22:51:57

Exactly. When we're 18 we can decide if we want any non essential irreversible surgery. Circumcision can be performed at any age.

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Damien742 · 17-11-10 02:27:06

It's a barbaric tradition, especially when done to babies.
In the name of religion? That's just twisted. Tho I am biast, I don't like any religion really..
I was about 20 when I had it done, for medical reasons. I do wish there had been some other sollution though cause I kind of wish I had the skin back..

TZO2K10 · 21-11-10 04:12:02

Damien742 wrote:

It's a barbaric tradition, especially when done to babies.
In the name of religion? That's just twisted. Tho I am biast, I don't like any religion really..
I was about 20 when I had it done, for medical reasons. I do wish there had been some other sollution though cause I kind of wish I had the skin back..

At least you enjoyed it for 19+ yrs I however, had no choice, and my parents were fuckin' episcopalian to boot!

Another reason I can't stand normal people!

Damien742 · 22-11-10 12:47:19

And what do you consider "normal" people?

blissed · 23-11-10 17:27:23

I think he means blind conformism.

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viva · 24-11-10 01:08:19

i dont want the government telling me what i can and can't do with my own baby short of the heavy hitters ie. dont kill it, dont leave it in the sun for 8 hrs, dont have sex with it or let anyone else have sex with it.

ive been with many men, both circumcised and uncircumcised and the general concensus is that men like their cocks the way they are, the way their mom and dad decided they would be. just as their parents decided their exposure to education, types of food, music, and defined them in all all ways as little tiny human beings to grow into big ones.

if anything, lets outlaw television. thats killing your little boys faster than any little lack of cockskin. let's outlaw unhealthy, unadventurous feeding, let's outlaw oversanitation of children, let's outlaw video games while the sun's out, twitter at school, let's outlaw cellphones at the dinner table. fuck.

i know many many parents who, because of their religion and culture, would be seriously disturbed if they were not allowed to have a brit milah for their baby boy.

circumcision, while not my favorite style for a penis, is not the end of the fucking world and a lot of girls and guys like cock better like that, if only because theyre used to it. its important that while recognising a man's right to his foreskin, we dont compare circumcision to a full cliterectomy - they are different things. pleasure and healthy sexuality are still possible with circumcision and there are benefits, whether or not they outweigh the negative consequences.

fuck off goverment, don't tell me what to do, and i'll make decisions for my own, on my own. i realise that my point of veiw is unpopular and you boys consider circumcision barbaric and cruel - and it pretty much is - but make it illegal?? this is not how to solve problems!

the way to change the general trend towards unnecesary circumsion is through education and communication, not just making a blanket law against it. that is how we get back alley rabbis performing bris with rusty razors and fucking rubbing alcohol.

i am not quite coherent as it is early and i just spilled the better part of my coffee on my dress, but hopefully my point comes across. for the record, i would rather die than circumcise my own future baby boy.
-v

blissed · 24-11-10 03:34:00

It's clear that a lot of people are satisfied with their successful circumcision, but every operation involves a certain amount of risk and I'm sure this legislation is designed to protect those people who won't have a successful outcome. Those unsuccessful outcomes can't be compared to watching television or playing computer games.They range from a penis being completely mutilated by a cauterizing machine to the much more common removal of too much skin, causing unpleasant to painful erections and intercourse. People don't get their babies circumcised because they don't love them, they do, and if their child later regrets the operation or the operation goes wrong they feel as much mental anguish and regret as their child.

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viva · 24-11-10 05:49:28

There are laws in place concerning how circumcisions are performed depending on where you live. I can't speak for hospital operations, but a jewish bris is performed at home by a mohel, whose whole life revolves around doing circumcisions in the cleanest and least painful fashion - ie no strapping down, no clamps or machines etc.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (1990) reported a complication rate of 0.19 percent when circumcision is performed by a physician. When performed by a trained mohel, the rate falls to 0.13 percent or about 1 in 1000. When a complication occurs, it is usually excessive bleeding, which is easily correctable. No other surgical procedure can boast such figures for complication-free operations."

Don't have time at the moment to find more information, but I think that the law is less about complications with the procedure later in life, and more about mens' rights.
v

blissed · 24-11-10 19:19:27

You seemed to be concerned for people you know who want to practice routine infant circumsision even though you seem to be agreeing that it's barbaric.

Within most ethnicities and religions there are various schools of thought where respectful reasoned debate is valued, and there, I feel the points and ethical issues are just as valid too. Probably reform, progressive Judaism and secular Israel and possibly parts of Sunni and Sufi Islam would be receptive. If I was part of one of those communities I'd be debating to make non-indicated infant circumcision illegal in those arenas too.

I think complication rates would need to be nil to overcome the ethical problem. There are some unfortunate people who have permanent complications. So even 1 person who has permanent complications from an unnecessary unelected procedure is too many and that unfortunate persons predicament doesn't become acceptable because they're not me. I can't see how a doctor can argue that an unnecessary unelected procedure is ethical and doesn't break their hippocratic oath. People who've had it done as adults have told me it's painful, there's always a lot of bleeding because a large blood vessel is severed and pain and trauma in the sexual organs during early cognitive and emotion development seems counter intuitive to healthy development.

So if I found myself as part of a community where circumcision is religiously important, or if that community formed part of British society I'd make the case with genuine respect and investment and say, I think true religious belief is a matter of free conscience. wouldn't it be good to ethically align legal practice with the hippocratic oath and respect for a persons future adult choices.

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shara_c · 24-11-10 21:38:21

I think it should be made illegal simply because there is no scientific proof that it's unhygienic and therefore an unnecessary procedure. Religions can just alter their belief systems to fit the information age which currently we're living in. Parents having their babies genitals mutilated is just like parents getting their toddlers ears pierced.

viva · 25-11-10 02:15:27

shara_c wrote:

Religions can just alter their belief systems to fit the information age which currently we're living in.

Hehe! then first can gay people get married and we can smoke pot and stop saying we pledge allegiance to the flag under god? i don't mean to play flippant but what you're proposing is a much greater overhaul than just "making things illegal" will accomplish. breaking the law isn't the big deterrent that lobbyists seem to think it is.

and what will be the penalty for an at home bris performed by a mohel? do you lose your child? pay the government with your diaper money? go to jail? who takes care of that snipped little babyface?

it's easy for atheistic or non-religious people to just say that "religions can alter their belief systems." There are epistemological values that remain valid even though you cannot quantify them based on your own personal systems of belief. If you can give this a lot of objective thought, imagining how thousands of years of tradition can color and impact a family lineage, and how that may be important to some even if its not important to you, then we can start solving problems.

Look up the brit shalom - there are jews who believe circumcision is not for them, and yet want to bring their sons into the world the way their tradition says is best. there are symbolic alternatives. There are options for education, while still being observant, but making a blanket law is not the way. Certainly hospitals should not perform circumcisions, as the circumcise-everybody movement was born out of a germaphobic and uneducated era, and as Shara says there is no reason for doctors to perform an unnecessary operation.

Blissed I think your points are good. But when should a child or man be allowed to decide? When he's 5? 12? a boy is bar-mitzvah at 13. a circumcised penis may be extremely important to him. is it still illegal? and having it done as an adult IS painful, humiliating, confusing etc. should a jewish boy have to go through that, just because he wants to do the mitzvah of, misguidedly or not, making holy his most essential organ? because, stupid sounding as it may be, this is why jews are circumcised.

you're right too about respectful, reasoned debate, 100%. this is what we need - a conversation, not a slap on the face and a big fat NO.

laws just make people break them, when it comes to passion words are not a great deterrent. and most people who seek out religious circumcisions care more about god's law anyway.

v

sonice · 25-11-10 02:27:30

I have to agree with Viva on this one. While it is not a part of my culture and I certainly would not choose it, there's a place for government intervention into peoples lives. This issue doesn't meet my "We gotta do sometime" threshold when weighting common good vs individual rights.

blissed · 25-11-10 05:01:47

viva wrote:

But when should a child or man be allowed to decide?

That's a little question with a very big answer isn't it

I think the stronger a cultures claim on sovereign land the more relaxed it can be about absorbing new ideas. You couldn't get more contrasting examples of that than England and Israel.

England is a liberal society that absorbs change and other cultures ideas (and in the past their land as well ha ha yep a huge physical empire now gone but with the queen as head of state in 18 countries including Australia and Canada and head of the commonwealth of 42 nations, 2 of which weren't even in the British empire, And with more people sitting in classrooms in China right now learning English than speak English in England, all based on 944 years of unbroken land sovereignty with mostly fixed sea borders, Given all that you'll understand why a lot of us think it's way uncool and very crass to be nationalistic here.

Where as Israel has a culture that's had centuries of exile without any sovereign land, where every tiny tradition lost would gradually and eventually erode the culture to nothing, so every tiny tradition without changes has become important.
So strange though it might seem to some in a thread that's just about circumcision, how much change there is depends I think on a workable power sharing middle east sovereign agreement, perhaps similar in spirit to Northern Ireland.

I would say that if the age was 13 and then eventually raised to the voting age at 18, that would be proof that a peace agreement had existed with possibly 15 to 20 years of success. But even in the shorter term if the law passes in California an initial middle east peace agreement would mean those traveling to Reno to avoid the new Cali law may feel less aggrieved and possibly even start to feel they can relax and enjoy the freedom of considering more care free and progressive cultural change without feeling intimidated or insecure,

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shara_c · 25-11-10 12:29:54

and what will be the penalty for an at home bris performed by a mohel? do you lose your child? pay the government with your diaper money? go to jail? who takes care of that snipped little babyface?

v

Yeah, I see your point. Just out of curiosity, who did the slicing before hospitals existed? Way back when there were no hospital midwives, the older/wiser women of the village used to help out or so I've been told. So surely similar people could help out today? Or maybe instead of it being made illegal, hospitals could refer parents to plastic surgeons so their babies bodies can be modified cosmetically in a safe surgical environment.

viva · 26-11-10 00:54:33

shara, for jewish people at least, even today all brit milah, ie. circumcisions take place in the home, in a ceremony performed by a trained professional called a Mohel. All he does is snip baby dick, thats his calling. they generally do it really well. there are lots of laws and things you have to do that correspond to pain relief and hygiene. a circumcision performed in a hospital is a not a mitzvah, it doesn't help or count with the whole being a jew thing. its called a medical circumcision and in the eyes of god its silly and useless.

blissed · 26-11-10 05:34:10

Bit like a unelected non-indicated circumcision itself That remark was addressed directly to god I wish he'd make up his mind and let me know which religion is the best

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viva · 26-11-10 06:38:32

Blissed, have you tried Pastafarianism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

hyperballad · 26-11-10 07:46:01

Oh yes, there is a DIRECT link between pirates and global warming... didn't you know?

shara_c · 26-11-10 11:03:08

viva wrote:

shara, for jewish people at least, even today all brit milah, ie. circumcisions take place in the home, in a ceremony performed by a trained professional called a Mohel. All he does is snip baby dick, thats his calling. they generally do it really well. there are lots of laws and things you have to do that correspond to pain relief and hygiene. a circumcision performed in a hospital is a not a mitzvah, it doesn't help or count with the whole being a jew thing. its called a medical circumcision and in the eyes of god its silly and useless.

Well in that case hospitals could direct parents to Mohels which should be left to do their thing safely in the home. It's still not my cup of tea though but hey, I'm an atheist.

Last edited by shara_c (26-11-10 11:31:03)

blissed · 26-11-10 13:43:38

viva wrote:

Blissed, have you tried Pastafarianism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Ha ha yes I have been touched by his noodly apendage and seriously considered becoming a church of the flying spaghetti monster nun

Hyperballad during that period of my life I was certain the link between pirates and global warming was as real as the link between female sexuality and eathquakes http://www.boundlessline.org/2010/04/wo … oh-my.html

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chmchrischm · 26-11-10 15:19:28

We are here in a widely discussed and almost inextricable subject, because purely ideological. Contrary to animal determinism, human societies are structured in terms of Meaning; what they do, allow or not is what their mythologies tell them is right. Trauma as a meaningful ritual to enter into a community as a belonging member is as old as humanity is - from the "sliced" penis of autralian native aborigenes to the widely practiced circumcision over the world and by far not only by jews and muslims, passing by african scarifications, pharaonic circumcision etc., etc. Any of these practices is quite evidently "non-sense" (i.e. no meaning) from a "barbarian" (i.e. The Other) point of view. Plato explains this very well in The Banquet about how the Barbarians do not understand at all and find utterly bizarre and reject the Athenian laws of Love. In this sense, concepts like pain, hospital versus Mohel, alledged "sound difference" between MY way (circumcision) and their way (cllitoridectomy) is irrelevant here, because each party basically goes from a cultural point of view and the alledged rationalization is only a way of telling the other that his way is wrong because it is not the right one - mine. By the way, Viva, as a sexologist I have to assert here that nothing, neither pharaonic circumcision nor tetraplegism for that matter necessarily impeeds pleasure taking. The late great Robert Stoller has demonstrated that operated transsexuals could experience genito-sexual orgasms (!) and Beverly Whipple has shown the same in people with definitive medullar damages (i.e. no more innervation of sexual organs). Because pleasure is in our brains (by the way for those of you who are interested in the subject, take a look at some fundamental new research published in the recent (2010) "Pleasures of the Brain" edited by M.L. Kringlebach & K.C. Berridge at Oxford UP). Where do we go from there if we do not want to fall into absolute cultural relativism..? This is for each society to decide, according to its values and meanings. But all you shall ever be able to say is nothing but "here, to-day, according to our values... and pronounce a Law, which is an arbitrary cultural decision. And if you decide that bloody ritual traumatism is wrong, then it has to qualify for ALL modes, forms and sub-cultural groups in the community - not only for those of "the others", because otherwise, discriminating the practices of the others that you consider right for yourself IS discrimination and your Law is one of discrimination in place of one of unification around a principle good for all the members of that "new community". In other words, an unjust Law.
chmchrischm

blissed · 26-11-10 20:24:36

Hope I've understood your post properly chmchrischm.
I make a distinction between the conclusions of reasoned thought and those notions based on acceptance of tradition. and though life is multi hughed the principle of that difference can quite often be totally proven.

If you say that god is the sun and if you find and hold the ancestors sacred feather in your hand and simple belief in your heart you may jump off a cliff and fly, I think you'll know what the end result will be you'll join your anscestors

Yet all the notions of reasoned thought that go into constructing a plane actually do keep it up in the air!

If you apply this principal to law, then wether a law is passed or not the result is a product of reasoned debate and is a conclusion that can be substantiated with evidence. This allows later for an intelligent reappraisal and a reasoned repeal. Just like a criminal conviction can be overturned on appeal. The proccess means the law isn't arbitrary like a kings pardon but is a revisable evidence based decision.

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chmchrischm · 28-11-10 17:21:05

Author: chmchrischm

I would make two clear distinctions; first between Reason and reasoning; Byzantine discussions about the sex of the angels was certainly soundly reasoned, being based on the Art of rhetoric’s inherited from the greek classical philosophers. But it was not in the realm of Reason. All contrary, the French philosophers Montaigne and Pascal tried to reason in the realm of Reason about the status of human laws and ways of life and thinking amidst religious confrontations and wars. The first one refused to choose one camp between protestants and catholics considering them all his human brothers and noted in his “Essays” that by humans, “what is considered right on one side of the Pyrenees, was wrong on the other side”! Pascal borrowed him this definition of Culture. And for his part concluded, to define “objectively” the choice he proposed in favour of Catholicism by his famous: the heart has reasons unknown to Reason.
My second distinction would be the one proposed by Rousseau between the laws of Nature (you feather and airplane), which do not generate moral principle or duty, and social laws who contrary create rights and duties which you have to choose for.
As Alain Supiot, professor of Law and member of the French Academy puts it:
We humans need in order to live together to agree on a common sense(Meaning) of life while the life has in itself no sense (meaining) which can be demonstrated scientifically. The dogmatic principles of Law are the western way of binding(connecting) together the people of a given culture. Law is the text corpus which spells out (or expresses) our founding faiths.
In other words, you may come to a very large universal common agreement about the laws of nature and disagree fundamentally on social laws. If everyone on the planet agreed on social laws, there wouldn't be different cultures!

#1 14-11-10 21:35:56

San Francisco may outlaw circumcision.

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