I was watching a piece about circumcision on the Today Show. The piece was not bad, which was a nice surprise in itself, but it ends with a rather stupid statement by the blond co-host (I don't know the names of the hosts that day.. it was not the regulars, Kathy and Hoda):
Dark-haired host:
"...a tough decision, and I made sure for my son that I stood there with him, because it was so hard on him..."To which the blond host adds:
"No, no, I wasn't there for the actual 'nippin' or whatever you want to call it...but I thought also that for a lot of dads, because they want their sons to look like the way they look, so their sons can identify with their fathers."The dark-haired host laughs:
"Why are you laughing?"
"I don't think it is a good enough reason!"I've got a couple of questions for blond host:
How often does a father look at his son's penis past diaper changing age? And how often does the son inspect his father's penis? Would it really hurt the son's self-esteem if he saw that his father's penis looked like his when the foreskin is rolled back? And what father would be so stupid as to feel troubled if his son wasn't surgically altered as a baby?If a son can't identify with his father is he doesn't look like him, does that also go for the hair color, eye color?
Should a blind father make his son blind too? And if the father is missing a leg, should he make his son look like him in that respect to?
Hans Sandberg
2 comments:
Anyone who calls it "nippin" has no idea what's actually involved.
Cutting part of your son's genitals off to match dad makes no sense at all. It's just to make dad feel better about the fact that it's been done to him.
There are plenty of circumcised women too. Should they circumcise their daughters, so that they can "identify" with their mothers?
Everyone should be able to decide for themselves if they want parts of their genitals cut off or not.
I know when my son was born I da to confront this issue for the first time. I was circumcized, but I didn't see any good reason to do this to my son. I talked to my brother about it (he'd already had sons so I knew he had had to have thought about it.
His point was sound, he said,"I figure if the kid wants to have it done someday, he always can, but he can't undo it if we do it now." That settled it for me. So, by not having him circumcized, I basically let him make the decision for himself.
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