To Think Non-Medically Required Circumcision Is Abuse?

[BigFatBully]

Circumcision of a child if not required for a medical reason is abuse. I don't believe a child can consent to mutilation and it should be for them to decide when they reach adulthood if they want such a procedure.

I don't understand how anyone could take a happy baby who is otherwise healthy and do this to them.

It's male genital mutilation (MGM).

Agreed. It sickens me.

Of course you are not being unreasonable.

Chopping bits off babies or children for non-medical reasons can only ever be abusive. I’m disgusted that it’s still legal tbh.

Do you support cutting the breasts off teenage girls to prevent breast cancer?

A quick bit of AI suggests maybe 0.25% of British men have HIV, whereas 12-13% of women get breast cancer.

It looks to me like double mastectomies for teenage girls are 40 times more justified than MGM.

I was brought up in a religion where although they don’t do it now they were very into the Old Testament with its forced circumcision stories and “oh yes that’s what God told them to do”
and “yes the scriptures say do it on the 8th day” etc 🙄 and I always thought “how very horrible and unnecessary” and disagreed with the idea. they’d even have magazine articles about the horror of FGM but retrospectively promote male circumcision .
if you can’t do it girls you can’t do it to boys 🤷🏽‍♀️

My husband is circumcised. We did not choose to circumcise our sons. That said, there are millions of circumcised men in the world. When they say it's an issue I'll support them, until then I'm pretty neutral on the subject. My dh (white British btw) certainly doesn't agree that it's abusive.

Steady on, love

My husband is circumcised for ‘no reason’ - he’s from the US where its normal.

We’re both pleased with it. He sees it as an ‘of course’ - an important part of his cultural heritage.

Its nothing like fgm, at all.

I am not particularly worried about circumcision for men although wouldn't inflict it on my own children. However someone suggesting that infant boys should get surgery because his future sexual partners will like it is absolutely gross. I am sure lots of husbands of women who were circumcised are also "pleased with" the mutilated genitals of their wives. So what?

I agree it should be banned. I wouldn’t put it in the same category as FGM though.

Lol, I'd be filing that under 'ignore'.

What does Fast Moving Goods have to do with it?

I ‘suggested’ no such thing.

How else should I understand you saying that you're pleased with it and that being a reason to do it?

No one has suggested that. Seems that you think the only acceptable female response to a partners circumcision should be disgust or sorrow though - and that's really not the case.

I don't think that at all, I think most people are pretty neutral about it - I do think saying you're "pleased with" the fact that your sexual partner got his penis cut as a baby is gross though.

It’s a cultural norm in the USA and people including doctors seek to justify their choice to have this procedure using statistics but everyone knows statistics can be manipulated to make a case. If the procedure had medical merit to reduce costs later on then across Europe with our socialised medicine we would have adopted it, yet only the country where doctors receive payment they are fans … I wonder???

My dh is circumcised, it was done aged 18 months on the NHS at the same time as wiring his testicles down, it was for medical reasons. Our son is not circumcised.

I lived in the US for 15 years and most males are circumcised there shortly after birth. I don’t really know how I feel about it as never put any thought into it, it seems normal to me as that’s how dh is.

It's a cultural norm across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia too.

Genuinely, what would your approach be to the response that would come if the government announced that "religious beliefs are irrelevant, we are outlawing circumcision of children when it is not medically indicated"? How would you get the communities who do view it as a covenant with god onside?

I don’t think she has done that.

FGM is exactly as you’ve described
Unnecessary male circumcision is abuse.

Different things, both true.

Again, where did I say that my liking my husband’s body the way it is was a reason to do it?

His cultural norm was the reason to do it. I’m not from his country or culture so DH would think it very odd indeed if I said anything about it being ‘wrong’ - (we’ve established that I don’t think it is), and it would help nobody.

Your anger is not my problem.

In terms of the physical harm it does, no, it's not the same.

Morally it is the same. You are sill inflicting harm for no good reason without consent, which is a pretty good definition of the word "abuse".

And do you call parents who get their daughters' ears pierced 'barbaric'? I doubt it,

I am not angry but obviously it would not be your problem if I was. To be fair, I replied before you edited your comment to say that the cultural norm was why it was OK rather than the fact it pleased you.

If the daughter concerned is a tiny baby then yes, I would.