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Mar. 31, 2006 Imagine being born male and destined for circumcision. First you get pushed out of your mother's abdomen, ejected slowly through what feels like a long tunnel wherein your pain is so great that it feels like your head is being crushed in between the jaws of a vise. A short time after you've made it through birth's ordeal you are taken by the doctor, clamped into hard restraints, and soon after that you are torn, sliced, and bloodied down below by the doctor's cutting instrument. You feel excruciating pain. This is male genital mutilation. The infant or young child has no power against the doctor. For little girls there are tough older women who cut them up. It is a gruesome and barbaric business. This is HIGH culture. This is GREAT civilization! Many cultured people want it to stay the custom forever and ever! Yesterday I watched a video which included scenes of a four year old girl in some African tribe being tortured by a local tribal Goddess. First the little girl was told that she was going to a joyful celebration party down by the riverside and then after she went lightly skipping along she was grabbed and taken into a dark house and held down by four strong women and cut by some big bully female. Parts of this girl's torture were actually preserved on videotape. Video Title: Rights & wrongs. Video 3, Women under attack [videorecording] / a co-production of Globalvision and WNET Thirteen. Here are the video notes: "Promotes increased awareness of the universality of the crime of rape and of the urgent need for human rights for women revealed by the systematic rape of women in Bosnia by Serbian soldiers. Includes reports on worldwide state sponsored violence towards women and the international human rights movement to stop the violence through documentation of events in order to establish criminal charges and bring the violators to justice. Victims offer testimony of events in Bosnia, Kashmir, and Peru and a rape room is shown in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq. Female genital mutilation in Africa and Asia is described in personal testimony as well as in an interview with Alice Walker about her documentary films. Scenes from Fire Eyes and Warrior Marks are shown to demonstrate how mutilation is often performed, and Walker reads from her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy. VHS. Table of Contents: Rape: weapon of war : women's rights Cover story: Genital mutilation / producer, Gail Ablow Alice Walker interview / producer, Gail Ablow. What about little boys? Well, in the United States of America a large percentage of male babies get cut soon after birth. Many pediatricians do this as a matter of course, unless the parents object. In the 1880s cutting of the penile foreskin was done to make boys associate the penis with sin, evil, and pain. At least this was a prevailing theory used to defend the practice. For more detailed information, read Rio Cruz article "Genital Mutilation American Style". Do not fail to read Rio Cruz's own account of his own son being cut. Cruz starts by saying, "My baby was shrieking now, his protest going from a simple cry to what sounded like screams of sheer terror. His body was rigid, contorted as he strained against the straps and the pain. If the Circumstraint had not been bolted down, it and my child would have crashed to the floor." What made circumcision so popular in the USA? Well, perhaps it wasn't entirely the fault of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, but about this doctor Wikipedia says, "Kellogg was a zealous campaigner against all forms of sex. He recommended extreme methods. In his Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects he wrote: "A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement." Pediatrics in the USA hasn't yet recovered from doctor Kellogg who was destined to play the role of Doctor God. What are the arguments in favor of cutting children? Whatever these arguments are, note that the arguments are not made by the children themselves. The arguments are made by adults who have lost the sense of empathy. The doctor may argue that genital mutilation reduces the chances of getting a disease or in transmitting a disease to another person. Often it's been done to discourage youthful sexual experimentation and promiscuity. To be fair we need to consider the arguments in favor of genital mutilation. Yuki's Intactivism Resources says, "Advocates of circumcision will something claim that since circumcision has been practiced by men for thousands of years and is still being done today that must mean there's something good about it. I'm not going to try to deny that male circumcision has been going on for this long, because it's an indisputable fact that's been proven by anthropology. What I will dispute is that the fact that the procedure is this old has anything to do with whether it should still be performed today." Regarding male circumcision, Elizabeth Pantley writes, "Opinion has started to change, however, and the rate of routine circumcision is decreasing. Recent studies have shown benefits of circumcision as well as risks, and the decision falls fully into the hands of parents. Below are two tables looking at arguments for and against circumcision." The answer to this stubbornness is higher intelligence. Higher intelligence will solve other socio-cultural problems as well. Children who can will run away from the old cultures and help create the new culture. Teaching good hygiene and reasons behind good hygiene each day to children is a lot more intelligent than just taking a sharp instrument and cutting them up and teaching them to totally submit to some bully God and to some bully Doctor God. Pain is not the answer. Cutting is not the way. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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