@FlyingLemons
I, too, don't really care what religious people think of me, but I still care about their offspring younger than 18 years of age. Because from my POV...
Here's the thing: you're trying to dictate how one section of society should raise their children from the standpoint that your values and practices are inherently superior to theirs. They aren't. They're just different.
children are not your belonging, your stuff, your objects, and that's why I can't accept treating them as such and "branding" them, because you are what you are. You shouldn't have a right to brand children by surgically altering them, and you also shouldn't have the right to label them "jewish". A six-year-old doesn't have a viewpoint on religion. Unless, of course, you force it onto the child.
Being Jewish isn't just religion, but it's also a culture and a national identity. Circumcision is part of that identity, and it's highly siginificant for Jews whether they're atheist, agnostic, Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. We have our culture, others have theirs. It's not the business of others to tell us how to raise our children.
As an aside, when the European Reform tried throwing aside circumcision and everything that made us culturally distinct to try and assimilate at the beginning of the 20th century, it didn't work. The message that me and others draw from that is that for this issue we shouldn't really mind about what those outside the Jewish community think as it doesn't matter either way.
1. The equivalent of blindness was suggested by a pro-circumcision person and so far wasn't stupid at all.
To me, it is stupid as everything works perfectly well. If it involved chopping the whole thing off, fine, otherwise no.
2. Right, I don't have the "experience". I also don't have the experience of having no appendix. And even though you can live perfectly fine without one, the mere surgery is enough stress to justify not wanting it to be removed.
Modern surgerical techniques remove most of the stress, and I remember being at school and knowing an uncut guy who hated the fact that his parents hadn't had it done, and hugely resented them for it. If you're not Jewish, I guess it's not that much of an issue. For us, it is.
3. Personally, I am insulted by people calling my penis "ugly", but I don't really care. People nowadays can be insulted by practically everything and, from the point of the procedure being horrible, the truth of being "damaged" doesn't really care if it itself is insulting.
I've never called being uncut "ugly", and really I don't care about those to whom it has no religious or cultural significance. Also, throughout this whole thing you appear to be saying that you know better than me if I have a good sex life or not. I do, so "damaged" really doesn't stand up.
5. And that's the point. It's fine if you don't really care, but think about your (future) children and the rest of the world. Not caring is no argument. Many people don't care if smoking will kill them 10 years earlier than the average guy. We still have laws prohibiting children from smoking and many countries now have laws concerning passive smoking.
Being satisfyied (as far as you can tell) is no argument either. Because by that standard, we could limit everyone's freedoms and turn the western world into a dictatorship. Many people in communist countries were "satisfyied", they lived good lives and that was it.
Also, if you know it can be even better, how is it moral to not make sure everyone has the best potential experience if he/she is older?
6. Identifying as something:
How can it be right for parents to be allowed to alter a child's appearance, if they only have the right to for 18 years max. and the person then has to live with it forever? Is parental privilege that important? 18 years versus at least 50 more years?
For Jews, it's normal. When we think about our future children, culturally it tends to make things more awkward to be uncut than cut. We've done it for thousands of years, and that means that millions have lived quite happily being circumcised. You come along and tell us that secretly we're all hurting inside and we're unhappy and damaged. Me and millions of other circumcised men, both Jewish and non-Jewish, know how we feel and we're perfectly happy thank you very much. As long as it's done properly by a skilled medical professional, so will our children. Mohelim have got it down to an art, anyway.
Also, why are we arguing over sexual satisfaction? It's about bodily integrity in the first place. You don't go around cutting earlobes off of children. And you don't go around removing perfectly fine appendixes.
It's one of the many arguments that's been rolled out that somehow it's lead to circumcised men being sexually damaged, and that's why it's "unkind". The perspective of those who have been circumcised really can't be dismissed, and most here say it hasn't affected their lives negatively. Ultimately, it's about the right of different groups in society to live as they see fit as circumcision is practiced by both Jews and Muslims, and the individuals in these groups are just fine with living circumcised. Are they happy? Yes. Should they change for what others think regarding this situation? No.
