Another study has come out confirming something that anyone who’s spent time around small kids could tell you: They know more than you’d think. In this case, the theory that children don’t learn traditional gender roles until preschool is turning out to be incorrect. (Via.)
At 24 months of age, children seem to recognize gender stereotypes - and when they are broken, according to research from Brigham Young University…..
The professor found the 2-year-olds looked longer at the inconsistent images - not because the children believed they were “wrong” but because they were unfamiliar, Flom said. In other words, children in the study were used to seeing women use lipstick and men wear ties.
The researchers revealed their fuzzy-headed liberal evil side by suggesting that it might be less than wonderful for toddlers to learn stereotypes so early on, but I say look on the bright side. The most popular child development expert in the country and wingnut extraordinaire, James Dobson of Focus on Family, is extremely concerned that children won’t have gender stereotypes and expectations pounded directly into their brains and puts a great emphasis on teaching these expectations to children, sometimes going to alarming degrees, as in this advice on preventing your son from becoming Teh Ghey:
Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.
With this new information that stereotypes are absorbed fairly easily, Dobson and his followers can relax a little. If you take your son into the shower to show him your penis, you can just come clean and admit you’re doing it because it’s fun to have someone ogle your ginormous cock with awe in his eyes.
273 Responses to “Daddy’s other necktie”
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My son, who is 5, went with two friends - sisters, 4 and 5 - and my wife to an event which turned out to be cancelled.
“So, girls,” said Augustienne, “would you like to go to [alternate event] instead?”
Both sisters responded with variations of “Only if that’s what Augustlet wants to do.”
I don’t like stereotyping at all. That is why Dobson is so damn backwards. He wants to maintain the 1950s stereotypes.
Ah, but not every kid is going to absorb those stereotypes early on—just the ones who are exposed to the ‘traditional’ stereotypes and not to alternatives.
Memo to: Straight people with kids
Re: Battling stereotypes
If you have kids, take ‘em to the Gay Pride Parade this month! Yes, they will probably see stereotyped outfits and behavior there—but the earlier they see it, the less likely they’ll be to raise an eyebrow at any of it. My seven-year-old seldom misses the parade. Side benefit: It may reduce the child’s Pavlovian association between parades and free candy.
You might have missed this year’s parade (Chicago’s is on June 24 but I know Boston’s already happened), but there’s always next year.
Best post title ever.
(And sometimes Mommy wears a clip-on!)
That bit about Daddy’s great big penis still freaks me the hell out every time I read it. People take this creep’s advice about raising children? Brrrr.
Ayup. That’s exactly why I cringe every single time I read that “Dad and son in the shower” excerpt. It’s almost unbearably creepy.
Ah, but not every kid is going to absorb those stereotypes early on—just the ones who are exposed to the ‘traditional’ stereotypes and not to alternatives.
You can avoid that if you keep them in a bubble away from the outside world. FROM BIRTH people start leaning on the kids to “conform”.
And while I’ve taken my kids to Pride Parades myself, don’t fool yourself that queers are totally free of all that gender-role stereotyping.
On Dobson, when I read crap about how about Manliness Keeps Away Teh Gay, I think those folks need to have a little field trip around the gay part of town. You know, to certain bars with names like The Eagle…
There’s an excellent book that talks about this, called Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female, by Phyllis Burke. And one of the things it talks about is a study showing that gender-role training begins in infancy. The study showed that adults treat infants that they think are girls noticeably differently than infants that they think are boys — encouraging sweetness and sociability in girls, physicality and assertiveness in boys. It’s usually unconscious, and the adults will often deny it when asked about it, but to an outside observer it’s not subtle.
So whenever I hear people say “of course gender roles are inborn, look at my five-year-old boy and my six-year-old girl,” my reply is, “Well, yes — they’ve been getting gender-role training for five and six years.
(For the record, I think it’s possible that some degree of gender-specific behavior is influenced by genetics. It certainly is in other, non-human animals. I just think that the training is so powerful and so ingrained that teasing out whatever part of the behavior differences might be genetic is just about impossible.)
And re Dobson: I’d just like to point out that if a lefty child-rearing adviser advised men to shower with their sons so the boys can look at their penises, the Christian Right would be howling for their blood.
Hmm… my main problem with Dobson’s theory about how older male figures can be used to ward off teh Gay is the research which suggests that having several older brothers *increases* the likelihood of a man being gay.
All those older brothers running around and casually showing off their larger penises seems to run contrary to Dobson’s logic that the sight of a penis will steer a little boy straight. Maybe the better solution is to have mom take the kid into the shower and show him her vagina–get him in the mood for future explorations, you know? That seems more logical, doesn’t it?
In Jesusistan, daddy may talk to Junior about the penis-but the chances are excellent that mommy or sis will be the ones to show him hos to use it.
Vive la clip-on!
I love that Dobson quote. My dream is to one day see every mention of his name in the media followed up by that quote, sort of like how Jerry Falwell will forever be attached to the “queers, feminists, liberals and PFAW caused 9/11″ bit. Thank you for doing your part to make my dream come true!
Oh, WORD.
My kids weren’t awed by big penises, having seen them all their lives. But I recall one little fellow at two, meeting a non-bearded man for the first time.
Evidently, he had some gendered expectations.
caitlin: *yes* as in “Dobson, noted for encouraging men to show their penises to their sons in the shower, was eaten by a swarm of angry german squirrels on thursday”
I don’t know if Dobson had a traumatic/abusive childhood, if he is just a sociopath, or what, but between this and his “parenting” books on how to beat, emotionally scar, and break the will of your children (and dachshunds), he has some serious issues that he really needs to stop projecting and inflicting on everyone else.
Here here!
I think it’s very much worth noting that animals definitely have culture — to what degree, we’re not sure, but it’s quite possible that many animals have cultures as rich and dynamic as ours. That means that gender roles in some animals are quite possibly a result of culture, at least to an extent.
You know, Dobson and Michael Jackson might make excellent bosom buddies after all! I’d been suspecting this all along, but that quote confirms my suspicions to a disturbing degree….
Oh gee, another “sun rises in the East” study!
When my kid came breaking into the bathroom one day, he was shocked to find that I was a setter rather than a pointer. A lot of his gender understanding began at that point.
Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of upon reading this was “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again”?
It is wrong, isn’t it?
Mythago: I think Peter LaBarbera’s way ahead of you on that one.
Darn tootin’ kids learn gender stereotypes early.
Anecdote:
I was at a pool party with a bunch of other moms and our 6-9 month-old infants.
One little feller was scared to go into the water.
His parents’ response, word-for-word:
What a pansy! What a momma’s boy! Don’t be such a p*ssy.
But showering with Daddy won’t stop Teh Gay or Teh Cross-Dressing. My pre-school son sometimes took a shower with his dad. He also loved dressing in pink tu-tus, and wearing sparkly jewelry.
“where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, ONLY BIGGER.”
Unless the Dad in question is Dobson, in which case…
Really, I can see absolutely NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with this idea.
But…why stop there? Forget the shower. Go into the living room when the kid’s watching cartoons, switch “Spongebob” off, and call Mommy into the room. Then go at it on the floor right in front of him. That way, not only will little Jeffy notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger, but he’ll also learn what the proper use for it is.
The scene: Preschool
The cast: Me and a four-year old student of mine.
William: (looking spiffy in a pink dress and with a purse that we keep in the play area)
Me: You look pretty, William! Who do you know that dresses like that?
William: My dad! When he drinks beer.
Ah, those were the days.
Maybe the better solution is to have mom take the kid into the shower and show him her vagina–get him in the mood for future explorations, you know?
But vaginas are evil and scary, and seeing one in the flesh will scare a boy away from women forever. It’s not like he’s ever going to have to look at his wife’s, so why put that unnecessary trauma on him? Much better to have him exposed to good, wholesome, red-blooded,
deliciouspenises as often as possible, so he’ll grow up to be a good American.If you take your son into the shower to show him your penis, you can just come clean and admit you’re doing it because it’s fun to have someone ogle your ginormous cock with awe in his eyes.
o.k. That’s a little too much for me. I can still remember my dad taking me to a public swimming pool when I was a little kid.
There were grown men standing in the showers and they were hairy. They were seriously hairy and some of the hairier ones even had hair on their back.
Shit, being a little kid that seriously grossed me out. When puberty finally came, it seemed like a pretty natural process.
Little boys (and girls) don’t need to look at dad’s dick. There is no fucking reason for it.
Dan… that is so funny I almost choked!
Ahhh, Bill S, why you gotta go make a tiny-dick joke? Some of us really do have little dicks.
There’s no way in hell kids aren’t going to absorb certain gender stereotypes like the lipstick and shaving bits, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with associating men with shaving or women with lipstick since few women have beards and few men wear Shimmering Sunset gloss. Those are observations, and two year olds are constantly making them and categorizing them. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be anywhere near so entertaining when you ask them things like, shall we park the car in the living room or shall we feed the cat a banana?
The problem is not in the observation, but in the value judgments they are taught to associate with the observation and the reactions they are taught when someone’s behavior or appearance falls outside their earlier observations. Observing is pretty much the full-time job of a toddler, which is why every parent has some story of a child blurting out questions like why is that person’s skin color different or why is that lady’s belly so big. The questions are almost always completely innocent and value neutral, but the parents get flustered and embarrassed, and that’s where things get screwed up. Kids start to get the idea that things that are outside of their norm are bad, which leads to a huge chunk of society’s problems.
And just in case someone was unaware of this, BYU is hardly a den of fuzzy-headed liberalism. It’s owned and run by the Mormon Church.
I totally agree Amanda. I consider myself to be a rather egalitarian and pro-feminist guy, but from around 4 years of age, my son would say things like “Girls can’t do that, only boys can” regarding particular activities. I was shocked when he said that, because he wasn’t learning it from me.
That one’s a no-brainer. My short hair confuses the hell out of little children all the time.
True, Marc. The problem is that LaBarbera came back out.
As a kid (3 or 4 years old), I couldn’t stand playing girls’ games. You know, I didn’t understand playing house, or why anybody would want to. I liked active games, like hide and seek, cowboys and indians, and I liked playing with blocks and lego. I remember when the teachers at the preschool tried to forcibly resocialise me — they took me away from doing something that I enjoyed (playing with building blocks, alone) and tried to make me join in with a group of girls, who had set up an invisible “house” on a bed. “Blocks are boys’ toys,” the teacher said. “I will ask these girls if you can join them in their game of house.” So, I was put on the bed, and the girls asked me what role I wanted to play, and I had no idea. They must have given me a role — but then I had no idea of how to play it. It was a very awkward experience for me.
Much, much later, as an adult this experience was repeated for me, when I tried to be a school teacher. It was a very awkward experience for me, as there was no grid of logic to the “game” I was supposed to play. It was like there was something — almost hanging viscously in the air — which I was supposed to grasp, and I could feel it there, hanging like a heavy fog, but it was too thin for me to grasp it.
Re: Graham’s comment
Perhaps the point was to traumatize them with that experience that they’ll never want to see another penis again? Hey, that would cut down on the shameful self-loving too!
Back when I was a cashier at Target, a mother and her kid came through my line. The child looked at me and asked, “Why do you have earrings? Those are for girls.”
Without missing a beat, I look at the kid and say, “But I’ve also got a beard. Do girls have beards?”
The child: “Sister Mary Catherine does!”
I look to the mother who says, “It’s true; she does.”
As far as gender roles, our daughters figured out FAST that Dad does all the ironing and Mom shovels all the snow! Also Dad does most of the cooking and Mom wears flannel shirts and jeans more.
And Dad gives himself manicures beautifully and even wears clear polish on occasion- Mom usually bites her nails and has tried to stop for 40 years. Dad wears more jewelry than Mom, too.
That may be my new favorite story ever.
Wow, there’s some seriously anxious heterosexual overtones to the whole “hammering a square peg into a peg hole” bit. Is the symbolism behind that intended, or are they honestly that delusional and insecure in their sexuality?
Dobson’s encouragement to use physical punishment as a method of Godly parenting spurred on other Bibical child raising gurus, such as the Pearls, who promote a good chastising, even for infants:
http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=35
“The Rod” (Daddy’s scary penis) is indeed a factor in proper “child training”. Their credo used is “training up” children, as in training animals and slaves.
Auguste-
Isn’t it, though? The other teachers were familiar with the context. I was surprised that no one worried about it, given the conservative people running that particular center, but they made the very good point that it made the little boy happy and didn’t hurt anyone: how could anyone object?
I wish more people were that cool!
Wow! That Daddy Dobson quote is really fucking sick. My husband has only taken a few baths with our son, so of course our son is curious about his penis, but my husband doesn’t do it with that intent in mind. A agree that if it had been someone on left side of the ideological spectrum everyone would be talking about NAMBLA.
I remember having this discussion not long ago about when gender socialization begins. I argued then, and still claim, that it is from birth. Every receiving blanket and gender specific item of clothing screams “cars, airplanes, tools, and sports” for boys. I am seriously starting to get irked that I can rarely find infant and toddler clothes that don’t have a “theme”- they all have some decal on them. I always notice that when people think my son is female they speak gently and tell him how “beautiful” he is- and I don’t correct them because I don’t care and neither does he- but when they know he’s male their voice drops in register and they talk about how “strong” or “alert” her is.
Need I mention how much satisfaction I get out of the fact that my son is obsessed with my makeup? Or how uncomfortable it makes people when I talk about his future in a non-heteronormative way?
Cara,
The “hammering a square peg into a peg hole” is to introduce boys to the proper use of tools and basic construction techniques. It’s to introduce the “handy-man” ideal early on with basic tasks. Just like when you go to a carpentry school, the first thing you do is hammer in about 1000 nails into a board then pull them out to learn the proper technique.
The fact that you immediately took it as a sexual cannotation shows were your mind is, the gutter.
Actually, I’m reading Jennifer’s story, and it occurs to me that if you really want to teach your kids about gender roles and gender expectations in our society, the thing to do is to teach them to hammer square pegs into round holes.
Because no girl would ever wish to learn such a thing, natch. And there could never be any symbolic subtext to “the proper use of tools.”
…yup.
In other anecdotes that affirm the idea that small children pick up gender roles and other such social conditioning very young and very quickly, I remember all too well what having a hardcore computer geek as a mother and honorary auntie did for my best friend’s eldest daughter. We lost at least one CD-ROM drive because toddler wanted to explore the shiny tech, and she wrecked one of Mommy’s Treos because she wanted to use the toy that mommy, daddy, and auntie thought were boundlessly interesting…
So basically, in the world of “duh,” duh, infants and toddlers learn these things like mimics. There may not be a magic gender chemical that guarantees boys like tech and girls like lipstick! Sometimes, little girls will like both if everyone in their life is building a Linux tower in front of them, or buying them legos instead of doll strollers.
Um, bryan, are you being ironic? Or do you understand where the reference came from?
Hint: Cara wasn’t referring to the classic “square peg in round hole” situation, but to something some wingnut wackjobs said about it!
Cara is merely referring to the DIRTY MINDED fundamentalist ministry types who came up with the “parts don’t fit” bit and then illustrated it with pegs and holes.
Geesh.
Candid,
Yes, children learn like mimics. I was not asserting that it should “only be taught to boys”, but countering that it had a sexual connotation that Cara made. And as far as a symbolic subtext to “the proper use of tools”, sorry, if you’re some kind of PC Nazi, sure. But here in reality, there is a correct way to use a hammer and an incorrect way to use a hammer, simple as that. And magically, that goes beond if the person using it is girl, boy, gay, or strait. Don’t believe me? If you can find a female construction worker, ask her. But of course, feminists are really concerned about trying to attract more women into that field, as even they would like to “leave it to men”. Pretty funny if you ask me.
Ultimately children are going to learn what interests them, regardless of what you as a parent want. I think that should be the ultimate lesson. And besides, the linked article was written for a target audience whom prefer to teach “traditional values”. I find it interesting how much you like to rip those people apart as “nuts”. How about we stop trying to tell eachother what to do? You go ahead and raise your child forcibly to be gay, I’ll raise my child to be think and decide for himself and pass as much of my knowledge to him as possible. And I’m sure someone will raise their child forcibly to be strait. And when they grow up, we can then determine which kid is happier with their life, because that’s what matters in the end, right?
Again, Bryan, do a search of the site for “peg hole”. You will find that it isn’t Cara who made a sexual assertion therein - she was merely referring to the sexualization of that saying by fundamentalists.
Don’t believe me? If you can find a female construction worker, ask her. But of course, feminists are really concerned about trying to attract more women into that field, as even they would like to “leave it to men�. Pretty funny if you ask me.
There are plenty of female construction workers - I’ve worked with many in the Boston area when I was an RA.
As usual, you don’t know from fuck what you are talking about.
http://pandagon.net/2006/12/08/wnds-kevin-mccullough-and-the-nuts-and-bolts-of-procreation/ for a genuine shape sorter graphic courtesy of the wingnuterria
Wow Bryan, do you make it a habit of coming onto blogs and projecting this much? You are really making some big logical leaps and inferring from comments arguments that simply aren’t there.
Take a pill or something.
“Is the symbolism behind that intended, or are they honestly that delusional and insecure in their sexuality?”
She might be refering to what you’re saying. However, most fundies won’t, they’ll simply take it as I had said, teach boys to be constructive.
Just because one radical fundie said something doesn’t automatically mean that all fundies agree with them. Perhaps it would do you some good to go learn a bit about their point of view before generalizing them as sexually-obsessed just because you are. And for the record, no, “traditionalists” aren’t generally insecure about THEIR sexuality, just about the sexuality of OTHERS. Just like some here seem to be insecure with “traditionalists” sexuality but not their own.
I find constant humor in this site. Considering the post is generally a dissent with gender programming of children, commentors on here trumpet their agreement of dissent, then tell the tale on how they are programming their children to a gender type. Seems to me a excersize in the pot calling the kettle black.
Ms. Kate,
Actually, the statistics prove my point, 96% of all labor jobs are filled by men. 4% still does produce a large number given the population of the country, but is insignificant when compared to the field.
Unless of course you consider 4% to be plenty. I guess it comes down to priorities, closing a gender gap in engineering (18% female) is much more important than manual labor (4% female), as is the overall wage gap (5%).
I sat on the board of our small local humane society for years…we had no facilities then, just fostering homes and desperate stopgap action.
The BH was heavily involved when he could be, and our three sons grew up participating in caring for milk dependent motherless puppies, kittens and occasionally livestock…and loving it.
I’ll never forget when the Evil Eldest (he was about 12) was sitting cross-legged on the porch, bottlefeeding the last pup of a doomed litter, hoping against hope that this one would make it…when a visiting older relative “jokingly” and maliciously suggested that the EE would make a “good mother.” EE, flushed and angry, held out the dying pup, and said…”wanna strangle her?”
Point here is that gender stereotyping robs our sons of their natural “nurturing” selves. I am so tired of the Leonard Saxes and Michael Gurions of the world, who implicitly claim boys are naturally uninterested in girlie stuff like caring for the sick.
Horseshit.
ahunt,
I couldn’t agree more. I find nothing worse than a parent trying to force children into a type-cast.
Well, maybe with the exception of people trying to tell others how to raise their kid.
Show me one place where anyone on this thread said they were “programming” their child to a gender type. In fact, so far everyone has said they are consciously exposing their children to a variety of gender expressions and/or not prohibiting them from exploring alternative gender expressions (I, for instance, do not care that my son plays with make-up or that people sometimes think he’s a girl).
Just because you want to make an equivalence between feminists/GLBT and so-called “traditionalists” (who are not all that traditional depending on what you define as traditional), does not mean that there is one.
You go ahead and raise your child forcibly to be gay
Heh.
And for the record, no, “traditionalists� aren’t generally insecure about THEIR sexuality, just about the sexuality of OTHERS.
Heh.
Just like some here seem to be insecure with “traditionalists� sexuality but not their own.
Awesome.
But seriously, while we’re on the subject, it’s amazing how little “sexuality” for these people has to do with actual sex. You’re not supposed to actually have sex with women; you’re supposed to want to, and the reason you want to is that you’re a man and that’s what men want. Hence no turning live vaginas loose on boys or making them watch their parents fuck on the living room floor. The whole point of being straight isn’t enjoying hetero sex, but warding off the wrath of the Almighty.
Bryan, can we find you some troll remediation facility or something? Or are you just bound and determined to try and derail every thread you find here?…
Queen of Spades, you reply “Here here!” to a mention of Mommy’s clip-on. Was that a typo for “Hear, hear!” (an expression of agreement or approval), or were you pointing out a target of opportunity?
MAJeff, when my grandson informed me that earrings like mine were for girls, I replied with a naughty grin, “I’m a grown-up, so I can do anything I want!” That both satisfied his objections and also forestalled his asking his homophobic father if he could get his own ears pierced.
Bryan, you are flinging nasty things in all directions like a caged monkey on speed. Who, exactly, suggested trying to forcibly raise a child as gay? Did anybody suggest that? Or did you make that up in an effort to muddy the water?
Orange: Not true. I tend to dress in a fairly androgynous style most of the time. My little girl’s dad is borderline effeminate. His girlfriend dresses androgynously as well, with the exception of an occasional skirt (but she never wears makeup).
And now my kidlet has somehow learned to differentiate between men and women. Only she doesn’t say “men” or “women.” Men are “Daddy” and women are “Mommy.” Two and a half, y’all. I blame television, and we don’t even watch network or cable. Just DVDs.
On the other hand I think that even if we did not have the stereotypes, children will still figure out there’s something basically different between XX women and XY men. I have noticed, for instance, that small children often seem intimidated by adult males. I am not the only one who has noticed this. I have no idea if it’s instinct or if they pick something up from the fact that most moms are more comfortable around female strangers than around male ones, or perhaps a combination of both.
But here’s the pisser. I’m not sure there is any safe way to control for whether a person’s perception of gender is inborn or learned without permanently warping the child. We are a social species which has replaced most of its instinct with culture and we can’t just isolate children from society. The best we can do is try to fix the damage after it’s been done and hope things get better over time. No lasting social change ever happened quickly (modern technology notwithstanding–it’s unsustainable and will NOT last forever), so I suppose it is just as well.
Junk: I take exception to your last remark. I’m straight because I prefer guys. No deity enters into the arrangement whatsoever, although if He were male and cute, I suppose I’d at least ask for His number. Hey, it worked for Zeus.
Sorry for the blank comment, the link didn’t take, doesn’t matter.
Dana: “We are a social species which has replaced most of its instinct with culture and we can’t just isolate children from society. The best we can do is try to fix the damage after it’s been done and hope things get better over time.”
No, the best we can do is provide loads of constructive counterexamples before the damage is done.
Oh, and Bryan, “whom” still isn’t the nominative.
Add as a twist to this the issue that men can do anything “feminine” as long as it’s superlative enough to warrant status. Women cook, men are celeberty chefs. Women sew or knit*, men are tailors or designers. Women care for the sick, men are doctors and surgeons. Women garden, men are farmers.
* Although I have some great photos of an entire household engaged in Fairisle Knitting, when it became a cottage industry, everyone did it.
Bryan:
Oh, they’ll “take it,” but they’ll just blame the Homosexual Agenda™ for it afterwards.
Shorter Bryan: “Yes! We’re all individuals!”
Shorter Bryan: “I know you are, but what am I?”
They obsess about the sexuality of others precisely because they’re so wildly insecure about their own sexuality. People with healthy sexual pathologies don’t publicly freak out about what consenting adults they don’t even know do with their genitals. You’d have to be an utter moron not to realize this.
See, this is my main problem with conservatives. They honestly believe that there’s no such thing as subtext.
In much the same way that people who point out the religious bigotry of fundamentalists are themselves bigots, I’m sure.
Dana:
I think you missed the point of junk’s comment.
History_Mom,
Your a pretty good example of what I said. Would you not agree that your actions are to program your child to an open, accepting, and exploritory gender-type? Is that, or is that not, also a form of parental controlled gender programming?
Make no mistake, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, just that it is a form of programming. The point that I’m trying to make is no matter what, as a parent you are going to program your child to something based on your beliefs as a parent of what is and is not acceptable. The only way to avoid that would be to remove all children from their parents. But that only solves half the issue, because it ultimately means someone else is going to program the child rather than the parent.
Ultimately, wouldn’t the conclusion be then, since there are different beliefs that deserve to be respected, that no one should force their views onto others, that parents should be allowed to teach their children what they believe without interference from others?
Dan,
In response to:
“In much the same way that people who point out the religious bigotry of fundamentalists are themselves bigots, I’m sure.”
Depends. Take for instance some assert we should respect and not interfere with “Radical Islam”. If the same person then practices ridiculing and attempting control of religous views, then yes, they become no better than the Christain whom wants to “wipe Islam off the map”.
And before I get attacked, yes, I believe we have absolutely no buisness “over there”.
Mike,
I think that class might be across the hall from logic remediation and next to hipocracy remediation. Might we make it a group trip?
Bryan,
Honey, isn’t it time for you to get in the shower and show your son your penis?
“Might we make it a group trip?”
Only if your MPD makes you think you’re really more than one person…
Dear Moderators,
I take it back.
That is the most asinine thing I have read in a long time. That you cannot tell the difference in forcing your child into a single, narrowly defined gender identity (as “traditionalists” do) and exposing your child to the multiplicity of gender identities without showing preferment for which they choose (i.e. not privileging “masculine” traitis over feminine” traits for boys) says more about your own level of ignorance than about my style of parenting.
Brian: BTW “your” is a possessive pronoun and “you’re” is the conjunction of “you are”.
Why is it that trolls never can seem to abide by basic rules of grammar?
Conjunction supposed to be contraction. Teach me to play grammar police while suffering from research-related brain drain.
Regarding boys, pegboards and construction workers:
I’m all for teaching girls as much carpentry as we teach boys. I just now started learning this stuff (at 26!) and I’m having a blast with it; the rush of creating something usable is gratifying on so many levels, it makes you understand why some people fill their garages with power tools.
However, I really wish I had learned construction methods as a kid because right now I’m woefully underskilled. Luckily, I got a male Engineer friend to help me through the first stages of my project, but I still have to improvise quite a lot - and although sometimes I do improvise my way to the correct technique, that’s not always. Guys who have been learning this stuff since preschool are so friggin’ lucky.
So yeah, girls, get out there and build some shit! (If you are so inclined)
[…] Via Amanda comes news that should be utterly unsurprising to any humans out there: If moms suddenly started shaving their faces and wearing neckties and dads painted their nails and applied lipstick, would their 2-year-olds notice? […]
I’m straight because I prefer guys.
At first I thought this was coming from condescending asshole conservative Dana, and I was afraid he was off his meds.
Female sexuality continues to confuse the hell out of fundies, which is why they don’t spend much time on it. One of them will occasionally go off on a rant about lesbians, but for the most part, I doubt they know what to make of them.
None of this surprises me in the least. Conservatives continue to believe that you can teach people not to be gay because they think it is not a natural state of being.
Regarding gender roles and toddlers, it is important to note that toddlers are completely ego-centric. They are incapable of caring about others except in how they relate to them and their wants and needs.
It is in the elementary years that children begin to be less ego-centric. They spend a great deal of time learning how to interact with others (without the aide of mommy, daddy or other care givers). It is at this stage of development that they become obsessed with normalcy, what everybody else does or thinks, and gender definitions. They can’t help it, it is a natural stage of development. All we can do as parents is teach them how crazy these heteronormative roles are, and expose the ridiculousness of these claims by examples from our own lives.
But remember these same role-defining obsessed beings are constantly passing judgment on other children, including toddlers, and even babies. All it takes is for one child to tease your toddler for playing with a “girl toy”, and all of the good you have done in modeling reality is going to be harmed. Your self-obsessed toddler can’t help but remember how much it sucked to be teased for playing with an unacceptable toy.
The good news is that once they reach the role-defining obsessed phase of life, you can undo all of that harm.
Since I’ve never had children myself, I probably shouldn’t comment, but I’ll note that my brother rough-housed with his son and his daughters, that they all are familiar with guns and change their own oil, and so on and so forth. They’re grown now, sort of, and the girls are pretty girlish and the boy is all boy. (And they’re pierced and tattooed, but finally reverting to their natural hair color, I think; I haven’t seen them for a week.)
Which of course proves nothing; the kids are thoroughly acculturated in a distinctly gendered society. They’re certainly less racist than my generation was, and probably less sexist, so let’s call it progress and see what happens when they have kids.
So true. And it’s really fascinating how even blurring the lines upsets folks like Bryan: nobody’s forcing my friend’s daughter not to play with dolls. She’s the daughter of nerds, and thus, with the common denominator of “nerd” in the picture, learned that the coolest toy in the house was…the iPod shuffle. This was not part of some nefarious master plan to turn said child into some experiment; this is just an anecdotal duh to say, hey, kids tend to learn by observation. If your kid observes that Mommy will forget to do the wash or eat if she’s deeply involved with a new hack, probably that kid will think, “ooh, the shiny computer box is magic and happy. I WANNA PLAY WITH IT, TOO!!!”
Because, follow me close now, kids seem to initially like, when they’re infants and toddlers, what makes the adults they spend the most time happy, or failing that, the items that make adult attention not 100% focused on the toddler.
Gosh, what a horrible PC beeyatch I am, thinking that providing some legos and blocks and other gender non-specific toys will be more apt to let kids have fun and find more independent ways through the gender jungle. Or letting boys play with dolls if they wanna, and teaching a child of either gender how to play carpenter because it’s a cool skill to have, and will dissociate that it’s a “boy task” and make it “cool” for either one.
It’s kind of fun to watch the trolls insert as many of their pet issues into a thread as they can. Gotta love that radical Islam and “some” shit. But let’s be honest Bryan, for me, as a gay man iiving in the United States, the Christian Right is a bigger threat to me than is radical Islam. While you folks run screaming about the “Dhimmitude” or whatever the fuck you think Europe will become, we’re fighting Christians here in America.
The next phase, Bryan plays out his fantasies by describing in depth the torture and execution we homos and feminists will face at the hands of the radical Islamists.
Then, bunnies (please!)
…cause there aren’t any Christians in this country who, based on a single line in Leviticus, want to kill homosexuals.
If that’s Dad’s other necktie, then he must be speaking out of his ….????
OK, enough. Some of us just know all that stuff about what gender specific behaviour is innate and what is beaten, brow-beaten or just hyped into our “second natures”
…and, it is painfully clear, some of us don’t and are invested in not knowing.
So I beg you all to go read The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. And I would really think it a service to the community, Amanda, if a thought leader [no sarcasm here at all Ms Marcotte, please believe me] like yourself reviewed the book in your book club.
As I sometimes blog: whatever people don’t know about gender when they have never lived a moment without its evidence in plain view is a token of how much the do not want to know. Enough of that.
I have three sons. They’ve seen my penis constantly, because I don’t have a problem with nudity and don’t want them to, either. (Succeeded a bit too well, perhaps. “No nudity in the front yard” is our standard, compromise, rule.)
I have a hatred for the “penis like daddy’s” way of thinking, since my wife and I decided that they weren’t going to have one like mine. They weren’t circumcised, because I consider it barbaric and evil and unnecessary. When another father/friend made a similar decision, his comment to the like-daddy’s crowd was “Am I going to get his enlarged and hairy, too?”
Mothers, don’t circumcise your sons if you wouldn’t do it to your daughters.
Male circumsion is a cosmetic procedure. Female genital mutilation—-well, do I really have to point that out? You can’t compare the two unless you’re the biggest weenie in the world, unless you’re also incredibly ignorant about what womens’ lives are like in the rest of the world. Women and girls die as a result of FGM.
“If you can find a female construction worker, ask her. But of course, feminists are really concerned about trying to attract more women into that field, as even they would like to “leave it to menâ€?. Pretty funny if you ask me.”
Bryan, as a female construction engineer, with a niece who is an electrician and a son who is a mason (who had a few girls in his classes, at the VoTech), all I ccan say is:
FUCK YOU, ASSHAT.
ginmar: While male circumcision is not comparable to the most commonly performed forms of FGM, to call it cosmetic surgery is really condescending and dismissive. I would think that feminists could at least get on board with not unnecessarily removing parts of children’s bodies for aesthetic purposes regardless of the sex of that child.
I remember my mum bought me one of those little-kid tool benches at the same tiem she bought me one of the little kitchens, because she didn’t want to “type cast” me. She was rather annoyed when I ended up playing with the kitchen more, if only because it had more room for imagination. Where’s the fun in sticking little pegs in, only to pull them out? And then do it again, and again, and again…
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the Destination Imagination group (formerly known as Odyssey of the Mind)? Well, its sort of a theater/improv-y thing. What’s interesting, is that all boy or mostly boy teams tend to get coached in how to use power tools fairly early, whereas girl teams don’t. I was on a mostly boy team and we started using power tools in third grade, and progressed to all-wood sets in a few years, whereas I know of high school girl’s teams, that still use only cardboard for everything. (What was really interesting when my original team dissolved, and I ended up on a mostly girl’s team. I ended up being the “boy”, because the only male was hopeless with power tools, and so I ended up building everything / insetting all our hinges).
Sorry, but comparing a mutilation that is done to sentient girls at the age of six or seven with a cosmetic procedure that is done to male babies is just not appropriate. Women and girls die from FGM and what it does. You may as well give up, because I’m not backing down on this. Unless you think male circumsion is having half your cock cut off while you’re held down by a bunch of adults, you’re off base. Male circumsicion IS cosmetic. It’s like having your ears pierced. FGM is castrastion, plain and simple—and then you’re supposed to go on ahead and try and live a normal life despite being mutilated. Sorry, but there’s no equality there.
Oh, and by the way: I do mean to be condescending and dismissive, because I’m sick to death of men and/or twits comparing male snippage to female mutilation. I’m funny like that. Women get an organ removed, men get some skin snipped off, how is that equal?
ginmar: While there can be no debate that female genital mutilation is a disgusting and life-destroying (either literally or otherwise) barbarity, I don’t think it’s fair to call circumcision an enitrely cosmetic procedure. As a male circumsized during infancy, I read a little about the practice just to get an idea of what had been done to me. While the research is not extensive, it’s generally accepted that the tissue removed is highly sensitive and plays a sexual and medical function.
So I would argue that its somewhat misleading to compare the procedure to getting one’s ear pierced - it’s more like having the very tips of one’s fingers cut off: you can manipulate things just as well without them, but you lose the sensation the densely packed nerves of the fingertips provide.
That said, it doesn’t really bother me personally, seeing as I never really experienced the alternative.
Brian: BTW “your� is a possessive pronoun and “you’re� is the conjunction of “you are�.
Why is it that trolls never can seem to abide by basic rules of grammar?
Ah, grammar attacks. The last refuge of a scoundrel.
greensmile, you *are* aware of the extensive criticism of Brizendine’s rather hand-wavy conclusions, right? As long as we’re playing book club, you might wish to look at The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris.
parents should be allowed to teach their children what they believe without interference from others?
Well, Bryan, since nobody is arguing that teaching your kids asshat ideas should be illegal, what’s your point? That you can’t address anything actually said here, so you’ll retreat to general principles on which we can all agree?
Tim P, you’re ignoring the central point, which is that it should never be compared to FGM, ever, unless you want to come across as a privileged twit. It’s called mutilation for a reason. The two are entirely separate subjects.
This is often one of the big hobgoblins of the right that we are “imposing” our ideas on them just by disagreeing with them.
Here is the bottom line. Provided that you don’t do visible damage to your child that triggers the notice of medical personel or teachers, you can get away with whatever the heck you want to do with your children. However, if, like Dobson, you set yourself up as a public expert and authority on how to raise healthy children, your ideas become fair game for discussion, criticism and argument.
“Mothers, don’t circumsise your sons if you wouldn’t do it to your daughter.”
Hey, isn’t there an old country hit by Waylon Jennings* & Willie Nelson that tackles this subject? “Mamas, don’t your babies grow up without foreskins…”
*I almost wrote “Waylong Jennings”. Waylong & Willie?
ginmar: Sorry, but you were the one who brought up a proposed equivilance between the two, not me or anyone else (it’s not my place to defend jon, but I don’t think he was claiming the two are equally odious). I was merely responding to the remark you made describing circumcision as a purely cosmetic procedure. It’s not. It doesn’t take anything away from your point to say that. And I fail to see how that makes me a “priviledged twit.”
Sorry, but mentioning the two together is comparing them, and Jon was the one who did that, along with History_mom. The two should not be mentioned in the same breath or within close proximity at all. Which they were.
I agree with ginmar: let’s not compare apples to oranges, or foreskins to clitori, as the case may be.
Studies have shown that getting the skin removed from your schlong at an early age will make you a cleaner and safer sex partner. So I am all for that time-proven and medically approved procedure.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that women who experience FGM do not have any increased hygiene benefits: quite the contrary–they often experience terrible infections or even death because incompetent fuckwads perform this procedure without any expertise or training. There is no medical benefit to FGM; it’s just about removing those parts of a woman’s sex organs which cause her to experience pleasure.
Ginmar: Not all male circumcision is performed on infants and many men have died or been permanently maimed by the procedure. You are the only one comparing FGM and male circumcision- nobody is defending FGM or minimizing its barbarity. Don’t you see how your position is similar to the “but what about women in the Middle East?” anti-feminist arguments that are meant to shut feminists up? Considering male circumcision a problem does not mean that one cannot also think FGM is a problem- we can maintain multiple thoughts in our head simultaneously after all.
SaucySaucy: Fuck off. In a written medium it is usually a good idea to observe basic rules of grammar if you don’t want to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. I don’t let my students get away with it because poor grammar does detract from one’s argument. If you don’t like it, tough shit. And if that’s all you have to contribute to this thread STFU.
ginmar: If I were to compare two fruits - say an apple to an orange - does that mean they’re the same thing? That aside, I agree that the two practices are obviously in completely different leagues in terms of suffering inflicted.
History_mom: bullshit, plain and simple. Many men? Where? As circumcision is commonly performed under fairly regulated conditions, I really doubt that. Let me guess: it’s some tribe somewhere. That hardly counts as common.
Tim_P, are you just deliberately ignoring Jon’s words, or is that just another male blind spot? And don’t tell me you can’t tell the difference between having a headache and having a decapitation. That’s the difference between male circumcision and FGM.
So does wearing a condom. I guess I happen to think that removing parts of the body is a bit drastic when their are even better prophylactic devices out there. BTW many of those studies have either been debunked or their conclusions were overdrawn (especially by the media). In many of those studies male behavior was not accounted for and the benefits of male circumcision were actually not enough to justify it as a routine procedure. If there was that much benefit why has the AAP and WHO decided to withdraw support for routine circumcision?
Foucault: Ha, I hadn’t even read your post when I replied.. but my point also applies to your example as well: just because they’re not the same thing doesn’t mean they can’t both be considered as history_mom wrote above.
ginmar: Male blind spot? Are you trying to be insulting? As I stated above, I recognize that the two practices are on different levels; I simply don’t think random parts of a persion’s body should be cut off without that person’s say so - no matter if it happens to be foreskin, clitoris, fingers, toes, whatever. That seems like a pretty uncontroversial statement to me, but maybe that’s just my male blindness acting up again.
Fuck off. In a written medium it is usually a good idea to observe basic rules of grammar if you don’t want to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. I don’t let my students get away with it because poor grammar does detract from one’s argument. If you don’t like it, tough shit. And if that’s all you have to contribute to this thread STFU.
Stop trying to silence me!!!!!
Why do you want to siiiiiiiilence me.
Last time i checked, this wasn’t a fucking classroom, and the commenters aren’t your (rather unfortunate) students, so you can get off your goddamn high horse.
Are you kidding about WHO withdrawing their support from this procedure? Here is what the World Health Organization had to say about it in 2007. Maybe you have some more recent knowledge that is not available to the rest of us? Circumcision sounds like a viable alternative to dying of AIDS if you ask me!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision
Three randomised trials carried out in African areas of high HIV infection have provided evidence that a man’s risk of acquiring HIV through heterosexual intercourse is halved if he is circumcised.[12][13][14] although some voice doubt regarding the value of male circumcision in reducing an epidemic.[15] The World Health Organisation recommended in 2007 that “promoting male circumcision should be recognized as an additional, important strategy for the prevention of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men.”[16]
One’s an amputation, Tim, and the other’s a cosmetic procedure. They’re not on different levels. They’re different things entirely, but Jon said, “Mothers, don’t circumcise your sons if you wouldn’t do it to your daughters.” You keep refusing to acknowledge that.
More on the medical benefits of circumcision. If I were a guy, I’d be standing in line for this procedure! Plus circumcised guys LOOK better if you ask me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision
On March 28, 2007, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS issued joint recommendations concerning male circumcision and HIV/AIDS.[107] These recommendations are:
Male circumcision should now be recognized as an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention.
Promoting male circumcision should be recognized as an additional, important strategy for the prevention of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men.[108]
ginmar: What is to acknowledge? I agree with the statement. Neither should be done against a person’s will. If a man wants to get circumcized later in life for medical reasons, let him make that choice.
Foucault: Sorry, you are right, the WHO has changed (again) their position on male circumcision after the recent study. But again, funny how nobody mentions how effective condoms would be for reducing transmission- even more effective than cutting off parts of the body. And once again you prove that you have no problem with perpetuating your internalized misogyny- are you fucking kidding me that a natural penis is not as pretty as a circumcised penis? How would you respond to men that say that fake breasts just look better than natural breasts, therefore women should all get fake boobs?
Ginmar: For your edification I did a quick Google search (because I don’t have the time to do your homework for you) and found these studies quite easily. In Nigeria, with an 87% infant circumcision rate this study found that 20% suffered complications with the majority being performed by medical personnel. I know you would like to think that it is only in “tribal” societies that complications occur (that way you can dismiss it as not “real”) but this assessment of the morbidity/mortality rate associated with male circumcision in Western countries puts the realistic figure at 5-10%, with hemorhhage and sepsis as the most common problems. While mortality figures are low the morbidity figures are significant.
SaucySaucy: it’s called basic fucking literacy. If you want people to understand you then you need to observe basic rules of grammar.
realityfighter — I still have to improvise quite a lot - and although sometimes I do improvise my way to the correct technique, that’s not always.
I do quite a bit of (basic) building and home repairs myself; as a kid, I was always at my dad’s elbow as he did likewise. But I watched only; he worried about a kid using the tools. (Same for his sons; I don’t think any of us handled power tools until our mid-teens, although hammers and screwdrivers were allowed much earlier.) Consequently, I don’t always know the “correct” technique either. BUT — because I’m not indoctrinated with “what” can be done or “how” it can be done, I sometimes come up with simple, innovative solutions that Dad would never have thought of.
In other words, don’t sell your intuition and basic common sense short. You may not do it the “right” way but, if it gets done and it’s functional, that’s all that matters.
You’re not supposed to actually have sex with women; you’re supposed to want to, and the reason you want to is that you’re a man and that’s what men want. - Junk Science
I’m not even sure about that, from their point of view. A lot of them still seem stuck in the grade school mentality of “you kissed a girl? that’s so gay”, to quote a line from the Simpsons.
History Mom,
Actually, yes I do realize the difference between narrow gender programming v. what you’ve described. However, it doesn’t discount the reality that it is still a form of “programming” or “conditioning”, or anything else you call it. Notice I never implied what you were doing was inferior or superior to standard methodology, just that the two ideologies deserved equal respect because both have positive and negative traits.
But I guess at this point this is a practice of me arguing with a wall since you don’t really see my point, that each parental style shouldn’t be outright dismissed as “inferior”, when you do so it makes you an ideological supremacist, no better than the Christian fundie whom thinks Islam is inferior, the man whom thinks women are inferior, or the white who thinks blacks are inferior. To respect each side and recognize the positives and negatives of the differing viewpoints, that’s actual ideological equality.
As far as foreskin removal, I think the benifits have more to do with lifestyle and social conditions. The history dates back to when modern medicine and personal hygene wasn’t the best. So, in countries that are still undeveloped, like the various African nations, there is still a benifit for forskin removal. In modern developed country, yeah, it’s pretty useless at this point, but still has religious ties to old traditions. I do think that it should stop being the law however.
He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball.
Throwing and catching balls (no pun intended) is one of the greatest life lessons you can teach a kid — you teach about assertiveness, follow-through, etc.
That he talks about teaching boys this and not girls this is perhaps the most glaring thing. You need to help your sons and your daughters learn this.
I’ve long felt that we won’t have true gender equality until girls get the same pressure to engage in sports as boys do (even nerdy dorks like me were pushed into sports in some way, shape or form in ways that girls, while allowed and even encouraged to be athletic, are not — just as boys are pushed, using gender stereotypes about “being a man” to be assertive in was that girls are not). That is why the opposition to Title IX, nu? C.f. M. Arnold’s educational ideas at Rugby, more than anything, real access of young women to sports is something that’ll really lead to an environment where women really are on an equal footing to men in jobs requiring assertiveness, teamwork, etc.
it is important to note that toddlers are completely ego-centric. - sadie
I am not so sure of that. As the soon-to-be stepfather of someone who is currently a toddler, I see plenty of non-ego-centric behavior in her … but maybe I’m biased?
OTOH, toddlers are natural fascists. Or more precisely, many people whom we’d call fascists are not so much fascists as “toddlerists” who have the will-based world-view of a toddler.
Getting back to gender roles: I’ll never forget reading a story about Talking Heads in Rolling Stone around 1984 or so, in which there was a paragraph about the 3-year-old son of TH drummer Chris Franz and bassist Tina Weymouth. Franz said the kid wanted a drum set like dad’s. “What about a bass?” the reporter queried. “No,” said Franz. “He says that’s for girls.”
Actually. toddlers are not totally ego-centric. My son right now is going through his “sharing” stage where he offers me whatever he is putting in his mouth. He almost always stops when I refuse the item and respects my preferences. I remember watching on Discovery HD this fabulous program about child development from birth to about age three. At around 14 months children will pay attention to what things you express preference or dislike for and will adapt to those. In the experiment it was about sharing food- the researcher noted the child’s food preference between two options and then responded the exact opposite to them (saying yuck to the child’s favorite and yum to the one the child did not like). The child then offered the researcher the food that the researcher liked- if toddlers were totally ego-centric then you would expect them to continue offering the researcher their favorite food.
But this also goes to show how “appropriate” gender roles are encoded too. Since children want to please adults, if you show dislike for certain gender traits and preference for others they will pick up on that.
On the playing ball: while I agree more parents should encourage girls to enjoy sports, I also think we need to give boys the space to not be athletic if they are not so inclined. Encourage activity but allow boys to enjoy quiet play too.
As a girl growing up in the 1980s in Canada, I was invited to join many of the same activities as the boys in my classes:
-Soccer at recess time was a big favorite;
-Ice hockey after school at the park was another popular past-time of my youth;
-Shop classes alongside Home Economics (the boys took Home Ec. one semester, and then we traded with them);
-”War” (a game of undercover Psych Ops which I invented based on the movie RED DAWN) became a huge summertime hit among kids in my neighborhood.
-Snowball fights, rock wars, exploring abandoned buildings, and other general “bad-ass” boy activities were things that I relished as much as any guy.
I do recall playing with Barbies and cut-outs, which I enjoyed a great deal. However, I was equally encouraged to put on a glove and throw the ball around. I do feel that these activities made me more assertive and well-rounded. Certainly I gained a lot more self-esteem from sports than from the jazz dance classes that I briefly took with a bunch of girls who were concerned about “form,” which I sadly lacked.
Oooh! Oooh! I got called an ideological supremacist! Yay me!
Uh, History_Mom, you’re deliberately missing the point now, and I’m quite sick of it. FGM causes death, vaginal rupture, miscarriage, fetal and maternal injury, and vaginal and anal fistulas. Nigeria? 370 children? Compared to the deaths of thousands of women? Sure, whatever. Don’t do my homework for me, o condescending one, because with shit like that I’d flunk. Thanks but no thanks. Death is a wee bit more serious than anything you’ve come up with.
Oh, and Tim, you’re still not getting it. One’s an amputation, the other’s ear piercing. SAying you’re against both and all is downplaying the seriousness and gravity of FGM. It ought to be in a category by itself, but I guess because it’s mostly done to women it can only achieve importance when men get somehow grandfathered into the discussion.
ginmar: I don’t understand why you have to assume bad faith in my motives - it’s not really intellectually honest. Nothing I’ve said has been in an attempt to somehow minimize the despicableness of FGM. I’ve repeatedly stated that I consider it self-evidently much more traumatic than circumcision, that’s why I’ve consistantly referred to foreskin removal as ‘circumcision’ rather than ‘male circumcision’ or anything like that.. I really don’t see what we disagree about.
Oh, wait, that’s 13% of 370 boys. I guess we know how much womens’ deaths and mutilations matter now.
BEcause FGM is so much more severe that it really deserves its own category. It really has nothing to do with circumcision at all; it’s mutilation plain and simple. It can’t be compared to it or lumped in with it or even said it’s much worse. It’s so much more severe in intent and consequences and design that it needs to be considered separately. But somehow we have to talk about it in a context that compares it to circumcision. Why?
ginmar: I don’t think “we have to” talk about it in the context of circumcision - obviously the two phenomena are products of entirely different motivations and I would be a fool to claim otherwise. As a general moral principle, is all, they are both bodily alterations done without consent, just as cutting someone’s hand off for stealing would be. They are all different: circumcision a product of ancient hygene/religion, FGM a product of misogyny and sexual repression, ‘eye for an eye’ justice a product of cruel and unusual punishment, but they all deal with the same type of behavior.
Note that I am *not* saying that they are the same - I think it’s important to note that something can be wrong for more that one reason: while circumcision and FGM are both wrong, in my view, for being unwanted bodily alterations, FGM is *also* wrong for being tortuous and depraved.
Ginmar: Please read what I wrote again instead of misrepresenting it to fit your own agenda. I first stated there is no comparison between the types of FGM performed and circumcision but that does not mean that the circumcision of males should be dismissed. Then I stated that not all circumcisions are performed on infants and there was significant morbidity and mortality, but that fatalities were few, which you dismissed as “tribal”. Thus I provided evidence that the harm of circumcision is significant even in medical environments and Western countries. I was emphatically not making an equivalence between FGM and circumcision- you are the only one who is doing that. And you (oddly) claim that circumcision does not cause death (right, it was the hemorrhage and sepsis that caused deaths not the circumcision…).
You and I obviously come at this from very different perspectives. I see the attention to male circumcision as a natural outgrowth of feminism and discussions about bodily autonomy- a questioning of previously held truisms. I think that if you want women to have absolute control over their bodies (no FGM, right to abortion, access to contraception) then you also have to support men’s rights to bodily autonomy also- that includes keeping their foreskin until such time as they opt to discard it. You, apparently, see any discussion of circumcision as a threat to women and I agree that the more hardcore anti-circ crowd (the ones who actually are trying to make an equivalence between FGM and circumcision, i.e. not me) gives that position some validity. I think your judgments here are misplaced. You obviously feel very passionately about this but I also think it is clouding your reason on this one.
Wait twenty years when your toddler son contracts HPV or some other nasty disease because you thought his penis looked “prettier” with its skin on! While there may be short-term complications such as infections associated with male circumcision, I agree with ginmar that it’s small headache to pay for the value of maintaining a healthier body and sex life in the long term.
Internalized misogyny because I think that circumcized cocks are better looking than those disgusting cigar cocks that men who don’t have them display? Sorry, you’re the one who has internalized some Catholic sense of “bodily integrity,” or whatever other religion you practice. No doubt you have some anti-Jewish hatred bottled up inside you, as your remarks about the “swarthy” Sarah Silverman demonstrated in our last discussion.
Can’t believe you’re a teacher, either. Unless it’s like grade one or something. What an asshole!!
Sorry–perhaps that last statement was mean-spirited, but I hate it when people project their crackpot theories onto others.
Keep your internalized misogyny and your anti-semitism to yourself, history_mom. If the hat fits, wear it.
Sorry, you’re the one who has internalized some Catholic sense of “bodily integrity,� or whatever other religion you practice.
Uh, what? I was raised Catholic, and my parents had absolutely no qualms about circumcising me.
Sorry, History_mom, but my position was an is simple: You cough up one study that says 13% of 370 males had some bad effects, while millions and thousands of girls suffer from FGM. Jon lumped them together, and since then we’ve had people saying they’re differing degrees of the same problem. They’re not. It’s just that simple, but we can’t have men not be mentioned, can we?
Sorry JackGoff; I was raised Catholic, too, and my parents had no qualms about circumcising my brother. Like I said, that post was a bit nasty and intended to show history_mom the stupidity of making baseless assumptions about the sources of peoples’ personal preferences.
She seems to assume that anyone who diverges from her simple-minded worldview is either a) an anti-semite, b) a misogynist, or c) ignorant and illiterate (as per her disparaging fuckwad comments to saucysaucy).
I think the *real* misogynist is a woman who jumps on the bandwagon to condemn those who argue that there is an inherent difference between removing foreskin for medical reasons, and mutilating women for the purpose of preventing them from enjoying sex.
Foucault: You are an utter idiot. There is no response to your sheer stupidity.
Bite me: I have nothing to say to some creep who constantly uses her posts to disparage other women (Paris Hilton, for one), and to abuse those whom she perceives as inferior.
You’re no doubt some insecure assclown who wants everyone else to conform to her assinine assumptions and prejudices. I can see you organizing PTA rallies to condemn circumcision and Paris Hilton songs.
Oh, and I spelled “asinine” wrong– you’d better correct me!
But really, I thought there should be an extra “ASS” in there just for you.
Foucault: Saucysaucy is one of the resident trolls who never has something meaningful to contribute to the conversation. He/she only shows up to insult regulars. You’re wasting your time getting offended on his/her behalf.
If you want to take offense at what I said directly to you, that’s fine. You want to keep throwing out the anti-semite shit (which was stupid on its face the first time you accused me of it on the other thread- apparently you are unable to understand sarcasm), that’s fine too. But you are a misogynist with all your hygiene crap.
Because you are so slow I’ll spell out how it is misogynist to talk about circumcised cocks being prettier (and the implication is pretty=cleaner=not disgusting). One of the main reasons that circumcision was promoted for secular purposes was to combat masturbation because masturbation=sexually undisciplined=unmanned=feminine. Do you see now how it is part and parcel of a misogynist patriarchal culture?
You are ignorant about the science in regard to circumcision and even the most recent studies about a reduction in HIV/AIDS transmission have been heavily criticized for flaws in methodology and failure to account for other factors (religion, behavior, etc.). Also, the applicability of these studies to Western societies where condoms are more readily available and the taboo against using them is not as strong it’s pretty ignorant to advocate the application of a permanent surgical procedure when disease transmission can be controlled by less invasive, non-permanent methods.
Here’s my question for you: Since you are so obsessed with the “cleanliness” issues, if any form of FGM was found to have significant health benefits would you support making it a routine procedure on all female infants? If not, why not? I sure as hell would not even if it would guarantee my daughter would never catch some awful disease. I’d rather err on the side of informed consent- I’m really consistent in that way, goes along with my whole pro-reproductive choice position and all.
I think the *real* misogynist is a woman who jumps on the bandwagon to condemn those who argue that there is an inherent difference between removing foreskin for medical reasons, and mutilating women for the purpose of preventing them from enjoying sex.
Where was this said? History_mom only said that the connection can be made under the argument for body autonomy, not that the two are equivalent actions. “Condemn” is an incorrect statement, as all h_m was saying was that circumcision of infant males is wrong because of bodily autonomy issues (not to mention the fact that it causes possible medical trauma), and so is FGM. FGM is also wrong, because it mutilates the woman as it is, as ginmar says, an amputation. I agree it would be fallacious to consider both these issues as equal, but they have a few ethical violations in common. Again, how is this not what H_M has said?
FGM is also wrong, because it
And yeah, there shouldn’t be a comma after wrong.
Ginmar: I have not missed your point but we are just talking past each other now. I think we will just have to agree that we look at the issue very differently and I think for both of us our feminism is what has led us to our conclusions. For me this is not a “what about the menz” situation (though I suspect that you are referring to Jon’s initial post).
Not to nitpick, but virtually every sexual individual will contract HPV. Most strains of HPV are asymptomatic. The terrifying strains cause either genital warts (6,11) or cancer (usually 16,18). However, research has shown a difference in the rate of penile cancer indicating a slight protection offered to circumcised men. Is the protection worth the surgery? I’m not sure how to answer that question. Hopefully the HPV vaccine will eliminate the debate.
But how does any of this (FGM vs circumcision: which is more evil?) tie into Amanda’s post on traditional gender roles?
Thank you JackGoff, I was beginning to wonder if my point was really that difficult to discern.
Kepler: Indirectly, all of this relates to how we view sexuality and sexual function along gendered lines and encourage particular views of gender in children. Female sexuality=evil and disordered, therefore young girls are mutilated in order to control them; male sexuality=potentially problematic but normal, therefore remove a part that will “control” excessive sexual appetite but not fundamentally remove sexual function (most of the time, anyway).
Okay, I know that was a weak argument for the thread drift. I apologize and will refrain from posting again on FGM/circumcision.
Don’t be a moron, history_mom: there is absolutely no medical or hygenic benefit to female mutilation. And my own support for male circumcision is not restricted to hygenic grounds. Remember, I think it enhances the appearance of a penis; I hate wrinkly, creepy-looking rolled up dicks. I am just fussy that way. I am also repelled by tattoos because they look trashy. Does this make me a misogynist? Or perhaps a classist?
I like people to be able to back up their arguments with solid evidence. You own “evidence” about how male circumcision fails to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases is a bunch of bullshit. You were totally wrong about the WHO’s stance on this issue, but you obviously prefer to continue arguing on thinly masked religious grounds rather than relying on scientific research.
You’re a closet anti-semite waiting to explode, aren’t you? I know you can’t stand the thought of millions of Jewish babies being forced by their parents to have their peckers trimmed. Just admit it.
And I’m sure your son will grow up to be a religious freak just like you.
Don’t be a moron, history_mom: there is absolutely no medical or hygenic benefit to female mutilation. And my own support for male circumcision is not restricted to hygenic grounds. Remember, I think it enhances the appearance of a penis; I hate wrinkly, creepy-looking rolled up dicks. I am just fussy that way. I am also repelled by tattoos because they look trashy. Does this make me a misogynist? Or perhaps a classist?
I like people to be able to back up their arguments with solid evidence. You own “evidence� about how male circumcision fails to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases is a bunch of bullshit. You were totally wrong about the WHO’s stance on this issue, but you obviously prefer to continue arguing on thinly masked religious grounds rather than relying on scientific research.
“ginmar: While male circumcision is not comparable to the most commonly performed forms of FGM, to call it cosmetic surgery is really condescending and dismissive. I would think that feminists could at least get on board with not unnecessarily removing parts of children’s bodies for aesthetic purposes regardless of the sex of that child.”
Here is some more evidence of history_mom’s deep-rooted belief that circumcision is simply an “aesthetic” (ie: religious) decision that we monolithic feminists should condemn, just as we condemn female mutilations done for implicitly similar (in her mind) reasons.
She believes it is “unnecessary” to remove the child’s foreskin, yet willfully ignores the research which shows that such removal will save lives– not only the lives of the men who receive circumcisions, but the lives of their partners. She also seems to be under the delusional impression that all American men use condoms. This must be why there are *millions* of new HIV infections every year.
Foucault: You are such an idiot. 1) Obviously you are incapable of handling hypothetical questions OR you know that you have no logical defense for circumcision but have bought into yet another cultural truism hook, line and sinker. 2) Aesthetic means “of or pertaining to the beautiful”- in other words, your preference for circumcised dicks is an aesthetic preference and a bad argument for removing a child’s foreskin without their consent. And I am not religious, was not raised religious. Boy you are really reaching if you think that disagreeing with routine circumcision is evidence of antisemitism. I’m sure you also think that criticism of Israel’s foreign policy is also antisemitic too. What a fuckwit.
You’re the fucktwit. You don’t expect me to respond to a “hypothetical” question that is clearly moronic, do you? You just want to defend your anti-Semitic views on circumcision.
You refuse to acknowledge scientific arguments in favor of the practice, and instead try to explain your objections to circumcision on the grounds that this is simply an “unnecessary” removal of body parts. Do you have the same reservations about organ donations, you idiot? I’ll bet you do, since you are all about preserving bodily integrity, which is a *religious* argument as much as it is an aesthetic one. Your earlier remarks about Sarah Silverman, when coupled with these remarks about your disapproval of those who cut off their kids’ foreskins without the kids’ consent, reveal a deep hostility to Jews.
I’m sure you’re also in support of British academics who use Israel’s policies in the middle east as an excuse to boycott Israeli scholars. Go fuck yourself. Do the world a favor and circumcisize your son. With a mother like you, I’m sure he’ll be so concerned with preserving his bodily integrity (and maintaining closeted religious beliefs) that he will conveniently “forget” to use condoms. (Catholics don’t like that, do they).
Oh, and get your tubes tied!
You are a pathetic, seriously unhinged person. You are so afraid of your own demons you are projecting them all over me. I truly hope you get the help you need. Really.
WHAT THE FUCK?! Criticizing the body autonomy violation represented by circumcision is anti-Semitic?! Ok, whatever, but I know more than a few Jewish males who would disagree with you.
JackGoff: Back slowly away…
No, you are projecting, you anti-semite! I know how much it must bother you to admit that, but your repeated anti-Jewish comments lead me to conclude the obvious: you fear and hate Jews.
You called Silverman “swarthy” and tried to pin that on me, you fuckwad.
You took an adamant stance against parents who circumcise their children without the child’s consent, which most Jews do.
Now you are drawing your obvious feelings about Israeli foreign policy into the picture. In short, you hate Jews, don’t you? Quick trying to deflect that anger, you ugly person. Just admit it: you can’t stand the thought of peoples who don’t act like you do or think like you do.
For the record, Hamas has shown in recent days where the real problems lie as far as Israel’s foreign policy is concerned. I think even an ugly anti-Semite like you can agree that Israel is not to blame for the wave of terror washing over Palestine these days?
I’m against circumcision, Foucault. Does that mean I hate my parents and want them dead? Where else can you go with this argument?
“Criticizing the body autonomy violation represented by circumcision is anti-Semitic?! Ok, whatever, but I know more than a few Jewish males who would disagree with you.”
When viewed in the context of her other statements about Jews, history_mom’s comments here are further evidence of her antipathy towards those whose religious and aesthetic beliefs contradict her own.
PS: history_mom, could you please post a picture of yourself so we can all see why you object to aesthetic arguments so much? I am dying to see what a bowser you are– Bow Wow Wow!
JackGoff, I don’t know if you want to kill your parents. Why are you against circumcision, if I may ask? I would like to hear the pitfalls from a sane person.
Why are you against circumcision, if I may ask?
My body, my choices. Pretty simple, I think.
I am dying to see what a bowser you are– Bow Wow Wow!
I honestly hope you don’t call yourself a feminist.
Look, I am a circumcised male. And while I have no personal beef with being circumcised, I can buy the argument that, possibly, it does fall afoul of the bodily autonomy principle.
BUT.
I am very much opposed to discussing it when FGM is a topic, because it ALWAYS comes up when FGM is the topic. Every time, every single time I have ever seen FGM discussed, someone will barge in and say “What about circumcision of males?!” In other words, what about the menz?
It strikes me as an attempt to change the subject, off of one that’s about women’s issues, onto one that’s about men’s issues. Which attempt, I might add, is very anti-feminist. So can you maybe understand why this is not a good thing?
I suppose you’re right, when you put it that way. And I am sorry you didn’t have a chance to make a decision of your own about the procedure. If there was a way to wait until youths could make an informed choice *without* acquiring all the stigmas that come later in life about having your penis handled by a medical practitioner, I would be all for it. I just think it is “easier” (for everyone) to do it when the child is very young. How many men would make this decision later in life?
PS: I don’t really think that circumcised men have ugly penises, by the way. I was just saying that to yank history_mom’s chain.
But I *do* think that there is a social value to circumcising boys: it’s for the greater good, if you know what I mean. Girls are socialized to be docile and mothering; you guys get your foreskin cut off. It’s the American way (at least in most states, where Medicaid covers the procedure). You will notice that the typical Bible Belt states are the ones that no longer cover the procedure, with the weird exception of California. So even at the level of health care coverage, there seems to be a religious/moral dimension to this debate that crackpot mom does not want to acknowledge.
Oh, I honestly *do* call myself a feminist. I also know a true anti-feminist when I read one, and history_mom is that person.
I am very much opposed to discussing it when FGM is a topic, because it ALWAYS comes up when FGM is the topic.
You’ll get no argument from me on that. I haven’t read the entire thread, so I’m not sure where the topic came up, but I definitely think equating the two or even wasting thread space, when the thread is devoted to FGM, to male circumcision is totally inappropriate. I’m sorry if I gave that impression, but there is no equation between the two practices. There are similar ethics violations between the two, namely the violation of body autonomy rights. That was my and history_mom’s point.
The bottom line is that the original post wasn’t specifically about FGM, so if I have erred, I’m sorry. I only read the initial post and skimmed the comment thread. I’ve got a habit of doing that.
If you think a valid critique of someone is “You’re so fugly!”, you need to reexamine your idea of feminism, I believe.
“ginmar: While male circumcision is not comparable to the most commonly performed forms of FGM, to call it cosmetic surgery is really condescending and dismissive. I would think that feminists could at least get on board with not unnecessarily removing parts of children’s bodies for aesthetic purposes regardless of the sex of that child.”
–History_Mom
This is where the detour occured: when history_mom decided to sympathize with the jerk-off who argued that male circumcision and female mutilation are comparable practices. She’s such a feminist! Hurrah for defending the indefensible.
I didn’t say I thought she *was* ugly. I just want a photo because every time the “aesthetic” argument comes up (irregardless of context), she flips out.
Either she has a complex, which is fine and why not acknowledge it, or she just hates the fact that others find certain things attractive that she does not find attractive.
So she is either: a) hideously bad-looking; or b) hideously prejudiced against ideas of beauty other than her own. I would prefer (a) because no one can help that, but (b) makes her an asshole.
“I hate wrinkly, creepy-looking rolled up dicks. I am just fussy that way.”
Foucault: You hate them? Fine, cut your own… oh, wait, you don’t have one, you damn hypocrite. If you don’t have one, your opinions about this are as valid as if I suddenly started spouting anti-abortionist propaganda. My body, nobody else has the right to mess with it. Oh, an Jew hating? Projecting much? Seriously, you come off as a troll. /heckler mode off
Now, shall we let this nonsense be and try to get back to FGM, which is still much bigger problem than circumcision will ever be?
Ok then, Foucault. You’ve misread her point, as she is obviously not equating the two. Breast implants are a cosmetic procedure too. Forcing it on people? Yeah, not ethically valid. And completely stupid. Yet, when it’s cutting someone’s penis, somehow that’s different. Bottom line is, no matter what supposed health benefits one gets, I did not choose to be circumcised, I had no idea what was happening to me, and I have to live with the results. I do not wish that upon anyone.
This, however, is nowhere near what women subjected to FGM go through, and both I and history_mom have said that. Or did you not read her first sentence? “Not comparable” may not be the language you were looking for, but it accurately describes a state of inequality.
I’m still looking for the anti-Semitism. Could you possibly quote that?
BECAUSE AESTHETICS HAVE NO EFFECT ON ETHICS. If this is a problem for you, then I have to say that there’s no reason your ethics, as they appear to be, could not be used by misogynists to justify altering women’s bodies to conform to a set standard of aesthetics. PLEASE tell me you recognize the evil in this.
Crap, I’m in moderation. Well, let me just say that aesthetics have no effect on ethics. To say that they do or even imply that they do has no basis in feminism. It is not unreasonable for H_M to have a problem with an aesthetic based argument for circumcision, as she is holding to not only feminist principles, but ethical principles.
And I quoted text in my moderated comment, so that’s why the formatting is screwed. Whatever. I probably should have taken history_mom’s advice earlier anyway.
Sorry–perhaps that last statement was mean-spirited, but I hate it when people project their crackpot theories onto others.
And the idea that modifying men somehow magically makes them resistant to infection is very much crackpot, thank you very much.
NB: before you tell me your “facts” you should know that I am a PhD epidemiologist with two intact male offspring who are going to stay that way unless they so choose to do otherwise. That is because I have read all the damn papers and shredded them from the abstract on because they make some pretty basic and horrible errors in study design, population selection, and conduct. There is extreme bias and extreme motive in the way a handful of “researchers” are promoting the notion that all men should be circ’d because of “disease”. The only REAL, scientifically validated, and reasonably effective protection against STDs is and will likely always be condoms, circumcision or no.
To do otherwise is not only scientifically disingenuous, it is ethically irresponsible to one’s partners and high mysogyny to boot (as in FUCK THE WOMEN, we’s gots to protect the mens from having to actually be responsible and there won’t be a problem!!!)
JackGoff, I’m starting to think Foucault is a parody troll. The alternative is frightening. Now I’m against circumcision because I’m ugly. ROFL. This just gets more ridiculous.
Thank goodness a voice of reason has arrived! I love you Dr. Kate.
She’s holding to her moralistic and unscientific beliefs, that’s what she is holding onto.
To argue that not circumcising young boys is an “ethical” choice when you know that circumcision prevents death and disease is selfish and moronic.
As I said above in my comments to you regarding your own circumcision, it’s a shame that you couldn’t make an informed choice. However, how many men *would* make the “ethical” choice to save lives when given the opportunity to do so? I’m asking this in a global context, not just in an American context.
Ethics are relative; your personal preference to have a foreskin seems like a less important ethical concern than the sexual health of your partners.
I am very much opposed to discussing it when FGM is a topic, because it ALWAYS comes up when FGM is the topic. Every time, every single time I have ever seen FGM discussed, someone will barge in and say “What about circumcision of males?!� In other words, what about the menz?
Flewellyn,
When the first family sues an insurance company and a maternity hospital for “gender equity” in coverage of non-consensual body modification on a juvenile female, what will you say then? How long will it be before such a case occurs? Before a family complains that a doctor who performed one surgery on their child with full insurance coverage refuses to do the same for their daughter? Can you say “serious legal hassles here”?
Moreover, what will the law say? What CAN the law say? We have already seen a case come up where a father converted to Judaism and wished to force such surgery on his periadolescent son - if that father wins, do you really think that that decision won’t be used to force FGM on 13-year old girls because of their parental customs? Do you really think that is any different?
You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about that angle, because I’m going to think you are living a rather linearly defined life and pity you if that is the case! Either that or you are simply in denial that THE LAW will somehow see the two situations as fundamentally different, and protect the female where it won’t protect the male?
But I *do* think that there is a social value to circumcising boys: it’s for the greater good, if you know what I mean. Girls are socialized to be docile and mothering; you guys get your foreskin cut off.
I can’t think of a way that this statement is not antifeminist. Girls being socialized to be docile and mothering is not a part of feminist ethics. And the fact that society is misogynist is a valid reason for circumcision?! Whoa.
“That is because I have read all the damn papers and shredded them from the abstract on because they make some pretty basic and horrible errors in study design, population selection, and conduct.”
Can you offer some examples of the horrible errors you encountered? I don’t think shredding is a particularly useful response to what you perceive as bad arguments. Why don’t you try to articulate your own sense of the fallacies in the research? What was wrong with the population selection, design, and conduct of these studies?
PS: Why would the WHO and other AIDS-related medical professionals argue that men *should* be routinely circumcised in order to lessen their chances of spreading HIV? Is this a conspiracy of some sort? I would like to see your evidence for a contrary theory.
history mom, what frightens me is that because ginmar and Foucalt are arguing the same side of this argument, he thinks they agree (which they decidedly do not, if I know gin). While I think that ginmar is imputing motives that aren’t there for a mild comparison of male circumcision to female genetic mutilation (note to ginmar: for a change, this was actually a thread about feminism as it relates to men, and the issue of circumcision is probably appropriate in that context). Foucalt is delusional, where ginmar is passionate about not letting “think of the menz” overriding feminist issues.
and I for one KNOW you’re beautiful. And that’s because beauty is in the person, not the shell, and I’ve never seen your shell, so I can only speak of your person.
“I can’t think of a way that this statement is not antifeminist. Girls being socialized to be docile and mothering is not a part of feminist ethics. And the fact that society is misogynist is a valid reason for circumcision?! Whoa.”
Oh good grief… I was trying to be funny. You act like your circumcision is such a huge intrusion on your life: suck it up! Women have to undergo gender modifications on a daily basis. At least your foreskin removal was for a good reason.
Oh great: odanu the person who never read the facts about the Duke rape case and still thinks the Duke 3 are guilty of rape. Nice to see that birds of a idiot feather flock together!
Sure:
Population selection: latent disease not appropriately ruled out; motivation for participation may have lead to false reporting of behavior
Non-validation of survey data and questionable scale formulation (cronbach’s alpha)
Study design: inappropriate model specification, ungrounded assumptions on independence of variables used in analysis, lack of collinearity analysis (absence of spearman correlations),
Ascertation of outcome: short-term followup
Ethics that violate Belmont Convention: subjects not given standard treatment (e.g. they were not advised to use condoms or continue to do so). This is why these studies were championed out of universities in countries that were not Helsinki signatories
where are the bunnies?
where is dr. dobson’s penis?
hey, i wonder if *he’s* circumcised!
let’s write in and ask him!
Ethics are relative; your personal preference to have a foreskin seems like a less important ethical concern than the sexual health of your partners.
Um, you’re missing the point. I had never had sex when I was circumcised. I was not given any information regarding circumcision when I was circumcised. I was not asked whether I wanted to be circumcised. Health issues aside, I had no idea what the hell was going on when I was circumcised, so higher ethical reasoning was not possible for me. What if I never wanted to have sex when I grew up? What if I never did have sex when I grew up?
The point is, assumed future sexual activity does not negate my body autonomy. People should have a choice in what happens to their body, period.
delusional and unable to read. I personally think she identified the wrong people. Interestingly, despite being disbarred for it, Nifong believes the accuser. His incompetence does not make her a liar.
I don’t have to prove a conspiracy - I merely have to show that the intervention is inappropriate given more effective methods of control of disease - e.g. CONDOMS!
The evidence for circ is way too thin and the studies far too poor for the most basic of risk assessments. I know people who work with the WHO in the developing world and they have been very frustrated by the popularity of this very poor research. I is interesting, certainly, but far too weak to make recommendations on.
Both ethically and in terms of standard-of-care, circumcising men for the sake of STD prevention CAN NOT be promulgated as an intervention because it MUST be shown to be more effective than an intervention we already know is highly effective. To become the standard of care, it must be more effective than condom use - and that means more effective in preventing STDs in BOTH PARTNERS, not just easier for men.
Dr. Kate: let me help you find some scientific evidence that comes out of American universities that are Helsinki signatories. I think the rest of your objections are covered in jargon that is intentionally meant to prevent a lay person from understanding why you object to this practice. This suggests you don’t have a scientific leg to stand on, as far as I am concerned. If I can’t understand your objections, then I’m afraid I will stick to the published facts. You can find detailed bibliographical citations for a wide range of scientific *and published* findings below. Where are your own publications on the topic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision
^ Milos, Marilyn Fayre; Donna Macris (March-April 1992). “Circumcision: A medical or a human rights issue?”. Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 37 (2 S1): S87–S96. DOI:10.1016/0091-2182(92)90012-R. PMID 1573462. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
^ Schoen, Edgar J (1997). “Benefits of newborn circumcision: is Europe ignoring medical evidence?” ((free registration required)). Archives of Disease in Childhood 77 (3): 258-260. PMID 9370910. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
Mothers, don’t circumcise your sons if you wouldn’t do it to your daughters.
When jon referred to FGM not as Female Genital Mutilation, but as “Female Circumcision”, he drew a parallel between them. And since circumcision is far less drastic and generally seen as benign, it minimized it. And this is what is unacceptable.
You would not take a man, cut off his penis at the base, sew his testicals together, and pronounce him “circumcised”. So don’t go referring to hacking off a woman’s clitoris and sewing her labia together as circumcision. It’s not. It is Genital Mutilation and should be referred to as such.
And, regardless of your feelings about male circumcision, it should got with out saying that, compared to FGM, it is relatively minor.
I never said the Duke accuser was a liar. I think she is a deeply troubled person (delusional, to use your word). She no doubt thought she was raped by someone (and in fact her history indicates that she was raped by several black men years earlier). However, in accusing the Duke 3 of rape, she was either reliving a past trauma, or simply lying.
I would prefer to believe the former. But then again, I would also prefer to believe that you are intelligent enough to realize that no one on the Duke lacrosse team raped this woman.
The medical examiner took the DNA of *everyone* from the team (sans one black student) and *not one* sample matched.
But that is *scientific* evidence, and obviously too complex for your pea brain to fathom.
no more Duke. I made my statement. My sons are not circumcized, and I have taught them what condom use if for. Thank you, Dr. Kate.
“no more Duke. I made my statement. My sons are not circumcized, and I have taught them what condom use if for. Thank you, Dr. Kate.”
Yes, THANK YOU, Dr. Kate! You might be preventing odanu’s children from passing along the ungrammatical and illogical gene!
Wow, Foucault. I tend to respect that when a woman says that she as subjected to a sexual encounter that she did not consent to, that she is telling the truth, and that the person or persons who subjected her to that treatment raped her. Then again, I understand that DNA evidence is not always left behind by the rapist in a rape circumstance. And that one does not have to be beaten up and violently assaulted to be raped. And I’m a pro-feminist. Your mileage may vary. In fact, it seems it varies widely.
I’ll go on record as a Jewish woman with a son.
I will regret to my dying day that I did not stop my son from being circumcised.
At the time, I was married to a quite religious and authoritarian man, and I succumbed, as I was meant to.
I was told, in essence, that if I did not circumcise my son, I would be condemming him to a life of exile from his religion, community, and family.
And it’s a vicious lie that the baby doesn’t feel pain.
That being said, there’s no real comparison between male circumcision and FGM and it’s sequelae.
By the way, if opposing slicing off parts of the genetalia of babies without anaesthesia makesme automatically ‘Anti-Semitic,’ I’m happy to be called names.
Ooohh, he quoted WIKIPEDIA as a source. Scientific and unbiased! Yes!
So much so that my son’s fifth grade teacher forbade it to be used as a resource.
It doesn’t matter any way - the ethics standards, the requirements of health impact assessment, and the fundamental standard of evidence of efficacy relative to the current standard of care required for evidence based medicine wilt in the face of what Foolcault quotes from WIKIPEDIA.
Lets just say that even if the research was as solid as Foolcault claims, he still cannot demonstrate the long-term efficacy of his chosen intervention is anywhere near that of the current best practice - condom use. Furthermore, circumcision does not protect vaginas and assholes and mouths of partners from transmission, while condoms do.
In sum, it is NOT clear or proven that circumcision prevents long-term acquisition of STDs. Short-term, maybe, but there are some serious methodological errors with the studies (and yes, I use scientific terms because I review studies for a living and there are no equivalently precise lay terms). There is certainly NO evidence that it prevents TRANSMISSION of STDs. It is an inferior intervention to the existing standard of care. Case closed.
‘Is”, not if. A bit too much wine to counteract the pain from an arthritic neck. As far as logic, Foucalt, what makes you think my sons have no intention of reproducing? They know how to prevent disease. That does not in any way imply they do not know how to have good relationships that result if offspring (or in the case of my younger son, “will have”). I have a seventeen year old son who despite not being trained religiously to avoid sex, has decided he is not ready for that and does not want to use drugs. That, my boy, is a smart kid. Genetics at work (and good parenting, too).
“Wow, Foucault. I tend to respect that when a woman says that she as subjected to a sexual encounter that she did not consent to, that she is telling the truth, and that the person or persons who subjected her to that treatment raped her. Then again, I understand that DNA evidence is not always left behind by the rapist in a rape circumstance. And that one does not have to be beaten up and violently assaulted to be raped. And I’m a pro-feminist. Your mileage may vary. In fact, it seems it varies widely.”
Yep, Nifong already tried this argument. And look where it got him. Are you also running for District Attorney?
To Dr. Kate: I cited Wikipedia as a compendium of scientific sources. You may pooh-pooh Wikipedia all you like, but the latest scientific findings and statements made on this topic by groups like the World Health Organization are gathered there for your perusal.
Of course, being a PhD in Epidemiology, you are too smart for that evidence, aren’t you? Where *are* your scientific publications on this topic? It’s one thing to make grandiose statements about why you think someone’s thesis is flawed; it’s another to back it up.
If I remember correctly, Foucault has identified as a woman before. I may be mistaken.
Oh, and I am TOTALLY for condoms! Always always, even if the partner is circumcized. Plus, I happen to be a woman!
My partner is circumcised, and he has no bones to pick with his parents for doing this “horrible” and “barbaric” thing to him. He’s never had an STD in his life, is in peak sexual health at a relatively late age (he’s in his 50s, yes I like older men), and has an awesome looking member!
Oh yes, and *in addition* to the health and aesthetic benefits of being circumcised, my partner says that he thinks it makes his penis more sensitive! How cool is that??? What more do you whiners want?
Ah foocault, the words “Cochrane Review”, appearing in your wiki of carefully selected to have certain results references obviously flew right over your head as too scientific to understand?
Here are their conclusions as stated in the abstract of the update of the cited review:
Yep, Nifong already tried this argument. And look where it got him. Are you also running for District Attorney?
In a rape culture, this argument is horseshit. Of course arguing that a woman’s testimony that she did not consent to what happened to her is going to be dismissed. That’s what misogyny does. It makes victims out of rapists. Now, whether the three accused raped her, I cannot say, but she says she was raped, and that means something happened to her that she did not consent to. Oh, but best to call her a drug-addled whore and be done with it, because that gets the patriarchy seal of approval. And we all winzorz! What we win, however, is another pile of horseshit. So, eat up, I guess.
Now, shall we let this nonsense be and try to get back to FGM, which is still much bigger problem than circumcision will ever be?
Actually the original problem was whether being given an opportunity to see daddy’s penis at a young age affects sexual orientation. I can say that my early childhood experiences of taking baths with both mom and dad didn’t make me less likely to swoon over men. It certainly didn’t counter my tendencies for sissyhood and mild gender dysphoria. (I love my primary and secondary sexual characteristics, I’m frustrated with the role expectations.)
He’s never had an STD in his life, is in peak sexual health at a relatively late age (he’s in his 50s, yes I like older men), and has an awesome looking member!
And the anecdote rocks this hizzouse! Not really. I have a friend from chidhood, known him for ages, who is uncircumcised, has married his girlfriend of 6 years, and has also never had an STD. I don’t know about sexual health, but the two of them seem to have no problem with their sex life. And yeah, that proves nothing.
As to your repeated use of aesthetics as a reason for circumcision, well, we’ve been over that.
Odanu: Thank you for those kind words. Unfortunately, Foucault is so self-hating and filled with misogyny she actually thought that insulting my looks would bother me. Unlike Foucault, I actually think that the content of character and a basic respect for bodily autonomy/dignity, among other things, matters more than physical appearance.
Dr. Kate: Don’t confuse Foucault with facts and stop using that fancy, indecipherable jargon- it’s taxing the only brain cell she possesses. Because if Foucault didn’t understand it, then surely it must have been nonsense.
I agree that the research is mixed. However, even the passage you cite fails to explain how these studies are “limited by confounding which is unlikely to be fully adjusted for.” What does this mean? What needs to be adjusted? Studies show that there is a strong connection between circumcisiona and HIV prevention: what else do you need?
Here are some other studies done by Yale and the French; both these countries are on board with Helsinki conventions. Both suggest that there would be huge advantages to adopting this practice. But noo… people without no apparent publications of their own would rather dismiss these findings as Western b.s.
Another study by Yale University researchers projected that a program that increased adult male circumcision rates in Soweto by 10 percent each year for five years could save 32,000 lives in that city over 20 years — 52,000 if that rate were doubled to 20 percent. Yale researcher Kyeen Mesesan told delegates that male circumcision “can confer substantial health benefits” and that programs offering even a modest expansion of the procedure should be “implemented immediately.'’
French researcher Dr. Bertrand Auvert, who conducted the South African study, separately reported last month in the journal PLoS Medicine, that widespread adoption of circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa could save 3 million lives over 20 years.
At the conference, Auvert said in an interview that “people are reluctant to promote ‘low technology’ ” such as circumcision, and are enamored instead with high-tech treatments. Although he is frustrated that policymakers haven’t moved more quickly to promote circumcision since his study came out, Auvert acknowledged that there are challenges ahead. The surgery in the study was performed by doctors, but Africa faces an acute shortage of physicians. “A health priority is to find a simple, fast way for this to be done by nurses,'’ he said.
Bow wow wow: who let the dogs out again?
I actually think that the content of character and a basic respect for bodily autonomy/dignity, among other things, matters more than physical appearance.
Which is your beauty. That, and your passion and continual quest for honesty and the truth.
Bow wow wow: who let the dogs out again?
Another “feminist” criticism, brought to you by
a rape apologistFoucault.“And the anecdote rocks this hizzouse! Not really. I have a friend from chidhood, known him for ages, who is uncircumcised, has married his girlfriend of 6 years, and has also never had an STD. I don’t know about sexual health, but the two of them seem to have no problem with their sex life. And yeah, that proves nothing.”
It proves about as much as anything else that anyone else here has said.
To summarize my arguments before I call it a night:
1) history_mom is an anti-semite and insecure about her appearance for mysterious reasons that she refuses to disclose.
2) Circumcision is a viable means of preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It also makes your cock look better.
3) odanu is living in a world without newspapers, which is why she/he is willfully ignorant about the Duke rape case.
4) Dr. Kate can’t be bothered to publish her own research, so she shreds the scientific findings of others who are better scholars than she is. Then she makes fun of Wikipedia because she’s bitter that her own work doesn’t appear there.
5) JackGoff wants his foreskin back. Or a chance to make decisions about it. Or a chance to experience sex with it. Or something like that. No wait, he wants to kill his parents.
6) Foucault loves arguing with people out of sheer perversity. Foucault probably needs to get a life, or at least find some more interesting interlocutors. Why don’t you all start a movement, “Don’t Snip My Cock Without My Consent?” I think it’s a catchy title.
Sweet Dreams.
Good night.
Use a rubber.
Get circumcised.
Hey Jack,
When there’s a rape, I’ll acknowledge it. For now, I just see an asshole without a job, and a woman who needs psychological help. The only ones who really merit an apology are the Duke 3.
The poor woman, while my sympathy does go out to her because she *was* raped–by her black boyfriend and his friends, apparently–does not deserve an apology. She deserves a room in Bellevue and some good psychotherapy.
You, on the other hand, deserve to have your balls waxed.
I do like that Foucault proved that she has no clue what confounding variables are. Nice.
I am confounded by them.
Ciao, amigos. I love you all, even those of you with shaggy tails.
JackGoff wants his foreskin back. Or a chance to make decisions about it. Or a chance to experience sex with it. Or something like that. No wait, he wants to kill his parents.
I was being sarcastic about killing my parents. I was using that example to show how ludicrous your “argument” against history_mom was. Where was H_M’s anti-Semitism? You have not backed that up at all.
And yeah, I think all people deserve to make their own decisions about their bodies. Granted, you think a woman who was raped deserves to be committed as opposed to deserving justice. I’m not surprised.
Can we get back to the less worn-out discussion as to wether seeing dick at a young age prevents teh gay?
You, on the other hand, deserve to have your balls waxed.
Classy. And totally par for your course. I ,i>really should have taken H_M’s advice and let you tweak on your lonesome.
What?! That was a *compliment!* I was trying to be nice to you! I think waxing is not a bad way to go for someone who’s already lost bits and pieces of himself.
“Granted, you think a woman who was raped deserves to be committed as opposed to deserving justice. I’m not surprised.”
I guess if she’d wanted justice (which I do believe she did want), then she should have pressed ahead with the original investigation of the incident that allegedly took place when she was much younger.
I know it is hard for women to continue on with rape allegations, and I can sort of understand why she dropped the charges against her *black* boyfriend and his gang of friends. However, that is no excuse for accusing people later on of a crime they didn’t commit. I think even someone like you, who wants to play the race card, can admit that is true. Or perhaps you would like to imagine your self in those guys’ shoes: accused by a traumatized person of something you didn’t do?
Oh, let’s all just ignore Foucault already. She has spent entire evening spouting off insults and spitting on valid arguments. If that is not a definition of a troll I don’t know what is.
I wish I’d gotten to this thread sooner. Great post, great comments.
I’m studying abroad in Japan right now, a land reviled for its gender stereotyping and general sexism. I think this in itself is an unfair stereotype, as gender roles are much more relaxed in many ways (I’ve seen more straight men with purses wearing makeup and pink shirts and in my competitive ballroom club in three months here than I’d hope to see in ten years in the States), and awareness of striving for gender equality is much higher in women (much of popular culture is focused on the idea of girls showing what they can do). My host family has a boy of six and a girl of two, and it’s a great opportunity to see first-hand gender socialization. When Mom took the kids shoe shopping, Sister wanted Beetle Battle sandals, but Mom made her get Hello Kitty sandals instead. Later, in the home:
Mom: I’m glad we ended up getting the Hello Kitty sandals. Aren’t they cute? Girls really do look best in pink, after all.
Brother: Why is pink for girls, anyway?
Dad: That’s actually a good question.
Sorry to derail the discussion with talk of body autonomy. It seemed appropriate at the time.
Granted that female circumcism and female genital mutilation are generally (I’m not sure of the exact percentages, but even once is bad enough) harsher than male circumcism, I still don’t see how one can be wholly justified and the other wholly condemned. Sometimes, female circumcism is really close to male circumcism: the skin around the head of the penis is removed or the skin around the clitoris is removed. Sure, it often happens that the clitoris is chopped up as well, but I wouldn’t say that the process of subincision means all male circumcism is hideous mutilation (especially since it’s a hell of a lot less common than the more thorough forms of FGM.)
I condemn any and all body modification done without consent. Cutting off the sensitive end of a penis, whether it is done for hygiene, aesthetics or religious purposes, is damn stupid and hateful toward men and male sexuality. I’m sure Egyptian men and women view a circumcised woman as cleaner, more beautiful, and closer in keeping with religious tradition too. But it’s still wrong. And I hope Foucault has a pretty vulva, since she apparently has no problem with anyone suggesting surgical modification.
As for African and HIV transmission, there is one big factor that isn’t the same as here in the West: open sores on the genitals. Such things are common in places where people use the outdoors as a toilet, don’t wipe, and have limited access to soap, clean water and antiseptic ointments. Surely circumcism can reduce these sores, but to overlook basic hygiene and suggest circumcism is the way to solve the AIDS crisis is damn near crazy talk.
Foucault, (probably too much info, but what the hell:) I’ve waxed my scrotum and it’s not so bad (the pain in this case is worth the aesthetic “pleasure”.) I prefer to modify my body my own way and in a manner where if I don’t really like the results, it grows back. If foreskins grew back, I’d probably be willing to circumcise myself now and then. But since they don’t, I’m stuck with someone else’s decision made when I wasn’t even able to be asked.
More information for those who aren’t squeamish:
http://www.pdrhealth.com/patient_education/BHG01ID03.shtml
Ms Kate:
This is a very good question, and worth pondering. But it’s irrelevant to my point, which was this: it should be possible to discuss FGM without someone bringing up male circumcision in a “what about the menz?!” derailment attempt.
Jon,
I was just being a jerk. I don’t think ball-waxing and circumcision are the same thing. I’m all about the aesthetic pleasure of ball-waxing!
I’m sorry about the remarks of mine which are still in moderation; please just go ahead and delete them. I never meant to drag the Duke rape case into my catfight with history_mom.
Jon, in the future, it would be wise to wield your opposition to cutting off the foreskin by comparing it to things it compares to. Cutting off the foreskin is not meant to destroy male sexuality, and FGM is. The similiarity of the terms “circumcision” is a distraction and you fell for it. Don’t be so stupid, maybe, and this won’t happen.
Male circumcism was often promoted as a way to stop masturbation in young men. Destroy? No. Modify to fit some cultural control? Yes.
Egyptian women are still fertile, so their sexuality isn’t destroyed. Am I being stupid? I don’t think so. Men who stray beyond the accepted bounds can be punished, too. Rarely as harshly as women, but that’s not my point. I say, “Why control someone’s sexuality in a permanent way without consent?” And I haven’t seen very good answers for why this should only affect those with Y chromosones.
Egyptian women are still fertile, so their sexuality isn’t destroyed.
Wow. Just. Wow. You are aware what “sexuality” means, right? And my sexuality isn’t destroyed either.
And my sexuality isn’t destroyed either.
Crap. That should say “By your logic, my sexuality isn’t destroyed either.”
Not “destroyed,” just somewhat (very moderately–I hope) limited. The potential sensuality that is–which is only a portion of “sexuality.” But a damn important component, and of course what happens to women with any degree of FGM inflicted on them is much worse.
I protest jon’s identification of “sexuality” with fertility too. Given that identifying women’s sexuality with fertility is a central tenent of patriarchy, I prefer to separate the concepts completely. Which by my Catholic upbringing is an heinous and mortal sin, and that’s a major reason I’m not a Catholic today.
Certainly if there is some kind of tradeoff between protesting and discouraging male circumcision versus FGM, the latter should get overwhelming priority. I hate the thought of FGM, however done, for whatever reason. Male circumcision seems like a bad and unnecessary thing to me on the whole, but one certainly can live with it.
Uh…can the circumcision fighting be moved to another thread? I’d also like to go back to the penis sightings equals teh ghey discussion…
Maybe there’s a relationship between teh *types* of cocks that little boys see?
Also, perhaps men should view circumcision on par with wearing braces? It’s slightly painful; it modifies your body at an early age against your will; but your teeth come out straighter for it.
Or at least you save your poor mother and father the hassle of having to teach you how to clean your dirty dick!
Fertility was a bad term to use. I should have said “Egyptian women still can have somewhat (but significantly less than otherwise) enjoyable sex with their husbands.” Mea culpa, my bad, et cetera.
But I still await the reasoning why little boys’ penises aren’t to be protected as are little girls’ vulvas. Seems pretty fucking sexist to me, and the blame goes to millions of men and women each year.
And, to get things back on track, Dobson is an ass.
The reason why little boys’ foreskins don’t warrant the same protection as little girls’ vulvas is because one can go on to live a happy and healthy sexual life without one’s foreskin.
In fact, countless studies have shown that you’ll be a much healthier sex partner *without* your foreskin. Plus you will likely have better hygiene habits than men with their foreskins intact.
Meanwhile, removing a woman’s vulva is mutilation that has absolutely no medical benefit. It’s a practice intended to strip women of their ability to enjoy sex, and to feel any sensation whatsover while they have sex. Basically, women are disabled by this act, whereas men are merely inconvenienced (if that).
Get over it: infant circumcision is like accidentally losing your baby teeth in a mildly violent way. You’ll never get them (it) back, but you’ll also forget the act of losing them (it). You penis will still be there and you can lead a normal life. No big deal.
Your comparison between foreskin and vulvas is what’s sexist.
Oh, and here you go: some evidence that boy’s penises are, indeed, protected from mutiliation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato
After the reunification of Italy in 1870, castration was made officially illegal (the new Italian state had adopted a French legal code which expressly forbade such mutilations). In 1878, Pope Leo XIII prohibited the hiring of new castrati by the church: only in the Sistine Chapel and in other papal basilicas in Rome did a few castrati linger. A group photo of the Sistine Choir taken in 1898 shows that by then only six remained (plus the Direttore Perpetuo, the fine soprano castrato Domenico Mustafà ), and in 1902 a ruling was extracted from Pope Leo that no further castrati should be admitted.
So Foucault, what kind of tragic foreskin accident happened that lead you hate foreskins so much? You seem awfully obsessed…
I’m not obsessed: I’m persistent. Guys seem to want to argue their point that foreskins are like vulvas until the bitter end, so I am simply performing the same stubbornness that men seem to take for granted.
So long as someone out there wants to claim equal status for foreskins and vulvas, I will be here to tell you want a misguided idea that is.
Truth be told, I don’t have anything personal against foreskins. I was exaggerating yesterday when I said I thought they looked disgusting. I think they do look mildly silly and distasteful, but that is no doubt a class-laden assumption of some sort.
I can’t recall having a boyfriend who had a foreskin, ever… which may say something about my personal preferences, or it may say more about our culture, and how few men still seem to have them in Canada and North America.
Guys seem to want to argue their point that foreskins are like vulvas until the bitter end…So long as someone out there wants to claim equal status for foreskins and vulvas
What? I never said this. I emphatically disagree that the two procedures are equivalent, or even in the same league in terms of the their consequences. They both do, however, violate body autonomy.
And yeah, I’m sorry I spent time on this, everyone. I’m a fricking idiot.
I realize you’re so vain that you think this song is about you, JackGoff, but I was actually addressing jon’s remarks in my recent comments.
Male circumcision does not violate bodily autonomy in the same ways as female mutilation. There are, in fact, *scores* of childhood practices that infringe on a child’s so-called bodily autonomy: braces that the dentist and your parents force you to wear; unwanted hair-cuts that tactity gender you and snip away parts of your body; toilet training which requires you to give up parts of yourself whether you’re in the mood or not; ear-piercing for baby girls because parents think it looks cute, etc…
Male circumcision is a parental choice in the same ways as abortion is a choice that women who become pregnant should be allowed to make. Just be thankful your mother didn’t abort you instead of just cutting your foreskin!
I don’t think you’re an idiot: I think it’s interesting to realize that *some* men feel scarred by this practice. That never crossed my mind before, and it does sort of disturb me (just a tiny bit), even as I am busy being a troll towards anyone who wants to say that this sense of “violation” is on par with the violation that girls experience when their vulva is mutilated.
Mythago:
sorry I did not notice your response sooner. Thanks. I will look for Mismeasure…. To be honest I am not aware of the criticism of Brizendine’s work but now that I am through with chapter two [I am one damn slow reader…I’d cover more pages if I was constipated] I have a reservation of my own. Although I wanted to assume the style of her writing was intentional and served the purpose of popularizing the subject, I DO miss footnotes and bibliographical references to the actual studies that I presumed support her work. Studies like the one Amanda cites must number in the thousands. The more I read the less certain I am what backs up the contentions since, indeed, they read like handwaving. It is possible to gloss over and simplify a lot of reserch for the reader unaquainted with the field without telling lies. possible. But the author does have a career in the field and has both read and lead studies that objectively dope out what behavior came without training…point me to some of the critiques if you get back to this thread.
I am very much opposed to discussing it when FGM is a topic, because it ALWAYS comes up when FGM is the topic. Every time, every single time I have ever seen FGM discussed, someone will barge in and say “What about circumcision of males?!� In other words, what about the menz?
This is a very good question, and worth pondering. But it’s irrelevant to my point, which was this: it should be possible to discuss FGM without someone bringing up male circumcision in a “what about the menz?!� derailment attempt.
Ok, first of all, this WAS a thread about Dobson being an idiot and a wierdo. The entire discussion of circumcision and FGM is the derailment.
Second of all, the first mention of either was of circumcision and the commenter said something along the lines of “if you wouldn’t do it to your girls, don’t do it to your boys.” So, it wasn’t that male circ. got inserted into an FGM thread, it was the other way around.
Then Foucault decided to turn it into an anti-anti-semitism thing and things just got uglier and stupider. In particular, the idea that male circumcision is a good thing because Foucault thinks uncircumsized penii are ugly is just about the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time.
But it only got better…
Also, perhaps men should view circumcision on par with wearing braces? It’s slightly painful; it modifies your body at an early age against your will; but your teeth come out straighter for it.
Right, because the correction of a congenital disorder and the modification of a normal, natural, and healthy organ are exactly the same.
Get over it: infant circumcision is like accidentally losing your baby teeth in a mildly violent way. You’ll never get them (it) back, but you’ll also forget the act of losing them (it). You penis will still be there and you can lead a normal life. No big deal.
Right, because the foreskin would have just naturally fallen off of its own accord anyway. That she goes on to accuse others of false comparisons is just too precious.
I found this highly illuminating. It seems to me that many of the comments here are from women who, though they probably don’t genuinely hate penises, truly have never thought about why some men would not be in favor of having sensitive portions of their penises cut off for reasons of alleged hygenic benefits, a loss or alleged increase in sexual sensitivity, a desire to have it appear “normal” or “attractive”, or because some religious nitwit decided God told him or her to perform the mutilation as an act of piety. But if the possibility of a mutilated vulva enters into the picture, silly little penises don’t matter in the least. It’s a big fucking mystery why men don’t see much benefit in feminism, which is supposedly all about equality.
Strangely enough, the vast majority of European males wander about uncircumcised, and we haven’t all died of AIDS and syfilis yet. Must be them condoms and sex ed.
Foucault, your willingness to support violation of someone’s bodily automomy in the name of your cultural bias is appaling and makes you look ridiculous.
There is no comparison between circumcision and FGM - the latter is a removal of a sexual organ, not its altering, and has disastrous consequences. However, I understand that both are being done in the name of a concept of “purity” and a percieved ideal of beauty. I get the impression that were you born as an Egyptian male, you’d be a staunch supporter of FGM.
And yeah, Dobson is a freak.
“It’s a big fucking mystery why men don’t see much benefit in feminism, which is supposedly all about equality. ”
And that’s what you came away with from this thread? Lord.
It’s a big fucking mystery why men don’t see much benefit in feminism, which is supposedly all about equality.
Well, it’s actually because of the fact that feminism is about equality that men do not see benefit in feminism. Men are invested in inequality, and anything taking away from that is seen as hurting men by taking away their power (which they should never have been granted in the first place). And no, for the last damn time, FGM and circumcision are not comparable, and expecting feminists to devote equal time to both is ludicrous.
Regardless of what all of you defenders of “bodily autonomy” say, circumcision is a medically approved practice that has the proven ability to cut down on transmission rates for lethal diseases sucb as AIDS. I don’t care if you live in Europe or America or Africa; you should be thankful that someone had the good sense to snip your penis at a tender age.
Not “thick” enough? Not sensitive enough? Tough; suck it up and be glad you’re healthy.
You’re worried about protecting a child’s “bodily autonomy,” but I think many of you are confusing this with relgious concepts of bodily *integrity*: the silly belief that you must leave the world exactly as you came into it, with no organs removed, etc…
Sadly, kids do not *have* much bodily autonomy, regardless of whether or not you circumcisize the buggers. Their parents tell them when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, when to shit… you call the life of a kid “autonomous?” Think again. And please confront your religious and cultural prejudices.
That South Park title, “Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” was supposed to be a JOKE, you guys! It’s so much sexier to be cut, in my view. If I ever give birth to a dreaded boy, I will snip that sucker on day one.
“It’s a big fucking mystery why men don’t see much benefit in feminism, which is supposedly all about equality.”
Stupidity!
jon, while the “merits” of male circumcision can and should be debated, to condemn feminism because some women (Foucault?) seem obsessed by eliminating a flap of skin (on the male body) that they don’t have does nothing to advance that debate.
You inflame people who might be your allies and make all of us who think male circumcision should be taken seriously look bad…
Find someone else to worry about: I really don’t care about your penis.
For all of you who hold backwards, medieval, and generally ignorant beliefs about circumcision. Please try to live in the 21st century:
http://www.circumcisioninfo.com/circ_record.html
Foucault, do you get a “cut” of each circumcision performed or something?
Does the fact there are several billion intact males living on this planet right now who are clean, safe, and functioning fine cause you to stay up nights or something?
***
While there is absolutely no question that FGM is about as cruel and barbaric a practice as it would be possible to imagine, don’t just wave off the pointlessness of thousands of years of culturally-driven foreskin excision as a simple cosmetic choice and then try to find “facts” to support some “scientific” or “health” reasons for that choice after the fact.
As (Dr.) Ms Kate points out, there is no medical imperative, it’s a practice that is only performed out of tradition, and the rest of the justification is window dressing to make it look that there’s more science than there is.
I’m not going to sue my parents for my circumcision. They did what they (in their ignorance) thought was best. I hope to see a day when such ignorant practices are understood to be ignorant.
He gets to be 18 - cut it off, pierce it, tattoo it, stretch it, tie it into a knot - let him do what he wants. Cut it off as a newborn and then justify it with a bunch of pseudo-scientific malarkey? No…
The original topic of this thread: “At 24 months of age, children seem to recognize gender stereotypes - and when they are broken, according to research from Brigham Young University” The only reason circumcision is still practiced in this country is because it’s a “gender stereotype”. You think “it just looks better”.
If a guy told you he thought you’d look better with your earlobes removed (”Not only does it look better, but it’s more sanitary too!”) you’d tell him to go to hell. Circumcision is just as stupid…
Ms. Kate is a pseudo-crank with no credentials that I can see. For all you know, she’s a grocery store clerk. I trust the scientific evidence and the fact that the World Health Organization advocates circumsicion as a *routine* medical procedure. The AAP is also reconsidering their recent stance on this issue as a result of the highly successful trials in Africa showing that circumcision prevents AIDS.
You’re just sad that your penis is shorter because of the procedure, aren’t you? Whah… cry me a river. I don’t care about your penis. I’m glad your parents hacked the foreskin off for you.
*Snort* You obviously do not have children.
Foucault: “You’re worried about protecting a child’s “bodily autonomy,â€? but I think many of you are confusing this with relgious concepts of bodily *integrity*: the silly belief that you must leave the world exactly as you came into it, with no organs removed, etc…
Sadly, kids do not *have* much bodily autonomy”
On the contrary. Bodily autonomy means that you have the right to decide what happens to your body. Nobody has the right to alter it against your will or without your consent (with exception of medical emergencies, or true medical defects or dysfunctions in children). That’s a pretty basic human right, even for children. Are you for real?
It is terribly irresponsible to claim that circumcision prevents AIDS or indeed any other STDs! It may slightly reduce the probability of being infected, that’s true, but nowhere near any level that could be called “preventionâ€?. Getting routinely circumcised has no relevant purpose because people should and must use condoms in situations where there’s a risk of STDs. The question is, why undergo needless and painful surgery with possible negative side-effects when far better results are achieved by basic hygiene and the use of condoms? In the long run, circumcision will not save anyone who has unprotected sex.
Anyway, the only reason I’m arguing with you is that you seem terribly invested into the idea of circumcision, far more than is usual for an alleged debate about health. You seem genuinely riled and lash out in an absurdly personal manner, which is amusing to watch. It seems that your main objection is an aesthetic and cultural one, after all. If circumcised penii are a kink of yours, go ahead, but don’t dictate others what to do with their bodies while hiding behind the mantle of allegedly undisputed “scienceâ€?.
“Nobody has the right to alter it against your will or without your consent (with exception of medical emergencies, or true medical defects or dysfunctions in children). That’s a pretty basic human right, even for children. Are you for real?”
Sadly, no… parents have the right to “modify” their childrens’ bodies as they see fit, so long as those alterations are within the scope of the law. Braces and other forms of cosmetic denistry, orthopedic shoes, circumcision, and even god-awful things such as those “implants” that delay puberty in girls are *all legal* alterations. They are a parent’s decision and no one else’s.
Children don’t have a say in most of these matters: sorry. Try suing your parents for circumcising you and see how far you get. I believe there was a recent and quite horrific story about a disabled girl whose parents removed her *breasts* to make her more easy to care for, as well as less prone to sexual assault.
Because of the medical reasons involved (as dubious as they may seem), there were no questions asked about having the procedure done from a legal point of view.
All you yahoos can do what you want with your own kids’ dicks. But spare me the righteous indignation about how circumcision violates bodily autonomy. The kid doesn’t matter in these cases; it’s what the parents want.
And my personal attacks are justified: just like Israel is always justified in bombing Palestinian terrorists.
Oh, and Marjoram, quit impersonating history_dog!
Foucault:
Really, I figure that nothing I can say here will do anything except provoke some form of attack upon me, but one of the specific reasons we decided not to circ our son is the problems that his father suffers on a regular basis due to this “routine” surgery being performed on him 33-odd years ago. No, erection pain and penile skin splits aren’t a regular outcome of circumcision–but they are common enough, and much more common side effects of infant circumcision than adult (it’s hard to figure out how much skin can be removed from a tiny little penis for full function as an adult–in fact, a Jewish bris performed by a rabbi tends to leave more skin intact than a medical circumcision performed by an US-trained pediatric surgeon or OB/GYN surgeon).
I’m amused that for all the studies you’ve been throwing around, you haven’t come across the little factoid that while the studies suggest that circumcision may reduce the risk of transmission of HIV from women to men slightly, (the same studies have suggested) the reverse appears to be true in transmission from men to women. Women may be at higher risk of infection from infected circumcised men than infected intact men. While this information is in some of the same studies, this information has not been seized upon by the media to the same degree.
Also, with circumcision rates among adult men in the US still up in the 70%-80% range, you’d think we’d not be seeing the HIV/STD transmission rate we do if circ was a magical cure-all. I’ll bet that most of the men involved in the first US-based HIV wave of the 1980s were circ’d: they would have been born during times when rates were 90%+.
Don’t forget all the kids who are forced to take psychotropic medications. Is this an example of medically necessary modification?
In mamy cases, I wager that psychotropic (mind-altering) therapy is undetaken because parents get tired of their child throwing shit on the walls, or seeing Satan in her dreams, or playing too much with his uncircumcised dick, or whatever else is “wrong” with the little one.
Often this form of therapy is done against a child’s will and it alters their mind– literally! Sometimes it alters their minds to the point of suicide or suicidal thoughts. But it is STILL LEGAL and still perfectly in line with HUMAN RIGHTS!! Thank the American pharmaceutical companies.
But please realize that your arguments about “bodily autonomy” for children are a fantasy. I don’t even know for sure if most *adults* have “bodily autonomy” considering all the toxins in the environment that we ingest without knowing, and that mutates our cells and our bodies.
“…or playing too much with his uncircumcised dick, or whatever else is “wrongâ€? with the little one.”
So all those psych hospitals from 100-years ago were RIGHT! Circumcision is necessary to stop masturbation and the inevitable mental decline that accompanies “self abuse”.
Wow. I knew you’d go blind and have hairy palms, but I never seriously considered the mental health toll…
And it must have prevented mental problems in the US, ‘cause all our mental health care facilities are empty…or not…
“I don’t even know for sure if most *adults* have “bodily autonomyâ€? considering all the toxins in the environment that we ingest without knowing, and that mutates our cells and our bodies.”
Wait a minute Foucault, you think they’re coming after your precious bodily fluids? And ours too? Their plan is eve MORE nefarious than I thought. And it all started with the failure to cut off a piece of a child’s dick…
Heh, it’s fascinating to watch the depths of illogic you sink to. Braces and orthopedic shoes are legal because the misalignment of teeth or plantar arch troubles are medical defects which make life difficult. Foreskin is not a medical defect. At least, not in the realm of sanity.
You crack me up, MikeEss!
Yes, they’re coming to get you… and they want the *rest* of your penis!
MikeEss, I think you misread my recent and somewhat sarcastic post. I was trying to say that many children are coerced by their parents and/or doctors to take psychotropic medication for reasons *other* than medical ones. Often, these dangerous meds are used on children to modify what is perceived as *socially* inappropriate behavior, as opposed to actual mental illness.
So to claim that children have some “innate” and protected right of bodily autonomy when there are countless examples in our culture of the contrary is just a pipe-dream; it’s a pipe-dream in the same way as the 19th-century notion of the whole and “autonomous self” was a patriarchal fiction (put forth under the guise of liberal philosophy).
You think you are cultural radicals for arguing that we have these protected rights to “own” our bodies, but actually you’re resorting to an outdated mode of philosophy that does not hold true. Our bodies are our own to the extent that we move to a commune somewhere and grow our own foods, inventing our own soil and water (to make sure that we are not ingesting any of the toxic chemicals that are presently found in our national soil and water).
What are you, fourteen? Fifteen? If the best you can do is insult the looks of someone you’ve never met, you should probably concede that your argument is shit. And it is a big piling steam of it.
Hee hee, poor history_dog. I’m sorry you’re pissed; want a bone? How about a chew toy?
hp, you fail to point out that risk to women only increases if women have sex with a man whose penis has not *healed completely* after an adult circumcision. This would clearly not affect women who have sex with a man circumcised in *childhood* or *infancy.* Nor would it affect women if their partners waited for the wounds to heal, or if they used condoms during the interim period. Plus, this research is “speculative,” as you will discover in reading the article below. However, you do introduce an important point, which is that education must accompany adult circumcision, particularly among populations at risk of AIDS.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17497713/
WASHINGTON - Circumcision helps protect men from getting the AIDS virus but may make an already-infected man more likely to infect a woman if he does not let his penis heal completely, researchers said Tuesday.
Researchers working in Uganda released early findings from a study of 997 HIV-infected men. It indicated that women who had sex with a man who did not wait to heal fully after circumcision seemed to have a higher risk of infection than through sex with an uncircumcised infected man.
Intercourse might cause tiny tears in the surgical wound, which in turn could put HIV-infected blood into the woman’s vagina, the researchers speculated
for hp:
WASHINGTON - Circumcision helps protect men from getting the AIDS virus but may make an already-infected man more likely to infect a woman if he does not let his penis heal completely, researchers said Tuesday.
Researchers working in Uganda released early findings from a study of 997 HIV-infected men. It indicated that women who had sex with a man who did not wait to heal fully after circumcision seemed to have a higher risk of infection than through sex with an uncircumcised infected man.
Intercourse might cause tiny tears in the surgical wound, which in turn could put HIV-infected blood into the woman’s vagina, the researchers speculated.
“We thoroughly agree that this should not be used to discredit the incredible value of male circumcision for the prevention of HIV acquisition in men,� Dr. Maria Wawer of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who leads the study, told reporters.
Women make up the majority of HIV-infected people in Africa, where HIV largely is spread through heterosexual sex.
Ok, well, regardless of whatever assumed info Foucault brings to the party, insulting someone’s aesthetics repeatedly is worthy of bunny videos, nay? I’m tired of this bullshit, personally.
I’m tired of your bullshit about the value of your foreskin, personally. Your parents made a choice that was their choice to make, and now you have to live with it. They also made choices about the haircuts you received, the clothes you wore, the schools you attended, etc…. All these factors are a part of your socialization. I don’t see why your foreskin has become the focal point of this discussion.
Let me tell you about my vagina for a change. It has never been modified. I’m very happy with it. It’s the perfect size and shape from my perspective. In fact, I would argue that my vagina fits me to a T. Do you have any questions? I think we should devote the next part of this thread to discussing vaginas in a much broader context: what do they do? How do the feel? Do they have feelings? Does extra skin aroud the vulva make them more or less sensitive? Does piercing the vulva actually hurt? How, if at all, does piercing enhance the sexual life of a vagina?
What do you say? I think *this* is a worthy topic of conversation, since the penis is frankly boring by this point in time.
Foucault, you only wish I was actually pissed. Now I think you’re just a sad, sad person. I can’t imagine how empty your life must be if you focus this intently on physical appearance, especially of someone you don’t know. You do realize that while some men may pat you on the head for calling a feminist “ugly”, they still think you’re a second class citizen, right?
How do we petition for bunny videos? I think most of us can agree that insulting another woman’s appearance is hardly a feminist act and in fact is complicit in perpetuating patriarchal systems.
Oh, I *know* you’re pissed! I also know that everything you say about me is something that is secretly true about you: anti-semite, patriarchal lap-dog, and anti-feminist– that’s you, isn’t it? You’re so busy worrying about other people’s penises that you really don’t care about feminism, do you?
I don’t see why your foreskin has become the focal point of this discussion.
Heh. The last time I said anything about it was two days ago. You’re the one still talking about it. And you’ve been an antifeminist asshole while you’ve been at it.
Look, I think it’s time to end this conversation and move on to other topics. It’s been a *slice* of life talking to you all. (Get it: slice?)
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/male_genital_mu.html
The vagina, the most magical and beautiful of all of god’s creations, responds to allegations that women around the world should care about jon’s mental problems.
My vagina prioritizes its own needs and experiences over losers who claim their circumcision ruined their sex life. To these clowns, my vagina says that even if you had the dick with which you were born, you’d still be too stupid to use it properly. For those like you, there *is* no vagina. No vagina wants to be with a troubled cry-baby.
Oh, the glorious vagina who shuns poor jon, even though he waxes his balls. No vagina for you, jon. I am putting out an all-points alert to make sure that *any* vagina who greets you shall refuse to help you overcome your psychological problems. Sorry, buddy, we vagina owners can only do so much.
We now recommend that you invest in a shrink who will hold your wee-wee, ask it what it dreamt about last night, and perhaps help you find the sexual satisfaction you seek. Ever tried hand lotion? What about sheep?