re: #24 Jimmah

Did you get permission from the World Compendium Of Groundbreakingly Appalling Analogies for using that?

I seriously hope so. lol

Then go ahead and address the issue, Jimmah, instead of just saying LOL. I’m perfectly fine having a debate.

The analogy is obviously imperfect, as any analogy is. But the argument against circumcision, when it’s not resting on the mystical idea of body intactness being sacred, is on a harm being done to the child. A small percentage of circumcisions do result in harm. At worst, any operation can result in death due to an infection.

However, these risk are present, and greater, in a ton of other activities that we have no problem having kids to, either voluntarily or involuntarily. You previously claimed that kids can just say no to their parents if they don’t want to do something. This is obviously insufficient for two reasons: Kids want to please their parents, and many kids are really unable to say no to their parents when they’re scared of something. In addition, kids can’t adequately judge risk— left to their own, kids would pick a lot of dangerous activities, not realizing how dangerous they were.

So, by making kids do ballet and football, we really are risking their lives, and in the case of ballet, changing their bodies. The feet of ballet dancers actually do change from what they do, so this would also violate any argument about harm resting on changing the kids body.

Both ballet and football have upsides to them, as well, in terms of getting the kids exercise and potentially providing them with team spirit rah rah, but there are obviously much safer ways for them to get exercise so that’s not really a defense of these activities.

Circumcision gets singled out because it has to do with sex, and for some people with religion, and for some people with culture.