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Being anti-circumcision does not make you antisemitic

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Last week a Times journalist admitted that she finds the practice of male circumcision to be “abusive and barbaric”. What gave this revelation an additional charge was the fact that it came in an article about antisemitism, writes Glen Poole. 

Deborah Ross is a secular, cultural Jew who has experienced anti-Semitism herself and says it is in the Jewish character to be “poised for and fearful of anti-Semitic repercussions”. At the same time, she freely admits she didn’t circumcise her son because she finds the practice abusive.

Does this mean Ross is secretly antisemitic herself?

In some people’s eyes if you hold the belief that taking a knife to the foreskin of an eight-day-old baby boy without anaesthetic is barbaric, then you are antisemitic. According to the European Jewish Congress President, Moshe Kantore, for example, those who want to ban unnecessary male circumcision in Europe are “sending out a terrible message to European Jews that our practices, and therefore our very presence on this continent, is treated with disdain.”

Benjamin Albalas, President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece also believes that trying to end the practice “is a sign of anti-Semitism” as does the columnist Tanya Gold, who wrote in The Guardian last year that a ban on male circumcision would be antisemitic.

The UKIP factor 

I have no doubt that that Gold, Albalas and Kantore genuinely believe that ending unnecessary male circumcision is antisemitic, it is their heartfelt, subjective belief. And if we looked closely we could no doubt find some antisemitic people who are also anti-circumcision. Last year, for example, the Jewish Chronicle reported that people who vote UKIP (a party that has faced continued accusations of racism) are more likely to oppose circumcision and if we dug deep enough we might find some antisemitism behind that statistic.

Taking the nation as a whole, 38% of people support a circumcision ban and 35% are against it, with 27% still undecided. Does this mean that nearly 40% of the British public is antisemitic? Of course not, because being anti-circumcision is not the same as being antisemitic. You can be both, neither or one or the other. You could be an antisemitic Muslim, for example, who stands shoulder to shoulder with his Jewish brothers when it comes to defending the right to perform religious rituals on boys’ genitals.

Are Jews who oppose circumcision antisemitic? 

In reality, there is no one singular Jewish view on the practice of circumcision. Some Jews campaign against it; some will only perform it in medical settings with anaesthetic; some want to continue circumcising boys without anaesthetic in religious settings and some still defend the practice of Metzitzah B’peh where blood is sucked from the circumcised baby’s penis.

Attitudes towards male circumcision sit on a continuum ranging from those who believe anything goes to those who believe in an outright ban, with various compromising (or compromised) positions along the way. Tanya Gold, for example, believes that the practice of Jewish mohels (ritual circumcisers) sucking on baby’s circumcised penises and giving them herpes in the process is “repellent”. She says “no circumcision should be performed without medical qualification; those who disagree, including Jews, should think again”.

The anti-circumcision campaigners that she calls antisemitic would agree with her, but they think that regulation and legislation should go further still. Meanwhile, the orthodox Jews who want to preserve Metzitzah B’peh may think Tanya Gold is antisemitic for wanting to ban their ancient Jewish rituals.

People have a right to think differently 

What some people along the continuum of circumcision beliefs, like Tanya Gold, are essentially saying is that if your belief is more interventionist than mine, then you must be antisemitic. This is an unsustainable position to take. Jewish campaigners against circumcision, like Eran Sadeh who wrote for us last week are not antisemitic, they just dare to think differently and that is a freedom that all good people should fight to preserve.

Anyone with a decent dose of empathy can understand why this is an emotive subject for Jewish communities to confront and everyone with a rational mind should also be able to reach the conclusion that daring to think differently about male circumcision does not make you antisemitic.

Acknowledging that people have a right to hold different beliefs is the antithesis of antisemitism. When we think that other people’s beliefs and actions are causing harm, it is our duty to speak out. If your think that circumcising Jewish boys is harmful to Jewish boys then raise you voice, it isn’t antisemitic to want to protect a Jewish baby from harm.

And the same applies to Muslim boys, American boys, African boys and other boy who is at risk of unnecessary male circumcision. If you think it’s harmful, speak out, it isn’t wrong to have an opinion. And if anyone tries to label you antisemitic, tell them that the Jewish journalist Deborah Ross thinks circumcision is “abusive and barbaric” and she said so in an article all about antisemitism.

—Photo credit: flickr/emmanueldyan

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Why the UK has no moral right to tell Africans to stop genital mutilation

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UK girls are being flown to Kenya to have their genitals mutilated but the British have no moral right to complain about this practice when we continue to turn a blind eye to unnecessary male circumcision says Glen Poole.

Wealthy Somalis living in the UK are flying their daughters to Kenya to undergo ritual FGM (female genital mutilation). There they are handed over to traditional practitioners like 80-year-old Dubey Sankader, who uses a support team of 10 women to pin down the girls while performs female circumcision in a temporary shelter made of sticks, wood and leaves.

In an interview published by Bloomberg this month, Sankader is reported to have said: “It’s painful and most of them faint in the middle of the rite, while others make loud noises and cries, but they are subdued by my permanent staff”.

While FGM has been illegal in Kenya since 2011, the practice is still commonplace and the UK is powerless to act when it comes to protecting Somali girls whose families have made Britain their home.

We aren’t legally powerless. Taking a girl out of the country in order to mutilate her genitals is against British law and today the prime minister, David Cameron has announced that new measures will be introduced meaning parents who fail to stop their daughters undergoing FGM will face prosecution.

However, rather than empowering ourselves when it comes to making a difference for women and girls, we disempower ourselves by becoming  moral hypocrites who apply one rule to women and girls and another rule to men and boys. We essentially tell parents from other cultures that their tradition of performing rituals on boys’ genitals is tolerable and but performing rituals on girls’ genitals is intolerable—one act is good and right , the other is bad and wrong.

Men are being forcibly circumcised in Africa

Meanwhile in Kenya, a man was dragged by a gang of men into his local church clinic and forcibly circumcised this weekend, according to media reports. After the operation, the Kenyan Post reported that his wife was overheard saying that she is “now assured of total satisfaction in bed”.

The forced circumcision of men and boys is neither uncommon nor illegal across Africa. There are many forms of ritual circumcisions which kill scores of young men every year, there are incidents of forced circumcision where men belonging to tribes who don’t circumcise are chased and forcibly circumcised by men from tribes who do circumcise and then there is the bizarre importation of circumcision to prevent AIDS by the World Health Organisation, a campaign that has been heavily criticised.  

The situation for men and boys in the UK is less severe and yet many boys in African families living in the UK are at risk and unlike their sisters, their parents don’t need to take them abroad to have their genitals mutilated. High profile incidents of African boys being subjected to forced circumcision in the UK include Goodluck Caubergs who died aged just 27 days old after being circumcised by a midwife and Angelo Ofori-Mintah who died aged 28 days old after being circumcised by a Rabbi. Earlier this month we also reported the story of a trainee doctor who divorced her African-born husband after he had their son circumcised without her consent or knowledge.

Moral double standards

There is a moral double standard at play here. While we essentially tell people of African heritage that they are wrong to perform rituals on their daughters genitals both in the UK and in Africa, we stand silently by while African men and boys in the UK and Africa are dying as a result of being subjected to ritual circumcision. Worse still, we support the highly contentious export of medical circumcision into Africa in the fight against AIDS.

And therein lies our moral dilemma. Anyone who has spent time studying the different types of male and female genital mutilation knows that the following statement holds true—male circumcision in all its forms is different and sometimes worse than the many different forms of female circumcision (and female circumcision is different and sometimes worse than male circumcision).

If we are serious about protecting the genital autonomy of African girls (and girls of all nationalities), then surely we’ll get there a lot quicker—and with far greater moral integrity—if we also take a stand to preserve the genital autonomy of men and boys in Africa, the UK and the rest of the world.

Photo: Courtesy of DFID shows the UK’s government minister for international development Lynne Featherstone supporting the “FGM or excision can kill” campaign in Burkina Faso.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

For more information about male genital mutilation, please visit Norm UK and Men Do Complain

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Land Diving: Courage, pain and the cost of becoming a man

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“While almost every culture had a rite of passage ritual, there existed a great diversity in what these ceremonies consisted of. The common thread was an experience that involved emotional and physical pain and required a boy to pass the test of manhood: to show courage, endurance, and the ability to control one’s emotions.”

For men who live in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the middle of the South Pacific, this takes the form of a ritual called Land Diving.

“Boys as young as five years old will take part in the ritual which is often preceded by circumcision. The boys start out jumping low, but will work their way up as they get older. The higher a man goes, the manlier he is considered by the tribe.”

Read the full story on The Art of Manliness

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Male genital mutilation: one man’s story

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—This is article #41 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Photo courtesy Men Do Complain

I and my sister were born in the late 50’s in the UK. Soon after I was born my parents taught me what it is to be discriminated against.

They saw to it that my foreskin was cut off and tossed away, but nothing was cut off my sister’s body when she was subsequently born. If I had been born a female I would still have all the genitals I was born with, just as my sister still has.

We hear a lot about FGM and rightly so, as it is an abomination. Sadly, many think that male circumcision is performed for religious and medical reasons: so it can’t be harmful. The truth is that all those men and boys who were circumcised without their personal consent are the victims of the theft of a functional and erogenous body part.

You do not enrich the life of a man by cutting a part of his body off, you make that man a poorer man, even though he may not realise it because he has never known any different.

‘It royally fucks up a man’s sexuality’

I recently spotted the following comment in response to an online petition against infant male circumcision: “I was circumcised as an adult… I can confirm that it royally fucks up a man’s sexuality.”

This came as no surprise to me since it was as obvious as my lack of a foreskin that my wife was enjoying a more ‘earth-moving’ sexual experience than me. We are now separated after spending almost 30 years together and I reflect that sexual issues were very much the undoing of our marriage. My sex life was not what it should have been. I now live alone and am a chastened man.

It is my personal belief that all infants, whether they be male or female, should enjoy the basic right to be born unto parents that do not feel it is their right to modify the genitalia of their offspring.

‘It should have been my own decision’

My late parents felt that it was their right to condone my circumcision as an infant without medical necessity. This is something that has caused me considerable pain and anguish and I shall eternally regret. It should have been my own decision as to whether or not I chose to give up an intimate and personal part of my body, because once it is done, it is done.

Children are in the custody of their parents until they reach maturity and are not their property. I am not Jewish or Muslim, but there are men I know of that were born unto Jewish/Muslim parents that also resent the fact that they suffered the same indignity of forced circumcision.

The majority of men in this world are genitally intact and perfectly content with their status. I believe that it is a profound injustice that there is not statutory legal protection for all infant boys against non-therapeutic circumcision (such as there is for girls in the UK, US and elsewhere), regardless of the religious affiliation of their parents.

If men want to be circumcised for religious reasons let them volunteer for it once they are adults, and can give meaningful consent.

By Patrick Smyth, trustee and secretary of NORM UK

For more information about male genital mutilation, please visit Norm UK and Men Do Complain

 You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Further articles:

NHS Midwife referred baby for genital mutilation against mother’s wishes