To be pretty uncomfortable with home circumcision

[EastofEast]

We get on very well with our neighbours and are pretty close but I was a bit shocked today, one of those moments where you find you really have opposing views on something quite fundamental.

Neighbour has a (gorgeous) two week old boy. She knocked on the door earlier to return my car keys (went to get a new battery for hers in my car) and I mentioned her new ds was unsettled for the first time ever; joking maybe he wasn't the perfect baby after all. My baby is demanding much more vocal about her needs. She said it was because he was circumcised today. I must have looked a little put off, I don't agree with it at all, as she then said 'oh he's doing really well. We were lucky the doctor came to house to do this one, all the others had to go to a clinic'. I was stunned, I'm amazed you're allowed to do such a thing at home in such an unregulated way. Frankly I wouldn't allow any deliberate harm to come to a child that wasn't medically necessary, but considering some people do do it I thought the rules would be tighter. We're both from (different) backgrounds which circumcise, although I refused to change my son, and I knew she'd do it after a related chat about whether fgm was that bad over a coffee one day but it's still upset me a bit the way it's done. The poor little thing is grumpy with loads of adults around to celebrate the event passing him round and round at 8.30pm.

I know the circumcision vs no circumcision has been done already, and not everyone shares my strong views, but at home? Should this be ok? I can't think of other similar procedures happening in a similar environment.

BOB - Circumcision isn't done for the benefit of parents. It isn't done so the dad's penis loses its foreskin. Dad's penis already has no foreskin. I don't know what you think your point is.

Braces were absolutely agonising. I had them for over a year. Eating was painful. Not doing anything was also painful. The wire would also frequently go loose and stick into my inner cheek.

All because my parents thought straighter teeth would be easy on the eye. Child abuse, I tell you.

We have a saying in my parents country that the baby whose mother has died cries the same way as the baby whose mother has gone to the well to fetch water.

I circumcised my son when he was a baby. Honestly he cries worse when I brush his teeth.

thou shalt not hurt a child

If we apply that then basically we shouldnt allow our children to have any medical treatment that causes them pain. Also why are you just stopping at physcial hurt? What about the emotional hurt you cause a child when you leave them in childcare for the first time. Yeah they get over it after a while but should you have caused them that hurt in the first place. Some may consider it barbaric to leave your baby in the care of someone you barely know when you wouldnt even leave your bank card and pin number with that person. Its all subjective really.

As an adult, I would choose to have braces (if I could afford it). I'm not sure many men would choose circumcisions. But then, I've never asked!

Côte seriously your points are ridiculous.

BoB, my point is that in responding to my previous post, you are putting words in my mouth, which is disingenuous. In particular, misquoting me as saying "a small amount of pain" has the effect of making me seem as though I want to make out that there is less pain than there is, which is not the case.

In this post, you are trying to represent me as a buffoon, unable to create a logical argument ("then you demand proof that you are wrong"). This is again disingenuous. I didn't "demand proof that I am wrong". I asked you for the evidence behind your assertions.

I think your attempt to formulate a moral principle that "Any amount of pain inflicted on another for the good of the person doing the inflicting is an atrocity" is too broad-brush (needs qualifiers about consent, must address utilitarian arguments, among many others). I also think it embeds a particular assumption that you hold about the parent - that they are doing this for their good, and not for the good of their child, and that their own belief that they are doing it for the good of the child is simply wrong. Your assumption may be right, but it is not a given. I have confidence in my beliefs as to who a brit is ultimately for.

Gosh I think the bottom of the barrel is well and truly being scraped there peacefuloptimist.

Children need medical treatment

They need their teeth brushed

They need child care in order to have a roof over their heads and food inside them.

These are all examples of parents caring for and protecting their children.

What they don't need is pain inflicted deliberately upon them and their genitals mutilated, to make their parents happy.

Im a strong believer in patriarchal societies commitment to benefiting men. If this caused serious problems for men there is no way it would have gone on for thousands of years.

Male circumcision is also parents caring for and protecting their child. For the reasons others have given already. Just because you dont do it doesnt mean everyone else has to stop. Its legal in this country for a person to have labioplasty (posh name for it) done so that their genitals look better. But if a male gets circumcised for religious reasons that's mutilation.

Well smacking babies is unlikely to cause serious problems either but it doesn't make it right, does it?

Taking away someone's body part forcefully and without their consent, is wrong whether it causes serious problems or not.

Yes but it would be illegal to force labioplasty upon someone wouldn't it?

In fact it would be illegal to force circumcision on to an adult male, but when he's a baby in the care of his parents it happens to be ok.

Just because something's legal it doesn't make it right.

It also doesnt' necessarily make it beneficial to anyone, other than the person forcing it on someone else.

Can I ask is your main issue with male circumcision that it causes a baby pain? What if it doesnt? My nephew slept through the procedure. Or is it that a parent is making a decision for a child without their consent. Well dont we do that all the time as parents. Make decisions for our children based on what we think is good for them. It is similar to the orthodontics point. Your child doesnt need to have straight teeth to lead a normal life. Yet you get them to have braces as a child because its much cheaper and less embarrassing to have them as a child then as an adult.

Your nephew may have slept through it but what about when he woke up? If I held you down and trimmed your labia, how do you think you might feel when the anesthetic wore off? Or when you urinated?

My main issue is taking another person's body part away from them when they don't have the voice to say, 'how dare you do that to me'.

They're never going to get that part of their body back again. So leave it until they're old enough to consent/refuse.

how many adults would cheerfully allow another adult to chop bits off their penis or mutilate their Vulva without any pain relief???

fucking none. because it's painful.

peaceful::loving parents make decisions for their children's good so that includes vaccinations.

braces arnt fitted to babies and DO require the consent of the child. dentists don't hold down children.

holding your child still and mutilating them isn't a loving act, it's not done for the child's health or well being.

it's done because parents are allowing their child to have pain inflicted on them.

CoteDAzur Seems to me that people are mostly doing it to please their god or at least their family. So it's about their welfare not the child's.

As for your painful braces I think you should start a thread on that too as I think that sounds awful. There might be some medical advantages to straighter teeth so we'd have to go into it a bit, but I'm not happy if you were put through that pain just to please other people.

HomeHelpMeGawd ok where do I start. Most circumcision advocates say that the pain is so small and quick sometimes the baby doesn't notice. They will probably not be happy that you are contradicting them, but that's between you and them.

When I said not a small amount of pain I wasn't quoting you. I normally put it in quotes and make it perfectly clear when I do so your objection is misplaced. All I said was that I have seen no evidence that the pain is small and not the pain I would feel if I cut a bit of flesh off.

Your objection asked me for proof of how painful it is. Since you are the one drawing lines and saying it hurts more than this but less than that then I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you. That's how it works.

I'm not making you look like anything. What you say is up to you.

I said "Any amount of pain inflicted on another for the good of the person doing the inflicting is an atrocity"

You are disagreeing. So are you are saying that sometimes inflicting pain on another for the good of the person doing the inflicting is NOT an atrocity"

Can you think of one example when that could be true?

One situation where you can inflict pain on another against their will for your own advantage.

BoB, as I say, your original moral principle was too broad-brush. You implicitly acknowledge this by introducing the notion of consent when you ask for an example.

As for other examples: I would defend myself with force if I felt the threat warranted it - eg against a mugger, or someone threatening to harm me or a loved one. If I were into bondage, I might want to inflict pain for my benefit (here, consent is obviously critical, whereas it's not relevant to the threat example).

I do get the intent of the principle you're espousing, but as I say, it's too broad-brush in the way you have currently drafted it.

Incidentally, your assertion that "that's how it works" is clearly not true. It's how you would like it to work. I would like it to work differently. You introduced the notion of evidence, not me. You said: "I've seen no evidence that it is a small amount of pain". So I asked whether you had looked. That feels like a fairly straightforward response to me.

I hate taking my son for vaccinations even though I know the pain from an injection is not that bad, having had them myself. I find it very hard to see him distressed in that way. I get through it by imagining how much more both of us would suffer if he contracted one of the diseases he is being protected from. I can't imagine what you tell yourself to get through this much more extreme procedure. It baffles me.

My dentist specifically told me I would not get braces until I was 12 so that I could make that decision myself. They were painful. I could see the benefit because my teeth caused me a lot of embarrassment and to me, the pain was worth it. If it had been forced upon me it would have been considerably more traumatic!

I also don't think the word atrocity fits. It doesn't acknowledge that there are important differences of degree. If one child hits another to steal their toy, that may be unacceptable but it is not an atrocity (this reminds me that mental / moral capacity is also an important qualifier for the principle you're trying to spell out). If a mugger hits me, that is very bad; it is also not an atrocity.

"your points are ridiculous."

Really? Why don't you share the funny bits you see so we can all laugh together.

"pain inflicted deliberately upon them and their genitals mutilated, to make their parents happy"

It's not to "make parents happy". This has been said several times now.

See, I think the WHO piece is a bit of a red herring tbh. If you want to reduce your exposure to HIV there are other ways to do it, apart from lopping of bits of your penis. It's always puzzled me as a harm reduction strategy.

They're not funny Cote, they're ridiculous.

Big difference in meaning.

"I could see the benefit because my teeth caused me a lot of embarrassment and to me, the pain was worth it"

To a Muslim or Jewish boy/man, an uncircumcised penis would be cause for a lot more embarrassment than some crooked teeth. I guess you would then say the transient pain from circumcision is worth it?

My main issue is taking another person's body part away from them when they don't have the voice to say, 'how dare you do that to me'.

They're never going to get that part of their body back again. So leave it until they're old enough to consent/refuse.

Where is this coming from though. Have men who were circumcised as babies complained about missing that part of their body or are you just projecting? Every generation of male in my family has had it done and they dont seem traumatised.