stellajames:

moneymud: lazydaysfullofhaze: moneymud: If you claim to be “for equality” and “fight for women’s and men’s issues” like the lot of you like to shout from the rooftops then this SHOULD be a feminist issue and this SHOULD be a priority. Period. End of story. I don’t claim to fight for women’s and men’s issues as part of my feminism. As part of who I am as a person, I fight for what is right in general. The reason I care about circumcision is because I believe in the right to body autonomy. That’s something I learned through feminism and will discuss when the subject comes up. It’s one of the many fringe benefits for men that more women understand that and will choose not to circumcise their babies. Unless feminists wind up being a bunch of single moms, they have to discuss circumcision with the father who may have different ideas about it. Most women I know who recently had babies (none of whom were feminists) let the father decide, and the father decided to circumcise. So in order to fix this problem, men need to be fighting for it and convincing other men, just like women are the majority of people fighting for issues that directly affect us. You are not a disempowered group that needs a female spokeswoman to be taken more seriously. Stop trying to play the role of oppressed class. You are more likely to be listened to as a man, you have more clout in the government and media that we do. You don’t need us to derail our efforts to fight your battles for you. I don’t see you going into other activist groups claiming those activists should focus more on the bad stuff happening to their oppressors. Good answer. ALSO, male circumcision is *NOTHING* next to Female Genital Mutilation. Male circumcision is NOT performed on a male who is pinned to the ground, it is NOT performed using rusty razor blades, shards of stone or glass, dirty lids from cans. The parts that allow pleasure are NOT gouged away. Please, tell this man that he must NOT compare the two. We must NOT take away the attention on FGM and put it on some whiny baby’s IDEA of mutilation. I’m not saying male circumcision is a good thing or something to be ignored, and I wish parents would let their kids decide for themselves when they’re grown. I AM saying males don’t DIE from it, they don’t suffer infections and intense pain for the rest of their lives from it, I AM saying that it’s NOT a woman’s problem (other than concerning her own son). Lastly, I think this guy is a troll.

>I don’t claim to fight for women’s and men’s issues as part of my feminism. As part of who I am as a person, I fight for what is right in general. The reason I care about circumcision is because I believe in the right to body autonomy. That’s something I learned through feminism and will discuss when the subject comes up. It’s one of the many fringe benefits for men that more women understand that and will choose not to circumcise their babies.

You’re trying to have it both ways; claiming that feminism has no responsibility to care about MGM, but implying that feminism can take credit for you learning about MGM and will somehow help the issue.

>So in order to fix this problem, men need to be fighting for it and convincing other men, just like women are the majority of people fighting for issues that directly affect us.

Men (and women) are. They get shouted down. Often by feminists.

Interesting how you say that women and men decide on MGM, but are trying to put all the responsibility on men in the very next sentence. If a woman cedes authority in the matter to a man, that means she had authority in the first place.

>You are not a disempowered group that needs a female spokeswoman to be taken more seriously.

Well, when men are dismissed as “whiny babies” and have entire websites trying to stigmatize them for talking about their issues, it sure helps. Strangely enough, the most popular such website, Manboobz, regularly ignores that women are also talking about men’s issues. Much like you are.

>Stop trying to play the role of oppressed class.

Here comes the science silencing. Saying that men’s issues are significant enough to require advocacy is the same as saying they’re oppressed, which is obviously completely impossible, because men have all the advantages ever.

>You are more likely to be listened to as a man, you have more clout in the government and media that we do.

No, men are discouraged from talking about their problems while women are encouraged. Even many feminists acknowledge this (EG “Toxic Masculinity”). Women’s issues have dominated Western political discourse for most of a century and can now be studied in college*. Women spend more money and have more advertising dollars directed at them. Women got Obama elected - twice - and he still has no Council on Boys and Men, despite serious issues like boys doing worse than girls in school, which he can say in Newsweek is a “great accomplishment” without controversy. And if men are more likely to be listened to, all the time, ever, why couldn’t Earl Silverman get any significant amount of funding for the one men’s shelter in all of Canada, while women’s centers worth millions were going up? Why are you assuming that because a man’s speaking, he’s speaking in favor of all men? That’s just as sexist as assuming women speak only in favor of women.

>I don’t see you going into other activist groups claiming thoseactivists should focus more on the bad stuff happening to their oppressors.

I’m not claiming it. Lazydaysfullofhaze and the woman I linked to is. A feminist. But, please, keep on erasing the opinion of another women in order to prop up your “oppression” narrative.

Amazing how you made a post about the opinions of women and feminists almost all about the opinions of men. No, Moneymud, you are the derailer.

I also don’t believe men are unilaterally or generally “oppressors”, and find such conceptions to be overly simplistic and at best hindering to discussion.

I don’t think MGM is a concern for most feminists. And I think that if feminism was actually the gender equality movement it purported to be, then that wouldn’t be the case.

>Male circumcision is NOT performed on a male who is pinned to the ground, it is NOT performed using rusty razor blades, shards of stone or glass, dirty lids from cans.

There are a wide range of FGM types, as the article in question pointed out. Most are not what you just described it as. MGM can also have severe effects on the male’s health. Hang on, let me try.

“Circumcision involves taking a baby from his mother seconds after birth, strapping him to a cold table, and ripping the skin off his penis without anesthetic. This bloody, raw, exposed skin will be put into a diaper with fecal matter. This is a common procedure performed on a large portion of infant boys in America, including those without any sort of religious justification. It is completely legal there and much more prevalant than FGM, which is illegal.”

Wow, when you say it like that, it sounds a lot like a serious problem.

Also, most FGM is decided upon and performed by women, not men. Did you just forget to mention that?

>The parts that allow pleasure are NOT gouged away.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102

http://www.livescience.com/27769-does-circumcision-reduce-sexual-pleasure.html

http://www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html

Congratulations. You have shown that you know basically nothing about the subject.

>Please, tell this man that he must NOT compare the two.

Why not? You just did. Or are you saying that it can’t be compared when they are found to be equivalent? Because I believe that both can and should be abolished (in infants and children), regardless of severity. The article I linked - which you barely mention - also points out the Appeal to Worse Problems fallacy you’re using.

> We must NOT take away the attention on FGM and put it on some whiny baby’s IDEA of mutilation.

Well, this is ironic. I think there’s plenty of attention to spare for both, and so did the woman who wrote that article.

>I’m not saying male circumcision is a good thing or something to be ignored, and I wish parents would let their kids decide for themselves when they’re grown.

But any man who describes ripping the skin off an infant’s penis as “mutilation” is a “whiny baby”, right?

>I AM saying males don’t DIE from it,

http://www.circumstitions.com/death.html

http://www.circinfo.org/USA_deaths.html

http://www.drmomma.org/2010/05/death-from-circumcision.html

Again, exposing your ignorance.

> I AM saying that it’s NOT a woman’s problem (other than concerning her own son).

But FGM and other women’s problems (IE abortion) are things men in general should be concerned with, right? And who are you to tell other women, other feminists, what they should think feminists should care about? Comments are open on that post, so you’d better tell the blogger yourself. Ironically, some of the commenters accused her of trying to co-opt men’s issues. Here’s an insightful comment she made.

The fact is, when we entirely separate the genders on the human right of genital integrity, we’re only making things worse. We can hardly teach equality when one gender’s body is cut simply for being that gender.

>Lastly, I think this guy is a troll.

I think you’re an idiot who can’t spend a few seconds Googling before spouting their mouth off, and is so biased they’re actively upset by someone discussing MGM and FGM in the same conversation (without saying FGM is totally, always worse full stop) and saying it should be a feminist concern.

I also think that neither I or LazyDays said anything about whether we’re male or not. You just assumed.

* This is where you make that stupid “everything else is about men!” quip.

(via stellajames-deactivated20141009)