It must be fun-with-philosophers day, because Ron Lindsay has written an article for CFI declaring that male circumcision should not be a major concern for humanists. He has several bad arguments to support this idea.
One is that he doesn’t think it’s very important. No, really; he’s in charge of ranking our priorities.
The head of the affiliate said they were going to concentrate on making an all-out effort to ban circumcision. I remember thinking to myself: of all the ills of a society on which a humanist organization could concentrate, this organization is going to focus on saving the foreskin?
STOP EVERYTHING. I say the biggest crisis looming over our heads is climate change, so of all the ills our society faces, why is the Center for Inquiry wasting their time opposing religion? Get some perspective, people!
Another reason he gives is that the foreskin is so teeny-tiny, and people aren’t seriously harmed by lopping it off, so it’s a trivial matter, especially compared to real problems (don’t forget, Ron Lindsay is the arbiter of what matters).
For humanists who are concerned about how the bodies of children are permanently shaped by their parents, I suggest they concentrate on how children are educated. We need tougher regulation of homeschooling and we need to prevent public funding of religious schools— something which seems quite possible under the new administration. The appropriate response to male circumcision is a shrug of the shoulders; it’s just not that significant an issue. We have other work to do.
I agree that education has a greater effect on children than circumcision. But this is just the fallacy of relative privation: that problem A has more severe consequences than problem B does not mean you should ignore B until A is completely solved. There’s always other work to do. It never ends. I taught two courses this term, but when the work piled up in one I couldn’t just tell the other class to stop meeting and stop learning until I’d caught up. You make do.
I’ll also point out that Lindsay was head of an organization of many people, and that he didn’t do all of CFI’s work. Ron Lindsay could ignore one cause; that doesn’t mean the entire organization isn’t allowed to work on it.
Then he dismisses the entirety of the autonomy and consent arguments!
The other reason I think many humanists are so opposed to circumcision is their adherence to a philosophical principle which, superficially, has strong appeal, namely that no permanent changes should be made to someone’s body without that person’s consent. Seems eminently reasonable—the problem is that it is impossible to comply with this principle with respect to the most important part of our body, namely our brain, and the possible harm that may be done to us via the shaping of our brain when we are young makes the loss of a foreskin trivial.
Yes. The universe is not perfect. We have to compromise all over the place. The fact that we cannot control what people teach their children means, what the hell, let ’em make any ol’ cosmetic change to their children’s bodies that they want. They have the right to teach children that Jesus is real, so we shouldn’t complain if they want to tattoo a picture of Elvis on their forehead. Or snip off the end of their penis.
Because piano lessons.
Most developed countries do exercise some control over the training and education children receive, imposing various legal standards and restrictions, but even so, wide scope is given to parents in terms of how they raise their children. Homeschooling is permitted in the United States, for example, with minimal oversight in most states. (Interestingly, homeschooling is forbidden in some European countries, such as Germany—again a significant cultural difference.) With respect to training in music or sports, parents can subject their children to extensive training, just short of physical abuse. Hour after hour of piano practice or swimming lessons. When grown, these children might be grateful for their training, or they may resent the physical or psychic pain they had to endure while forced to pursue an activity which they never liked. On the other hand, some children will receive no training in music or sports, something which they may regard as a handicap in later life. Either way the bodies of these children will have been permanently altered by their parents.
It’s true! Excessive focus on one discipline, whether it’s football or piano, can be damaging to a child’s development, especially if they have no talent or interest in the subject. These wrongs therefore justify another itty-bitty wrong, docking their penis. Or tattooing Elvis on their forehead, as long as we’re building arguments around hypotheticals.
He wraps it up with this pile of garbage: we should impose limits on what parents can do to their children, but elective cosmetic surgery doesn’t cross that line, because maybe it helps something.
Nothing in the foregoing analysis should be interpreted as saying we should allow parents to change their children’s bodies in any way they regard as suitable just because their role in shaping these bodies is inevitable. Clearly, limits should be— and are —imposed on what parents can do. Parents cannot inflict disabling injuries on their children. But, as indicated, the evidence regarding male circumcision is that it provides some small benefits. It cannot plausibly be characterized as medically necessary, but, with appropriate use of analgesia, it’s not harmful. The energies that some devote to opposing male circumcision might be better spent lobbying for tighter regulation of homeschooling. The cerebral portion of young male bodies should receive as much attention as the genital portion.
I’ve read the CDC summary, and some of the papers that claim there are benefits to circumcision. I’m unimpressed. There are multiple reasons why those arguments of a benefit are weak.
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They fail to show any benefit to American children. Some claim to have found significant benefits to some African populations, which are under a very different regime of infectious diseases.
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Even those effects in African populations are inconsistent. Some claim statistically significant reductions in infection rates, others don’t.
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The studies that do show an effect show that late, voluntary circumcisions are as effective as post-natal circumcisions. So why force it on babies?
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All of these studies are carried out under a complicated set of biases. Americans have high rates of circumcision, Europeans don’t. Strangely, American studies say it’s not a problem, European studies find it harmful. Isn’t that odd? It’s almost as if cultural biases influence the results, although we know that can’t possibly be.
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The CDC summary is not without strong dissent.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have announced a set of provisional guidelines concerning male circumcision, in which they suggest that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks. I offer a critique of the CDC position. Among other concerns, I suggest that the CDC relies more heavily than is warranted on studies from Sub-Saharan Africa that neither translate well to North American populations nor to circumcisions performed before an age of sexual debut; that it employs an inadequate conception of risk in its benefit vs. risk analysis; that it fails to consider the anatomy and functions of the penile prepuce (i.e., the part of the penis that is removed by circumcision); that it underestimates the adverse consequences associated with circumcision by focusing on short-term surgical complications rather than long-term harms; that it portrays both the risks and benefits of circumcision in a misleading manner, thereby undermining the possibility of obtaining informed consent; that it evinces a superficial and selective analysis of the literature on sexual outcomes associated with circumcision; and that it gives less attention than is desirable to ethical issues surrounding autonomy and bodily integrity. I conclude that circumcision before an age of consent is not an appropriate health-promotion strategy.
Lindsay is comfortable with dismissing people’s objections to circumcision because he thinks it is a trivial problem, but somehow, a trivial and disputed positive effect is enough to justify disregarding any concern about an unnecessary surgery routinely performed on infants for no good reason at all. Does he even realize that circumcisions were not performed because there was evidence that they helped at all?
This makes no sense.
But then, Lindsay also put a priority on chastising women at a feminist conference. He also, as a humanist, thinks the death penalty is just fine. He knows what issues are really important.
You know what’s much more important than circumcision, or state executions, or the ongoing harassment of women, women in his own organization?
Chupacabras, that’s what. That is the other work CFI must do. Valuable and scarce resources must continue to be invested in debunking this plague on our nation, while the only appropriate response to those other nuisances is a shrug of the shoulders.
At last! Someone finally makes the connection between penis-chopping and piano Chopin.
I don’t know why it seems so hard for people to acknowledge we can multi-task. I know I hold views and act on my views of different issues all the time. There are some issues I don’t devote any time because I can’t or choose not to. Using the argument that we can only work on one issue important to the person making the argument has never worked on me.
I was part of debate on circumcision more than twenty years ago on an old Humanist email list. One person who favored circumcision said a decision had to be made and an infant can’t give consent so the parents should allow it. She refused to acknowledge that the decision could actually wait until the child could decide for themselves.
…which is why I made the decision, soon after my kids were born, to get their ears pierced and to get them tattoos. I’m glad your friend understood: a decision had to be made. </sarcasm>
Every time I hear this fallacy, I keep thinking back to the old adage, “Eat your peas, there are starving children in Africa.” I’ve never seen anyone show how eating my peas somehow helps the starving children in Africa, or how refusing to eat my peas makes life more difficult for the starving children in Africa. But I keep hearing variations of this dumbass argument nevertheless!
“Why are you wasting time talking about workplace harassment while women in other countries are beaten or executed for not dressing properly?!”
“Why are you wasting time trying to let gay people get married while gay people in other countries are beaten or executed for being gay?!”
“Why are you wasting time complaining about religious discrimination while religious people in other countries are beaten or executed for having the wrong beliefs?!”
I’ve heard it so many times that I think I’m starting to develop a noticeable twitch every time someone says it.
Also:
The same can be said for nearly all other cosmetic bodily changes, so go ahead and put giant loops in your newborn’s ears, or give them a nose-ring, or split their tongue!
At the risk of wading into a dumpster fire, this is the exact same argument that anti-vaxxers use. If it were the case that circumcision had major positive health benefits, none of us would take seriously the argument that the baby isn’t able to consent to it. Just as we don’t take seriously the complaint that a 2-month-old can’t consent to a vaccination. Babies and children, by virtue of being who they are, cannot legally consent to anything. That doesn’t stop us from forcing medical interventions on them when it clearly makes sense. Ultimately, the argument must turn on the risks and benefits of the intervention in question, not the bizarre idea that infants are “autonomous”, when they manifestly are not.
That would be a relevant argument if A) there were some sort of medical benefit to circumcision, and B) there were some sort of risk associated with an MMR vaccine.
Oh, but these same folks who scream about autonomy and consent and genital mutilation will rake you over the coals if you dare to suggest disabled infants and children be allowed the same rights! I’ve heard people rail against circumcision, only to turn around and argue that cochlear implants (for example) are “different” because they’re “for the good of the child”. Gee, isn’t that the primary argument for circumcision, it’s “for the good of the child”?
Either autonomy and consent matter for ALL patients (of ALL ages, genders, and abilities), or it doesn’t. Pick one and stick with it, I’m tired of double standards, and I’m tired of interventions being forced on disabled people to “fix” us. (Pro Tip — Stop trying to “fix” us, and start fixing society’s barriers!)
oh dear
@WMDKitty — Survivor #7
Are you antiwaxer? Or libertarian? Or smoking something at this moment?
World is not divided into binary categories. There are not only different shades of gray, but diferent shades of different colors. There is not a single moral issue in the world as absolutely and clearly cut as you wish with this one to be. According to your “logic”, my parents should let me die as a toddler because the help (disinfectant and antibiotics applied directly to the sores in the mouth) I had to get was painfull, I was unable to consent as a toddler and therefore I was screaming and doing everything I could to avoid the procedure. Nevermind that without it I would quickly be unable to eat, my bodily autonomy had to be preserved at all times! According to your absolutist, black/white “logic” parents should not be allowed to restrain physically their children from wandering onto the street and under a bus should the child decide to do so. Etc. etc. examples aplenty.
Further this:
Is a flat out lie. That circumcision is good for the child is a post hoc rationalization of cultural practice that has been introduced for entirely different reasons, mostly religious. The evidence that it is beneficial is at best unconclusive.
And the unconclusivity of the evidence for beneift is exactly the reason why the childs autonomy is paramount in this regard, but not in regard for example of vaccinations.
Unlike Chupacabras, I have extensive hands-on experience of foreskins (namely my own) and therefore require little further investigation of its benefits or skepticism of its existence.
So I’m going out on a limb here, but it does seem to me that an eternal search for the missing scraggly lump in some Americans may have a deep psychological basis worth investigating.
Eventually, humanity will grow to the point where we can hold two thoughts, and plan for two things, but, alas, that day has yet to arrive.
(Sometimes I wonder if the weird idea that women can multitask while men can’t is based on studies that, coincidentally, only contained men like Lindsay?)
Well, see, it hurts! It hurts a lot! You wouldn’t want to inflict that pain on a grown man who understands and consents to the oncoming pain, or the potential complications, would you? No! Inflict it on a child who understands nothing of it. And if it happens to cause lasting damage to them? Oh well. It is more important that their penis be aesthetically pleasing to their parents than fully functional in adulthood. Because that’s not remotely fucked up.
@Charly, 9
Except that being dead is slightly more of a problem than being deaf. You can still communicate quite well when you’re deaf. Not so much when dead.
Sorry, but things can’t work this way. The notion of human autonomy has to rest on people having functional and sound minds. Infants obviously don’t have that. Nor do advanced Alzheimer’s patients, or people with various other conditions. That’s why we have power of attorney.
There are necessarily going to be some grey areas here, and that will provoke discomfort and controversy in some marginal cases. That’s just life. Reasonable people should argue about such things. But it cannot be the case that an infant must give consent before being subjected to a medical procedure, or that we must fling ourselves into the opposite guardrail and declare that competent adults can’t make their own decisions. That’s nuts.
There are differences between deciding for a child because of health and safety reasons and for cosmetic or religious reasons.
If the science is still uncertain that the foreskin has to come off then the procedure can wait until the child is able to make their own informed decision about doing it.
The science is more clear on vaccines so a parent saying a child should wait to make their own decision is in fact putting the child’s health and other people’s health at risk.
And I’m sure plenty of people will make the false equivalency between them
I would argue most (well, Gentile) proponents of circumcision are well-aware of the weakness of their arguments. It is a case of self-justification. We’re all missing bits of us, and we men don’t do victimized very well. I know I don’t enjoy talking about it – ever – despite being against circumcision and willing to say so.
There’s really no point debating them when they realize to condemn it is to admit a kind of inadequacy.
My anecdata: I elected for one for medical reasons when I was in my mid-20s. I’m glad it was done under general anaesthetic. The post-op pain was fierce and frequently eye-wateringly distracting at times. And it lasted for a few weeks.
So maybe it’s a bit like a tattoo gone wrong, I guess?
I would be very very surprised if many people would elect for one as an adult. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is partly why its proponents favour forcing it on children.
So Yeah, there are worse harms in the world. But that’s not the point. And humanists should be capable of not getting hung up on just one thing.
@7 WMD-Kitty
What?
First of all: We are not talking about circumcision as medical procedure.
Which is some times necessary, in fact, that’s why I’m circumcised. My foreskin was to tight and had to be removed after other methods failed. That was done when i was seven years old. But this procedure was necessary and had clear medical benefit. (A puberty with out lots and lots of pain)
It is the same with CI’s. Which my nice got with 6 months. Now, CI’s should not be taken lightly and my sister did not made this decision over night. CI’s are a risky procedure and some times do not even work. But in this case it was a good decision. My nice can hear. She can listen to music, sing ,dance and has a close to normal speech development for an two years old. That is a fucking miracle of sciences in my eyes. Oh and fun fact: You can partly revers this procedure. Externally by removing the processor (5 seconds). Internally partly by a small operation, which is necessary if a MRI is required for example. So, besides a scare behind your ear, it is not even for life if you decide as adulte to remove them.
And you just equated such a procedure with an at best unnecessary operation that is done solely out of cosmetic or religious reasons. I hope i could make clear why i think your comment was quite stupid.
If not, just replace CI with “operation to set a broken bone” and read it again.
Athywren, #
I don’t think that’s how you want to be arguing this, because it makes no sense.
@Athywren #12
Irrelevant. I was responding to an absolutist statement, where the phrase “ALL patients” was written with the word all emphasised in all caps. Reductio ad absurdum is in this case valid counterargument.
So.. No comment on how far off the rails they already went when this howler, never mind with the rest of the article? I mean, is Ron really not paying **any** attention to the kinds of fruit loops that are being picked for the “new administration’s” cabinet, which includes, unless Trump changed his mind again, both antivaxers, climate denialists and private, religious school, voucher programs? These people are supposed to prevent public funding of religious schools, never mind take seriously the idea that *any* school should be well regulated, and teach facts, instead of pure fictions?
I think he has much, much, bigger problems than nit picking priorities, or believing questionable studies.
I was circumcised at birth, my step brother was not until he was about 18 and had an infection. Neither of us has any sexual problems or even thinks about it much.
If circumcision’s downsides outweigh its benefits, then yeah we should stop it.
But the way people carry on about it, the melodrama of white male victimization and hyperbole about the trauma makes it increasingly difficult to give a shit. Don’t circumcise your kids if you don’t like it. Educate others if they are misinformed. Next problem.
Is there anything in Lindsay’s argument that doesn’t apply to female genital mutilation as well?
I’m not trying to change the topic, it’s just that his arguments can justify a lot of things.
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We still have something called “evidence”: evidence in favour of neonate circumcision is weak to non-existent. People who do have medical problems can still get one when the problems become apparent. With CIs and language you have developmental windows. You cannot wait and then go back to age 2 and start all over.
Another indicator is: How many adults opt for this procedure? Are there any adults without medically compelling reasons who go for an elective circumcision? Are there adults who go for CIs?
Also, where do you draw the line? If a child is at risk of becoming blind, are the parents allowed to have that treated?
And what about vaccines?
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Well, some parents actually think that their child has a say in these matters as well. Can you imagine?
I allowed my kids ear piercings when they were six. At that age I thought them to be able to understand that it would hurt and decide if it was worth it. The older one decided to wait for another year. When it was getting done she walked out of the store after the first ear but came back 15 minutes later. At four they were both allowed to pick a sport and since then they are allowed to decide again every half a year. Respecting your children is actually not that difficult.
Adam Conover did a fair Job on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCSWbTv3hng
Our leaders, ladies and gentlemen… you’re only allowed to focus on what they care about, and if you don’t, you’re excommunicated.
I just remembered another very good example from my life, one that adresses the absurdity of WMDKittys oversimplification without lending itself to misunderstandings like Athywrens.
My father had his myopism untreated as a child, because it was not recognized by his parents as a problem (my grandfather was an asshole and he thought he is just clumsy and lazy). As a result, he is all but blind in one eye and has really bad eysight in the other one. He lived a full life, but some experiences were and are closed off to him and some things are difficult to do, because he does not have functional stereoscopical sight. Mostly he does not miss it, but occasionally he does – especially when he tries some finicky precise manual work.
I had the same problem as a child, but my parents have sent me to doctor straightaway and they forced me to wear the prescribed glasses afterwards. I hated that, but they insisted so I had to wear them for a few years. After a few years I could do without them because the problem has corrected itself due to timely intervention. And I am still OK without them now more than twenty-five years later.
As a result I can do many things that my father cannot do and I am gratefull that he did not insist that since he could do without treatment as a child, I can to do without it too when I do not like it.
I mean my step brother was circumcised because he had an infection. The operation did not cause any infections.
I think the argument should less be about strict bodily autonomy/consent and more about, as a general guideline, not modifying someone’s body in permanent ways without either their consent or a medically sensible reason.
@PZ (OT):
That phrase has two meanings which are, for the most part, mutually exclusive.
@WMDKitty – Survivor (#7):
A rather ironic word choice, considering your target.
On a more serious note, I was born with ankyloglossia. Also, a foreskin. The latter was cut shortly after birth, the former when I was in my 30s. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if my young autonomy was violated on the former, and I had been allowed to indefinitely postpone alteration of the latter. Maybe there’s a group of people out there, proud that they make their “T” like an extra-hard “D”, absolutely thrilled that they don’t jam their tongue behind their clenched teeth like those “normal” folks. I guess to them I’m a sell-out for not revelling in my uniqueness, for seeing it instead as something “wrong” that had to be “fixed”. I’m sure my actions would, if they could, set their tongues a-wagging.
Like, if I’m passed out and you have to amputate my arm for me to not die, please dear god lop my arm off I can make due with a cool robot arm.
On the other hand, please don’t just casually lop my arm off for religious/aesthetic purposes. I’m rather fond of this arm.
Did Lindsay realize it’s been a while since he’s alienated people so it’s best to get on that right away?
multitool #21:
I’m glad for you that you’ve experienced no downsides. Do you think you are a representative sample? And the fact that you were abused and did not suffer long-term consequences, does not mean that others are so lucky. And yes, when I say “abused,” I mean “abused.” If corporal punishment by means of a paddle is abuse (and it is) then what is chopping lumps off a person? A fucking tickle?
Yes, but no. If no clear benefits can be shown, then we are talking about unnecessary surgery being performed on people who are unable to to give informed consent. Thus, in the absence of said clearly shown benefits, the default position should be that we should not allow it.
In what way is this considered to be, or expressed as, a problem only pertaining to white people? And hey, you know what, cutting chunks off male bodies for no good reason does create actual male victims. Just as slicing bits off female bodies creates female victims. Your snark is misplaced.
FTFY
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, daughter-in-law of the guy who co-founded Amway, who wants to use education reform to “advance God’s kingdom,” whose record is exclusively about funneling public money to private schooms, gives Lindsay hope that we’ll see stricter regulations on homeschooling and religious schools.
At what point do we decide that living in and being aware of reality are necessary qualifications to be the head of a skeptical organization?
Ugh, “schools.” Damn you, tpyos!
Tom Foss:
Tpyos may’ve intervened in a cool way, as far as I can tell — charter schools are all too deserving of a portmanteau combining ‘school’ with ‘scam’.
Schooms it is!
Circumcision makes you more aerodynamic.
And thank you ALL for demonstrating EXACTLY what I was complaining about!
Bodily integrity, autonomy, and consent are so important… until it comes to the disabled, then able-bodied assholes are ALL FOR denying consent and violating autonomy! (And why? Because you’re “fixing” us? You’re “helping” us by imposing your definition of “normal” and “functional”? Pity? We don’t want that…)
I would NEVER force a CI on an infant, and for the SAME REASONS you wouldn’t force a circumcision. It’s the CHILD’S BODY, and therefore the child’s ABSOLUTE RIGHT to decide what happens to their own body.
If an adult wants to get one for themselves — circ or CI or hypothetical future brain implant — that’s their choice, and they are going into the procedure fully informed of the risks and benefits.
I simply do not understand why, when it comes to the disabled, forced interventions and therapies are just fine, but snipping a bit of skin off a boy’s parts (far less invasive than many of the procedures used on the disabled) is totally taboo.
What is it? Are the disabled less-deserving of rights than infants or something? Hm? Because that’s how it’s coming across, all this able-splaining of how “corrective surgeries” are different because, you know, disabled people need to be fixed.
WMD Kitty
How’s an adult going to get that developmental window back that closed when they were preschoolers?
Again, where do you draw the line? Am I allowed to vaccinate against Polio or is it ableism to deny my child the chance to become disabled?
Also, nobody here is in favour of letting infants decide about their medical care. It’s about a purely cosmetic surgery.
WMDKitty, you are either being obtuse, unreasonable or petulant or all of those and more. I am glad that my eysight is OK because my parents decided to fix it for me, because if they did not do it, I would be needlesly burdened my whole life with preventable disability. In hindsight I see what they do as good, and what my grandfather did as abuse.
What you are proposing seems as ableism stood on its head – instead of marginalizing disabilities (which I think everybody here agrees is bad) you seem to propose glorifying or trivializing them and denying their real negative consequences (which is, in all honesty, idiotic on par with sticking your head in the sand when confronted with danger.
Or are apendoctomies also forbidden on children who have acute apendicitis and are unable to consent? If they are OK for you, then I would like you to explain to me why is corrective surgery preventing death acceptable, but corrective surgery preventing permanent disability is not? If you indeed think we should let children die instead to save their life by invasive prcedure, then we are done discussing and I will chalk you up as an amoral idiot.
It seems to me that you are conflating the person/human and the organism. It is not the person who is fixed by corrective surgery, it is the organism whose function is fixed.
It is not anybody’s fault that disabilities are disabling. People who are unable to hear/see/walk/take care of themselves will be at disadvantage to those who can do those things no matter what society does and no matter how it is set up. Not because they are lesser human beings, but because they are less well functioning organisms. If hearing/seing/movement/ability to care of oneself were not advantageous to organisms, they would not evolve in the first place. That is the world how it is, we (in all meanings of we) have to deal with it. We are humans, but we are also animals, with all the gabbage it carries with it.
Lastly you still are conflating corrective surgery (a procedure with clear benefit) with cosmetics surgery performed for arbitrary reasons. It has been explained to you multiple times in this topic alone, why such reasoning is faulty.
Uh, sorry. Gabbage = baggage. My brain is confused and preview is not working for me.
WMDKitty, #36
You truly are a dumbass on this topic.
To even pretend that a parent choosing to have a corrective procedure done on a baby so that they’re not deaf is like a parent choosing to have parts of the baby’s penis removed if fucking ridiculous.
It’s almost like you’re equating disabilities with people. Correcting a crucial non-functioning part of a baby via legitimate medical means is doing what’s right for the baby. It’s not ableism. Mistreating people (in any way) who have disabilities is ableism.
What you’re saying is all babies who are born with medical issues and disabilities that can be corrected should be left as they are and have to grow up with the problems that come with those issues and disabilities. Yeah, that sure sounds like the right thing to do for the baby because …. reasons?
How about the babies born around the world with cleft lips and palates?
Charly, #39
Exactly. Because of how Homo sapiens interact with the world, things like sight and hearing are better to have than not have.
If you were magically given the choice to decide whether the next three babies who are born in this world are going to be born with hearing or born deaf, you would not shrug your shoulders and go “It’s a coin toss really! I better not say with hearing or that would somehow discriminate against deaf people because I can’t seem to tell the difference between a person with a disability and the disability itself!”
Or maybe you would.
Oops, that second part was addressed to WMDKitty, of course.
@WMDKitty — Survivor
Ok, so wanting to avoid a unnecessary and irreversible medical interventions while being in favor of medical interventions with clear benefits makes me a hypocrite and ableist? I can live with that.
At least i am not effectively in the same group of people as faith healing parents and anti-vaxxers. Would you also deny a child a operation to set a broken bone? Because a broken bone is not necessarily life threatening and the operation would be at least as invasiv as a CI operation. And a badly healed break can be quit disabling.
Using a Ci to prevent deafness does not mean that being deaf makes you less of a person. It just means there is one less deaf person. The same way that removing a cancer grow in a child does not mean that having cancer makes you less of a person, it just means on less child with cancer.
You seem to be under the illusion that NOT getting a medical procedure done is somehow less of a choice made by YOU over your child then getting it done. But it is still you who is making the decision that will form the entire life of your child, not only its childhood.
That does not mean that their are never good reasons to not do a procedure. But it is still YOU who made that decision, not your child. Because for the first few years the child is absolutely unable to even grasp the concept of medical intervention, let alone give inform consent, and many intervention can not wait or are much less effektiv if you wait. So it is the duty of a parent to make such decisions for your child to the best knowledge available to you.
And the best available knowledge says that circumcisions are unnecessary.
Ironic: Occam’s Razor
multitool #21:
The OP is pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence of ANY benefits to the routine circumcision of boys for non-medical reasons.
‘Educating the misinformed’ is EXACTLY what the people against routine circumcision are trying to do.
WMDKitty #36:
So if someone who is mentally disabled, with a mental age of, say, about 6, were to agree to sex, that wouldn’t be abuse, as that is that disabled person exercising their autonomy? Someone who is both mentally and chronologically 6 agreeing to sex also wouldn’t be abuse, as that is the child exercising their autonomy? I would suspect your answer to those questions is ‘no’. The simple fact is that children’s right to autonomy is over-ridden all the time, because they don’t have the mental capacity, knowledge and experience to make informed choices for themselves. NOT having corrective surgery/implants/therapy/whatever for medical reasons is just as much a choice as having those things. Circumcision is different because the evidence that routinely circumcising all newborn boys has any medical benefit at all is inconclusive or nonexistant (and female circumcision is worse because there is fairly damn clear evidence it actually causes harm, but that is not really routinely done in western countries).
Preventing deafness is considered “cultural genocide” by some in the deaf community because it’s robbing them of new members.
Although it’s true that being deaf comes with challenges, they view that as a problem with the dominant culture, not with being deaf. Being born gay, or a woman, comes with challenges, but we don’t say we should correct those things (assuming we could). Even saying that we’d “correct” them implies there’s something wrong with being a woman, or being gay.
I don’t agree with that premise, but you won’t get anywhere in comparing CIs to vaccines or broken bones because it assumes there’s agreement that deafness is a medical condition that should be treated (if possible), rather than a personal and cultural identity.
@WMDKitty
Speaking as both an advocate for the disabled and as someone with several (fortunately relatively mild) disabilities; fuck off.
Look, I agree with some of your points. Yes, we should be trying to “fix” people. But trying to give someone an advantage isn’t fixing them, it’s helping them overcome an obstacle. Yes, society should adapt as much as feasible to accommodate those who are at a disadvantage (in all respects: physically, mentally, economically, etc). But we should also be working to prevent those disabilities as much as is feasible.
Here’s the big thing that bothers me about your posts (Saad touched on it above): PEOPLE ARE NOT THEIR DISABILITIES!!!!! I doubt you were trying to convey that they are, but that’s how it comes off.
Seriously, saying that trying to help prevent or compensate physical disabilities is dehumanizing is like saying trying to help people get out of poverty is dehumanizing.
“I would NEVER force a CI on an infant, and for the SAME REASONS you wouldn’t force a circumcision. It’s the CHILD’S BODY, and therefore the child’s ABSOLUTE RIGHT to decide what happens to their own body.”
I would NEVER force social programs on an infant and for the SAME REASONS you wouldn’t force a circumcision. It’s the CHILD’S BODY, and therefore the child’s ABSOLUTE RIGHT to decide what happens to their own body, even if it means starving to death!”
Hell, your argument can be applied to deny children even the most basic medical care. Look, parents do not own their children. They should not be making arbitrary changes to their childrens’ bodies. They are, however, the custodians of their children, which means they are responsible for caring for them and preventing/adapting to disabilities their children may have.
CI implants are a tangent, perpendicular to the issue of circumcision. ?
Parenthood is a complex role. During much of the growth of the child, the parent is essentially required to consider the child as essentially a detached part of their own body and treat it as such. Provide the best healthcare and nutrition possible (emotional nutrition as well), etc.
Body modification is fine for an independent adult to perform on their own (attached) body. CI is not modification, nor even enhancement, it is compensation for a defect. Only issue are medical risks involved. Anything implanted involves risks. Those must be considered with high priority.
I was born club foot, and went through a grueling childhood trying to correct that defect (involving extensive surgery). Even in my 50’s still have effects of the compensations and original defect. Do I want my parents to have respected my bodily integrity and left me as I was? Definitely no. Was the correction perfect? definitely no. Better than nothing.
Circumcision benefits are all anecdotal with no consistent evidence for them. Equally valid anecdotes are stories of lessening sensation due to lack of foreskin, and loss of enjoyment from manipulating the foreskin itself. Saying it’s easier to keep clean without it is hooey. Circumcision is valid only when medically necessary, eg [medical term for too tight foreskin].
@widdershins #47
That migh have some truth to it, but mostly it is just plain wrong. To the culture can be at the most attributed the “blame” for verbal audio communication – but if we take that away, what about blind people? Culture has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that our senses give our brains all of information about our surroundings and that sound is one helluva chunk of that (even without speech). That is completely independent of culture and that is the reason why animals evolved hearing in the first place.
The problem with people who are born with disabilities is that they do not have the experience with not having the disability. If deaf people are insisting on maintaining their unique deaf culture, they can start persuading adults to become deaf. But hey have no right whatsoever to force children who were born with disability to remain disabled when there is an alternative.
After people whose disability – any disability – has been corrected in childhood start en masse protesting against such treatment when they grow up, then it will be worth considering whether to postpone that intervention into adulthood. I am not holding my breath while waiting for such occurence, not even for people with CI. Right now it sems that the sooner a person gets CI, the more likely they are to keep using it continually. And regardless of age, voluntary nonuse of CI is in single digits.
@Charly #50
Thank you, that is the idea I was struggling to articulate about “unique deaf culture”. Well said.
nyes.
In some aspects society is literally dis-abling people. It’s not a law of nature that certain signs are only sound or only visual, excluding people who are deaf or blind, making them reliant on help. Certain pedestrian crossings try to mend that by having signals that are also acoustic. Stairs are not a law of nature and ramps don’t go against the laws of nature. It’S a social decision to use the former not the later.
But you’re right that some things are NOT social decisions. Some pleasures and possibilities are denied to people with disabilities and it’s nobody’s fault. Spectacular sunsets are visual. Bird song acoustic.
widdershins
If they had a child who was born hearing, would they try to remove that sense?
@Giliell #52
I have no problem in agreeing with that and the rest of what you said. What I was trying to say is that it is not entirely and intrinsically societal thing that disabilities are disabling, because disability means that some basic biological function of the organism does not perform as well as it otherwise would.
Pertinent anecdote: my father has saved his and my mothers life because he heard in a wind storm the cracking of a breaking tree and started running away, dragging my mother along. If he were deaf, I would be an orphan at ~10 years age and culture would have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Pertinent data: electric cars have higher pedestrian accidents rate exactly because people do not hear them coming.
I would also argue that speech is in this regard a biological function. Language is cultural thing, but speech itself is not, it is a evolved feature.
Having a sense of hearing isn’t cultural. It existed long before human cultures (and humans). The senses are ways for us organisms to interact with the environment. It’s not just about the social human world. If every single thing that can be done was done to make things in our social world accessible to deaf and blind people, how many people would really look at their newborn with such a congenital disability and say to the physicians, “Leave it; the city I live in is fully accessible”.
And not having such a thing medically corrected is also a choice you’re making for the baby. You can’t say choosing the procedure is somehow violating autonomy but choosing against the procedure is somehow not doing so. The baby can’t decide either way to begin with. Also, saying that choosing not to do it is the default and good choice puts you into the bullshit “it was meant to be” religious-sounding territory.
Lastly, if there are people who hold that view about “the deaf community being robbed”, they need to realize that babies aren’t property. A random arbitrary deaf baby is not automatically enrolled in your club. They’re a human being and the parent is responsible for making decisions on their behalf, i.e. with their best interest in mind, not that of some community.
I have spent 25 years working with people who have a range of disabilities, amputation, paraplegia, stroke, brain damage, cerebral palsy, hemiplegia, and deafness and blindness. I have always asked the people I worked with the impact they feel from their disabilities; and the answers of the blind or deaf have been enlightening. One person who became deaf as a result of a stroke told me that he would rather be blind than deaf, as “blindness only cuts you off from things (you can see) while deafness cuts you off from people (because very few people use sign language).”
Many paraplegics have said to me words to the effect of, “As long as I have BBS (Bladder, Bowel, and sexual function), life is just fine.”
In order to understand them, you have to understand that they view deafness as part of their personal identity, the same as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Having a sense of hearing isn’t cultural, but the way the culture views them as broken and in need of fixing is.
My husband and his sister (both not deaf) were born to deaf parents, and yes, they’ve said they wish they’d had deaf children. It seems a lot like the situation with first and second generation immigrants – the parents are sad that the children don’t have the same experience of a culture that they do.
They don’t think deafness is better and everyone should be like them, no more than a gay person thinks everyone should be gay. They can both be happy and proud about their identities, and not be thrilled when people say they should be “fixed.”
All the things you’re all saying – imagine saying them about another identity. e.g. Native people shouldn’t be upset when white people take their children to raise them in the dominant culture. It’s for their own good; they’ll get better treatment during their important developmental phases, and babies aren’t property, after all. If they want to save their culture, they’re free to convince the kids to come back once they’re adults.
You need to understand that’s how they see it in order to effectively discuss this with them.
These are not even remotely similar to fixing disabled body. Not in the slightest. Not even in principle.
Again, for upenteenth time: it is not the person who is fixed. Their defunct sensory (or other) organ is fixed. Those are objective facts, not cultural constructs.
That culture sees deaf people as broken people is wrong. But it is equaly wrong to insist that deafness is not a disability worth fixing.
widdershins
What a horrible thing to say.
Only that there are no non-social things gay people cannot enjoy or do. Of course saying that you wished your child was also deaf is like saying you wished everyone was gay.
widdershins, #56
You need to understand that an arbitrary newborn baby with fixable deafness isn’t part of any deaf community. Stranger parent(s) choosing to have a corrective medical procedure on their baby to repair the problem is no business of the deaf community. People who are deaf do not get to tell random parents that their baby must remain deaf (especially for a reason that doesn’t even make sense). Marginalizing and mistreating people with disabilities is a problem, because it causes harm to people with disabilities. Stop confusing that with what we’re talking about.
How the fuck is that even analogous?
A sense of hearing is important in things outside of human interactions, community relations and culture.
If those things are all that hearing was for, then I’d probably be in agreement. But it’s not. It’s an important sense that is very useful in many, many things. There will also be unforeseeable things that a sense of hearing is good for in one’s life. You can’t sit down and make a list of pros and cons of not being able to hear and then make a choice. It’s not a game you’re playing with a baby’s life.
It’s also a fact that quite a lot of deaf people don’t agree with that particular community.
Saad
I don’t think that widdershins is supporting those arguments but merely relaying them to us.
Please note: if you’re referring to Deaf culture, the “d” is capitalized. There are deaf people who are not Deaf, and vice versa.
What a Maroon, #62
Thanks for the correction.
Giliell is correct that I don’t agree with much of what they believe. But a lot of what was being said here would be the equivalent of a fundamentalist trying to convince an atheist by threatening them with eternal damnation. There’s lack of agreement on many of the premises, so the arguments are falling on deaf ears. (sorry – but to be fair, my in-laws make that joke, too)
You’re taking it for granted that deafness is a disability, but if you read up on Deaf culture, that’s not how (most of them) see it. Are they wrong, and can I, as a hearing person, tell them that they must accept the label? Do members of Deaf culture get to decide for other deaf people? It’s a discussion in itself.
If you allow them to define themselves, and accept Deaf culture as something the community wants to preserve, and realize they had to fight hard to get ASL accepted as a legitimate language (see the history of deaf education and oralism), their attitudes towards CIs may be clearer. Not that they’re right, but you’ll understand that arguing that the surgery is like vaccines or fixing broken bones is missing the core of their objections.
While the views on cochlear implants is all well and good, as was mentioned above, children are not property, they’re family members and parents have a duty to provide the best medical care, education and life opportunities that they can for them.
In our society, hearing is a very distinct advantage and in that context, parents should ensure an implant is emplaced if such is appropriate for their medical condition.
But, we’ve also diverted from the absurdity of the initial statements that PZ was writing about.
We can’t do anything about B because of A, where both problems are different fields.
It’s like saying, “we can’t fund research into cancer treatment because we’re not addressing global warming”.
As if oncology researchers could help address climate change.
widdershins, what you say makes me feel that in your analogy it si not the Deaf comunity who is trying to explain fact based things to fundamentalists, but the other way around. I know about all the information hearing is conveying to me all the time even when I am not concsiously aware of it, so I can at least somewhat imagine what I would be missing if I were deaf. But people who are deaf from birth do not and cannot know what they are missing, because they lack the experience all together. They are completely isolated from it. That is why they are not inherently qualified to evaluate how usefull hearing is.
They are of course qualified to evaluate what things society should be doing to better accomodate them when they are deaf and how to help them overcome the problems associated with deafness, but the refusal of some of them that preventing deafness is exactly one of those thing is just stubborn and stupid.
For one thing, if deafness was not a disability, it could not be induced through infection, injury or a stroke – i.e. demonstrable disruptions and damages to the organism. Further deafness in nonhuman animals is strongly selected against – as (slightly) evidenced by the fact that from the top of my head I could name a few animals who lost sight through lack of use, but none that have lost hearing.
Ad language – even if all people learned sign language, I don’t think it would help too much (but it might be worth trying). Secondary languages get forgotten through nonuse. And in a community where deaf people are rare, most people would not be using sign language at enough high frequency to remain proficient in it. Further there are undeniable advantages to spoken language over sign/written language (you can talk and use your hands and eyes for something else for example, you can convey information in the dark, to large groups over larger distances etc.), so even in such a culture deaf people would still be disadvantaged to hearing people, albeit less. And of course we cannot change all people to sign language only for the sake of deaf minority, because what then would the blind minority say? (again, intentional use of reductio ad absurdum) We as a comunity should do our best to accomodate disabled people, including deaf, which I admit we are not doing by far. But it is absurd to insist that a disability and the obstacles it brings into life of the disabled person are to be blamed purely on the culture.
More on topic – female genital mutilation. AFAIK in some african communities it is the women who were subjected to it – mothers, grand mothers – who insist on perpetuating this practice. It does not make it any less of an abuse.
tldr: Deafness is not called disability due to ableism. It is called disability for pretty solid and evidenced rational reasons. I consider to willfully and without medical reasons not to prevent it to be a form of child abuse on par with not giving your child any other medical care they might require (including circumcision for evidenced medical reasons).
widdershins,
Sorry for interpreting your angle on this incorrectly.
Absolutely not.
It’s not a discussion. It’s a simple and clear answer of “no”.
There can be no valid argument for a deaf person getting to have a say about what happens to the deafness of a random stranger newborn a thousand miles away. It is quite simply none of their business. Deaf babies that are going to be born today aren’t magically a part of the Deaf culture and their parents and physicians are not bound by some duty to adult deaf people worldwide. It’s not ableism for a parent to choose a corrective medical procedure for their baby’s deafness.
Not all disadvantages that deaf people face are due to our ableist society. Many of them are due to how organisms interact with the world. It’s just the way it is.
What Saad said. And I mention again that there are many adult deaf people who actually do opt for medical hearing aids. It’s not as if there was a world wide consensus that CIs are horrible.
I think we all agree that deaf people get to define their own terms and what accommodations they want and need*. But some things cannot be compensated for, some things can only be easily compensated since the advance of technology.
BUt no, they don’t get to decide over some infant because they want to perpetuate their culture.
*If it’S not a disability, why accommodation?
++++
Let’s get back to parenting, consent and health in general again.
Somebody said that for parents, their children’s bodies are like an extension of their own. I disagree: I treat their bodies much better than mine, exactly because it’s not mine and I don’t bear the consequences. I also think that “parental rights” are bullshit and prefer the terms “parental privilege and duty”.
And here’s a story about all those things. When my older child was about 2 and a half years old, she came down with a stomach flu. She couldn’t even drink water without puking, so we took her to the hospital after three days. They said they needed to give her an IV because she was dehydrated and also very skinny. The dehydration and her size meant that setting the needle was very complicated and didn’t work at the first attempt. My child, my precious child begged me to make them stop. But I held her close, restrained her and let the doctors try again.
There was clearly no consent on her part and I used force on her. It was one of the worst moments ever, but it was the thing to do.
My 2 year old didn’t get to make the medical decision because she didn’t understand that dehydration can kill, but she only understood that the needle hurts. I made the decision in accordance with the doctors.
And clearly NONE OF YOU get that while the disability is not the person, the disability is PART OF THE PERSON. When you “fix” that, you are REMOVING PART OF THE PERSON.
Again, if y’all would stop trying to cure us, and start fixing society’s barriers…
WMDKitty
We’re talking about newborns. I somehow doubt they have their personalities formed around their disability.
My mom would have that part of her personremoved IMMEDIATELY; if she could. I doubt that all the accommodation in the world would change that.
Guess what? Not everyone is you.
Why is it that curing the disability is only an issue that ever seems to be brought up by the deaf community? I mean, I’ve not once ever seen a major protest from the vision-impaired community over the possibility of a blind infant being given surgery to correct the condition.
@WMDKitty #69, <blockquote<And clearly NONE OF YOU get that while the disability is not the person, the disability is PART OF THE PERSON. When you "fix" that, you are REMOVING PART OF THE PERSON.
So, when I put my hearing aids in, I’m amputating my deafness? When I use my cane to walk, I’m removing lameness from nerve damage?
Fuck you.
I’m mitigating a lost ability in each case, removing social isolation of severe hearing loss and restoring mobility, rather than sitting in a chair all day.
I’d love for the tinnitus to go away, for my old sensitive, tone perfect hearing to be returned to me. That’s beyond our technological capabilities, so I use amplification, compression and filtered bandwidth to restore functional hearing. That’s not removing a damned thing, save for a disability and it’s a disability as stated above and as stated by codified federal law.
WMDKitty, #69
Learn to actually engage with the substance of the topic, We’re way beyond the term “fixing people” in this discussion. Actually read what is being said instead of shouting the same shit over and over.
As has been stated clearly as an example, society’s barriers aren’t the only thing that are disadvantageous about deafness. You’re failing miserably to understand the difference between telling deaf people they should get their hearing fixed and a parent choosing a medical procedure to allow a newborn born with a non-functioning sense of hearing to be able to hear. Big god damn difference.
Also, you’re someone who said all babies with penises must be circumcised and got angry and doubled down when rightly criticized for it. It’s hard to take someone like that seriously when they think circumcision is like cochlear implants for babies.
1. People change. I’m no longer the same person I was 10 years ago. People gain and lose things during their life.
2. Quite a lot of disabled people really seem to want to remove their disabilities. That’s why there’s waiting lists to transplant eyes and stuff. That’s why people are thrilled about ever better prosthetic limbs. Many people have come forward in this very thread and talked about it.
3. As said before, we’re talking about infants. They aren’t part of any community nor are parts of their identity removed.
4. As for things being “part of a person”, this has exactly as much value as a person puts on it. And for some things it’s actually worth removing them. If my mother had decided to get help when I was an infant instead of being an abusive alcoholic I would not be the same person, but believe me, if you could remove the trauma and abuse part, I’d happily sign, even though it is a big part of who I am today.
Again, not everything is “fixable” by society. Some things may be fixable by medicine. I have food allergies. There’s things I want to change, especially jerks who act as if I have a potentially life threatening condition just to spite them. I want clear labels and choice. That’s things society can and should do. Eating something store bought shouldn’t be a hit and miss thing. But you know what? No amount of apple free fruit salad, carrot free salads and human kindness will ever be a substitute for apples and carrots. It’s as easy as that.
WMDKitty
You know, I sobbed myself to sleep last night over my frustrations with my hearing and the limitations I have because of how my brain is now wired after a lifetime of this, so that no matter how loud and clear a sound is my brain simply can’t identify all of the sounds. It had nothing to do with society’s barriers.
Certain neurological paths are closed off if not used during the right window. We have a way to prevent those paths from being lost forever by the use of CI in infants. However, it’s not appropriate in all cases. There are definite drawbacks to CI and the fact that you haven’t mentioned any of them makes me wonder how much you actually know or care about Deaf issues and how much you’re simply using this as a bludgeon to make yourself feel good.
A cochlear implant destroys any natural hearing, so that if a better option comes along later it may no longer be a viable choice. There are the risks of death while under anesthesia, facial nerve damage, meningitis, cerebrospinal fluid leaks, perilymph fluid leaks, infections, tinnitus, and others. The hearing afforded via a CI is not the same as natural hearing or even that through a traditional hearing aid. There are, in fact, some complex reasons for people in the Deaf and HOH community to be cautious about CIs and to urge others to use caution, and it’s not all about this cultural genocide issue you’re raving on about. You’re using what is very nearly a strawman version of these concerns and it’s unhelpful in the extreme.
There are drawbacks and risks to this surgery, as there are to many medical decisions parents have to make for their children. Each situation needs to be weighed by the child’s guardians and doctors. In some cases, it might be preferable to use traditional aids. In others, the benefits of the CI so clearly outweigh the risks that it would be irresponsible to not get the implant. Some would argue that trying to fit a deaf child into a hearing world is cruel, even with the use of CI, because of the harm done to those who were mainstreamed in previous generations. We don’t know enough about how children given CIs will feel later in life and it’s dangerous to essentially be experimenting with their development, these people might argue. (My personal feeling is that this viewpoint is akin to antivaxxers and we should absolutely use reasonable medical interventions for children.) But I’m not personally aware of anyone who would argue as you’ve done here.
Yes, there is pride in Deaf culture. Yes, there are people who feel very strongly about ensuring that culture is not lost. But the issue of cochlear implants is actually more nuanced than you’ve presented and you’re doing people literally no favors by arguing it this way.
WMDKitty, I am sorry to say that, but you are clearly a fanatic. This is second topic I see where you absolutely refuse to actualy adress the points raised and engage the substance of what is written. You just shout over people and repeat the same nonsense over and over again. In response to an ample of counterarguments – many saying the same/similar things with different wordings, thus further reducing a window for misunderstanding – you do not even bother to sighificantly reformulate or expand your position.
Ad nauseam/broken record method is not a valid form of persuading people. It is a tool for propaganda, intimidation and brainwashing.
There clearly is nothing that can be said for you to even contemplate that you might be wrong. You have carefully constructed your narrative as unfalsifiable and therefore any discussion with you is a waste of time.
Have a nice day.
WMD Kitty’s argument seems to be that you must keep the body in the worst possible condition but then reshape everything else no matter what.
Apart from that being just plain wrong, it’s also not possible. There are things society cannot fix. You won’t get a general population fluid in sign language. You won’t get all hiking trails wheelchair accessible. It’s not desirable to remove soy from planet earth. We can and should do a hell lot more to make the world accessible. Whenever we design anything, accessibility should be a major concern. Yet there are things we do and can not design, there are things where accessibility for one group would impair accessibility for others or remove functionality.
WMDKitty
I would very much like to cure my disability. While fixing society’s barriers so not being able to work consistently doesn’t mean I risk not being able to eat, there are still issues beyond that. The constant pain and nausea are still unpleasant, and will be no matter how many barriers are fixed. I still want them gone. I do not feel that part of me would be removed if they were, any more than I was less me before I had them – I will simply be a happier me, more able to do the things I like and spend time with the people I love.
I actually think that even talking about “removing disability” is wrong. It is falling prey to the trap of how languages function and it assumes that if there is a word for something, that something actually exists as a thing in itself.
It is not disability that is removed, it is ability that is added. Disability is not a thing, it is a word describing the absence of ability. And ability is a thing. Ability/disability are privative opposites, not complementary opposites.
I cringe every time when I hear someone talk about metals “conducting cold”. This is the same principle at work.
The thing I never comprehended about this sort of fanaticism.. While implants are really not very good “yet”, there is likely to be a point when we have something more universal – replacement eyes/retina that can have “addons”, like access to some version of google maps direction guidance, or who the heck knows, in the long run. Maybe you are a swimmer. Maybe there is a way they could, at some point, like some level of hearing enhancement to the visual implant, and produce a decent mimic of sonar. We do this sort of thing, if externally, all the damn time – expanding our sense into the infrared, ultraviolet, to see inside out bodies, and so much more. Some of what we can do is “bound” to be possible to eventually internalize. Yet.. here we have people talking about losing their identity and place in a community, which seems to function on a sense of victim hood, and us versus them (its the only thing that makes sense to me as an explanation), in which everyone else is failing to give them the solutions they want, and are instead trying to make them, “Not one of us any more!!” Where is the desire to expand horizons? Is there really so much self perpetuating distrust and hate, for the rest of society, which is, to these people, “never doing enough”, and, “still treats us, whether this is true or not, like freaks”, that they can’t see these things as a way to go beyond their limits, the same way, ironically, I, or most other people, would?
In some ways, its like watching someone go ballistic over being offered google maps, on a phone, because they think its an attack on their identity as a member of the Society of Paper Maps, which started out, decades earlier, as a complaint that people didn’t print enough maps. Maybe the problem isn’t the lack of paper maps at this point… but, trying to make that argument, when there is, instead, a perfectly reasonable argument that, much like CI, the google maps are not always as good, yet. That would be a sound argument. Not that they, or CI, bloody exists, and that the world is conspiring to destroy people’s identities by offering them.
Oh, fuck off with that isht.
If it was possible to remove the effects of a lifetime of trauma, so I could sleep normally, I’d do it in a heartbeat. If I could have a spine replacement, I’d do it in a heartbeat. If there was a way to fix my muscular problems, I’d do that in a heartbeat, too.
You need to learn to talk for yourself, and no one else.
Look at the history of how disabled people have been treated. Consider that there are some people — some in positions of power — who want to return to those bad old days when we were shut away in institutions and “homes”. Take into account the way PWD are often treated — talked to as if we’re children, treated like we’re stupid or retarded because of physical impairments, and that’s when we’re visible. Most of the time we’re invisible until someone happens to trip over us or (more likely) our mobility gear.
Disability is just as much a part of a person as their eye color, their skin color, their gender, their orientation, their genitals. It’s not okay to FORCIBLY treat a child when that treatment involves invasive surgeries that aren’t, you know, necessary to immediately save their life. (Cleft lip/palate is, personally, on the list of “necessary surgeries” — eating is important.)
I’m applying the SAME STANDARDS you’ve applied to circumcision — it’s not strictly necessary and should be left up to the individual. So, those of you who want to be “fixed”, I have no problem with that — you’re consenting adults, and haven’t been coerced or forced.
On the other hand, if you’re serious about letting parents make medical decisions for their children, then you should include the decision to circumcise.
I’m only holding you to your own standards.
Look at the history of how disabled people have been treated. Consider that there are some people — some in positions of power — who want to return to those bad old days when we were shut away in institutions and “homes”. Take into account the way PWD are often treated — talked to as if we’re children, treated like we’re stupid or retarded because of physical impairments, and that’s when we’re visible. Most of the time we’re invisible until someone happens to trip over us or (more likely) our mobility gear.
Disability is just as much a part of a person as their eye color, their skin color, their gender, their orientation, their genitals. It’s not okay to FORCIBLY treat a child when that treatment involves invasive surgeries that aren’t, you know, necessary to immediately save their life. (Cleft lip/palate is, personally, on the list of “necessary surgeries” — eating is important.)
I’m applying the SAME STANDARDS you’ve applied to circumcision — it’s not strictly necessary and should be left up to the individual. So, those of you who want to be “fixed”, I have no problem with that — you’re consenting adults, and haven’t been coerced or forced.
On the other hand, if you’re serious about letting parents make medical decisions for their children, then you should include the decision to circumcise.
I’m only holding you to your own standards.
Weird. That didn’t post.
Look at the history of how disabled people have been treated. Consider that there are some people — some in positions of power — who want to return to those bad old days when we were shut away in institutions and “homes”. Take into account the way PWD are often treated — talked to as if we’re children, treated like we’re stupid because of physical impairments, and that’s when we’re visible. Most of the time we’re invisible until someone happens to trip over us or (more likely) our mobility gear.
Disability is just as much a part of a person as their eye color, their skin color, their gender, their orientation, their genitals. It’s not okay to FORCIBLY treat a child when that treatment involves invasive surgeries that aren’t, you know, necessary to immediately save their life. (Cleft lip/palate is, personally, on the list of “necessary surgeries” — eating is important.)
I’m applying the SAME STANDARDS you’ve applied to circumcision — it’s not strictly necessary and should be left up to the individual. So, those of you who want to be “fixed”, I have no problem with that — you’re consenting adults, and haven’t been coerced or forced.
On the other hand, if you’re serious about letting parents make medical decisions for their children, then you should include the decision to circumcise.
I’m only holding you to your own standards.
WMDKitty @ 83, you do have valid concerns over idiots in position of power who would like to institutionalize many people who are otherwise thriving outside of any institutions.
That said, a disability is not part of a person, it’s a part of the person’s life. My cataract isn’t me, it’s a medical condition that’s causing visual distortions that have become extremely troublesome.
My hearing loss makes communication difficult and crossing the street an exercise fraught with peril, it isn’t me.
My need to use a cane to walk is not me, it’s part of my life and damned inconvenient when my leg gives out despite it being present. Don’t get me started about when the cat swooped by and accidentally knocked it out of my hand in mid-step, dumping me unceremoniously to the floor (about a quarter second of irritation, then ten minutes of laughter over my predicament and the cat’s sheepish expression).
@83:
So to preserve the bodily autonomy of a child* you are willing to condemn an adult to a life with limited bodily autonomy. Got it. It is of course still you that decides over the body of your child without any consent of your child whats so ever. But doing nothing out of principle always is the easy way out of a hard decision, isn’t it?
You also still do not understand the difference between a medical procedure and the majority of circumcisions done in the US, but by now that is not surprising.
*Which a child does not posses. Because for that it would have to be able to understand this concept.
@WMDKitty #83
You actually managed to get me pissed.
You still did not answer any points raised- are we allowed to prevent polio? Are we allowed to fix broken bones in children? After all those do not necessary kill (cleft palate does not have to be deadly too). And why exactly are we allowed to save children’s life, but not their hearing/seing/ability to walk unimpaired? Just because you say so?
Nobody here objects against medical circumcision for necessary medical reasons. It has been told to you by at least three people, some of whom circumcised, and nobody here objected to what they said. Fuck you. You dishonest, lying, evasive fuckwit,
Past or even current discriminations agains disabled people are not a licence to needlesly let disabled children grow into irreversibly disabled adults, because when the adult deaf person decides they do not wish to be deaf, it is too late to do anything about it. You did not adress this point too, although it was said multiple times – even by a disabled person!
You are not holding anybody to “the same standards”, you are simply lying.
Kagehi
It’s important to notice that the person making the argument isn’t actually a member of that community to the best of my knowledge. While WMD Kitty is disabled, they are not deaf. They are speaking out of their ass.
WMD Kitty
You’re wrong. Obviously we can wait until adulthood to treat it, so by your own standard you must oppose it as well. We have raised numerous examples of medical decisions parents make that aren’t necessary to immediately safe their lives, but to improve their health and physical condition. You haven’t addressed them. You haven’t addressed the multiple disabled people here who have told you that you don’t speak for them and that they would happily do away with their disability.
You’re plain dishonest here. You’ve been told multiple times that this isn’t about circumcision as a medical procedure but as a cosmetic one.
Remember those times when you’re plain wrong and an absolute asshole about it? It’s one of them.
Jebus H Christ, WMD Kitty.
The decision to use a cochlea implant is a medical< decision. It may be, as The Mellow Monkey eloquently explains, a complex and difficult decision, but it is medical.
The decision to hack lumps of flesh from a child’s genitalia is, in the vast majority of cases, an aesthetic decision or an attempt to comply with the wishes of an invisible friend. The bodily-autonomy argument is strong in this context because the procedure is unnecessary. Nobody with any sense would argue that parents have no right to over-ride the child’s right to bodily autonomy for medical reasons. Most, including some judges, would argue, in fact, that it is their responsibility to do so.
By all means, discuss, as The Mellow Monkey has done—and you have so far not actually done—the pros and cons of cochlea implants; but don’t fucking try to pretend that the two issues are in any way analogous. It’s a bold-faced insult to those affected by either.
Here are just a few of the resources that might be of interest to people looking for more info on this topic:
“Forced genital cutting in North America: feminist theory and nursing considerations.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24030105
“Doctors Opposing Circumcision (D.O.C.) is dedicated to ending routine, non-therapeutic circumcision – the genital cutting of infants. Babies are born with perfectly designed genitalia, and no one has the right to inflict this unnecessary procedure on them as they grow – for any reason.”
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/
“Voluntary medical male circumcision” (VMMC) is the policy term for the world’s first mass surgical campaign, targeting Africans. Its goal is to create and maintain an 80% male circumcision rate throughout the African continent.
12 million men and boys have been circumcised in the campaign, largely on American taxpayer dollars through the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Because many men refuse circumcision, “early infant male circumcision” (EIMC) was added to the VMMC agenda in 2016.”
http://www.vmmcproject.org/
“Infant circumcision is unhealthy, unhygienic, unnatural, unkind, unchristian.”
https://www.littleimages.org/
“American Circumcision is a feature length documentary exploring the modern controversy around circumcision in America and the growing Intactivist movement, which says that all human beings should have the right to make their own choices about their bodies. The film features interviews with top experts on this issue, and ground-breaking research into the full truth about circumcision in America. Currently in post-production.”
http://circumcisionmovie.com/