#cause the may have 'consented' but they were children and are victims imo

[long-claw]

minor fire and blood spoilers:

ik fire and blood is meant to be ambiguous at points but there's no way people actually believe daemon didn't have an affair with nettles just because "he treated her like a daughter" considering this is the same man that had an affair with his teenage niece. they were having fucking baths together like come on 😭

daemon saw himself as her father- HE MARRIED. HIS NIECE.

[doberbutts]

fragile-milkbones @fragile-milkbones

And a reminder, female genital mutilation usually includes the tearing open of skin that had been sutured shut. FGM is often practiced in ways that work more like a “tamper evident” seal under the guise of religious practices. The other common practice is the cutting off of the clitoris which is the equivalent of the head of a phallus. Both are used to prevent a woman from experiencing pleasure from genital stimulation, and

Women who have had their genitals mutilated in the “sewn shut” variety often experience dangerous and sometimes fatal complications during normal body processes like menstruation (gross warning) where the sloughed uterine lining cannot effectively exit the body and then rots. Male circumcision is harmful, but has not been used as a mechanism of oppressing and subjugating men or for shaming men for having sexual pleasure. Circumcision when preformed correctly should never cause long term medical

*medical complications

I’m against both, but equating make circumcision with fgm is imo, a vast overstatement due to the historic purposes of the rituals, general standards of safety for the patient, and overall long term health consequences of the victims.

Am Jewish if that matters at all

Oh! And there’s no “typical age range” for fgm! But it’s been preformed on children as young as infants and as old as fully mature women!

Underlining concept: modifying genitalia for children inherently lacks consent and is based on antiquated notions of health and hygiene, and has been perpetuated by religion. However FGM, unlike circumcision is still practiced in extremely brutal ways and causes significant threat to a woman’s physical health and serves to cause extraordinary pain during intercourse.

Circumcision is also highly regulated and has standards of procedure and after care for a medical procedure. FGM generally does not and the religious figure preforming it generally lacks medical trainings and there is often an emphasis on pain experienced during the procedure. If you want to compare levels of harm done, one minimizes harm (mostly), and the other encourages it

Yes, the nuance is why I conceded ground there. FGM is practiced by select vulnerable groups but my opinion on it is not changed despite cultural and religious reasonings due to just how bad it is, and I don’t really care that it has cultural and religious significance to those groups because of this. Additionally my introspection comment was more aimed at considering that there is a cultural and religious reasoning within yet another vulnerable religious group for male circumcision, and that I would need to consider if any of my reasons to dislike the procedure are based in anti-Semitism even if by accident.

However, that being said, I have read many studies regarding the effects of male circumcision and whether there really are “no side effects” and the consensus is “it’s complicated” and “there can be side effects up to and including septic shock and genital reconstruction due to necrosis because fresh wounds in baby diapers are not the cleanest” and “it’s possible subjecting male babies to severe pain is causing them trauma which we know childhood trauma has lasting effects on brain development and can cause a rise in aggressive behavior” and “correlation with circumcision and negative effects on male arousal”  and I just cannot accept the idea of shrugging all of that off as “no lasting side effects” because clearly there can be. I know many cis men who were cut that wish they were not, and just as many cis men who were cut and do not care... but I know zero uncut cis men who want to be circumcised and zero cis men who wanted to be cut as adults, and I think that is also telling.

And, well, the whole consent argument. Which, as said, as someone who was raised Mennonite even if I am very much fairly done with the majority of the Christian faith, something I think Mennonites did right was ensure children were allowed to grow and mature and make their own choice before a potentially permanent choice was made on their behalf, even if the choice was whether or not they wanted to be dunked in water with prayers said over them.

There is another reply on this chain that says the hospitals they’ve worked at have used some amount of (mild) painkiller and while I still don’t like the procedure, at least there’s that. One of my sisters was a nurse for a while and she reported the opposite, that most of those baby boys had absolutely nothing to help them through it, and the sound of them wailing was so haunting that she regretted having her own son done. I’ve had a few other nurse friends verify the same, so it may be different hospital to hospital.