[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Ralesk at 25 Jun 2004 17:56:58: Re: When in Rome...
As an answer to: Re: When in Rome... written by David_R at 25 Jun 2004 16:05:40:
>Obsessing is used too often when the words used should be: 'a desire to do the best for my son.' That isn't obsession at all. On the contrary, the extreme avoidance of "doing the best" does seem to me to be quite an 'obsession'
Of course, that’s your view that the majority of people who don’t happen to meddle with their sons’ and daughters’ genitals are freaks who refuse to “improve” or “do the best for” them.
I recall you say something about necessity in a post above — which seems to actually contradict your heavy support of the forced modification.
> and as a physician who was circumcised as an adult I can't quite understand this phobic like reaction.
Enjoy that YOU yourself had the chance to choose and that YOU chose what YOU felt and now YOU find as having been a good choice.
It cannot be extrapolated universally, and there needs no “anti-circumcision propaganda” for people done without their consent to feel bad about it. This, for one, goes back to the example with the toenails. And the simple fact that you cannot know what your child’s preference is and you can’t know forward whether he will mind the presence of a however neatly done scar. It should also be obvious that even though they most usually do not remember it, the fact that grown adults go through serious dicomfort with their freshly exposed glanses, infants whose circumcision is a much “nastier” work in the sense you have to forcibly separate and wound the glans as well, go through perhaps even more discomfort. Not to mention the quite salty urine and other unnice substances in the nappies. I have to disagree that it would be anywhere “doing the best for the child” — even if it were well and unmisunderstandably proven that the benefits you usually list are indeed valid and significant.
> It is strange. By now it should be clear that I am more than happy to advise men and parents on regimens offering an alternative to neo-neonatal circumcision. That wouldn't conform to an obsessive attitude, I wouldn't think.
This seems to go against what I read from you — please write it clearer again, I don’t like to misunderstand people I’m communicating with.