There is a lot of fuss about this picture on facebook. Strictly speaking, they are discussing removal of the hood, or clitoral foreskin. This is just as ethical or unethical as removing penile foreskin, give or take some ethical wiggle room. I personally prefer the look of a covered clitoris for the same reason many women prefer the look of an uncovered glans, that is, increased femininity.masculinity.
We should always accept the hard facts, regardless of political expediency.
Since a German regional court in Cologne ruled in the summer of 2012 that the circumcision of a Muslim boy constituted “grievous bodily harm,” a movement was born that calls on governments across Europe to legislatively protect “genital autonomy.” The European debate is characterized by the fact that, unlike in the U.S., the majority of Christian and secular men are not circumcised. Depending on national context, the circumcision rate ranges between 0% (Finland), 1.5% (Spain, Denmark), 10% (Germany), up to a high of 15% (U.K.). Across Europe, circumcision is considered a ritual practice limited to Muslim and Jewish religious minorities. The German Bundestag was caught off guard by the Cologne court’s decision and sprang into action, mindful of the ominous consequences of this criminalization for Jewish (as well as Muslim) communities in the country of the Holocaust. By December 2012, German lawmakers passed a law defending the right of Jewish and Muslim religious communities to circumcise their sons—though not their daughters.
This spurred a movement across Europe that demanded the protection of boys’ bodily integrity in the name of gender equality. Their declarations and websites use gender-neutral language and declare “genital autonomy” a “fundamental right of each human being,” which includes “personal control of their own genital and reproductive organs; and protection from medically unnecessary genital modification and other irreversible reproductive interve. The Nordic Ombudsman of the Child Rights International Network issued a declaration in Oslo in 2013, signed by representatives from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Greenland that called on their respective governments to outlaw boys’ ritual circumcision and “to work towards a situation where circumcision without medical indication may only be carried out if a boy, who has reached the age and maturity required in order to understand the necessary medical information, chooses to consent to the procedure.” Girls are not mentioned explicitly.
The reason for this silence is, as another website explains that “the problem of girls’ circumcision has been thoroughly discussed in the media and on the internet… while the ritual circumcision of boys has been remained completely taboo.” One website quotes Somali anti-Muslim activist Ayan Hirsi Ali, never known to shy away from controversy, as saying in an interview on Dutch TV: “I believe that male circumcision is worse than the incision of a girl.” The German site pro-kinderrechte.de asserts that “the male foreskin contains more than double as many nerve endings as the female and possesses much greater physiological significance.” Another website, intaktiv.de, maintains that “the amputation of the foreskin occurs usually against the will and without consent of the victim and causes considerable physical, sexual and psychological harm. It can and should therefore be called male genital mutilation (MGM). The comparability to female genital mutilation is given . . .The court decision [in Cologne] for the first time found the medically unnecessary amputation of the foreskin illegal bodily harm and explicitly gave boys the same self-evident right of genital autonomy which is generally accepted for girls.”
There are several reasons why this European push to criminalize ritual circumcision of boys is odious. First, there is the competitive edge that aims to outman the political battle against FGM, which is far from self-evident and generally accepted. Suddenly, men must be rescued from marginalization and traumatization and need support workshops with names like “Revealing the Wound-Restoring the Dignity,” as offered at the conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder in July 2014. The idea that ritual circumcision of the penile foreskin should be considered equivalent to the partial or total removal of the clitoris, the excision of the labia minor, and/or the infibulation of the vagina achieved by slicing (incision) and sewing up the vagina is ludicrous. The gender-neutral code of “genital autonomy” serves to conceal the “seamless garment” of coercive violence that aims to control women’s sexual and reproductive bodies. These practices cannot be compared at either the level of their painful physical and psychological impact or for their religious, political, and cultural meanings.
The religious reasons for men’s “mutilation” are fundamentally different from the arguments that drive the wounding of women. Women are cut for aesthetic reasons in order to purify and protect men from promiscuous female sexual pleasure. Women’s pleasure and agency is the target of the knife and it serves no religious signification. Men’s circumcision, on the other hand, does not aim at sensation and potency. On the contrary, men’s virility is enhanced by circumcision and loaded with religious meaning. God seals the covenant with Abraham promising him progeny, land, and everlasting life. The sacrifice of (fore)skin is more properly compared to the pain and blood of breaking the hymen. The promise of future offspring requires women’s sacrifice of bodily integrity (by penetration). The commandment given to Abraham to circumcise “the flesh of your foreskin … as a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old,” (Gen 17:11-12), is given within the context of the promise of descendants. Male circumcision and the penetration of women constitute the basis of the “covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant.” (Gen 17:7) Christian women who refused to sacrifice their hymen by pledging perpetual virginity (as Christian women did) radically reinterpreted the meaning of God’s covenant with “carnal Israel.” But for Jews, the regeneration of the covenant involves the sexual production of corporate peoplehood, which is ritually sealed in the flesh of the male foreskin and consummated in women’s reproductive labors.
It is precisely this religious quality of male circumcision that disturbs its secularist European opponents. The movement to criminalize ritual circumcision is spearheaded by uncircumcised men who feel morally obliged to protect innocent boys from “ancient stone age rituals” and “obedient submission to irrational laws of a tribal god.” It is Christian men who want to prevent the medically unnecessary suffering of Muslim and Jewish boys. All of their websites, especially those in German, categorically reject any suggestion that their campaign might advance anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim aims, and loudly proclaim their tolerance and opposition to antisemitism. But their denials are hollow. For instance, one website lectures: “Some Jews are afraid to recognize circumcision for what it really is and think that those who reject circumcision are antisemitic. That is ridiculous. Jews are not defined by their practices… People who advance the antisemitism-argument to undermine criticism of circumcision may be swayed by the following analogy: If 90% of all black people smoke, and one opposes smoking, one is not therefore a racist, but only an opponent of smoking. It is the practice not the people.” Surely, since circumcision is merely a bad habit, any reasonable person should be able to quit…. Such dismissive, arrogant, and self-righteous contentions reveal the true agenda.
Odd and rapidly shifting political and religious coalitions characterize the contemporary European scene. Emotional appeals to protect innocent children from the bloody knives of religious fanatics unite conservatives with progressives. Feminists, who work against sexual violence, such as FGM, are recruited into campaigns to outlaw gender-neutral ritual circumcisions thereby marginalizing and criminalizing Muslim and Jewish minorities. European Jews and Muslims are divided by the rise of antisemitism, which is increasingly committed by Muslim immigrants, radicalized by poverty, jihadi ideology, and anti-Israel politics, but find common ground in resisting this ban. Feminists should insist on the fundamental difference between male and female circumcision and speak out against criminalizing male circumcision in countries where such bans serve to marginalize religious minorities.
Comment: Boldfacing by me.
http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=51
Divergent views having been expressed on this subject, may I attempt to sum up and clarify the position?
Dr McAuley’s letter raises the point which is the crux of the matter: Should the prepuce be removed whether phimosis is present or not? I suggest that phimosis, especially if extreme, demands circumcision for these reasons. (1) Many infants so affected cry excessively until the operation is done: thereby (2) they may develop hernia. (3) Various troubles – for example, nocturnal enuresis, “fits”, and, in later life, epithelioma of the glans and paraphimosis – are associated with phimosis. (4) In patients with phimosis suffering from gonorrhoea, complications arise, and treatment is more difficult than in the circumcised. (5) The disadvantages in the event of marriage are obvious. Although difficult of proof, there is little doubt that the prepuce, especially a long one, renders boys more likely to acquire the habit of masturbation. For this very good reason alone I think circumcision desirable, phimosis apart, If the reasons given for circumcision are sound, then stretching operations find no place.
I venture to describe the method I use, as it is not the orthodox one. It is well to wait until the infant is 2 to 3 weeks old, and feeding is well established.
Local anaesthesia is always used, novutox or locosthetic (P.D. & Co), being injected with a fine needle at the root of the penis on the dorsum and below at the peno-scrotal junction. This makes the operation entirely painless, as I have repeatedly proved. After thorough sterilising of all the parts with spirit and biniodide solution, the end of the prepuce is seized on the dorsum on each side of the middle line with small, narrow-bladed Spencer Wells forceps. Traction on these parts puts the prepuce on the stretch. A similar forceps is then passed down under the prepuce (dorsally), and opened widely, stretching the prepuce and freeing it from the glans, right down to the neck of the latter. The blade of a pair of straight, blunt-pointed scissors is then passed under the prepuce and the latter slit down dorsally to the neck of the glans. The prepuce is then separated, if necessary, from the glans on each side, and cut away, beginning at the fraenum and ending on the dorsum. The cutting is carried round close to the neck of the glans, leaving just enough skin and mucous membrane to be stitched together. During these various manoeuvres traction is made on the forceps originally applied, so as to steady and stretch the prepuce. Often no vessels need tying – at the most, one on the dorsum and one on the fraenum. The free edges of the skin and mucous membrane are united by a few sutures of fine iodised catgut, using a small, half-circle Hagedorn needle. A narrow strip of sterile gauze is wrapped round and tied on. The operation takes very little longer than the usual one, and the skin edge left is almost a perfect “circle”; any after-trimming of the edges is rarely necessary.
The advantages of this method are two: (1) there is no possible risk of injury to the glans; and (2) seeing exactly what one is doing, it is possible to remove the whole of the prepuce, which is the main point. results are entirely satisfactory, and in my experience shock, sepsis, haemorrhage etc are unknown. Stitches absorb or work out, and healing is complete in five to ten days.
I hope I have shown, in reply to the flagrant statements of one of your correspondents, that “circumcision” is not a “horrible mutilation”, that it “has a sanitary and therapeutic value”, and, being ordained by Providence from very early times (doubtless for good reasons), it is not a “cool assumption” on the part of surgeons doing this operation that they “know better how little boys should be made”. And if phimosis is to be relegated to the list of imaginary diseases, why not make a clean sweep, and say that cancer, tuberculosis, and the rest do not exist?
G.W. Thomas
…
With regard to your correspondence on circumcision the following case may be of interest.
My son, now aged 6, was born with a long, tight foreskin. As I was against circumcision at the time, he was left uncircumcised. When he was 6 months old I noticed that he continually handled his penis. A colleague found adhesions, which he freed, and since then the foreskin has been pushed back every night at bath time and the parts thoroughly washed. There has been no recurrence of the handling on his part, except on one or two occasions when nightly washing has been omitted and there has been some slight inflammation. The boy now does the washing himself as a matter of routine, which falls into place with the cleaning of ears, teeth etc.
The points I wish to stress are: (a) it is really difficult to keep the parts clean in the uncircumcised, and (b) regular pushing back of the foreskin and washing does not always conduce to masturbation, whereas dirty, itching parts do. I hesitate to have the boy circumcised now because I think it quite likely that a psychological trauma may result from the operation at this age. I know of at least one case where a boy of 4 years, one of twins, was circumcised, in which the operation was undoubtedly a great shock, and this may have farreaching results.
With regard to what Dr H.M. Hanschell says of the preference of copulating women for the circumcised male: this may be due to the fact that the glans is less sensitive after circumcision in infancy and that therefore coitus can be prolonged. If this is the explanation it is an argument in favour of circumcision which should not be overlooked. Ejaculatio praecox with its concomitant unhappiness to both partners is common enough to call for investigation.
W.M.C.
Comment: These quotes give a very interesting perspective to a time period generally considered to be patriarchal and prudish.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/is-pornography-a-public-health-crisis/17664
Michael Flood, the Australian academic, approaches it from a feminist perspective. At a recent conference at the University of New South Wales organised by Collective Shout, a lobby group “for a world free of sexploitation”, he listed some well-documented harms.
Pornography is becoming a primary sex educator for boys and young men, displacing explanations from parents, formal instruction in schools, and even conversations with peers. However, what they learn from pornography websites is kinky practices which strip sex of intimacy, loving affection and human connection. And they learn that women are always ready for sex and have insatiable sexual appetites.
Women feel betrayed by men who use pornography. Most often men conceal their use of pornography. When a partner discovers it, she often feels as if he was having an affair. Pornography use decreases intimacy and makes women feel less attractive and more like mere sexual objects.
Pornography may become an addiction. Flood is cautious about analogies to drug addiction. He points out that attachment ranges from recreational users to compulsive and self-destructive users. However, as with other addictions, some people experience social, work or financial difficulties because they use pornography.
Pornography entrenches sexist attitudes. Abundant research shows that men who use pornography are more accepting of attitudes that sexualise and objectify women. They tend to want sex without emotional involvement.
Pornography disposes men for violence against women. Flood writes, “Exposure to sexually violent material desensitizes male viewers to sexual violence, diminishing their emotional response to the stimulus, eroding their sympathy to victims of violence, and informing more callous attitudes towards women rape victims.”
As a pro-feminist man, Flood and other activists view the sex industry as patriarchal, misogynistic, and brutalising. They call upon men “to quit pornography and forge ethical sexual and gender relations.” Their strategy for change is good sexual education, mostly in schools.
But this does not exclude the possibility of “good pornography”. And it includes acceptance of masturbation as a normal and natural part of human sexuality. Even more troubling, a feminist approach to pornography isn’t interested in the context of sex. It doesn’t need to be within marriage; it doesn’t even have to be heterosexual. The key thing is that it should be mutually pleasurable and lead to greater intimacy and affection.
Flood characterises the other approach to fighting pornography as “Christian”: it is based on total abstinence outside of marriage and it frowns on masturbation. He believes that this approach is limited, because “the contrary tenets of a powerful sexual culture” make it unrealistic.
However, in many respects, the Christian approach might be more realistic, if harder. Fundamentally it is based not on “narrow sexual proscriptions”, as Flood calls them, but on virtue, building up good habits that lead to human flourishing. What the feminist approach lacks is a clear vision of the purpose of sex and how it can be integrated into a mature personality. At the conference, for instance, the idea that sex is connected with babies, children and marriage was barely mentioned.
Young people need to be exhorted to struggle to control their unruly sexuality. The task is made much easier if they realise that this is part of their capacity to participate in procreation and the even greater and more absorbing responsibility of raising children and participating in society as mothers and fathers. Without a unifying vision like this, feminist exhortations also shrivel up into “narrow sexual proscriptions” like “No means No”, “Yes means Yes” and elaborate parsing of the meaning of affirmative consent to sexual activity.
A public health crisis
These important differences can put feminist and Christian activists at loggerheads. The beauty of describing pornography as a public health crisis is that they can work together in the same tent. Perhaps we can finally make some progress.
The idea had been kicking around for a while before Senator Weiler’s resolution in Utah. Cordelia Anderson, an anti-pornography activist from Minnesota, told a Congressional Symposium in Washington DC last year that “Individual stories and realities do not constitute a public health concern, but when the reach of today’s pornography through ever expanding and changing technologies create what some researchers, academics, and activists have called ‘the largest unregulated social experiment ever,’ we have reason to be concerned.”
“Various studies document the harms of viewing pornography [she said] including sexually aggressive behavior in adults and youth, sexually reactive behaviors in youth, desensitization to others in sexual situations, rape supportive attitudes, arousal to increasingly violent content, increased levels of sexual insecurities, and difficulties with intimacy or sexual functioning such as erectile dysfunction in males.”
Activists’ model for social change is the complete reversal of attitudes towards tobacco. In the 1950s, most people smoked and doctors even said that it could be good for people’s health. Today, smokers are treated like pariahs.
To be sure, pornography is deeply entrenched in the culture and the pornography industry is well-funded and powerful. But this was also the case with the Big Tobacco.
In 2009 social researcher Mary Eberstadt made a powerful comparison of the tobacco industry with the pornography industry. They both dispute the harms of their lucrative product; they both use bogus science to bolster their claims; they both rationalise addiction; and they both use sophisticated marketing techniques.
Bizarre as it seems, like Big Tobacco, Big Porn even uses philanthropy to burnish its image as a good corporate citizen. Earlier this month Pornhub pledged a one-cent donation to saving the whale through the Moclips Cetological Society, a non-profit organization, for every 2,000 videos streamed from its website in February. “This initiative allows us to demonstrate our sincerity and integrity when it comes to helping out one of the planet’s most sacred populations of creatures,” said Pornhub’s vice-president.
So if society turned its back on tobacco, why can’t it kick its addiction to an even more serious public health crisis, pornography?
– See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/is-pornography-a-public-health-crisis/17664#sthash.hSY80OTx.dpuf
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2009/september/case-for-male-circumcision.html
What mother hasn’t, in the halcyon days after the birth of a son, felt her ferocious she-wolf instincts kick in when it comes time for her boy to be circumcised? Having perhaps suffered violence to her genitals during the birth, the physical ache to all that is vulnerable in her world can seem unbearable. And then it is done, and life goes on.
Anti-circumcision activists would have us believe that life does not in fact go on, that boys grow into men whose sexual pleasure (and that of the women they love) is compromised by this act of “genital mutilation.” While increasing numbers areswayed by both argument and sentiment, I’m stupefied by the controversy.
Male sexual pleasure is not my highest priority, having rarely witnessed a lack thereof. Nor is my own, if in fact I’m speaking out of my ignorance of the delight foreskin can deliver. What I am concerned about is sky-rocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and the gender inequality evident in these rates.
A 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studyestimates that 25 percent of American women ages 14-19 are infected with at least one of the four most common STDs. Eighteen percent of them have human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer. Four percent have chlamydia, which, if left untreated, can lead to Pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility. Chlamydia can also bepassed from mother to baby during vaginal birth, and is reported to occur in women at three times the rate it occurs in men. Furthermore, nearly half (48 percent) of African American women in this age group were infected with an STD, compared with 20 percent of white women.
Based on multiple studies suggesting that male circumcisionreduces the risk of STDs, U.S. health officials are encouraging routine circumcision for male babies at a time when circumcision rates are declining. In a BloggingHeads.tv discussion with colleague Emily Bazelon, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin surmised that the recommendation is ultimately about confronting a decline in Medicaid funding of the $300 procedure in at-risk communities.
Even if STD prevention benefits are as overblown as critics suggest, the risks are far less dubious than those related to prevention measures like the HPV vaccine Gardasil, which young women are coerced by their governments into receiving. Last year Andrew Jones, also known as Tall Skinny Kiwi,reported that his 13-year-old daughter had been “jabbed” with the vaccine in her British school after she and her parents had opposed it in writing. Earlier this year, the FDA agreed to investigate possible risks for deadly Lou Gehrig’s disease-like symptoms after at least three young women developed such symptoms soon after being vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Intact America, an anti-circumcision group, saysthat boys can be taught the good hygiene necessary to ensure that their foreskins don’t harbor disease. As the mother of boys, I wouldn’t entrust my sexual health to the grooming habits of young men.
And why should women?
We bear the brunt of the communal sexual and reproductive health load in our bodies. We take birth control pills and fertility drugs laden with side effects. We have unnecessary C sections and hysterectomies. We are surgically sterilized at five times the rate of men. We have elective surgery, both cosmetic and bariatric, to attract them. We diet obsessively.
Opponents would argue that we have choice in these matters, while baby boys don’t. To which I say, “Hooey!” Absent the enthusiasm of a male OB-GYN and the cultural ascendancy of second-wave feminism in my formative years, I doubt I would have had an irreversible tubal ligation at age 23 or taken birth control pills at 16.
Call me ignorant if you want, but in this debate, I’ll side with women—women like Marjan Hezareh, scientific director of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Research Alliances. In 2007, sheconcluded, “The health benefits for women of having a circumcised partner have been sufficiently proven, and the medical benefits should outweigh any stigma against both adult and infant circumcision.”
As for the biblical mandate to circumcise, the apostles settled that one for Christians in the first century (Acts 15:6-11; Gal. 5:6). It’s unnecessary.
http://www.snipeme.com/archive.php?year=2008&rant=circumcise_vocal_cords
Many avid readers of this site are probably well aware of my attitude toward women who feel like “female issues” (periods, bras, etc.) are some secret fucking taboo “in” thing that should be shared only between women and men have no place even hearing about them from a self-respecting woman unless she HAS to tell him (“I’m on my period, no we can’t fuck!”). In fact, I wrote a rant about it in 2004. It’s a subject that pisses me off to no end. Women, thinking their fucking crotch is so goddamn special that it needs to be all “hidden” and “secret”, like Idiana fucking Jones is the only man who should be trying to find out. And what’s worse is the idiot men who were taught that this is the case by their stupid fucking cunt mothers and feed right into the bullshit. Seriously, this elitist attitude about your smelly fucking hatchet wound really pisses me the fuck off, girls!
But alas, I have come to the conclusion that turnabout is fair play. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And other stupid euphimisms.
You see, there’s an ongoing debate raging among liberal farts in this country about male circumcision. There’s no medical reason to do it, it’s purely cosmetic, it’s unneccesarily traumatic to the infant, you shouldn’t perform such a procedure on someone who can’t consent, and blah-de-blah-de-blah. Well, truth be told, I actually agree with most of these sentiments. Yes, it’s barbaric and I’m totally on the fence about whether to have my own son “cut.”
But that’s not the issue at hand. No, the issue at hand is a very interesting trend I’ve noticed. Bring up this topic in any liberal circle of friends, message board, chat room, etc. and you will invariably get a flood of anti-circumcision propoganda. What’s the problem with this? Well, the neat little thing I’ve noticed is that 99% of this “don’t cut the penis!” talk is coming from fucking WOMEN!
So, lemme get this straight… If I were to be a royal asshole about something like “you should let your daughter shave her legs whenever she’s ready” or “You should let your daughter use tampons instead of pads” or some other shit, you’d call me a pervert, tell me it’s none of my business, don’t worry about your daughter, it’s a GIRL thing, and then tell me to fuck off. But YOU get to be a total fucking cunt about my SON’S PENIS??? Well, alrighty then…….
Watch… AS THE FUCKING TABLES TURN!
Here’s the deal: YOU get to SHUT THE FUCK UP about what I, a MAN, decide to do about my son’s PENIS, because it’s a GUY THING, you stupid bitch!
Oh noes, if I get him cut, it’ll be barbaric and blah blah blah. Hey, guess what, Suzy Homemaker? CIRCUMCISED MEN DON’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THIS ISSUE! Guess what else? I’m a circumcised man. And y’know how much I feel like I’m missing out? That’s right, dipshit, not one little bit. I like my nice CUT cock just the way it is. In fact, I’m GLAD that my dick looks the way it does. And, hey, every other man is too, unless they just have a strange looking (or small) dick. Uncircumcised men are ALSO perfectly happy with the way their dick looks and don’t WANT to get circumcised! MEN are perfectly happy with their dicks – whatever their dicks may be – for the most part. Oddly, it seems to be YOU BITCHES who are kicking up such a fucking fuss about it!
Now, as I stated, I haven’t decided what to do about my son. Honestly, I haven’t even decided if I SHOULD decide at all! But here’s what I *am* VERY certain about. Whatever I, a man decide to do about my male child’s penis is a “male thing” and it’s none of you wimminz’ business
SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Here’s the deal: YOU get to SHUT THE FUCK UP about what I, a MAN, decide to do about my son’s PENIS, because it’s a GUY THING, you stupid bitch!
Oh noes, if I get him cut, it’ll be barbaric and blah blah blah. Hey, guess what, Suzy Homemaker? CIRCUMCISED MEN DON’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THIS ISSUE! Guess what else? I’m a circumcised man. And y’know how much I feel like I’m missing out? That’s right, dipshit, not one little bit. I like my nice CUT cock just the way it is. In fact, I’m GLAD that my dick looks the way it does. And, hey, every other man is too, unless they just have a strange looking (or small) dick. Uncircumcised men are ALSO perfectly happy with the way their dick looks and don’t WANT to get circumcised! MEN are perfectly happy with their dicks – whatever their dicks may be – for the most part. Oddly, it seems to be YOU BITCHES who are kicking up such a fucking fuss about it!
Now, as I stated, I haven’t decided what to do about my son. Honestly, I haven’t even decided if I SHOULD decide at all! But here’s what I *am* VERY certain about. Whatever I, a man decide to do about my male child’s penis is a “male thing” and it’s none of you wimminz’ business
Most MRA’s are enamoured with the intactivist movement regarding circumcision. They make silly comparisons between FGM and circ, making people laugh at how ridiculous they are.
Some of these MRA intactivists sit outside medical conventions harassing any woman they can find and talking about their porn fantasies, which include the complete torture of women’s bodies and especially their genitals, while whining about how their dicks don’t work.
Whether you think circ is a good thing or a bad thing, MRA’s use it because it’s something to use as a weapon to attack women. This is precisely what happened when a bunch of them attacked Dr. Monaghan outside a convention. They held up their signs with their crotches spray painted red and told her about what they like to see happen to women’s genitals, especially when they’re at home every day beating off to it.
What they think of the doctor, after they spent days harassing her and beating off to torture of women (comments from AVFM):
Then they got sad face when the good doctor told them that hey, maybe they should cut the whole thing off so they’ll stop harassing her. OMGERDDDD! The doctor talked back! She put my male violence in my face to show me how fucking ridiculous I’m being! Then they told her to ‘cut off your pussy lips BITCH!’ ‘Cut your VULVA BITCH!’ ‘YOU’RE A PEDOPHILE!’
Now it’s true that men love watching a grown male fuck a female child in porn. Teen porn is very popular to these men. I wonder if they know how painful it is for a female child to be penetrated by a grown man. We’ve also seen a rise in men, fathers and brothers, raping their young daughters and sisters, even infant girls while whacking off to child porn. So really it’s men who are the pedos and are projecting it onto her. Ah yes, the smell of fresh MRA hypocrisy in the morning.
These MRA’s harassed these doctors for days, specifically women, and then when the good doctor got angry they took that one comment and began failling on their fainting couches. They forgot to edit out the sexual violence they wanted to do to her afterward and in a brief moment of intellect, understood what FGM is all about. FGM is about cutting girls completely whereby they have ZERO sexual pleasure and have complications their ENTIRE lives. It makes it easier for men to own women as baby making machines and fuck holes. This never happens to men, ever.
She’s not the first female they’ve harassed. This MRA made another video where he claims he met two women, who he assumed were doctors, and claimed they said they’d stop circumcision when they got equal pay. Of course he didn’t catch any of this on camera. I imagine he targeted a couple women and then started harassing them because that’s what this is really about. These MRA intactivists specifically target women so they can use circ to harass them. It’s as simple as that.
See, it’s ok for dudes to beat off to women and girl children being gagged, anally raped, vaginally torn and bruised on a daily basis but goddammit if a doctor makes a quip about MAH DICK when I’ve been harassing her for days!
Guys, you’re being dumb. Harassing women near medical conventions with your silly diatribes about man hating lesbians who circ boys is you being ridiculous. Your need to get off on the actual torture of women’s and girls genitals in porn marks you as the ultimate hypocrites. I won’t give you any tips on activism because I love watching you make jackasses out of yourselves.
Your dicks work just fine when you beat off to women and children being genitally, anally, and orally tortured on a daily basis. So I don’t want to hear your shit about how you can’t sexually function and manhating lesbian doctors are ruining your life.
You compare FGM to circ and people laugh at you and they’re right to do so. How is it that you don’t understand the differences between how and why girls are cut up to nothing and how and why you are NOT? Nevermind, don’t answer that. You should already know.
House Mouse Queen
September 15, 2015 at 12:50 PM
I have to say that I’ve been with both circed men and uncirced men and the uncirced men got yeast infections. I remember when my partner from Greece who was uncirced got a yeast infection. I had to take him to the doctors and he had to take internal medicine. The doctor flat out told him it was b/c he wasn’t circed and that he would keep getting them.
I am Jewish and it’s part of our covenant for boys to be circed and after my experiences with men who are uncirced having problems I would be more likely to circ my child.
I actually think the medical evidence is pretty compelling FOR it. I also don’t think harassing women at medical conventions accusing them of being man hating lesbians is going to stop the practice.
Either way, it’s about educating parents about it, not screaming at women.
http://blog.balder.org/?p=1528
During a debate about religiously motivated genital mutilation organized by the anti Islamic Free Speech Society [Trykkefrihedsselskabet], most recently in the news because of the attempted murder of the organizations president, Lars Hedegaard, Mrs. Marie Krarup, MP for the Danish People’s Party [Dansk Folkeparti] followed in the footsteps of now former member of the Free Speech Society the Lutheran Priest Katrine Lilleoer, MP for the DPP the Lutheran Priest Jesper Langballe, and Marie Krarup’s sister, the Lutheran theologian Katrine Winkel Holm, and argued that circumcision; amputation of part of the male foreskin is a minor procedure with positive effects, and that the freedom of parents to raise their children in some religious tradition is more important than the right of the individual to bodily integrity.
But Marie Krarup went even further than the preceding line of traitors to secular Occidental and Christian ideas, and suggested opening up for some ‘mild’ circumcision of girls!
This caused an immediate reaction from Dr. Morten Frisch:
The debate about foreskin amputation, which goes under the misleading term ‘circumcision’, has gone into a new phase.
Hard pressed by almost nation wide public opposition to the legality of the practice as well as strong and almost unanimous opposition from Danish medical practitioners, panic is spreading among the ranks of the foreskin amputation ritual advocates.
New marked arguments are being launched in an attempt to prevent boys in Denmark from attaining the right to bodily and sexual integrity.
According to Dr. Morten Frisch, Marie Krarup suggested that we end this sexist imbalance by opening up for ‘a mild form’ of genital mutilation for girls, if a good and painless method can be found. Equality for the law so to speak.
Dr. Morten Frisch about the debate on february 7:
The panel was made up of Chief Rabbi Bent Lexner, columnist Leo Milgrom (Jewish), economist Torben Mark Pedersen and me. Marie Krarup spoke as a suppliant for her sister theologian Katrine Winkel Holm, who rose from her sick bed and took part in the discussion anyway, seated among the audience.
I was the first to speak and went through the anatomical, health related and sexual consequences of foreskin amputation, and pointed at the need to secure boys the right to their own bodies, the same way we have installed paragraph 245a of the Danish Penal Code to protect girls from genital mutilation.
Chief Rabbi Bent Lexner talked about the reason why Jews practice foreskin amputation when the boys are eight days old.
Leo Milgrom, a Jewish man gave us his personal story of violence, loss and being let down, something many foreskin amputated men experience, while he also used the occasion to ask Chief Rabbi Bent Lexner once more, as he did in his article in the newspaper Politiken on July 28; ‘Can you give me my foreskin back?’.
MP Marie Krarup thought that there were important health benefits to be got from foreskin amputation, that the pain during and after the procedure were limited, that assault is too strong a word, and that the family deserves to be prioritized before the individual.
Torben Mark Pedersen (member of the Free Speech Society and a member of the ultra liberal, [financially the European meaning of the wordliberal] party, Ny Alliance (New Alliance) closed the presentation round focusing on the rights of the individual and the protection of children against religiously motivated assault.
Thereby the stage had been set for a confrontation between two badly agreeing points of view: that a child’s right to bodily and sexual integrity trumps parents possible urge to cut into their bodies. Or that we for historical reasons and respect for Judaism should accept that some parents violate the UN Children’s Convention, and mutilate their boys because religion is more important for them than basic human rights.
Allowing female genital mutilation in the name of equality
During the following debate, Marie Krarup was asked why some minorities living in Denmark should be allowed to cut into their boys’ genitals, while other groups for cultural reasons just as legitimate, risk several years in jail, if they have genital mutilation performed on their girls.
Marie Krarup suggested that we do away with this sexist imbalance by opening up for a ‘mild’ form of genital mutilation for girls, if a good and painless method can be found. Equality before the law so to speak.
The fact that this Member of Parliament can get it over her lips to legitimate female sexual mutilation in order to preserve the right to mutilate boy’s penisses, is logical enough in all its horror. When one has a world view which accepts that boys should pay with pain and life long loss of sexual sensitivity, because of their parents’ religious ideas, well I guess the same fate may befall girls.
The fact that it is possible to completely spare boys and girls for this madness by banning all none medically necessary chirurgy on children’s genitals obviously hasn’t occurred to Marie Krarup as a viable possibility.
Circumcision advocacy not official position of DPP
Many members of the Danish People’s Party are probably happy that she spoke as a private person, and not on behalf of the party.
[Mr. Frisch is sure right about that one too!]
[..]
Leo Milgrom (the Jewish man) asked a question to Katrine Winkel Holm which sounded about like this: ‘Is it ok if a new religious movement would want to amputate the tip of the little finger of their kids, in order to give them a sign of their belonging to a group, when after all it is legal to remove something far more valuable from a boy’s sex organ?
Theologian Katrine Winkel Holm thought not, because that would be violence against the child. When fingertip amputation is violence, while foreskin amputation isn’t, that is because there are historical reasons to cut into boys penisses, we were made to understand.
Or in other words, when a religiously motivated assault has been going on for so long that we have repressed the notion that it is an act of violence, nobody from the outside should come and interfere.
[..]
Foreskin amputation is costly. For the defenseless boys as well as for the young and adult men they will become later on. Sexually, emotionally, identity wise and economically.
That fact that this practice in the US is a golden egg worth hundreds of millions for doctors and other ‘circumcizers’ is a delicate matter which was not brought up at the meeting.
But it is thought provoking, that American Pediatricians and Obstetricians, who perform most of the foreskin amputations on newly born American boys, are the only doctors in the world, who can find arguments in the scientific literature in favor of the foreskin amputation practice.
[..]
People in the Western world prioritize to an ever higher degree the emphasis on the rights of children and abstain from the practice.
Even in the US where prognoses say that 2014 or 2015 will be the first year since WWII in which more than half of all newly born boys will have intact sex organs when they leave the maternity ward.
Western doctors argue against the amputation practice, except those who make good money out of it. [And those who support it for tribal reasons – Balder]
Marie Krarup doesn’t think that we should protect Danish boys from genital mutilation.
But a solid majority of the Danish public wants Denmark to lead the way and stop this assault on underage boys which is illegal under the UN Convention.
The Danish Medical Society advices against medically unnecessary foreskin amputation. The Sex & Society Organization is against it, as well as the Children’s Council.
What do you say?
Morten Frisch is Chief Medical Doctor, ph.d., and professor of Sexual Health Epidemiology
Comment: White Nationalists who complain that Muslim men should have more fun when they have sex with non-Muslim women resemble Muslims who think non-Muslims should have large non-Muslim families instead of being sluts and faggots. Disingenous, transparent hypocrisy is never cool or even effective.
http://www.lightofmashiach.org/circumcision.html
Ellen Kavanaugh
Let’s start with *when* circumcision was given, in Genesis 17:9-14:
“And God said unto Abraham: ‘And as for thee, thou shalt keep My covenant, thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt Me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner, that is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised; and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken My covenant.'”
The command is given to Abraham. Abraham is the father of the Jewish people, but this covenant is made before the Israelites have been chosen. In fact, it is given before Isaac is even born. So, circumcision isn’t given just to the Jewish people but to all of Abraham’s descendants. Abraham obeyed G-d and all the males in his household were circumcised.
A common argument is that Gentile believers don’t need to be circumcised because they come into G-d’s covenant not through Torah or Jewishness, but through Abraham. Yet we’ve just seen circumcision was the *very sign* of the covenant G-d made with Abraham before Torah was even given. So this argument doesn’t excuse Gentile believers from being circumcised.
What Does Yeshua Teach About Circumcision?
Both Yeshua (Luke 2:21) and Yochanan (Luke 1:59) were circumcised. Yeshua only discussed circumcision once, in a comparison to healing, but He did uphold both the importance and priority of circumcision in His remarks:
“I have done one work and you are all surprised at it. Moses gave you circumcision–not that it comes from Moses, but from the fathers–and even on the Sabbath you give a child circumcision. If a child is given circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?” John 7:21-23
An indirect reference to circumcision is Yeshua’s command that believers partake of the Passover each year in remembrance of Him:
“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19
“And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:24
The indirect reference to circumcision is that in order to obey Yeshua’s command one would have to be circumcised, because Torah forbids anyone uncircumcised to partake in the Passover:
“And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the YHVH, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land; but no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. Exodus 12:48
From the TaNaKh and the gospels, there is no reason any Gentile should think circumcision isn’t for him. So let’s find where the confusion begins.
Timothy’s Circumcision In Acts
“Paul had a desire for him to go with him, and he gave him circumcision because of the Jews who were in those parts: for they all had knowledge that his father was a Greek.” Acts 16:3
Now knowing that Timothy’s father was Greek, the Jews would know that Timothy had not been circumcised as an infant, so Sha’ul had Timothy circumcised. The Christian argument is that since Timothy was Jewish (because his mother was Jewish) that Timothy’s circumcision doesn’t count. Afterall, Timothy was Jewish but Gentiles aren’t obligated to do the same. Are there two paths to G-d? Are there two sets of rules? A Jewish Way and a Non-Jewish Way? Of course not! In Galatians 3:28 Sha’ul explains “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Messiah Yeshua.” One. So either circumcision applies to all, or to none. If none, then Sha’ul should have simply explained to the people that believers didn’t have to undergo circumcision. He didn’t. When Sha’ul circumcised Timothy, he was showing that this new faith in Yeshua *also* upheld circumcision.
Sha’ul’s Teachings Regarding Circumcision
A common misconception about circumcision is that “circumcision of the heart” replaces physical circumcision. Yet the Brit Chadasha (New Testament) passage that mentions circumcision of the heart is directed *only* to the Jewish people, let’s look:
“But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Romans 2:29
Yet in the preceding verse 17 it reads: “But if you bear the name ‘Jew'” and in the preceding verse 23 it reads: “You who boast in law.” The audience here has been clearly identified as a Jewish audience. Sha’ul is really just reiterating Torah to His Jewish brethren:
“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.” Deuteronomy 10:16″And the LORD thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” Deuteronomy 30:6
Sha’ul is *not* introducing a new concept so that Gentiles can circumcise their hearts instead of undergoing physical circumcision. He is reminding his Jewish brethren that physical circumcision *alone* is not enough.
Jeremiah repeats this need:
“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest My fury go forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.” Jeremiah 4:4
Note, at no point in Jewish history did anyone *ever* interpret these texts to mean that circumcision of the heart replaced physical circumcision. *Both* are G-d’s commands, both circumcisions are important.
Sha’ul To The Romans
Let’s look at the Romans 2 passage:
Romans 2:23 Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
Romans 2:24 For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
The group being addressed are Jews.
Romans 2:25 For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.
“Circumcision” here is Jewishness, those born into the covenant. A Jewish person who does not keep Torah is likened to a person outside the covenant (a Gentile).
Romans 2:26 Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?
A Gentile who obeys Torah is likened to a Jew. To keep the righteousness of Torah includes being circumcised since circumcision is included in Torah. So this text contradicts itself if we make ‘uncircumcision” mean anything other than a “non-Jew” or “Gentile.” Stay close to the text here, Sha’ul is debunking His fellow Jews confidence — they boast *because* they are Jewish and were given Torah. The discussion here isn’t about circumcision but Jewishness.
Romans 2:27 And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?
Better: ‘If a Gentile by birth (nature) obeys the law, couldn’t he judge you, who are Jewish through covenant (letter), if you break the law?’ It’s a logical point — which counts more? Righteousness without covenant and birthright, or unrighteousness having covenant and birthright? Sha’ul was an early evangelist to the Gentiles, he is seeing many more Gentiles come into faith in Yeshua than Jews. He is speaking this to his brethren out of shame.
Romans 2:28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
Romans 2:29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Again, Sha’ul is addressing his Jewish brethren. Yes, they have outward circumcision in accord with the covenant; they were circumcised at 8 days of age by their parents, true. But a true Jew also has circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, outside of the covenant, which isn’t performed as a ritual of identification for others to see, but for G-d alone. Sha’ul isn’t criticising physical circumcision — it is a covenantal birthright and Torah command; but there is a deeper level one should be seeking. Resting solely on birthright and the covenant will never be enough.
Romans 3:1 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
Romans 3:2 Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.
I included the above verses for continuity, to show this passage was directed *only* at Sha’ul’s Jewish brethren. (A related article on Romans 2 is: “Spiritual Jews”
What we’ve seen in the above passage is one of several cases where ‘circumcision’ and ‘uncircumsion’ mentioned are interchangeable for ‘Jewish’ and ‘Gentile’ and aren’t strictly reflecting the covenental command itself. As Sha’ul explains:”Wherefore remember, that in the past you were Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands.” Ephesians 2:11 “Uncircumcision” was used loosely to simply mean “Gentile.”
Romans 4
Romans 4:7-10 “Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.”
Sha’ul is showing that Yeshua’s atonement and grace covers the Gentiles as well as the Jews. But how can Gentiles receive this blessing too, since Gentiles are outside the covenant that gives the blessings? Because Abraham himself received these blessings *before* he was circumcised and entered the covenant.
Romans 4:11-13 “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.”
This is a marvelous picture of G-d’s larger plan. G-d selected Abraham *before* he entered the covenant and was circumcised. Gentiles are brought into the covenants of Israel in the same way. Faith precedes the covenant. Note Abraham *did* undergo circumcision, this passage does not abrogate the covenant of circumcision G-d made with Abraham. Sha’ul is showing that G-d made a provision for those who would later come into the faith, that the promise of righteousness could be bestowed on all through Abraham.
Romans 4:14-17 “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.”
These promises were made to Abraham *before* law was given so that they extend to *all* Abraham’s seed and not just Israel. Grace is from G-d and our response of faith towards His grace *precede* law. Simply put, Torah was given later through only one line of Abraham’s seed (Isaac to Jacob). Torah set boundaries for the people but it did not provide grace nor was it ever intended to. As in chapter 2, Sha’ul is debunking the confidence of his brethren who felt grace/righteousness came only through Jewishness and Torah. Torah had been misused as a system for justification and as a way of limiting the promises of Abraham so that only the line of Jacob received them. Abraham is the father of Ishmael (the Arabs), the father of the Israel/Jews, and is the father of *all* through faith.
Galatians 2
Galatians chapter two is often misunderstood as being against circumcision.
Galatians 2:1-2 “Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also. And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain.”
Sha’ul has gone to Jerusalem, to check with the Beit Din and verify the gospel he was teaching met their approval (James, Kefa, and John, the leaders in Jerusalem). Note that the early believers had accountability — no man is an island, not even Sha’ul.
Galatians 2:3-5 But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Messiah Yeshua, that they might bring us into bondage: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.
Now, note in verse 4 *who* was pestering Titus to be circumcised. It wasn’t James, Kefa or John, it was *false* brethren who heard Sha’ul and Titus were in town. Who were these false brethren? Two hints help us, we know they are in Jerusalem, and we know they wanted Gentiles to convert (be circumcised). It is probably the same group as in Acts 15:5, that sect of the Pharisees who believed all Gentile believers should become proselytes and undergo the conversion rituals of Pharisaic Judaism. (recommended read “Acts 15” We already know from Acts 15 that Gentiles do *not* have to become proselytes. The issue of circumcision here, as in Acts, isn’t about a Torah command of circumcision; this is about ritual circumcision; to basically convert Gentiles into Jews. Had Titus been compelled by these false brethren, it would have given them more power to push others into conversion — they could then say “Even Sha’ul agrees Gentiles must become Jews in order to be saved.” Salvation was being offered to *all* people through faith alone; it was not limited to Jews (and Gentile proselytes). Yeshua wearied at such efforts to convert Gentiles: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Matthew 23:15 Sha’ul refused to submit to these false brethren, he submitted himself only to G-d and the Jerusalem Beit Din.
Galatians 5
1 “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Messiah hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Bondage here is bondage of men — the traditions of men.
2 Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Messiah shall profit you nothing.
If you convert (become circumcised) it’s validating the teachings of the false brethren, you’d be agreeing that salvation is based on conversion and works, in which case you wouldn’t need Messiah.
3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
Dependant on keeping “whole law” for salvation — written Torah *and* traditions — no room for error.
4 Messiah is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
Incidently, there is no justification through works, it was a false belief system, it is *not* a scriptural teaching.
5 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
6 For in Yeshua Messiah neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
As I quoted earlier, ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek’ — salvation is found in faith working by love, not through Jewishness or Non-Jewishness.
7 Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?
8 This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.
9 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
10 I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be.
11 And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.
12 I would that those troubling you would mutilate themselves.
Now Sha’ul is angry. Sha’ul has been teaching the Galatians about the gospel of Yeshua, yet in came these false brethren trying to yoke the new believers into following conversion rituals and oral law/tradition. Theirs was *not* the gospel of Yeshua that Sha’ul had originally shared with them. It should have been obvious to the Galatians that these teachers opposed Sha’ul since they persecuted Sha’ul too. If Sha’ul had also taught such conversion was necessary (as these false brethren taught), then he wouldn’t be persecuted. The Galatians should have easily recognized they were false teachers instead of Sha’ul having to reteach them. But since the Galatians didn’t recognize the false doctrine, Sha’ul reshares his testimony at the beginning of his letter to the Galatians; and reminds them that gospel he teaches is in accordance with G-d *and* the Beit Din of Jerusalem (Kefa, James & John). In other words, Sha’ul’s gospel can be trusted, the ‘gospel’ of these false brethren cannot.
Galatians 6:12-16
12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Messiah.
13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.
In other words, this Pharisaic group compelling these Galatians to be circumcised want to boast in their flesh, and prove to their peers that they maintained and taught Pharisaic Judaism and gained many new converts / proselytes. Yet for all this emphasis on making proselytes, they weren’t even obeying Torah themselves. If these Galatians refused to submit, then the Pharisaic believers would suffer persecution too for failing to make more proselytes.
14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Yeshua Messiah, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Sha’ul points out we glory in our L-rd Yeshua, not in making proselytes.
15 For in Messiah Yeshua neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.
16 And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
This is better rendered, “For in Messiah Yeshua, neither Jewishness is anything nor NonJewishness, but a new creature.” Referring back to the fact that Israel’s olive tree is like a new man, comprised of believing Jews *and* Gentiles — with no need for the Gentiles to undergo any conversion ritual to be included. This is the Israel of G-d.
Some of Sha’ul’s writings had been misunderstood as being against Torah, as Kefa says:
“And be certain that the long waiting of the Lord is for salvation; even as our brother Paul has said in his letters to you, from the wisdom which was given to him; And as he said in all his letters, which had to do with these things; in which are some hard sayings, so that, like the rest of the holy Writings, they are twisted by those who are uncertain and without knowledge, to the destruction of their souls.” 2 Kefa(Peter) 3:15-16
It’s nothing new that Sha’ul’s teachings are being twisted into saying something they don’t (like the church today saying that Sha’ul teaches us not to obey the Torah). Sha’ul has been misunderstood for two millennia.
So, Did Sha’ul teach against circumcision for believers?
Let’s look at two very easy to understand texts of Sha’ul:
“But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.” Acts 24:14″And when he was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove. While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all.” Acts 25:7,8
Sha’ul was the apostle to the Gentiles. Sha’ul himself claims to uphold Torah and teach Torah. I will accept him at his word.
Circumcision of males in Judaism and Islam has the same religious function as the veneration of St. Mary has in Roman Catholicism. Abraham was the oral sex slave of the Pharao. Hell is eternal, Hell is eternal, Hell is eternal…
oogenhand 