This week’s Open Thread has been brought to you by Christina Hendricks.
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Ozy Frantz is a student at a well-respected Hippie College in the United States. Zie bases most of zir life decisions on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and identifies more closely with Pinkie Pie than is probably necessary. Ozy can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter as @ozyfrantz. Writing is presently Ozy's primary means of support, so to tip the blogger, click here.
I’m really sad that I can’t but the ADF on my list of good guys… http://www.adl.org/religious_freedom/circumcision-qa.asp … 🙁 Maybe I can start a new list of “organizations that are good most of the time, but occasionally support horrible things.”
I think I’m too sensitive. I was having a debate with someone about the old “guys never have to fear sexual abuse while women do constantly” and I gave the 1 in 6 site (with an explanation obviously) expecting that to be fairly reasonable. They came back with “your argument would ‘duuuh what about the meeenz’ in the eyes of every other woman”. Not even going into privileged!cis!girl upset about being assumed to be a guy, now I feel like crying.
@ Lamech Wow, I find it really ironic about how the man says the ban on circumcision breaches the freedom of religion and privacy and that the government should stay out as people’s personal choices, he obviously has no idea what human rights or the amendments are, because anyone who was educated on that matter would know that freedom of religion stops when it encroaches a child’s freedom of religion, that a child has a right to privacy of it’s own, and that circumcision isn’t a /personal/ choice because it directly marks someone else’s body. In other words, you have… Read more »
For extra irony you can see what they say about FGM. Spoiler Alert: They oppose it, none of this religious freedom. Not even for a pinprick. (They are of course, right about FGM, and totally wrong about MGM.)
That’s the odd thing about those two things. People that believe in bodily autonomy and think that a person should not be altered in such a way for any reason will in one hand say that FGC is wrong (and reach for the old “its about controlling women’s sexuality”) and in the next will offer reasons to defend MGC (those contested health reasons and of course “oh its okay, he’s Jewish”). Often times it sounds like people have put their foot down to say there is not reason to alter a girl’s body but its okay to alter a boy’s… Read more »
Yeah, that’s great if you think of “choices” as “parents should have the right to do whatever they want to their children with impunity” and not “everyone should have a choice about whether an irreversible medical procedure is performed on them, not have it done to them when they are too young to say no.” Sometimes, adult men do choose to undergo circumcision, sometimes for health reasons and sometimes because of religious conversion. And hey, if all religious circumcisions were performed on consenting adults, wouldn’t it be more meaningful that way? To have the procedure chosen as an adult as… Read more »
@ Lamech Wow, I find it really ironic about how the man says the ban on circumcision breaches the freedom of religion and privacy and that the government should stay out as people’s personal choices, he obviously has no idea what human rights or the amendments are, because anyone who was educated on that matter would know that freedom of religion stops when it encroaches a child’s freedom of religion, that a child has a right to privacy of it’s own, and that circumcision isn’t a /personal/ choice because it directly marks someone else’s body. In other words, you have… Read more »
http://www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/circumcision-civil-liberties-minute Looks like I need to cross the ACLU off of the list of good organizations in the world.
And before someone thinks this just comes from hyper-libertarianism or somethinghttp://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-womens-rights/lighting-fire-womens-rights-treaty it really doesn’t.
People as young as 7 practicing self injury?
http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/Study_Even_7-year-olds_Sometimes_Hurt_Themselves_158401025.html
http://news.yahoo.com/even-7-olds-intentionally-hurt-themselves-193303983.html
(I’m sharing this in hopes that in light of my busy load this week someone else might take this and run with it.)
“Policing Femininity” – an interesting news item via metafilter: http://www.thestar.com/sports/london2012/article/1205025–olympics-struggle-with-policing-femininity?bn=1 “Some female athletes competing in the Olympics this year will be required to undergo medical treatment to make them less masculine. Caster Semenya is South Africa’s premier middle-distance female runner. She was subjected to questions and tests about her gender, and kept from racing for 11 months, when she won gold in the 2009 World Championships by a 2-second margin. Now, in order to compete in the Olympics, her testosterone, and that of other women with unusual hormonal balances, must not exceed the normal male threshold – even if her… Read more »
I’ve always wondered if they perform circumcision on older humans than babies. Like is it a procedure that a dude can go and -decide- to have done when he can think for himself or whatever? I have another question! I have a little brother who’s just gotten to the age where he starts paying attention to clothes a bit and I was googling around for a teen boy fashion site that are similar to lookbook.nu and those fashion-spotting types of sites that crop up in fancy places like NY. And I didn’t find any! So I was thinking of starting… Read more »
You don’t need forms, you just should ask the parents; they could sue you if they deem the pictures inappropriate or they want to make quick cash.
Something that I was just thinking about yesterday, is how dissociative and trivialising so many of the slang terms for male genitalia are , metaphors like a pole or stick or peice of meat are often used.
Since that Men’s Centre story managed to pop up here in the forums a few times this week I figured I’d go ahead and put it out there. (http://dannyscorneroftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/06/so-do-they-want-men-to-improve-or-not.html)
I’m looking for a movie, a specific type of movie.
(http://dannyscorneroftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-such-movie-exist.html)
Its a pretty old one that I shared here before NSWATM moved so I’ll share again.
(http://dannyscorneroftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/05/six-billion-dollar-sex-worker-and.html)
Trigger warning for genital mutilation, and all related aspects. [rant] http://feministsspeak.blogspot.com/2012/02/deep-thoughts-on-male-circumcision-from.html Okay I should probably stay away from this kind of thing for a while, but seriously what the hell people? 1) Defenition of torture “…any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person…for any reason based on discrimination of any kind” 2) Torture is include in crimes against humanity. 3) Some defenitions https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/940/II/19/1 battery https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/940/II/225 sexual assault and sexual contact. If you’ll note sexual assault includes sexual contact, which includes any battery on the genitals. 4) The people doing the… Read more »
I, as a circumsized male, don’t think it’s comparable. It’s obviously an unnecessary medical procedure, but a) everything still works to my satisfaction, and b) I wouldn’t want a flap of skin down there anyway. Obviously, that’s just me, but it’s nothing compared to the pain of female genital mutilation.
Now, did that poster overly trivialize it? Yes, absolutely. But circumcision and FGM are really apples and oranges. One is a relatively harmless, if unneeded, procedure, usually done at a young age and under anesthesia; the other is mutilation and destroys the functions of the genitals.
Perhaps you aren’t clear on what qualifies as FGM so here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Types_I_and_II 1a is removing the prepuce, as is the stereotypical male genital mutilation. Type 4 can include even a pinprick. Comparing MGM to FGM is like comparing FGM type 1a to FGM. That said, I wonder why you brought it up since I didn’t even mention FGM in my post… Moving on, last time I checked most people believed that doing something to a baby makes it WORSE, not better. Do you disagree? That would certainly be a novel position. Also note just since you were able to come… Read more »
I agree that infant circumcision is really bad. Not apples and oranges, though. More like apples and… crab apples? It’s not that bad, but it is not different in type.
Does anybody know whether any type of metallic badge or symbol other than military medals is worn at the throat / collar of a man’s shirt?
Feministsspeak I find is quite sexist site in general, and goes way further with it than most feminist sites, you’ll be glad to know that site isn’t ‘mainstream feminist’ even when I do find that mainstream feminists do tend to be rather “save the poor women from the evil men!”