Is circumcision immoral?

Question

In Africa, women frequently experience genital mutiliation. The practice varies, but often the parts of the female genitals that provide pleasure are cut off (without anesthetic) and sewn back together so that the young woman is "pure" for her husband. This is clearly immortal. If so, is circumcision immoral? Keep in mind that the medical validity of circumcision is in question.

Answer 1

yes. someone else asked that here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AhnMtLjbvrQYB8LGmO98PlgjzKIX?qid=20060714124414AAakLU1

i said:

just so you are clear what routine neonatal circumcision looks like:

http://ftp.intact.ca/images/new025.mpeg

it is immoral when it is done routinely, as only 1 in 10 000 men will need their foreskins cut off IF they get the ONLY medical problem that foreskin removal MIGHT treat: BTX

you are right to question the morality of it

it is the immorality of FEMALE circumcision which got it banned, that's why i'm campaigning on here to have it banned, and that's why this bill was introduced in february:

http://www.mgmbill.org/multimedia.htm "

i also just wrote this in my livejournal:

[first i linked to the first video above, then i wrote:]

"this is why circumcision must be stopped: it causes unnecessary pain to the newborn, and fibroblasts harvested by scientists from the foreskins are used to help adults avoid learning the lessons their injuries can teach them, thereby also removing what once prompted them to spread that message to other adults

that is two travesties in one, both being committed by our supposedly 'advanced' western culture, causing unnecessary pain to newborns so that adults can avoid the pain and disfigurement necessary for them to learn from some of their experiences, and to motivate them teach and warn others about those experiences.

Now is this a blatant disrespect for the sensitivity of our children or what?

What was i saying before? That we sought to, in the past, inflict ritual pain during initiations for example, upon our children so that they would be able to cope better with the pain that sometimes accompanied their experiences later on in life?

Well if what i am saying is true, that using infants' foreskins and embryos' stem cells to help adults cope better with the pain of injury and disfigurement from some of their experiences in life, then this strategy of ritual injury isn't working. either that or we've stopped giving our children these painful initiations.

i think it is the latter, initiations have all but left our western culture. now this is food for thought. is this a justification for bringing back these painful initiations? is this evidence of what happens when we don't systematically traumatise our children in a standard initiation procedure when they change over to being adults?

Jee, i was almost sounding serious there. the answer is of course not! What needs to happen is that we stop being consumers who are only interested in external things. the corporations that rule our society have convinced us all that external, material objects (which includes our bodies) are the only things that matter, because it is those material objects which corporations can sell to us for money.

we have come to value external things, like our bodily appearance, over internal things, like our character. an appreciation, on the internal rather than external level, of the injury and disfigurement that accompanies some experiences in life would be to say that one's character is built up. how many people have you met who are awesome in so many ways, but who have suffered horrendous pain? whose bodies are disfigured? i know many, they are a feature of our collective consciousness. there is something special about physically disadvantaged people - they have a certain divine glow about them, they are, as some say, filled with love. they are so responsive to kindness. it is their very 'disadvantage' which puts them at advantage, just like those of us who are not born physically disadvantaged but suffer great injuries often become more rounded characters. i know that often times when i suffer an injury, i begin to appreciate the basic fabric of society - all the human values of love, non-violence, peace, righteousness and honesty. I feel motivated to practice these values.
these people, and those of us who become partly like them (permenantly or temporarily) through injury, are of tremendous value because of this.

to try to remove the disfigurement is to diminish the significance of human values. it says, to me, that one's external appearance is more important than the internal attributes of good character and attendance to the human values.

perhaps the desire of injured people to remove their disfigurement by using body parts of both the unborn and the newborn exists because they suspect that they will no longer be of value to a society possessed by materialism. perhaps they are justified in wanting to remove all reminders of their bodily imperfection in defence against being shunned by the rest of us, who only value external appearances, not the pure divinity on the inside of every one of us, regardless of our bodily integrity?

this is the path to destruction, in my mind. we are:

interested in external appearances only
disinterested in internal characteristics like human values

this means:

sacrificing the unborn and the newborn so as to keep our external appearance satisfactory
missing out on the learning that our injuries teach us and also others
losing the positive influence on society that injured people have by their emphasis on human values
not feeling willing to support those who are physically injured because we do not emphasise internal things like human values, but rather external things like perfect bodies, which disfigured people do not have.

what is something you value most when you are injured though? not being injured. at the moment my ankle is hurting as i rolled it at netball two matches in a row. i know it will heal, but right now i am valueing the times when it was working properly. i am reminded to look after myself in future, so as to avoid rolling it again. i have some experience to pass on to others, to warn them against being to vigorous, or they might roll their ankles.

taking that further, if i was burnt badly, i would not want others to suffer similar pain. this involves the most basic process of learning from the injury - don't let that happen again, even for others. it seems like this principle is not upheld when using skin repair products made from the foreskins of routine neonatal circumcision. this is because we are inflicting unnecessary pain on, and causing unnecessary disfigurement to baby boys by cutting off their foreskins.

if i had learned anything from getting so burnt, i wouldn't request that the foreskin be cut off a newborn boy so i could have some relief from my burns. especially since the pain of getting one's foreskin off burns. why? because the glans has a concentration of nerve endings on it that are specialised to feel pain. not only that, but the glans is supposed to be protected by the soft, moist, inner side of the foreskin. circumcision cuts off the foreskin, due to some unthinkable combination of rationalisations.

so let's learn from our mistakes and, rather, seek to educate our young about the perils of, eg, driving, so they don't get themselves into bad car accidents and get burnt. let's stop this insanity of disfiguring the young for life in an attempt to recover our own figures.

if there's anything one can learn from an injury, it is how lucky everyone else is not to also suffer disfigurement. it is a great pity that this message is not having an influence on us. i think it happens at the peril of our species."

so if that doesn't make circumcision of all forms immoral, then i don't know what will.

by the way i wonder if they would be able to use the fibroblasts in infant females' foreskins for skin repair products. i recall when i read one of the journal articles about fibroblasts from foreskins that it was specifically male fibroblasts. i wonder if this was part of the decision to refuse to also outlaw male genital mutilation in the US back when the female genital mutilation bill went through in 96.

Answer 2

According to the Muslim faith, it's a good thing.

I've been looking at questions and comments all morning about Isreal and the Middle East. People have such an issue. They don't seem to know the differance with civilization and barbarians. Who seems more equiped to use what help they are given? The contest is almost like one between the cave men and the National Association of Science.

Answer 3

Female circumcision has little or no medical support or advantages. It is a domination procedure and is often performed punitively. In that sense, it is immoral. To consider it immoral for an infant male is to deny the health advantages of living without a foreskin.

Answer 4

that's relatively helpful to rephrase that to : Is circumcision immoral despite if it HAD a comfortable wellbeing income? despite if circumcision had a comfortable wellbeing income it would nevertheless qualify as an immoral act. certainty is , God positioned it there via layout , between different motives, to augment wellbeing .

Answer 5

Absolutely

Answer 6

All circumcision is immoral if done to an infant.

Answer 7

interesting a girl would be asking about this i dont believe it is immoral mine is cut and i would not want my extra skin back at all

Answer 8

Well it is certainly done with out consent.

Answer 9

i love my forskin its actually very usuful in protecting my johnson.

Answer 10

morality and culture always clash.... but my opinion is it is not IMMORAL