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Nov. 30, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:45
2542.5 Oh God I Circumcised My Son! Now What?

Stefan Molyneux reads a letter from a mother who had her son circumcised and now regrets the decision -- followed by a breakdown of the letter and an answer to her question.

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I'm breaking a letter from a mother that I'd like to read to you.
And it looks like this.
Dear Steph, I just listened to your video, The Truth About Circumcision.
For a while now, I have known it is wrong and unjustifiable.
My entire frame of mind began to change, and drastically so.
Around the end of 2009, when I started listening to voices like yours and others who speak about liberty, listening to this video just broke me down emotionally.
In March of 2009, my son was born.
I agreed to have him circumcised under the advice of my doctors and friends.
At the time, I had done minimal research and asked mothers who had sons what their reasoning was and sadly were satisfied with the overwhelming support for circumcision.
From what I could tell at the time, being 19, with an unexpected pregnancy and little knowledge, circumcision was just the thing to do.
When you give birth to a boy.
I didn't know anyone who hadn't circumcised her son, and any male I knew intimately at the time had been circumcised as well.
So the trouble is, I don't feel any of that justifies me choosing to allow doctors to mutilate my son.
I feel truly awful.
I have no way to explain to him, when the time comes, why I made that choice.
I fear he will be angry and feel betrayed eventually.
I also think about, what if I have another child?
If it is a boy as well, will my current son feel bitter that I circumcised him and not his brother?
I'm seeking advice for a mother like me who made that choice before being truly informed.
It is too late to fix.
How can we express her overwhelming regret?
How could I ever explain?
Well, that's a very sad letter.
I feel...
I mean, I feel enormously...
It's a tragic situation.
So, 2009.
There was the Internet, of course, in...
It may not be exactly the same now as it was in 2009, but let's see.
Let's see here.
I'm just going to Google type, should I circumcise my baby boy?
Should I circumcise my baby boy?
And let's see what comes up.
So, babycenter.com has an article, Should I Get My Baby Boy Circumcised?
And the top answer is, let your son decide for himself.
It's a painful procedure, whether they remember it later or not.
It hurts a lot and has been proven to cause permanent changes in the neurological function of the child.
It risks infection and scar tissue, and babies even die from having it done.
We protect our babies from everything else.
Why put them through an elective surgery for no reason?
Intact boys won't suffer infections if they're cared for properly.
Do not retract the foreskin, just wipe what you can see when he can retract it himself, teaching him how to clean under the foreskin using bath times.
That's all it takes.
See drmama.org and thewholenetwork.org for more information.
Second highest response.
No, it's a completely unnecessary procedure that causes pain to an infant.
It's purely cosmetic, and parents should do some serious research on it.
Americans are about the only ones who do it.
There's a lot of research on it.
Look online.
Talk to your doctors.
I had a little boy, though, and as far as I was concerned, the answer was no.
I don't know why anyone would cause unnecessary harm to an infant.
Seems like complete child abuse to me.
So that's just sort of the first site that I came to.
And so pediatrics...
Should I have my new baby circumcised?
This was one of the more controversial topics in pediatrics today.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, in their most recent circumcision policy statement, concluded that data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision.
So it doesn't really come out for or against, and so on.
So...
There's quite a bit of information.
And the end of this, I don't want to read the whole thing because it's just the whole presentation.
The end of this says, a better question would be, does my new baby boy need a circumcision?
The answer to that one is much easier.
No.
He doesn't need a circumcision.
Dr.
Sears?
Ask DrSears.com.
Whether or not to circumcise medical benefits, there are none.
Do not circumcise your baby because you think there are some medical benefits.
A recent review by the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at all the data from the past decades to see if there truly were any medical benefits.
That conclusion?
No.
There are no significant medical benefits that make circumcision worth doing.
So, there's no medical benefits, cleanliness, there's no decreased risk of STDs, And the AAP has determined that the risk of penile cancer, the benefit is so tiny, it's not worth circumcising for this reason.
And that's just, what if I spent five minutes, along with chatting about it, I would have spent about three minutes to find this information, which I'm sure was all available.
In 2009.
So, that's kind of important to understand that if you're apologizing to someone, you cannot make a single irrational or unfounded excuse.
You can't do it.
That is a re-exploitation of the person.
But let's review the letter.
Look, you're going to have to have the conversation with your son at some point.
And trust me, by the time he gets old enough to understand this, circumcision will be very clear, clearly revealed as the barbaric and brutal and abusive practice that it is.
So, I mean, you've always got a parent with your eye 20 years in the future.
Certainly at least 10 years in the future.
So you say, I agree to heaven circumcised under the advice of my doctors and friends.
That's not going to be enough for your son.
I'm telling you this right now.
He's going to smell a rat.
This is not a truthful response.
And if you are...
And look, again, I admire your sensitivity in this and the fact that you want to find some way to apologize to your son.
But...
Apologies only work when you take 100% ownership of what you have done.
100% ownership of what you have done.
And you are not quite at that place yet.
May I say this?
Out of kindness and out of concern, I would like for you to have, as good as possible, a relationship with your son.
But when you apologize to someone, you have to accept 100% responsibility for what you have done.
And if the first thing you talk about is other people told you what to do, Then you have a problem.
And your son will have a problem.
I think forgiveness is possible.
Here, of course, restitution is not possible.
Removing the foreskin is not cutting the end of the penis.
It is removing half the skin tissue of the penis.
It is crippling the penis.
Sensation, you know, pleasure, erectile function, I mean, you know, four and a half times higher rate of erectile dysfunction among circumcised boys.
I mean, it's crippling the penis.
People say, oh, well, you know, women don't like the look.
Well, you know, frankly, you know, and I'm Trying to remember back here.
When I was single, most times that women were looking at my penis, my penis was not hanging down like an elephant trunk, but was, yea, verily, mounting itself to the very skies.
And when the penis is erect, the circumcised penis is fairly indistinguishable from the uncircumcised penis, because the whole point is that the skin retracts, and the head of the penis, the glands, emerges, and so on, you know, and...
You know, like a bald head through a tanned turtleneck.
And so, the look of it, unless women like looking at non-erect penises a lot, which, you know, I guess is possible, but doesn't seem like the number one hobby to have.
Most times where women are up close and personal with a penis, it is not heading downwards, but quite in the opposite direction, and therefore, it just doesn't...
Oh, and I got so many heartbreaking letters from guys who were like, oh, you know, circumcision, finding the right amount of lubricant is really tough.
If I don't have enough, it's chafey.
If I have too much, I can't feel anything.
It's really hard, and so on.
I mean, it's just a horrible, horrible procedure.
But this is the reality of the Internet.
The reality of the Internet is that once you have the Internet, lack of information is no longer an excuse.
I mean, you know, you grew up in a remote village in Afghanistan.
Yes, I can understand that you would lack information about circumcision and you would be told by the local witch doctor and religious leaders and so on what to do.
Yes, gosh, tragic.
How horrible.
Of course, it would go against your maternal instincts to have a scalpel taken to the most sensitive part of your baby boy, but I can understand that you could legitimately say that you lacked information.
But...
One of the beautiful things and terrible things about the internet is that, I guess for the last 15 years or so, it has eliminated the excuse called, I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had.
Or, I was misinformed.
I was misinformed.
I can't make that excuse.
So, let me sort of tell you what I mean by this, right?
So, when you write the letter to me, you are telling me That you had significant doubts about circumcision, right?
You had significant doubts about circumcision.
Now, you chose not to Google, right?
And what you did was, you say, I asked my doctor, or my doctor told me, or whatever, whatever.
Doctors should not be saying that circumcision is medically necessary, right?
And we know that.
And you know that too.
I can almost guarantee you that your doctor, unless he's a complete quack who should have his license removed, your doctor did not say that circumcision is medically necessary.
He may have said there are some benefits, but there are obvious drawbacks, which is half your penis skin is being removed days after birth with almost no anesthetic.
I mean, Jesus, can you imagine that?
Imagine you're camping and some animal chews the end of your penis off.
I mean, that's what it's like for a baby.
A baby is traumatized from exiting the womb.
A baby desperately needs warmth, nourishment, calm, peace, quiet, love, attention.
And all they know is that the environment that they're born into has creatures that chew off the end of the penis.
That's what the baby experiences.
That the caregivers are unable to...
Either the caregivers are doing it directly, or the caregivers are unable to protect him from animals that chew off the end of his penis.
That's what the baby experiences, because the baby doesn't have a fucking clue, excuse my French, about religious rituals, or what other moms are up to, or, you know, whether women like elephant trunks or pythons.
I don't know, right?
All the baby knows is that he has the experience of an animal chewing off the end of his penis with no painkillers.
Not that he would know anything about painkillers, but...
And then that pain lasts for weeks or months.
And the mental trauma lasts forever.
It lasts forever.
You are rewiring the baby's brain to be more pain-sensitive, less trusting, and so on.
And even if it was for certain that the child would get an infection under the foreskin, even if that was guaranteed for almost everyone, it would still be no excuse to remove half the penis skin.
And you know that.
We know that.
We all understand that.
I mean, almost everyone gets some sort of cavity or Oral infection or gingivitis or something, right?
Because they have teeth.
Would we then say that after a toddler's teeth come in, that we should tie the baby or toddler down and go in with pliers without anesthetic and remove their teeth?
Of course not.
I mean, you can certainly survive without teeth, and you can certainly survive with half your penis skin missing.
Okay, your diet is a little restricted, but, you know, you can certainly clean dentures a lot easier than you can clean teeth.
And so, given that everyone, almost, has some sort of cavity or some sort of infection in their mouth throughout the course of their life, I clearly...
What we should do is remove the baby's teeth when they come in and also remove the toddlers or the kids six or seven or their adult teeth come in.
We should have those removed without anesthetic with pliers while the child is tied down because that way you see they won't get gingivitis or cavities or infections under the gum or anything like that.
Now, if we propose this, it would be obviously barbaric.
Yet, because we don't urinate through our mouth, and urine is acidic, in other words, it's incredibly painful to have on an open wound.
You have ripped off half the body's most sensitive skin by ripping off half the penis skin, and then the baby is basically going to be peeing in that cut for weeks or months until it heals, and the peeing will interrupt and interfere with its healing.
So, no, I mean, it's monstrous.
Now, so the doctor cannot say that it's medically necessary, and we know that.
We know that the doctor did not tell you that because you went to ask your friends.
So the doctor probably did not give you anything conclusive.
The doctor said, well, some people say this, some people say that, you can do it, you cannot do it, but I guarantee you the doctor did not say it.
Particularly if you're in America where you get the shit sued out of you for stuff like this, I guarantee you that the doctor did not say that it was medically necessary.
And if the doctor did say that it was medically necessary, then you can make a fortune by suing the living shit out of him.
Because it's not.
Then he might as well say it was medically necessary to amputate the two baby fingers on either hand without anesthetic and therefore you would sue a doctor like that who said this was necessary and it wasn't.
So, I can almost guarantee you that the doctor did not tell you that it was medically necessary.
Because if the doctor tells you something is medically necessary and has the charts and you get a second opinion or you believe him or whatever, then you don't go to your friends to ask them what they think.
Right?
I mean, that's important.
You went to your friends because you did not get a conclusive answer from the doctor.
And the reason you didn't get a conclusive answer from the doctor is the doctor doesn't want to get sued for saying yes or sued for saying no.
If the doctor says it's barbaric and against the Hippocratic oath by the removal of completely healthy tissue from a newborn without anesthetic, then what's going to happen to him?
Well, all of the religious cultures that want it will cause huge problems in his life.
So he's not going to say, don't do it, it's barbaric and horrendous.
He doesn't want to spend the next 10 years fighting off lawsuits.
But he's also not going to tell you that it's medically necessary because it's not.
And he actually can't say that, right?
Any more than you can say, you know, I have to remove your...
I have to drill in and remove your baby's teeth without anesthetic because we're concerned they might get cavities.
You'd say, hey, I'll take the chance with the cavities.
Thank you.
I can brush his teeth.
Well, yes.
And when the foreskin retracts, you can wash that too or teach him to wash it.
So, you went to talk to your friends because you did not get a conclusive answer from your doctor, right?
Let's be honest here.
I mean, these aren't even lines you need to read between.
It's right there.
Well, my doctor said X, but I went to go and ask all my friends about whether I should circumcise my son.
Well, you don't ask friends about medical procedures, right?
I mean, if you're...
I guess my brother had his wisdom teeth removed when he was, I don't know, eight or nine, I think.
You don't...
You know, if the dentist says, look at these x-rays, there's all these abscesses and infections, and I can't clean it, and, you know, you've really got to take these wisdom teeth out...
Or he's going to get really sick.
You don't take this decision to your friends and say, should I have my son's wisdom teeth out?
Because they'll say, well, listen to your dentist.
I'm not a dentist.
I don't know.
I mean, I had my son's wisdom teeth out because I had the same spiel from my dentist.
You don't go to friends for medical advice.
So the fact that you went to your friends is clear indication that you got no decisive answer from your doctor.
Your doctor would not say, yes, you should have it done, and your doctor would say, no, you shouldn't have it done.
He basically said, it's up to you.
He may have also said there's no medical reason or no compelling medical reason to do it.
He would say, it's up to you, which is why you went to go and talk to your friends.
Come on.
Be honest.
Be honest.
If you're going to apologize for allowing your son to be mutilated, you better be as honest as honest can be, because if you hedge or avoid or dodge or don't take ownership, you will do absolutely irrevocable emotional harm to your son and your relationship with your son.
I can guarantee you that.
So if you say to him, I'm incredibly sorry, but my friends told me to, He will lose respect for you completely because it doesn't add up.
And let me tell you why it doesn't add up.
He may not know this consciously.
He may not express it openly, but it will be in his heart.
It will be in his gut.
And I don't want this to happen to your relationship with your son when you come to this critical juncture in your relationship with him.
If you say to him, well, look, if you say to him, my doctor told me to, Then you'll say, well, let's get the doctor's name and let's, like, why didn't you sue the doctor?
Or why didn't you get a second opinion?
Or why didn't you look something up on the internet?
Because you clearly had doubts.
And why didn't you, like, one three-minute search on the internet would reveal that your doctor was wrong if he told you it was medically necessary and then you could sue him and we could be sitting on a fortune, right?
So clearly the doctor did not say that.
Now, If the doctor said something and then you went to go and talk to your friends, it's because the doctor didn't give you a clear answer, right?
Fair enough, Mom?
The doctor did not give you a clear answer.
So you went to your friends.
Now, which friends did you go to, Mom?
To find out, to discover, to figure out whether I should have half my penis ripped off or not, You went to who?
Why, to moms who had already had their son's penis ripped in half as well.
Now, come on.
What did you think they were going to say?
I mean, this is not you trying to figure something out.
This is not you looking for unbiased, objective information about circumcision.
You are going to moms who already said yes to ripping half the skin off their son's penis without anesthetic when they were new to this world.
And lo and behold, they said that you should do it.
Well, of course they said you should do it.
This is identical to going to a man involved in lynching a black guy saying, do you think the black guy should be lynched?
Hell yeah!
Do you understand?
This is like going to a Nazi and saying, should we act negatively towards Jews?
Or an anti-Semite?
And he's going to say, well, yeah!
It's like going to a gang of young men who routinely beat up homosexuals saying, do you think that homosexuality is wrong and or bad?
You understand?
You are not seeking any kind of unbiased information if you take that approach.
you're going directly for confirmation bias, and you've got to be smart enough to know that, right?
And if you try and tell this to your son, he'll get it at some level.
I mean, he may say, my mom, how many friends did you talk to?
Well, I talked to five friends, and they all had their son circumcised, and they all said that it was a good thing.
And had those parents done the research?
Right?
I mean, because the facts are important when you're doing something like this.
I mean, the ethics are important, too.
Or you can figure out the evil of circumcision.
I mean, literally the evil of circumcision.
You can figure out the evil of circumcision with no facts at all.
Which is the initiation of force.
Baby's not attacking you with their foreskin, right?
They're not looping it around you and trying to strangle you like an anaconda.
It's not self-defense, right?
It would actually be quite an impressive baby.
But that's neither here nor there.
Superman villain action babies, notwithstanding, it is the initiation of force.
Because circumcision is the removal of healthy tissue.
Incredibly painful, sensitive tissue.
It's literally like having a giant reach down and break off your nose while you're driving.
The gush of blood, the incredible agony, the irreparable nature of it.
but, I mean, this is what you need to understand.
So, the doctor didn't tell you anything conclusive, clearly, and you asked friends what they thought when you already knew and you asked friends what they thought when you already knew what they thought because of what they had
Because, for sure, if any of the friends that you asked about circumcision had later had regrets about circumcising their sons, they would have told you.
Right?
I mean, your friends, obviously, knew that you were pregnant.
A little tough to hide.
So they knew you were pregnant.
Now, if...
If one of your friends either was against circumcision to begin with or had circumcised her son and regretted it enormously and found out better information later, then for sure that friend would have sat you down and said, listen, if you have a son, don't do it.
Don't do it.
I mean, 10 or 11 years ago, I broke off relationships with a Jewish friend because he did it.
I just...
I can't be friends with baby hackers.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I just...
I cannot do it.
And...
I mean, if they've regretted it, if they've, you know...
Then that's different, right?
But it's far worse than having a friend who took a handsaw and hacked off his wife's finger and defends it as noble to this day.
I can't break bread with someone like that.
I can't do it.
I can't pretend that what they have done and what they defend is not irredeemably evil.
Now, what you've allowed to happen, what you have permitted, what you have not permitted, because it wasn't going to happen unless you say so.
Nobody circumcises a baby without parental approval.
Right?
So what you gave the go-ahead to, what you caused as a mother, was evil.
Irredeemably evil, because no restitution is possible.
You know, if someone gets cut, at least they can get sewn back up, and eventually the scar fades.
But this is irredeemably evil.
And you need to own that if you wish to genuinely apologize.
Well, I was confused, or people told me this, or people told me that, and so on.
See, you tell me all this stuff, and then you say, well, there's nothing that doesn't excuse anything.
Okay, well then, don't bring it up.
You understand?
If it doesn't excuse what you did, don't bring it up.
Because that's a contradictory message.
Thank you.
I mean, look, you chose friends who you knew for sure were going to advocate circumcision when doing your, quote, research.
If you have a friend who says, oh, I just checked it out on the sonogram, we're giving birth to a bouncing, beautiful, healthy baby boy in three days.
What will you now say?
For God's sake, don't get him circumcised.
For the love of all that is holy and virtuous, good, kind, gentle, peaceful, and empathetic, do not have the surgeon slash off half the baby's penis without anesthetic.
Fucking weird that this needs to be said in the 21st century.
Child sacrifice?
Don't do that, please.
You will vociferously, I hope, This will be part of the restitution for the evil that you made happen with your ascent.
And we'll get to the husband and the father in a moment.
Thank you.
But part of your restitution is to work like hell to ensure this doesn't happen to other babies.
I mean, write a blog, create a pamphlet, donate to The evils of circumcision information groups.
Circumcision.org, I think, is pretty good.
Part of the restitution is to not allow this, as much as you can, to happen to any other boy that you know of, or that you can influence through money, time, or other resources, right?
Clearly.
Whatever second-born or whatever sons you have in the future.
But if you have a friend who's going to have a boy, you will sit down with that friend and say, Dear God in heaven, do not do this to your innocent and helpless, independent baby.
Do not hack off half his cock.
Please.
And if you do choose to do this, my friend, and I know this will probably end our friendship for now, but if you do choose to hack off half but if you do choose to hack off half your baby's penis, then I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Thank you.
The moment that your boy is old enough depends on his intelligence and maturity, but for sure by the time he's 12 or 13, I will sit him down and tell him that half his penis was hacked off because you wanted it.
Hacked off.
There was no anesthetic.
No real anesthetic.
And that I gave her all the information necessary to not do it.
And she spurned and rejected me and decided to have you mutilated anyway.
And...
Maybe what you'll do is you'll say, well, no, I will never let you speak to my son that way.
Really?
There's just no way to find him.
No way to contact him.
He'll never be on Facebook.
He'll never have a presence on the internet.
I will find him.
And I will tell him what his mother did.
I gave all the information that was compelling and true and accurate and factual.
and scientific to not mutilate you and she chose to mutilate you just giving you the facts young man because sorry I'm sorry if that causes problems in your relationship but it should because I did not pursue this information and I made a terrible decision you did not allow them To
circumcise your son, my friend.
You told them to circumcise your son.
If a rock's bouncing down a hill towards my car, I jump out of the way because it's too big.
I guess I'm allowing it to hit my car.
I'm not trying to block it with my hands or whatever, right?
Inaction results.
In disaster, if a dog is approaching my daughter and I don't go and pick her up, I'm allowing that...
Dog to jump on my daughter, maybe.
Inaction results.
But for you, inaction did not cause circumcision.
Your explicit approval say-so It's what caused the circumcision.
Not the surgeon, not the knife, not your friends, not the hospital, not the doctors, nothing.
You saying, yes, do it, is what caused it to happen.
You must own that.
If you wish to make restitution, you want to weasel out of it and give excuses and mealy-mouth it and all that sort of shit, I'll tell you what the consequences for that will be, just so you don't, hopefully you're not tempted by that.
But you can do what just about everybody does and weasel out and fog it up and excuse yourself and blame others while then Nobly pretending to take responsibility, but taking 100% responsibility is taking 100% responsibility.
I made the choice.
I made the choice to ask the doctor.
The doctor didn't tell me what to do.
I didn't want to spend three minutes looking up the information on the internet.
I didn't want to.
So I went, instead of spending three minutes Looking up the information on the internet, I spent hours asking my friends who'd already mutilated their children and approved of it and thought it was great whether they thought it should be approved of and was great.
Because if my friends hadn't mutilated their children, they would have told me not to mutilate mine.
If my friends had mutilated their boys and regretted it, they would have told me not to do it, as I will tell others not to do it.
So I knew for absolute certain that I was going to go and get pro-mutilation advice even before I opened my mouth to ask the question.
You say, well, all the men I knew were mutilated.
Is that really such a plus?
A 19-year-old woman with an unplanned pregnancy who'd had a variety of penises before enough to draw some sort of conclusion?
Is that really such a plus?
Is that really the kind of person you want your son to become?
Do you not think that circumcision has any effect on one's capacity for empathy?
Go read the comments under my circumcision video.
And see all of those who are pro-circumcision.
The vast majority of them, the men who were circumcised and who said they are circumcised, are brutes, are cold, are vicious, are ugly, are demented.
Do not think it has any effect.
Do you say your baby...
In another letter you say that your baby couldn't breastfeed, you took him off the breast.
After two months, well that's also associated with circumcision.
Now robbed him of his immune system as well as half of his penis, some of his immune system, some protection from your antibodies.
So don't try to tell your son about anybody else who influenced your decision because the doctor left it up to you and you went to your friends who'd brutalized their sons and who were proud and positive of that brutalization to ask them To confirm what you wanted to do anyway.
You went there to get reinforcement for what you wanted to do anyway.
So don't blame them.
I really wanted to go beat up a black guy, so I went to the KKK chapter and said, do you think we should beat up black guys?
And they told me to, so it's not really my responsibility for beating up a black guy, because the KKK guys told me to go beat up a black guy.
I really hate fags.
So I went to a bunch of...
You know, homophobics who had just been convicted for beating up a gay guy.
And before they went to prison, I said, do you think that we should beat up gay guys?
And they said, hell yeah!
So I went to go beat up a gay guy.
But, you know, I did my research.
You get that that's insane, right?
It's ludicrous.
It's embarrassing.
It's...
Incredibly dangerous to your relationship with your son.
To say that you did any kind of research when all you did was ask people who brutalized their kids and who were proud and positive about it whether you should brutalize your kid.
Go to a pro-spanking group and say, do you think we should spank our children?
Yeah!
I mean, look what happens when you don't.
You get these kids right around, no respect for anyone.
I was spanked.
It turned out fine.
Of course we should spank our children.
Not spanking your children is child abuse.
Don't teach them limits, discipline, respect!
Well, look, I did my research and it turns out that spanking is good.
No, you didn't do your research.
You wanted to spank and you went to people who told you it was going to be okay so you could blame them and absolve yourself for what you wanted to do in the first place.
Own it.
Own what you have done.
It's not 50%, not 25%, not 95% yours, 100% your choice, your decision to inflict is on your son.
Don't blame others.
Because if you do, you're basically saying to your son, whatever evil you want to do, find people who agree with you, do it, and then blame them.
How's that going to serve your son?
That's arguably worse than the circumcision.
How's that principle going to work out for your son?
Whatever bad, ugly, vicious things you want to do, hang out with a whole group of people who want to do it too, ask their advice, and then go do it.
Right?
Instead of having friends around him who will keep him on the straight and narrow path of virtue, he will, if he has any ugly impulses, You are telling him to go and find people with equally ugly impulses and get them to support and approve what you're doing.
If you tell this, I did my research, bullshit, right?
You didn't.
Now, there's a great opportunity for self-knowledge here, which of course is important if you wish to make any kind of real apology and whatever restitution you can.
There is some real opportunity for self-knowledge, which is, why did you want to circumcise your son?
Well, you know, lots of people around me were circumcised.
Well, so what?
And the more important question than why did you want to circumcise your son is why did you want to circumcise your son when he was a baby?
Right?
There's no need to circumcise your son when he's a baby.
You can't even retract the foreskin.
It's adhered to the penis head.
It has to be sliced off the penis head.
So there's no possibility of infection going in there.
There's no possibility of...
I mean, babies don't get penis cancer, for God's sakes, even if that correlation turns out to be true, and it's so insignificant that who cares, right?
The question I always want to ask people who circumcise is, why do it to a baby?
Because if you do it when the foreskin begins to retract, when he's much older, he can actually get real anesthetic.
And he can understand why you think it needs to be done.
He can do his own research.
He can have his own opinions.
He can ask around.
He can dig up the facts.
He can challenge you on the medical necessity.
Of having scalpel animals chew off the end of his cock.
Why do it to a baby?
And we all know the reason why.
We all know the reason why we circumcise babies when there's absolutely no need for it.
Even if there were some medical reason, there's no medical reason when they're babies.
Why don't we choose to do it when they're 14?
We all know why.
Because you can control a baby 100%, but you cannot control a 14-year-old boy 100%.
Because a baby is helpless, dependent, bleeding putty in our fucking hands.
Whereas 14-year-old boys can call the authorities.
They have perspective, they have opinion, they have web skills, they can Google.
We do it to babies because babies can't fight back.
We do it to babies because babies can't get the facts.
We do it to babies because we can fucking do it to babies.
We don't wait till they're older, because they might have a different opinion from ours.
Why do it to babies?
We all know the answer to that, right?
There's no doubt about that.
Because 14-year-old boys aren't very big on having half their cock cut off.
Right?
Not big checklists on 14-year-old boys.
I mean, 14-year-old boys have one checklist to do with their penis.
Right?
To spank it like you're trying to start a fire.
But they don't have, oh yeah, can I get half of this cut off, please?
But at least it will be somewhat informed consent.
Why don't they wait till they're 18?
Can do it themselves, if it's so important.
It's not like you're adding to any significant risks at that point.
Even if there were, which there aren't, why not wait till they're 18 and then try and talk them into it?
No.
Just cut!
When they're helpless and can't fight back and can't say anything about it and won't remember it.
It is a vicious assault on the most helpless.
You know, when he's 18, why not just give him the facts and then say, hey, I'll even pay for it when you're 18.
Then you can go all the way under and then you can clean and take care of it and you won't accidentally roll onto it, you won't pee into it.
I'll make the case when you're 18.
Why not do that?
Because no 18-year-old will fucking go for it.
it.
That's why.
Christ almighty.
Thank you.
You get how unholy this is, right?
It has to be done to babies, because no sane young man would do it.
It is a brutal imposition of despotic, satanic will on a purely defenseless and helpless baby.
And it's about as evil as evil can be.
And you did that.
Thank you.
Nobody else.
You did that.
You wanted to do that, and that's why you went to these brutal cows who'd already mutilated their own children and said, Hey, think mutilation's okay?
What do you think?
Yay or nay?
Go to the rape club and ask them if we should respect women.
Well, they told me I shouldn't respect women, so I didn't.
But at least I did my research.
I'm being frank.
I know it's rough.
But if you are going to apologize, you better own it.
And I really want to reiterate that I respect your desire to own it.
And moral progress is agony.
Because there's a tipping point.
There's a tipping point.
I think in...
In 2009, it was almost 50-50, or maybe 60-40, circumcision, non-circumcision, so it was not at all any kind of exception to the rule to keep your penis intact.
I mean, this is not, oh my god, you know?
Who'd have thought this is, right?
Now let's get to the Father.
Why is the father not mentioned in this?
Why is it the woman's decision?
It's a penis, for God's sakes.
What the fuck is a woman talking about that I'm making this decision for?
Ah.
I want him to look like me.
Great, so if you lose your hand in an industrial accident, does that mean that your baby has to have his hand cut off too, so he looks like you?
Well, that makes sense.
Yeah, I had to have three teeth pulled because they were infected.
So, I'm going to have to pull my children's three teeth so they look like me!
Well, listen, Dad, do we want to compare your cock with your son?
Are you insane?
Are you insane?
How is your son even going to know that...
Oh, I don't know.
Why is your son staring at your penis?
Jesus, why do I even have to say any of this stuff?
I feel like I live in an asylum.
Sometimes.
The things that I have to say.
Where was the father?
Did he approve of it too?
Was he circumcised?
I guarantee you, if he was not circumcised, then he does not want...
His boy to be circumcised.
Or if he does, he's even more evil, right?
Because if he's not circumcised as an adult, then he was not circumcised as a boy, and he chose not to get circumcised as an adult, right?
So what the fuck is he doing recommending circumcision for his boy, right?
Ah, well, I didn't want to get half my penis cut off, but I bet you my son does when he has no idea what the hell's going on.
So I'm going to inflict it on him.
Well, it's just, I mean, I have no words for that.
So, of course, he's circumcised, right?
And did he do the research?
And did he figure things out?
And did he try to understand?
Say, well, we don't want him to feel excluded in the locker room.
Great, okay, so if there are a couple of racists around, or if half the locker rooms are in, you'll teach him to be a racist so he won't feel socially excluded, right?
So if, you know, a bunch of boys are going to go and beat up a homosexual, then you'll say, oh yeah, put the hobnail boots on and join the fuck in because you don't want to feel different from those around you.
Right?
I mean, if kids have nose rings and tongue rings around them, then you fucking hold them down.
And though he may scream bloody murder against his will, you fucking hold him down, you put his head in a brace, and you puncture the fuck out of his tongue and his nose.
Because you don't want him to feel excluded, or you don't want to feel different from those around him, right?
I mean, if there are some kids who've got tattoos, then you hold him the fuck down and you drill all that shit through his skin and you give him a tattoo.
Because otherwise he's going to feel different, right?
I mean, if there are, you know, some smokers at school, you hold him down and you make him smoke until he's addicted so that he doesn't feel different from those around him.
It's really important that he understands that mutilation for the cause of social conformity is really, really important.
Oh, shit.
Well, I can guarantee you at the old age home, he's less likely, right?
Because...
There'll be less, right?
Circumcisions are going down.
hugely, rapidly, crazy.
You don't mention that the father was around to make this decision, Maybe the father wasn't around.
I think later you mentioned that you sort of have a thorn-again, off-again relationship between him to get married, so maybe he wasn't around for the birth.
Why didn't you ask any men?
Why are you only asking women about penises?
Jesus!
I don't go to a bunch of guys and say, you know, give me your expertise on breastfeeding, for Christ's sake.
How are your menstrual cramps?
It's a penis, for God's sakes!
Talk to a man!
What the fuck are you talking to women about whether to cut male penises or not?
What do they know about it?
They don't even have one.
How are they supposed to know what it's supposed to feel like or what it's not supposed to feel like or what it's for or what the sensations are?
Or how sensitive it is.
Oh, man!
Do you get how crazy it is that you bring any of this stuff up?
Well, it's true that I did get your labia taken off.
Because, you know, labia can attract bacteria and so on.
Sorry, my daughter, I did get your labia cut off, hacked off without anesthetic, but I did ask men whether they thought it was a good idea.
What?
I appreciate that you're waking up, but you're a long way from waking up. *click* And I know this is going to be a jagged big pill, and I'm very sorry for that, but if you want to apologize, you must own it.
You made it happen.
You wanted it to happen.
It's entirely your responsibility, and you had all the information literally at your fingertips.
Google returned searches in about one one-hundredth of a second, and it takes no more than 60 to 90 seconds to read that there's no medical benefits and significant psychological and physical harm to circumcision.
And even if you still had doubts, when you have doubts, don't act!
Right?
Right?
When you have doubts, don't act in irretrievable ways.
Well, I wasn't sure who was coming into my house, so I shot him.
Oh, it was the repairer guy.
Oops.
Well, sorry, you go to jail.
Well, I knew it was an axe murderer coming into my house, so I shot him.
I mean, he threatened me.
He sent me his pictures.
I saw him clearly in the light.
I told him to back off.
I shot him.
Hey, you get self-defense because you act irrevocably shooting someone with certainty.
If you don't, no, don't act in violent ways.
Why not wait till he was older?
Because you can't inflict this kind of abuse on people who have a choice, so we inflict it on babies who have no choice.
So, thank you for your sensitivity, but I hope I've given you some sense of what it really means to own your decisions.
And if you really own your decisions, you have much more likelihood of being forgiven.
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