[box type=”note” icon=”none”]If you knowingly advocate the commission of violence, directly, or indirectly; If you endorse the harming or injuring of children – or promote, or endorse or facilitate injury or harm or mutilation of infants; then you are depraved and sick. This applies equally to left-leaning gender ideologues and to right-leaning columnists writing for mainstream publications, even the Huffington Post.[/box]
In Germany, in late June of 2012, the regional court in Cologne banned the religious circumcision of infant boys. The German news service published the court’s decision on the 26th of the month.
“Circumcision is now known to be harmful, when you do circumcision you are harming the body. Neither the parents nor the right to freedom of religion guaranteed in the Basic Law can justify this procedure, the court clearly said in it’s ruling”.
Children’s rights groups and men’s rights activists world wide have been in long term agreement with the repeated published position of the medical establishment who almost universally oppose the practice, and this opposition is not new.
However, the Canadian HuffPo contributor Sheryl Saperia made a case on 3 July 2012 that the routine religious ritual mutilation of infant boys is, according to her; not mutilation. She even spelled out the p-e-r-i-o-d at the end of her sentence, so you know she must be right.
According to Saperia, “neither the right to security of the person nor to gender equality should operate in such a way as to proscribe male circumcision on the grounds that it is comparable to the justifiably prohibited custom of female genital mutilation “
Saperia makes no attempt to logically support this naked assertion, but cites the argument of a law professor at Duke University who says :
“This analogy can and has been rejected as specious and disingenuous, as the traditional forms of FGM are as different from male circumcision in terms of procedure, physical ramifications, and motivation as ear piercing is to a penilectomy.” (amputation of the penis)
This rationalization is convoluted, and from a logical point of view, irrelevant.
According to professor Coleman, female and male ritual infant sexual mutilation are as different as ear piercing and amputation of the penis. Of course, this is a false comparison, but even if it is taken as true, the fact that injury done to infant boys is not identical to injury done to infant girls, it remains injury. “Specious and disingenuous” perfectly describes this so-called refutation.
Sheryl Saperia also makes the pointless detour in to a claim that FGM has no benefits. It probably doesn’t, but so what? It’s illegal, and nobody is arguing for the mutilation of girls. She cites irrelevant statistics about FGM induced deaths. Again, nobody is arguing for the mutilation of infant girls.
However, Sapiera trots out a catalog of formal logical fallacies in support of mutilation of male infants, starting with the Logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority (argumentum ad verecundiam).
The World Health Organization says quack quack quack. It does not matter who says it, what we’re talking about is using a sharp instrument to remove the most sensitive tip of the male sex organ on an infant – with no anaesthetic. This is the medically unnecessary mutilation of a newborn baby.
However, appeal to authority isn’t where the formal logical fallacies end, we also have the logical fallacy of Appeal to Tradition. (argumentum ad antiquitatem).
According to the W.H.O. Male genital mutilation is one of the oldest and most common surgical procedures worldwide, and is undertaken for many reasons: religious, cultural, social and medical.
Oh, well on that basis, let’s bring back trepanning to address migraines too. And when the crops fail let’s sacrifice a virgin – that’s an old practise as well. Seriously, as I type this, I am asking myself if maybe I misread the article and it wasn’t Huffington Post but actually The Onion?
However, not content with formal logical fallacies, our huffpo correspondent trots out a flatly absurd claim, although she wraps it in an appeal to authority by citing the WHO as the source.
“There is conclusive evidence from observational data and three randomized controlled trials that circumcised men have a significantly lower risk of becoming infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”
Well I guess we don’t need condoms anymore, now that HIV is prevented by getting your foreskin chopped off.
Let us take a short break from asinine lies and consider some reality.
Numerous independent studies have shown NO [1] reduced risk of HIV infection for circumcised men, compared with those uncircumcised. An international organization of physicians, opposing non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision with members in 50 States and 12 Canadian Provinces published a statement in 2007 indicating: “Although male circumcision is likely to be proposed for political reasons, it is likely to have little effect on the overall incidence of HIV infection and may cause later problems”[2].
In fact, According to Volume 80 of the British Journal of Surgery, October 1993,[3] “the operation is associated with a definite morbidity”. A cursory Google search also reveals published data from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia stating [4] “Routine infant male circumcision performed on a healthy infant is now considered a non‐therapeutic and medically unnecessary intervention”.
In addition to this, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/Aids stated in 2009 that [5] “The male latex condom is the single, most efficient, available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections”.
The sadistic, amoral quacking columnist also claims – with perfect confidence :
“In the absence of strong and non-conflicting medical evidence that male circumcision regularly causes substantial harm to young boys, the arguments against the procedure are severely weakened.”
Unfortunately, the procedure is fatal to about 117 infants in the US every year[6].
Sheryl Saperia also makes the empty claim that: “Since male circumcision and FGM are simply incomparable, gender equality should not demand the banning of the former just because the latter is illegal”
MGM and FGM are incomparable? (incapable of being compared to each other)
Each procedure is a non therapeutic surgical intervention, removing or mutilating the sexual organs of a newly born infant. Clearly, they ARE comparable, since I have just compared them. Does it seem like I am playing unfair word games here?
Saperia constantly refers to mutilation of boy-infants by the clinical and palatable term “circumcision” but refers to the corollary female procedure with the emotionally charged term “mutilation”. That is what playing word games looks like. In fact, both female and male infant ritual sexual mutilation are abhorrent, but for motivations we can only guess at, boys do not deserve to be protected from a brutal, injurious, sexually crippling procedure which kills over one hundred newborns each year. The word monstrous fails completely to encompass the total depravity of arguing to continue harming new born infants. My mind cannot encompass such malice.
The reality is that Saperia’s utterly irrelevant argument against female sexual mutilation (nobody is arguing in favour of mutilating girls) – while it is a technically true argument, is equally true if is applied to mutilation of male infants.
Neither female nor male genital mutilation has health benefits. Sexually mutilating an infant harms girls and women in many ways, but it also harms boys and men. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal genital tissue. It is bizarre, cruel, and sickening to describe harm to infants of one sex and then pretend a similar atavistic ritual of mutilation doesn’t also harm male infants, and interferes with the natural functions of boy’s and girls’ as well as men’s and women’s bodies.
Our amoral robot next cites religious integrity as justification to harm children. “It is well known that the circumcision of baby boys is mandated by the Jewish religion”.
This is another irrelevant argument. It is also mandated that practicing jews not use technological devices on certain religious days. They loophole their way out of this inconvenience by such innovations as elevators which go to all the floors, thus, not necessitating a religiously observant jew to press a button.
If cutting the end of a boy’s sexual organ really is a matter of identity, let him chose to do it after reaching an age of self-possessed reason. Mutilation of an infant who has no ability to object is depraved, vicious and without a single sane redeeming argument. Another hyperbolic appeal to emotion is made that not mutilating babies is equivalent to genocide. Stated flatly, this argument is nothing but dog shit.
Saperia makes several other worthless, garbage arguments which do not even deserve being addressed. However, she concludes by saying “there are insufficient medical, legal, and moral grounds to draw that line at male circumcision.”
Except that it is non-therapeutic (medical) it mutilates an infant who cannot possibly consent (moral), it induces permanent trauma, and results often enough in death to stop doing it world wide immediately. If only we can somehow make the logical leap that male infants are actually humans who; like female infants, we should protect from harm. Is that not sufficient medical, legal, and moral grounds to not mutilate babies?
Harm, of course is the key to understanding the total intellectual bankruptcy and moral depravity of arguing in favour of harming baby boys, or deliberately injuring babies in general.
Saperia, a so-called conservative violates the most fundamental principal of ethics. That of self ownership and bodily integrity. This is totally inexcusable, indefensible and betrays either a refusal to recognize a baby boy as a human being, or a catastrophic mental malfunction. The purposeful advocation of mutilation, and let’s not pretend we are talking about anything except mutilation. This is obscene, horrifying and rank, craven, depraved mercenary cruelty inflicted on newborn infants.
A few rhetorical questions to consider.
Who is paying to advocate the purposeful sexual dismemberment of baby boys?
Is it the heads of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies[7], which Sapeira’s Huffpo by-line[8] names her as Director of Policy for Canada of the FDD? For the interested, these include:
The FDD chairman James Woolsey, FDD’s president Clifford D. May and executive director Mark Dubowitz. The Foundation for Defence of Democracies Leadership Council is composed of prominent leaders from the defense, intelligence, and policy communities including Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, Louis J. Freeh, Joseph Lieberman, Newt Gingrich, Max Kampelman, and Robert McFarlane.
That is the crowd behind this Huffington Post writer advocating the mutilation of infants. But I have one other question, just to consider.
Whose infant son was butchered for Sheryl Saperia’s wrinkle cream?[9]
Perhaps, next week Sheryl Saperia can write another article, this time for the preservation in Canada of the Islamic religious ritual of stoning women to death. Ha! I’m only kidding of course – that would hurt women, but how about hanging gay male teenagers, an atavistic and religiously motivated practice we could adopt from places like Iran. That should be right up Saperia’s alley.
[1] http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV.html#contrary
[2] http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/info/HIVStatement.html
[3] http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/williams-kapila/
[4] https://www.cpsbc.ca/files/u6/Circumcision-Infant-Male.pdf
[5] http://www.unaids.org/en/Resources/PressCentre/Featurestories/2009/March/20090319preventionposition/
[6] http://www.circumstitions.com/death.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies
[8] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sheryl-saperia/infant-circumcision-canada_b_1646749.html?utm_hp_ref=canada
[9] http://www.avoiceformen.com/women/profiting-from-pain/
