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In one of my recent posts, I mentioned that circumcising a child for reasons that are not solidly medical or religious is something that should be thought about in terms of what the child may prefer, not what you want.
Someone pulled me up on this, saying that they consider mutilation because of religion a bad reason for doing it.
I actually agree, and I'm surprised it took someone so long to pull me up on this one. My reasons for including it in the 'acceptable' category are a mixture of tolerance and what I think of as the significantly lesser evil.
I actually don't agree with it, but when addressing the issues around circumcision, breaking a couple of thousand year's worth of religious tradition is something that takes education and baby steps. Just saying "You're wrong and your culture and traditions of the last few thousand years are wrong..." Well, most people are going to dig in their heels and think (rightly) one doesn't understand, or is a bigot.
So why would they even start to consider the other options in that circumstance? Why would they even start to listen to your objections with an open mind, since you clearly don't have an open mind when it comes to their way of life?
I also look at it this way, there are many cultures that would look at things Western culture does, like attitudes to nudity, the lack of skin contact, and the baby sleeping in a separate room to its parents, that they would find horrific and abusive ideas. They couldn't understand how you could want to psychologically scar your child this way.
If some of my religious friends had their child circumcised because that was an aspect of their religion, I would accept it without issue. I don't have to agree with it to support them and their cultural/tradional reasons for doing it. Plus, the child will be growing up in a culture where it's the norm, so they are way less likely to have issues with it.
My preference would still be for it not to be done, but that's personal, and I'm not in a place to understand the significance of thousands of years worth of teaching and tradition.
Having been to ante-natal and breast-feeding classes, religion has still been by far the best of the non-medical reasons I've heard for circumcision. I find it quite acceptable when compared to reasons like "I want him to look like his father," and the vastly more common, "I think it looks nicer."
Some people could say the same thing about female genital mutilation or foot-binding. "I think it looks nicer, and I want her to look like her mother." People would think these reasons disgusting, and they'd be right.
The back-up excuse is often one of cleanliness and preventing disease. They want to be a good parent and reduce the risks to their child. I figure if you can't teach your child to wash their gentials effectively, then what makes you think they wash their backside properly, an area way more likely to harbour unhealthy bacteria? As for the supposedly increased risks of STDs, if you've raised the kid right and educated them about sex properly, when they're older they should be using condoms anyway, so that's no excuse.
Basically I find these reasons fall into the "I can't be bothered trying to teach my child things they should know, so I'll just mutilate them and save myself some trouble" category.
Interestingly, I've yet to hear any of these reasons coming from the fathers, only the mothers. The fathers are usually silent on the matter. Maybe they agree, but they never seem to be the one jumping forward with the reasons.
It's gender differences again. There are things and areas where one gender will have incredible difficulty understanding the needs and mindsets of the other, where they will find things acceptable for one sex and not the other. Despite the way it's often presented, it's not all guys not understanding women's needs, it does in fact work the other way, too. But that's a different rant.
I'm not saying all men don't want their kids circumcised and are forced to by their partners. There will be plenty of men out there wanting it done for all the same reasons. I'm saying that to date, I have have not heard a single non-religious guy say he wanted his son circumcised, but I've heard a number of women pushing their reasons for the decision. Some guys will probably speak up in the comments now saying they were for it, and that's fine. But they will be the first I've heard it from. Whereas I've heard women backing up their reasons for circumcision for years.
The crazy (and disgusting) thing is, that if you asked these same people to consider genital mutilation of their daughters for the exact same reasons, they would likely be utterly horrified and think you a sick bastard.
I don't think there's any good non-medical reason for mutilating the genitals of the child you profess to love and care about, but religion and cultural tradition is certainly a far superior reason compared to cosmetic preferences.
Someone pulled me up on this, saying that they consider mutilation because of religion a bad reason for doing it.
I actually agree, and I'm surprised it took someone so long to pull me up on this one. My reasons for including it in the 'acceptable' category are a mixture of tolerance and what I think of as the significantly lesser evil.
I actually don't agree with it, but when addressing the issues around circumcision, breaking a couple of thousand year's worth of religious tradition is something that takes education and baby steps. Just saying "You're wrong and your culture and traditions of the last few thousand years are wrong..." Well, most people are going to dig in their heels and think (rightly) one doesn't understand, or is a bigot.
So why would they even start to consider the other options in that circumstance? Why would they even start to listen to your objections with an open mind, since you clearly don't have an open mind when it comes to their way of life?
I also look at it this way, there are many cultures that would look at things Western culture does, like attitudes to nudity, the lack of skin contact, and the baby sleeping in a separate room to its parents, that they would find horrific and abusive ideas. They couldn't understand how you could want to psychologically scar your child this way.
If some of my religious friends had their child circumcised because that was an aspect of their religion, I would accept it without issue. I don't have to agree with it to support them and their cultural/tradional reasons for doing it. Plus, the child will be growing up in a culture where it's the norm, so they are way less likely to have issues with it.
My preference would still be for it not to be done, but that's personal, and I'm not in a place to understand the significance of thousands of years worth of teaching and tradition.
Having been to ante-natal and breast-feeding classes, religion has still been by far the best of the non-medical reasons I've heard for circumcision. I find it quite acceptable when compared to reasons like "I want him to look like his father," and the vastly more common, "I think it looks nicer."
Some people could say the same thing about female genital mutilation or foot-binding. "I think it looks nicer, and I want her to look like her mother." People would think these reasons disgusting, and they'd be right.
The back-up excuse is often one of cleanliness and preventing disease. They want to be a good parent and reduce the risks to their child. I figure if you can't teach your child to wash their gentials effectively, then what makes you think they wash their backside properly, an area way more likely to harbour unhealthy bacteria? As for the supposedly increased risks of STDs, if you've raised the kid right and educated them about sex properly, when they're older they should be using condoms anyway, so that's no excuse.
Basically I find these reasons fall into the "I can't be bothered trying to teach my child things they should know, so I'll just mutilate them and save myself some trouble" category.
Interestingly, I've yet to hear any of these reasons coming from the fathers, only the mothers. The fathers are usually silent on the matter. Maybe they agree, but they never seem to be the one jumping forward with the reasons.
It's gender differences again. There are things and areas where one gender will have incredible difficulty understanding the needs and mindsets of the other, where they will find things acceptable for one sex and not the other. Despite the way it's often presented, it's not all guys not understanding women's needs, it does in fact work the other way, too. But that's a different rant.
I'm not saying all men don't want their kids circumcised and are forced to by their partners. There will be plenty of men out there wanting it done for all the same reasons. I'm saying that to date, I have have not heard a single non-religious guy say he wanted his son circumcised, but I've heard a number of women pushing their reasons for the decision. Some guys will probably speak up in the comments now saying they were for it, and that's fine. But they will be the first I've heard it from. Whereas I've heard women backing up their reasons for circumcision for years.
The crazy (and disgusting) thing is, that if you asked these same people to consider genital mutilation of their daughters for the exact same reasons, they would likely be utterly horrified and think you a sick bastard.
I don't think there's any good non-medical reason for mutilating the genitals of the child you profess to love and care about, but religion and cultural tradition is certainly a far superior reason compared to cosmetic preferences.
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From:
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I've known two guys who have had partial or complete circumcision later in life due to medical reasons. (one was for getting it stuck in a zipper and the ensuing infection just would not heal without it being removed.) In both cases they expressed a preference for being circumcised young because as an adult, way way *way* more painful (so I'm told). As to sexual sensitivity or performance, no difference for one, the other actually preferred it because he felt he was more sensitive.
As to vaccination, don't know if either of you read my recent post, and refrained from commenting out of politeness, but I see the issue of vaccination as a bigger one. Just recently had a friend who almost lost their baby *because* of a severe reaction to a vaccination, and they are now doing a lot of research and seriously considering how they proceed forward. Like me, they still plan to have their child vaccinated against most things, but are looking at delaying the schedule so as to avoid immediate risks. Seriously, when you are talking about taking a child under 6 months of age who has little to no immunity of their own, their is a world of difference to injecting a live virus into them as opposed to them contracting it through 'normal' means. In SA where there has only been one active case of Measles in the past 12 months, the risk of catching that (and then suffering the worst) is actually lower than the risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccination. The studies I looked at also did not give a break down of cultural backgrounds, but sadly my gut feel is that I think the aboriginal communities probably fair worse in most of these things. In the majority of cases where someone contracted one virus or another, the vaccination status was listed as 'unknown'.
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If everyone relies on everyone else getting vaccinated then it won't work. What uses live viruses for vaccinations? I wasn't aware of any.
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I don't have the schedule in front of me, so a bit from memory, but rotovirus is a live virus, others are genetically modified forms of the virus, such as HepB, Rubella, whooping cough, etc.
I want to make it clear, I am not *anti* vaccination, but I am concerned that the recommended age for all of these on the current schedule is much younger than it was 10, 15 or 20 years ago, and we *know* that in the case of some (especially the more recent vaccinations) there has been insufficient study done into both the short and long term effects (my friend's recent experience is a case in point as there was actually a researcher at the hospital as luck would have it, but that's a longer story.)
They are also doubling and tripling up on these shots a lot more than ever before, and my feeling is that an infant has enoguh trouble fighting against one introduced virus, let alone three at once. If they do suffer a reaction, it also makes it much more difficult to determine what has caused it (and many professionals concede this). For my own peace of mind I'd rather wait a little longer (and I'm only talking 12-24 months old here) and seperate the shots.
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Plus, my understanding is that if you have actually had any one of the three, measles, mumps or rubella, then you can't get the triple shot and have to have the others seperately anyway.
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I'm sure there is a point where the benefit is outweighed by the risks and that would be the time to say no. So long as you know both benefit and risk rather than just looking at the worst case scenario then refusing a vaccination is a valid parental decision.
I just get annoyed by people who decide that their child doesn't need vaccinating *at all* because there is "some risk" (as defined by tabloid television) or because "nobody gets those diseases anymore". Migration from Africa and Asia is bringing a lot of those diseases back into our country (and I'm not saying we should stop migration either).
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What an insulting remark. Do you know how *hard* it is to be a parent to a child of any age? Laziness doesn't even come into it. Newborns are hard, toddlers are hard, teenagers are hard and I've had all three age groups immunised in their due time because I went by the schedule given to me, not because I'm lazy. I saw a baby with whooping cough once when I was 15 and I swore I'd make sure my own children never had to suffer in such a way.
If laziness really were an issue, most parents would wait until their children had left home before getting them immunised because anything before that is hard work.
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Giving a baby an all-in-one jab means it is a lot likelier that the children of those parents will get their immunisation than if they were required to come back on multiple occasions a little later in life. Unfortunately if that is the only option on offer then anyone who might want a different immunisation schedule has to fight to get what they want.
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And whilst some parents are well informed and caring, I would agree that there are alot out there who aren't. I've taught alot of kids who have come from really crappy backgrounds who have parents who can't be bothered making sure they have breakfast or even a lunch to bring to school, why would they bother with multiple vaccinations?
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It's interesting taht you make that comment, because the site I looked at with teh Victorian schedule (I think, but I'm getting abit tired now) cited pretty much exactly that reason. Not pehaps for doing it young, but certainly for setting the schedule and doubling and tripling up on shots. That follow up appointments might be forgotten in the bust schedule of life, and so forth. The old, we'll make it easy for you, see aren't we a wonderful government, etc. So if that's the offical line being used by the government, your observations are not at all off the mark.
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In some cultures, circumcised men actually use very fine sandpaper on the head of their penis to regain sensitivity. So would be interesting to see ten or twenty years down the track whether the guy who found greater sensitivity still felt that way. Maybe he'll find he's lost some, or maybe the whole sandpaper thing got started by one weirdo and got taken up by lots of others.