J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
Punxsutawney Mohel
Cartoon by J. Neil Schulman and Baloo
Punxsutawney Mohel
The origins of this cartoon:
A lively Facebook discussion this past weekend on the pending San Francisco vote to ban circumcision had a number of the opponents objecting because an infant has not granted consent. Which led me to wonder precisely how you can get informed consent from a week-old baby boy. Which reminded me of asking the groundhog for a weather prediction.
Leaving religion out of it: the libertarian answer — the American answer — whether to circumcise a baby is that, unless it’s your own baby, shut your damned pie hole and mind your own business.
— JNS
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June 7, 2011 - 4:20 pm
I truly hope that guys one day look in the mirror and realize what your doing. Shame on you all. History all to often repeats itself.
June 7, 2011 - 5:45 pm
Um, that’s because no one should be cutting on an infant. If he wants to be circumcised when he is an adult and CAN give informed consent, like any other permanent body modification, so be it. Just for the record, very few men actually do this, because their WHOLE penis has value, not just what the doctor or mohel leaves behind. End GENITAL MUTILATION NOW!!!
Neither can a one week old girl give consent to mutilation, or either sex to have intercourse, you pedophiles!
June 8, 2011 - 12:07 am
what’s the picture meaning? i can’t understand.
June 8, 2011 - 6:02 pm
Aaron, the mutilation I’m concerned about is of the right of a family not to have its personal perceptions, analyses, values, and freedom of choice invaded by outsiders.
If you consider circumcision genital mutilation, don’t circumcise yourself or your own children. The decisions others make for themselves and their children is none of your damned business.
June 8, 2011 - 6:23 pm
“The libertarian answer — the American answer — regarding whether or not to circumcise a baby is that unless it’s your own baby shut your fucking pie hole.”
And I expanded with this comment:
Infants are not capable of making any decisions. Their parents or legal guardians make those decisions according to their own analysis and values.
This begins with the decision of a pregnant woman, or her choice to extend this choice to her loved ones, whether to give birth to a live baby or to end the pregnancy.
The attempt to ban circumcision is no different than the attempt to ban abortion. Both are invasions by the use of police power to rob individuals of their autonomy and overrule privacy with the totalitarian control of others
The mutilation I’m concerned about is of the right of a family not to have its personal perceptions, analyses, values, and freedom of choice invaded by outsiders.
If you consider circumcision genital mutilation, don’t circumcise yourself or your own children. Others who disagree with that analysis are not your slaves to make decisions for.
The decisions others make for themselves and their children — whether for reasons of religion or for reasons of health management — are both protected by the Bill of Rights and are none of your damned business.
It’s no coincidence that this campaign parallels Nazi propaganda one can find in the historical pages of German newspapers and the Dearborn Independent.
Bigots begin by trampling the rights of specific minorities then expand to trampling the rights of all.
This Facebook group is a hotbed of intolerance and hubristic State Paternalism.
June 8, 2011 - 7:37 pm
I agree with that statement in total.
In practice it means that if I see someone beating a child, or a horse, I understand that by either intervening or failing to intervene I am risking my life, my fortune, my sacred honor, and my immortal soul.
The costs might require me to sacrifice my own life to uphold my decision. That is a price I understand and am willing to pay. … And I’m damned well not going to do it over something as minimal as a family deciding to circumcise their baby son.
June 9, 2011 - 8:24 pm
Babies neither consent nor object. To anything. Not just to circumcision.
They neither consent nor object to having their umbilical cord cut.
They neither consent nor object to being slapped to begin their breathing.
They neither consent nor object to having their ears pierced.
They neither consent nor object to having their skin pierced to inoculate them.
They neither consent nor object to surgery whereby one conjoined twin is saved and the other is killed.
They neither consent nor object to being fed foods to which they are allergic.
They neither consent nor object to their parents’ smoking.
They neither consent nor object to being given antibiotics.
They neither consent nor object to being rectally invaded by a thermometer.
And they certainly do not have the consciousness, wit, wisdom, perspective, or acculturation to decide whether or not they wish to acquiesce or object to a traditional rite which makes them part of a religious tradition going back before written records.
All of these decisions are made by their parents for them because they are babies.
The alternative is the Brave New World where the State, instead of parents, makes these decisions.
Nature itself makes it impossible to register a baby’s consent or objection to anything. This standard of demanding infant consent is ridiculous and the demand for it is asking the impossible.
June 14, 2011 - 6:26 pm
“Babies neither consent nor object. To anything. Not just to circumcision.”
That undeniable fact does not permit anything or everything.
“They neither consent nor object to having their umbilical cord cut.”
It falls off of its own accord after its mother expels the placenta.
“They neither consent nor object to being slapped to begin their breathing.”
This is no longer standard practice.
“They neither consent nor object to having their ears pierced.”
To pierce the ears of a minor purely because the mother demands it, is no longer ethical.
“They neither consent nor object to having their skin pierced to inoculate them.”
There is a substantial evidence that inoculation does good. Parents who disagree are free not to inoculate.
“They neither consent nor object to surgery whereby one conjoined twin is saved and the other is killed.”
I invite you to bow your head when talking about such tragic cases.
“They neither consent nor object to being fed foods to which they are allergic.”
For an adult caregiver to give a child food that (s)he knows the child is allergic to, is wrong.
“They neither consent nor object to their parents’ smoking.”
To smoke in the presence of a child aged in single digits is wrong. To do so in the presence of a teen sets a bad example.
“They neither consent nor object to being given antibiotics.”
Antibiotics are administered to when certain symptoms present themselves, and are a good faith attempt to resolve the problem.
“They neither consent nor object to being rectally invaded by a thermometer.”
Done properly, that invasion causes no pain and does no harm.
“And they certainly do not have the consciousness, wit, wisdom, perspective, or acculturation to decide whether or not they wish to acquiesce or object to a traditional rite which makes them part of a religious tradition going back before written records.”
That’s correct, and the conclusion that follows is that bris should be delayed until after the 18th or 21st birthdays. I do not support enforcing this by legislation, but desire that it come about by an evolution of Jewish and Islamic understanding. The Third Reich and the USSR banned ritual circumcision outright, for persons of any age. In the Third Reich, a circumcised penis was the kiss of death. No intactivist has come within light years of that sort of tyrannical thinking. Please understand that many of us have nothing to do with Hess and do not approve of his comic. The vast majority of us intactivists focus all of our energies on opposing the routine infant circumcision, a completely secular practice, that has been common for several generations in the USA and Canada.
BTW, Leonard Glick (2005) states that it is not likely that bris is more than 25 centuries old. The story of Genesis 17 is a myth/legend. Parents in a free western society do not have the right to put a child in a religion in an irrevocable way. It is a fine thing to surrender one’s foreskin to enter into a covenant with God. But only if the surrender is a free choice made by the owner of the foreskin and not his parents.
“All of these decisions are made by their parents for them because they are babies.”
“The alternative is the Brave New World where the State, instead of parents, makes these decisions.”
There is a Third Way: where we refrain from doing certain things to children, not because they are illegal, but because we know better.
“Nature itself makes it impossible to register a baby’s consent or objection to anything. This standard of demanding infant consent is ridiculous and the demand for it is asking the impossible.”
Again, the ethical conclusion I draw from what you write is not that parents are or should be free to do anything to their children, but that they need to reflect carefully about the possibility of abusing the power and discretion that they necessarily enjoy over their children.
It is entirely feasible to delay bris until the 18/21, unless one is a grim Biblical literalist of a sort that few Jews are. No Jew obeys all of the Torah, and most Jews ignore most of it.
I did not baptize my children, precisely in order that any baptism they undergo be an informed decision taken after their 14th birthday. If they do not get baptized until their 30s, as was the case with my father, that does not bother me in the least. Christian tradition states that the unbaptized cannot enjoy the good afterlife. I categorically deny that, and likewise deny that the soul of an uncircumcised Jew will encounter difficulty in the hereafter.