the everyday adventures of sabrina

ran across this site today, mgmbill.org. it’s an effort to extend the protections barring female genital mutilation (aka female circumcision, including cliteridectomies and worse) to bar male circumcision, or sex-assignment modifications to intersexed infants.

in the past i’ve considered myself to be generally against circumcising male children, primarily because it seems unnecessary and most of the arguments for it seem stupid to me. also, it seems cruel to hurt a baby when he can’t fight back, or to make a fairly notable modification to someone’s body without his informed consent. i’m ivory-towering, of course, as i’m not a parent and have no real intent to become one. so feel free to say what you will about the childless dictating rules to the childhaving. i just think it’s a dirty trick to play on a poor little baby who not only can’t do anything to stop you, but is relying on you to protect him from pain…and it’s a dirty trick to play on the person that little baby will grow up to be, depriving him of a presumably valuable body part. (i say “presumably” because, hey, it’s not like i’ll ever know first-hand, right?)

i might be caught in a situation where i’m being hypocritical, though, because i think this proposed bill goes too far.

female circumcision serves no medical purpose, only a cultural one — and it’s a cultural great minority in this country. i don’t think that many informed adult females would willingly choose to have a clitoridectomy, or the labia sewn shut, but i am sure that some might choose to do so as part of a body modification or scarification, or for other personal reasons. and so long as they’re legal adults consenting to the modification, i have no interest in preventing them, nor any right to do so.

male circumcision also serves no or little medical purpose, but in contrast to female circumcision, it does serve some fairly common cultural purposes here, not the least of which is boys observing jewish tradition. (and, speaking as a non-jew, i believe it’s more than just a “tradition,” in the sense that it’s one of the requirements for becoming an adult in that religion (bris, bar mitzvah, and i think something else i forgot). although in reading links off this site, i did encounter information on “bris shalom,” which is a symbolic ceremony instead, so maybe the times are changing on that as well.) however, if a male adult should consent to circumcision for his own personal reasons (not excluding religion), i wouldn’t be opposed. again, i wouldn’t have any interest or right to interfere in a consenting adult’s modification of his body.

so yeah, i agree that circumcision is bad and should be discouraged, but no, i don’t think that, starting immediately, someone should get fourteen years in jail for performing a bris. i mean, that’s stupid. it’s one thing to pass legislation officially discouraging the practice of circumcision through education efforts and publicity campaigns, with an eye toward making it a rare occurrance (instead of something that is done to 60% of male infants), but you can’t just go around announcing that all of a sudden, this very common religious and aesthetic tradition goes from being an everyday occurance to incurring decades in jail. i mean, people, there’s got to be a little lead-up, you know?

the “hypocritical” bit i referred to above is because, while i don’t think that we should just immediately go around condemning and convicting practicioners of male circumcision, i’m totally and unequivocably in favor of dumping practicioners of female circumcision into jail and throwing away the key. i think male circumcision should stop, but it should stop on its own lack of merits, or at least slow drastically. then you can start with the throwing into jail bit, once you wouldn’t have to jail 2/3 of america. so maybe it’s not hypocriticality so much as … temporal disjoint. like, if both practices — equal in unnecessariness — were equally culturally-unaccepted, then i could be in favor of 14 years in jail for practicioners of either, but they’re not, so i can’t be.

it looks like this bill was just submitted to the congresscritters by its authors, but hasn’t been introduced by any of them. so that’s good. i imagine they’re getting the standard treatment of yahoos with goofball bills, which i might say is sort of a shame because i think their hearts are in the right place, but, guys, again with the “you can’t just go all of a sudden dumping people in jail with no warning.” i mean, gas doesn’t jump straight from $1.50/gal to $3.00/gal, it kinda weasels its way up there until you’re longing for the good old days of $2.25 gas. that’s how you should approach lessening male circumcision towards elimination, by just sneaking little bitty things in until everyone’s convinced that it was a horrible idea and “isn’t it great that we’re not barbaric like those horrible 20th-century people, circumcising little babies, can you imagine?” also, you’re less likely to get treated as yahoos with goofball agendas if you act less like them.

and thus ends sabrina’s latest ramble on something that affects her exactly not at all.

i’m charmed by an email i just got — from a .uk place from whom i’ve bought mp3s before — which signed off with, “Have a nice weekend won’t you.”

i believe i shall!