Denmark Vesey: One Man's 'Terrorist' Is Another Man's 'Freedom Fighter' • One Man's 'Circumcision' Is Another Man's 'Genital Mutilation'

Saturday, June 04, 2011

One Man's 'Terrorist' Is Another Man's 'Freedom Fighter' • One Man's 'Circumcision' Is Another Man's 'Genital Mutilation'

4 comments:

cadeveo said...: In the meantime, across the continents, in Africa, medical professionals and politicians are propagandizing FOR circumcision based on some medical journal articles that suggest circumcision decreases the chances of contracting AIDS! I'm very, very dubious. Medical doctors have claimed magical benefits for circumcision, particularly in the U.S., many times in the past. It's religious indoctrination cloaked as cure or therapy (just like AA), in my opinion. I won't be surprised in about ten years when they say, "Oops...circumcision DOESN'T reduce the likelihood of contracting AIDS. Um, well, enjoy your foreskinless penis anyway!"

From a different perspective, initiation rites of indigenous cultures often include ritual scarification and bloodletting of some kind, but at an age where a boy traditionally becomes a man and can conscientiously understand the symbolism involved and, maybe, even withold consent. However, folks have been arrested for conducting those rites, mostly African derived, here in the U.S. and it's mostly painted in the press as some sort of diabolical satanic child abuse situation. Meanwhile, you can take a knife to an infant boy's penis (and accidents do and have happened with this) and nobody bats an eye, except of course the shrieking baby.

So what makes the difference, pray tell? Is it just a difference in collective political and legal clout?; Jun 12, 2011, 12:39:00 PM
cadeveo said...: Circumcision is practiced and originally comes from Africa, among specific tribal groups with a specific understanding of it (not the groups that are being propogandized with "circumcision prevents AIDS" marketing,among which circumcision is traditionally taboo). The key difference, though, between this rite as practiced in Africa and in the Middle East is that it's never done on infants, but to boys transitioning to adulthood or to those who are already grown men.

Just throwing some context in there.; Jun 12, 2011, 12:43:00 PM
nicki nicki tembo said...: Noted pediatrician, Paul Fleiss points out that the foreskin is a multipurpose sheath that humans, both male and female, are born with. Thin muscle fibers that line it serve as a protective sphincter, membranes that line it contain antibodies, it allows for nonabrasive insertion due to it's ability to slide inside its own slick sheath of self-lubricating, movable skin, emoilients that lie beneath the foreskin have both antibacterial and antiviral properties.

All of these benefits are eliminated with circumcision.

Meanwhile, the benefits of circumcision continue remain questionable at best.; Jun 12, 2011, 9:08:00 PM
The Doc said...: I saw an episode of Manswers that said foreskins are later sold by those same hospitals for like $1800 a pop or some such outrageous number and broken down to make lotions and skin creams. *Shudder*

And I bet those same hospitals still charge you hundreds of dollars for the visit, while sharing none of the profit of secretly selling off your own genetic code to you.

Not to mention...umm... ughh... who the hell wants foreskin on their face? I hope they don't do this with all lotions.; Jun 14, 2011, 3:47:00 PM

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of "educated" has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses, is now in the possession of a specially educated elite, a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. P

Lord Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).

"At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?"