Whoa! Wait a sec!..
/me CK.
That post was… well, very educational, and I mean this straight, but wow woman! Don’t hate the place that much. I can see why you would feel outcast and indeed forced to adequate yourself to, well, medieval ritualia. But this kind of overall attitude will get people to alien you out even more, and then you won’t be able to spread your word properly. In order to do politics, in the best interest of the kids who are mutilated all over the place, I ask you to consider a more giving tone of voice… diplomacy, contrary to popular belief, is war a cold war for reason and in order not to lose it, you must not, ever, allow yourself to lose your mind.
That said, I proceed to contradicting myself. DreamAddict expressed, in his first post, concern about how Eyelids had delivered his opinions. One of his points was that Eyelids had made the post so that it would be more effective as a “one more reason to hate the Yanks” post to foreigners than as a mean to help change locally. I beg to disagree. Politics is done by whatever means are necessary and sometimes international embarrassment will just do the trick. In your position, I’d rather shame-on-you at the people who said “see, that’s why I say Yanks are a bunch of brainless morons” than frown at Eyelids’ attitude itself.
There are two things at play in this discussion: the most embarrassing situation which is culturally-generalised circumcision, and the xenophobia people direct at the United States. This being a topic about the former, and not the later, I’d like to firstly reprimend, damn seriously, all the acts of xenophobia posed by forum members in this topic, and secondly ask for everyone to drop that subject and refrain from discussing it in this topic. And that said, I move back to circumcision, which is the rightful subject of this topic.
I have only skimmed the replies, and having ignored 70% of the posts for the reasons stated above, I’m left with few relevant posts. Firstly, I’d like to say I agree completely with Chris and Q: no form of operation should be done to a child unless strictly necessary and, moreover, it should not be a parent’s choice whether or not their child will grow up mutilated, whatever the reason, but in fact the child’s choice when they’re old enough to make that choice.
In that sense, there is a very strong dialogue between the ideas posed in this last posted by CK, and DA’s replies. CK’s post implies the lack of circumcision is a source of great embarrassment for the parents and the child, to the point of casting out those people. DA, in a more pondered tone, points out that “most of the reasons” for circumcisions are “cosmetic”. Isn’t he saying just the same as CK after all? The word cosmetic shares its root with the word cosmos: it’s from Ancient Greek, and translates roughly as “orderly, correct”. In which sense whatever is “not cosmetic” is to be taken as “disordered, wrong”.
DA himself points out how people in the United States are actually embarrassed of being uncircumcised, assigning to that the values: “unattractive, gross”. How horrible is that? The fact that it’s such a commonsense value that it was not untill a couple of years ago (that is, after this topic’s heyday) that it was made illegal for hospitals to add circumcision to the “standard procedures” effectivelly requiring all doctors to always check with the parents first. This is really serious. And what about the people who will make their kids go though this without anesthesia! because they’re afraid their kids will have to put up with great embarrassment otherwise. Because the only good reason for circumcision is cosmetic, that is to say, aesthetic: because it is implied by the culture that an uncircumcised penis is gross.
I think this is a very serious issue, and I’d like to say I too am horrified that it’s indeed so disseminated in the States. I’d like to applaud CK for being a brave mother and for standing up for her beliefs, an attitude which should only inspire pride, and happiness. And once again before the end of this post, I’d like to leave my glare towards anyone who wishes to polarise this topic into a Yank xenophobia parade.