To cut, or not to cut.

[JewelSong]

After all, Abraham himself chose circumcision as an adult,

And also performed the procedure on himself, according to the scriptures. Which just makes me go, "Owwww...."

[nerdanel]

One of the things that angers me more than anything is the use of the word "circumcision" for the mutilation of girls' genitals. As nerdanel points out above, it is NOT the "simple" removal of the clitoris. That would be bad enough, but it is much, much worse. There is no comparison with male circumcision and the term "mutilation" is the correct term.

Yes - just wanted to add to my second post from today (on the effects of FGM), that that information was taken directly from Bah v. Mukasey, 529 F.3d 99 (2d Cir. 2008), which in turn was citing materials from the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of State, and the Hastings Women's Law Journal. As you might guess, I was reading the Bah case when I felt the need to come here to post about it - and have now lost plenty of time due to the resulting procrastination. Back to work!

[Lidless]

Ner, I agree that 18 would be better, but by Jewish custom a male hits adulthood at 13, which is what bar mitzvah is all about. If the Jewish faith has faith in itself...

But certainly 18 is a better alternative to a 13 yo's "painful medical procedure, with all the dread that it lay ahead, and with no real ability to refuse." than an 8 day old's painful medical procedure, with no knowledge of the dread that it lay ahead, and with no real ability to refuse.

JS - I realise the hole will close over, but they stuck needles through earlobes to make her look prettier in their eyes. I say 'their eyes' because it certainly is not in mine.

[JewelSong]

But certainly 18 is a better alternative to a 13 yo's "painful medical procedure, with all the dread that it lay ahead, and with no real ability to refuse." than an 8 day old's painful medical procedure, with no knowledge of the dread that it lay ahead, and with no real ability to refuse..

And no memory of it, either. So there is no dread, no fearful anticipation. That is one of the reasons for doing it at such a young age. Ditto for the ear piercing...which doesn't really hurt even as an adult.

Plus, as I said before, most circumcisions are now done with a local anesthetic. The drops they put in newborns eyes to protect against bacteria and the heel prick they do to test for a number of abnormalities hurts more. Babies don't remember these, either.

(Didn't realize you didn't care for earrings on women.)

[Cerin]

Despite your understandable distaste for the comparison, Cerin, I just wanted to note that 18 U.S.C. s. 116, which criminalizes female genital mutilation, has a section (c) which underscores that no religious or cultural exemption from the practice is prohibited. The constitutionality of this provision has never been challenged.

I guess this gets right to the heart of the matter. FGM is known to have physically injurious consequences, whereas circumcision was more widely adopted outside of its cultural/religious origination because it was believed to have healthy consequences. So I think it will be much harder to establish laws against circumcision on the same basis that laws against FMG have been established (unless the laws against FMG are based solely on the notion that the bodily sovereignty of infants can't be violated).

So I see that my original comment wasn't well-reasoned; if laws against circumcision can be established on the basis of the harmfulness of the practice, then I see that a religious exception wouldn't make sense. I guess the question of religious freedom would come into play in considering the basis for any potential anti-circumcision laws (that is, weighing the religious importance against the claims of lasting harm).

[Lidless]

The drops they put in newborns eyes to protect against bacteria and the heel prick they do to test for a number of abnormalities hurts more.

That's for health reasons.

Babies don't remember these, either.

So much for circumcision being a covenant between that person and God.

Didn't realize you didn't care for earrings on women.

I don't count babies as women.

[JewelSong]

The drops they put in newborns eyes to protect against bacteria and the heel prick they do to test for a number of abnormalities hurts more.

That's for health reasons.

So is circumcision...at least, that was why I made the decision to have my sons circumcised. My uncle's adult (emergency) circumcision was a tipping factor, as well as working with physically disabled males.

Babies don't remember these, either.

So much for circumcision being a covenant between that person and God.

I am not Jewish, so this had nothing to do with it.

Didn't realize you didn't care for earrings on women.

I don't count babies as women.

What age would you consider a girl old enough to decide to have her ears pierced? My daughter was 7 and she had begged me for 2 years.

Edited to fix quotes.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Didn't realize you didn't care for earrings on women.

I don't count babies as women.

What age would you consider a girl old enough to decide to have her ears pierced? My daughter was 7 and she had begged me for 2 years.

Well, if your son was seven and had begged you for two years to be circumcised, then maybe scissor time...

Otherwise? The imposed surgical removal of a body part, no matter the cultural, religious, aesthetic etc. justifications, should be treated as a physical assault. No ifs. No buts.

It really is that simple.

[Lidless]

It really is.

JS, I'm saying that any surgical procedure for cosmetic or religious purposes, even an ear-piercing, should under no circumstances be made by anyone to anyone else without that person's consent.

Even if it's a 3 year old begging for an ear-piercing, that's OK, so long as the child is aware up front it will hurt. The pain will be part of the learning curve.

Hypothetical. A religion believes that one must kneel before God to show supplication. A tradition has grown up over thousands of years that a baby's legs are to be broken at age 8 days. That's OK of course because the baby will not remember it and the leg will be completely healed before it takes it's first steps. No long-term damage then. It's not as if any skin will be permanently removed that nature has seen fit to include.

Anyone OK with that?

[axordil]

It really isn't.

[nerdanel]

There are a lot of really interesting, good-faith divergent views expressed in this thread. So when anyone insists that their point of view in this discussion is simply the completely correct one ... it's not very persuasive, at least to me (as one of the "undecided" people in this discussion).

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

There are a lot of really interesting, good-faith divergent views expressed in this thread. So when anyone insists that their point of view in this discussion is simply the completely correct one ... it's not very persuasive, at least to me (as one of the "undecided" people in this discussion).

There is a difference between asserting that a view is simple, and that view being simply correct.

The requirement, it seems, is one of definitions. What is the definition of assault? I would (tentatively) profess that assault is the unauthorised imposition of physical intrusion, causing some degree of discomfort (hey! I'm not a lawyer). I think the important factor in my layman's contribution is the concept of authorisation.

Circumcision without informed consent would seem to me to be unauthorised intrusion, and would be assault. That seems to me to be simple (not simply correct). However, I would enjoy an argument presented that disabuses me of my simple conclusion. I have yet to read one...

[nerdanel]

Oh, and I also wanted to add a different thought:

When I was a teenager, I was absolutely, positively convinced that I was going to convert to Judaism, and there was nothing that was ever going to change my mind about it. (My young adult journey into agnosticism taught me just how wise the rabbis had been in making me wait to convert.) During that time, I remember feeling perversely left out that the men had brit milah, or really in this day and age, hatafat dam brit, the ceremonial taking of a drop of blood from the penis, where the man has already been circumcised. Now, I never wished there was such a thing as "female circumcision" practiced within Judaism, but I did wonder what it would be like to have a female equivalent to hatafat dam brit - a physical taking, a physical commitment to the religion. In my teenage mind, with all the fervor of a would-be convert, I wished for such an option, and (as incredible as this may sound) would probably have considered even a more serious form of "circumcision" if this religion, which I thought was to be my lifetime spiritual path, had prescribed it and there were not serious risks of complications.

It's strange for me even to recall that I felt that way. It's so utterly removed from my current agnostic distrust of any ritual that cannot be rationally justified. But it again would make me very nervous about allowing underage people to consent to genital alteration for religious reasons, particularly where parental pressure is involved. (Needless to say, my situation was quite different; far from imposing their religion on me, my parents were somewhat bemusedly trying to accommodate my interest in a quite-foreign-to-them religion.)

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

nerdanel, I am itching to find out why you wanted to convert to Judaism. Not specifically because it is Judaism, but what provoked you to such a desire generally. I remember watching "Fiddler on the Roof" as a child... (and my apologies if that attempt at humour is deemed out of order.)
Perhaps you could open a thread on the subject of religious calling? I'm from a staunchly Roman Catholic upbringing, so I am naturally an atheist...

[nerdanel]

*** off-topic response to Ghân ***

Ghân, you may want to take a look at this thread: What is Jewishness?

I started it back in 2006 to talk about issues of Jewishness and conversion, and we had a wonderful, classically Halofirian discussion about it. I'm fairly sure I discussed my early interest in Judaism, and I certainly discussed at length the concerns about religion and sexuality that caused me to move away from Judaism initially as a young adult. During the discussion in that thread, I was agnostic but regularly attending synagogues in the San Francisco area while I tried to figure out whether I could stop being agnostic and manage a religious conversion. (One note if you read that thread, because it deals very heavily with the issue of sexual orientation - it's a bit dated in terms of where I'm at with that issue now. But anyway.) Suffice it to say that a few more years of adult Jewish observance didn't help me to get rid of the agnosticism - I had the epiphany two months ago, at Yom Kippur Kol Nidre services, of all places, that I was perilously close to atheism. I found that rather a perplexing realization, to be honest ... but it's where I'm at right now - a nearly-atheist non-Jew who still seeks spiritual guidance from Judaism and observes many of the holidays. I freely concede the irrationality ... but it's where I'm at right now. Judaism's now been part of my life for more than half of it, so I'm not really comfortable with just letting it go entirely.

[JewelSong]

Perhaps circumcision was needed for the Hebrews when they lived in the desert and bathed once a year.

Well, since most of the ancient laws were, in fact, based on health or cleanliness, this is a valid point. Warmer climes do encourage more bacteria and under the foreskin is a great place for it to multiply.

However, Hebrews did NOT bathe "once a year" but weekly, before the Sabbath. One of the reasons fewer Jews died from the plague was due to their weekly ritual bath. Of course, nobody knew that back then and Jews were summarily blamed for causing the plague, since less of them got sick.

[vison]

Ah, our nerdanel is just a simple girl . . . .

I admire this young woman so much. She is an amazing person.

[Primula Baggins]

The requirement, it seems, is one of definitions. What is the definition of assault? I would (tentatively) profess that assault is the unauthorised imposition of physical intrusion, causing some degree of discomfort (hey! I'm not a lawyer). I think the important factor in my layman's contribution is the concept of authorisation.

Circumcision without informed consent would seem to me to be unauthorised intrusion, and would be assault. That seems to me to be simple (not simply correct). However, I would enjoy an argument presented that disabuses me of my simple conclusion. I have yet to read one...

I wanted to respond to this point. First, I am NOT arguing in favor of circumcision, or against it (it's complicated, and this being a publicly readable forum, I don't want to go into that).

But . . . the parent of a baby or small child is often called on to make decisions that involve invasive and painful procedures to which the infant can't give informed consent. Immunizations, stitches, emergency surgery . . . a parent has to be able to consent for the infant in cases like that. And by the definition you give they would all be assault. Yet clearly, they aren't assault and can't be.

Many parents who consented to circumcision of their male infants were, to the best of their knowledge, acting in the infant's best interest. When I was eight weeks old I had a kidney infection and needed a renal angiogram, which in those days was crude and very painful involving a series of large injections and x-rays for which I had to be immobilized. My mother says I screamed in unmistakable pain for a solid hour while she and my father sat on the other side of a closed door in a different kind of pain. Yet even that wasn't assault.

Parents can (and must) authorize these kinds of things. The child isn't capable of giving informed consent.

[yovargas]

The requirement, it seems, is one of definitions. What is the definition of assault? I would (tentatively) profess that assault is the unauthorised imposition of physical intrusion, causing some degree of discomfort (hey! I'm not a lawyer). I think the important factor in my layman's contribution is the concept of authorisation.

Circumcision without informed consent would seem to me to be unauthorised intrusion, and would be assault. That seems to me to be simple (not simply correct). However, I would enjoy an argument presented that disabuses me of my simple conclusion. I have yet to read one...

I wanted to respond to this point. First, I am NOT arguing in favor of circumcision, or against it (it's complicated, and this being a publicly readable forum, I don't want to go into that).

But . . . the parent of a baby or small child is often called on to make decisions that involve invasive and painful procedures to which the infant can't give informed consent. Immunizations, stitches, emergency surgery . . . a parent has to be able to consent for the infant in cases like that. And by the definition you give they would all be assault. Yet clearly, they aren't assault and can't be.

Many parents who consented to circumcision of their male infants were, to the best of their knowledge, acting in the infant's best interest. When I was eight weeks old I had a kidney infection and needed a renal angiogram, which in those days was crude and very painful involving a series of large injections and x-rays for which I had to be immobilized. My mother says I screamed in unmistakable pain for a solid hour while she and my father sat on the other side of a closed door in a different kind of pain. Yet even that wasn't assault.

Parents can (and must) authorize these kinds of things. The child isn't capable of giving informed consent.

I am sure the "except for the child's health/welfare" clause was implicit in GBG's statement. Now that modern data seems to show that there is little to no discernible benefits to circumcision, I think GBG's definition is a fair place to start. I don't necessarily agree or disagree but I also don't exactly have a counter-argument off the top of my head, asides from a gut-level "What's the big deal???" reaction, which isn't much of an argument.

[Holbytla]

I'm am not advocating for or against circumcision, but I think some realism has to be inserted into this thread, as well as a few facts.

There is no way to equate female mutilation with male circumcision.
None at all.

There is a lot of talk about choices and surgery and pain. I agree with choices with regards to cosmetic things, but in reality we are talking about a bit of nearly dead skin with few nerve endings. Very little of the skin (if any) is actually excised, and most of it is just displaced.

It is far more comparable to suturing a cut than it is to female mutilation.

Babies that small are far from fully developed in many areas, and memory of pain does not exist for them. Children 2 years of age have no concept of sharing. It just isn't something that the brain is capable of at that age. Nor is a newborn capable of remembering any thing shortly after birth.

Choice is another matter, but in all honesty we are talking about skin being forward or backward. It isn't akin to any type of mutilation, and the sensitivity issue is way overblown. I won't go into personal details, but being circumsized is not a huge deal at all, and actually may be a blessing.

It is funny that there is a lot of talk regarding hygiene here. The beneficiaries for the most part regarding circumcision are females, not males.

I think there a lot of misconceptions going on and a lot of mountains and molehills.

Just my 2 pesos.