So in the spirit of Father's Day...let's have a circumcision debate! I kid. Mostly. But during one of my daily trips to the wonderful online world known as Babycenter I came upon a circ discussion in my son's birthclub. Mind you he is now 19 months old and although circ debates/discussions are a common thing on Babycenter you'd think that by 19 months we would be past discussing this. Nope, not in Babycenter land. Here a poster starts a thread asking if anyone had ever heard of the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because apparently she lives under a rock and never had. She wasn't even looking for a debate. Just baffled that something like that exists and sadly it does. But you can't mention FGM without someone piping in that just a regular plain old done at the hospital to your newborn son circumcision is the same kind of barbaric practice. What? I mean seriously?? Someone needs to do more reading and not just of propaganda. What did interest me though was this rather long post someone from a totally different birthclub posted about what they are currently discussing in school about FGM and circumcision. I won't post the whole thing, but the line that really got me was this...
"FGM was outlawed in the US in 1996. Technically, under the US constitution, this makes MGM illegal as well since the constitution guarantees equal protection for genders and races. (Boys circ'd after 1999 will have a very good chance at winning law suits against the hospitals, doctors and possibly even their parents for being altered cosmetically against their consent)."
I haven't gone to google to find out if this is true or not. I guess you'd have to really prove that regular routine male circumcision is the same as Male Genital Mutilation. It is an interesting concept though. Can you imagine all these boys and men filing all these lawsuits because they were "mutilated" without their consent? Especially in a country where up until recently the circ rate has been greater than the non-circ rate. Insanity! It makes me think of that episode of Strange Sex that I watched where this guy made this contraption to "grow" his foreskin back because yep...he feels mutilated. It was sort of laughable to me at the time because he claimed being circ'd ruined his sex life...even though he had sex fine with his wife for the first 2o years of his marriage. Now that he is older and can't get it up like he used to he blames it on the "barbaric" practice that his parents' had inflicted upon him when he was too young to have a say. Somehow I seriously doubt the fact that he was circ'd had anything to do with his ED issues. Too bad he was born well before 1999 because he may have been able to sue and earn tons of loot to mass market his foreskin growing device.
My honest opinion of this whole thing...I chose to leave my son intact but not because I think circ's are mutilation or barbaric, but because frankly it's unnecessary, insurance wouldn't cover it, and I was really swayed by the idea of letting him make that decision when he is old enough to. I don't think parents that choose to have it done to their sons are wrong, it just wasn't the choice I made. I'm glad to live in a place where we have these kind of choices when it comes to our children. I can't imagine what some massive lawsuit would do. I would think they'd have to stop allowing circ's like that law they were trying to pass in San Francisco which would then violate religious freedoms and cause all kinds of uproars. I guess it's not something that I'll ever personally have to worry about, but I would hate for it to come down to that. Whether you believe it's mutilation or not the bottom line is that your parents did what they thought was best for you at the time which is what any good parent tries to do. Hopefully they won't ever be shamed or punished for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment