It's Not The Same Thing

OK, so I fully expect that I may lose some followers on this point or offend some.  I know it.  I've been around my earthy-birthy peeps for a long time.  It's a topic, that when brought up at birth network meetings or childbirth educator or doula conferences, I politely excuse myself to the bathroom before my opinion is asked for.  But, as this blog is MY forum, I'm going to go out on a limb and share my opinion.  Please don't hate me.


The topic is circumcision.


Now, truly I do not care whether you circumcise your sons or not.  You can argue the merit or benefit of circumcision all day long.  It's medically a good idea vs. it's medically useless.  It's completely safe vs. it's potentially dangerous.  It's an outdated, antiquated practice vs. it's still relevant.  It's OK to practice only for religious reasons vs. it's never OK.  The debate can go on and on.


Those who are anti-circ or "intactivists" would make a lot more progress, however, if they left out the comparison to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).  Those who would convince you not to circumcise use the comparison as their trump card.  "If you are against the female genital mutilation that happens in Africa then you have to be against the male genital mutilation that happens in the West."  They maintain that the two are the same and totally comparable.  I beg to differ.

Image from here.

First of all, FGM is always a means of controlling women and their sexuality.  In contrast, in all countries that widely practice circumcision, males are dominant.


Also, male circumcision rarely, if ever, has long-term medical consequences; FGM always does.


FGM removes at the very least part or all of the clitoris taking all pleasure out of intercourse.  (Often FGM removes even more than that.  Sometimes all outer genitalia is removed, leaving only a small opening for urine and menstrual blood to be released.)  Circumcised men still enjoy intercourse.


FGM damages the urinary tract leaving a woman with reoccurring infections and often very painful urination.  On the other hand, circumcised men have a slightly reduced rate of urinary tract infections.  And for men with reoccurring UTIs often circumcision is recommended by urologists.  


FGM can cause fertility problems, sometimes even making vaginal childbirth impossible, forcing women to undergo more risky c-sections.  Male circumcision does not effect fertility.


Male circumcision almost always takes place when the boy is still an infant (in Jewish tradition at 8 days old). If it occurs at an older age it is done under general anesthesia.  FGM happens at various ages, often in the teenage years.  And it is never done with anesthesia--neither general nor local.  


Infant circumcision heals very quickly.  If done at 8 days there is scarcely any bleeding at all.  This is because vitamin K peaks in a boy at 8 days, allowing for swift blood clotting.  Vitamin K is higher at 8 days old than it will be at any other time in his life.  FGM, which happens at a various ages, sometimes never full heals and is often re-injured and torn open when sexual intercourse does eventually occur.


Male circumcision is always carried out in a sterile environment, using medical grade tools.  FGM is typically carried out in an unsterile environment using everything from razors and scissors to fingernails and sharpened glass or rocks.  Sutures can be anything from agave or even thorns.   


Complications from male infant circumcision in the West are very rare. (from 0.2 to 0.6 %.  Source: "Report 10 of the Council on Scientific Affairs (I-99):Neonatal Circumcision". 1999 AMA Interim Meeting: Summaries and Recommendations of Council on Scientific Affairs Reports. American Medical Association. December 1999. pp. 17.)  In contrast around 10 percent of those subjected to FGM die of hemorrhage or shock. (Source: Van Zeller, Mariana. "Female Genital Cutting",Vanguard, Current TV, 31 January 2007.)


As you can see it's really not the same thing.  For intactivists to keep using this comparison belittles the atrocities committed against women all over the world through genital mutilation.  This is a very serious social injustice that deserves our outrage.  It is not at all comparable with male infant circumcision.


You can disagree with male infant circumcision, choose to keep your sons intact, and advocate better information and education regarding circumcision.  But, don't compare it to female genital mutilation, please. Women, we need to care more for our sisters than that.  To compare the two is not only bad science, it's disrespectful to women all over the world who have had this heinous thing done to them.  
   

Artwork from here.

John and Joe

Beauty is an experience, nothing else.

Everyone I know seems to be dieting.  Some because they have a genuine health concern because they are medically obese, have diabetes or other health issue.  Others because they don't like the way their thighs look since they had children or because they crave some skinny jeans.

I never know quite what to say when someone says he or she is dieting, when clearly there is nothing wrong with his or her body.  I know the conventional response is to say, "Good for you!" or "Good luck!" But, I just can't.  I have to literally implore the fruit of the Spirit--Self Control--to help me not say, "What are you kidding me?"

 I know a woman who is trying to get her body fat below a certain point and what she sees in the mirror disappoints her.  She's probably a size 4.  I know a lovely curvy woman who wants to look like she hasn't had children.  I know someone who is middle aged who is trying to be the same size, shape and weight as this person was at 18 years old.  Personally, I just don't get it.  Since I've passed 18 years old, I have never once desired to be that size, shape or weight again.

I mean, I'm living life!  I'm having some adventures and some mishaps and birthing some babies and facing real life drama and grieving the loss of loved ones gone to be with Jesus and getting stressed over nothing and running through sprinklers with the kids and eating fabulous food along with the occasional entire package of Red Vines.

This is real life, baby!

And in the course of real life I'm getting a few gray hairs and some stretch marks on my belly and thighs.  I'm getting laugh lines and hopefully not too many frown lines.  I fully expect by the time I'm fifty to be a few pounds  pudgier and a lot more beautiful.

Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.~ D. H. Lawrence

Perhaps this goes against the way you were raised or the messages you've believed, but probably nine times out of ten I think dieting is in opposition to health.  You all know that I'm a health nut.  And I like to exercise and be active  But, I don't do so to obtain some artificial standard of beauty or acceptability.  I think our culture's messages about what and who is beautiful and what is acceptable for size and shape is so out of line.

Health is about balance.  It's your mind, emotions and spirit being in-tune with God and enjoying the world around you.  It's about having enough energy and stamina to do the things you love, without sacrificing enjoying life along the way.  It's about using your body as a tool for living a great life, not for preserving it like a piece of art in a museum.  Just like tools you use in your kitchen or in your garden we have to keep the tool in working order.  But, after you've had it 20 years if it still looks exactly like the day you bought it including it's protective coating, you've obviously not been using it properly.

Health is not a number on a scale or a date on a calendar.  It's not the number on the tag of the clothes you buy or whether or not you compare with who is on the cover of Vogue.


Look at our culture's messages--which are billed as "health":

Slim = Happy

And you can have this happy equation in just 48 hours.

I'm so sick of things saying "Anti-aging."  What so wrong with aging anyway?  

Isn't that the point of life?  To mature, to have experiences, to grow old?

And this next one!  Oh come on!  I think everyone looks good naked.  We all can't look like we are airbrushed.  Sure, I have some cellulite and some belly flab, but I still look good!

In Eat, Pray, Love (a movie, I did not like actually), I love the scene when Julia Robert's character tells her friend to eat the pizza in Napoli.  The friend is worried about her "muffin top."  Julia's character says something to the effect of, "I bet that any time you have ever undressed in front of a man, he has never asked you to leave.  Eat the pizza."

Naked is naked.  There is no looking bad.  Enjoy.

What's the message here?  The perfect size is one size smaller than you currently are.

Beat Ab Flab.  The message here is that NORMAL is sculpted.  Anything else has to be beaten into submission.  The number of "normal" people in the world is strikingly small.

Although billed as "women's health" and "fitness" these messages are anything but healthful!  Listen up...real woman come in all shapes and sizes.  More often than not we have some curves and some roundness.  We don't look like the cover of a magazine--we are better than that.  We have had real lives, not scripted lives.  We've carried and birthed children and nursed them at our (slightly more saggy than when we were 18 years old) breasts.  We have cared for the sick and been at the bedside of the dying.  We have been up at 2am catching our family's vomit in a kitchen pot.  We've danced the night away with the one we love.  We have laughed 'til we cried and cried until we laughed.  We've gotten ourselves into some sticky situation and loved our way out of them.  We've spent some time with our faces in the carpet before the Lord and got some skid marks on our souls.

You don't live a whole lifetime of adventures and come out looking like you did in high school.  If you do, I think you haven't been doing it right.

The sooner we all accept that the sooner we can throw out the pills and shakes and complicated diet plans and start really living!  Loving ourselves!  Being confident enough to be active!  And let our inner sexy shine through!  (Let it shine even through the gray, the pudgy and the not-exactly-flat abs.)

We can only blame men so far, ladies.  We do this to ourselves much of the time.  As every woman knows, "I am my own worse critic."  We are the ones a month postpartum who are kvetching that we need to get back to our pre-pregnancy size.  (Which in the long-run is actually damaging our health!) We are the ones who buy all these "women's magazines" with covers that bear no resemblance to real life and with ads that objectify us.  We are the ones who buy into these fad diets that are actually making us as a society fatter and not slimmer.  If women took charge of their own health and joy, rejecting these messages around us, would men suffer?  No.  We'd be more confident, sexier, and happier.  And what man wouldn't want to live with a confident, sexy, happy woman?!

We have the power ladies.

The Bible Is A Very Great Book

A friend posted the following verse as her Facebook status wondering what in the world it is supposed to mean:

"Though I have searched repeatedly, I have not found what I was looking for. Only one out of a thousand men is virtuous, but not one woman!"  Ecc. 7:28

And somewhere inside I'm thinking, "What the?!?!"  If it wasn't the Bible I might just call that sexist.

In this post I will not pretend that I have a clue and it would take more exegesis than I can muster at the moment.  I was just thinking how funny the Bible is.  So many things that make me stop and go, "Huh?"  The thing is that I think perhaps that is exactly what it was intended to do.  See, had this Scripture been reversed and said that he could find a virtuous woman but not any men, all the women would say, "Tell me about it." And the men would probably say, "That's about right."  And we would all leave it at that. 

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Mark Twain

It seems to me that men are a lot more honest about the fact that they are all screwed up.  They know it and generally admit it.  Women on the other hand....well, we are always on our moral high horses.  If only our men would listen to us we could tell them how to run these families, these churches and this country.  We think the "fairer" sex has something to do with justice.


Truth be told, we are every bit as debased as men.  We just hide behind our spirituality, our upbringing, our gender and sometimes our guidebooks--like Sgt. Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls.  We are perfect angels until the very moment we get drunk and in a bar fight.




And that's just one reason why the Bible is so great, it states the obvious that no one ever wants to admit.  But when I strip away all my conceit and own cleverness I have to admit, "Yeah, that's right."  And then the next thing is "So, what?  If that's true what does that mean for me?"  I guess I could begin with stop playing the victim every time I'm in a conflict with a man (namely, Gana).  I suppose I could start there.  Why'd I start reading this verse again?  Oh yeah, I was tricked by Facebook.

"Of course, what we make of the Bible will never be as great a thing as what the Bible will--if we let it--make of us.  For that which is born of the flesh--our human understanding and handlings--is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit--God's revelation of Himself and the power of that revelation to enliven us--is spirit....So, let us press on with no faith in our own understanding and nothing but faith in the Truth that is too great to be diminished by our feeble minds and too great to not transform us....The Bible is a very great book.  Let us submit to it so God may do the great work of making us into a great people."  Rich Mullins