StopTheCut.org Blog

Dutch doctors’ group calls for circumcision ban

June 6th, 2010 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

Link to Reuters Article
Press release

‘Violation of physical integrity’

Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) to discourage non-therapeutic circumcision of
male minors

Utrecht, 27 May 2010 – The official standpoint of KNMG and other related
medical/scientific organisations is that non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors is a
violation of children’s rights to autonomy and physical integrity. KNMG is urging a strong policy of deterrence.

The reason for the adoption of an official standpoint regarding this matter is the increasing emphasis on the protection of children’s rights. Contrary to popular belief, circumcision can also cause complications – bleeding, infection, urethral stricture and panic attacks are particularly common. Full or partial penile amputations have also been reported as a consequence of complications.

KNMG is calling upon doctors to actively and insistently inform parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical benefits and the danger of complications. “The rule is: do not operate on healthy children”, says Arie Nieuwenhuijzen Kruseman, chairman of the KNMG. “It is an unfortunate fact that any surgical procedure can cause complications. Doctors accept this to a certain extent because there are medical reasons for the procedure. However, no complications can be justified that occur as the result of an operation that is medically unnecessary.”

Children’s rights
KNMG regards the non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors as a violation of physical integrity, a constitutional right that protects individuals against unwanted internal or external physical modifications. According to the KNMG, minors should only be subjected to medical procedures in the event of illness or abnormalities, or if a convincing case can be made that the procedure is in the interests of the child (such as vaccination).

Dialogue
The KNMG sees good reasons for the statutory prohibition of non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors, but fears that the procedure will then be driven underground, leading to an increase in the number of complications.

The Medical Association is aware that the practice of circumcision of male minors has deep religious, symbolic and cultural meaning. The KNMG respects this, and is calling for dialogue among medical associations, experts and the relevant religious groups.

Wide support
The following medical and scientific organisations officially support the standpoint of the KNMG: the Dutch Urological Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Urologie), the Dutch College of General Practitioners (Het Nederlands Huisartsengenootschap), the Dutch Paediatric Surgery Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Kinderchirurgie), the Dutch Plastic Surgery Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Plastische Chirurgie), the Association of Surgeons of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Heelkunde) and the Dutch Paediatric Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Kindergeneeskunde).

A survey among a representative sample of KNMG members recently showed that individual doctors widely support the above standpoint.

Note to editorial staff

The complete standpoint of the KNMG, including a background study, the results of the
members’ poll and a preamble, are available in English at www.knmg.nl/jongensbesnijdenis.

For more information, please contact the KNMG communications department/Sander Hofman T:
+31 (0)30 282 38 31 E: s.hofman@fed.knmg.nl

The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) is the professional organization that represents more than 46.000 physicians and students in the Netherlands. The KNMG is the federation of medical practitioners’ professional associations: the National Association of salaried Doctors (LAD), the National Association of General Practitioners (LHV), the Dutch Association for occupational Health (NVAB), the Dutch Association of Insurance Medicine (NVVG), the Dutch Order of Medical Specialists (Orde) and Elderly care physicians (Verenso). www.knmg.nl

David Rothscum: How to make the ultimate warrior

June 6th, 2010 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

“Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.” Judith Lewis Herman (1992).  Trauma and recovery.
How to make the ultimate warrior

Humans are volatile creatures. As Aldous Huxley explained in Brave New World, you can shape humans in pretty much any way you want, and turn them into creatures that enjoy whatever task you have for them. Of course, as shown in Brave New World, to create a certain type of human, you have to “cut” away other parts, until you are left with what you need.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. For example, to create someone who enjoys simple activities, you have to eliminate the ability to engage in more complex activities. This is why Brave New World featured different castes, with lower castes that were brain-damaged through a lack of oxygen while young, and higher castes were not brain-damaged.

To make a warrior, the same principle applies. A warrior serves only one purpose, which is to kill their enemy. Generally speaking, humans are both capable of love and hatred. A warrior however requires a simple character. An efficient warrior has to be capable of only hatred, and obedience to his group. He should not ask questions or be rebellious against authority. This hatred can not go together with an instinct for love. To fully develop one personality trait, you have to eliminate another. And thus, any capability of expressing love or gentleness has to be eliminated.

Efficiently developing warriors requires for the entire society to revolve around aggression and hatred. To make warriors, you need a warrior culture. In such a culture, there can be no open expression of love, but only of hatred and violence. A warrior culture has the benefit of easily expanding itself. Through it’s ruthlessness it can destroy other cultures by force.

Looking at history, the most efficient cultures have been those that followed the Abrahamic religions. In less than 2000 years, followers of the Abrahamic religions have taken over most of our planet after starting as a religious minority in the Roman empire. The reason for this, is that from an early age, the Abrahamic religions begin building warriors. This article will explain how this is done.

I understand that nobody wants to hear any of this. However, the first step towards solving a problem is recognizing it exists. If this means that certain elements of our culture that we hold dear are contributing to the problem, we have to analyze these elements as well. We can not simply point at “the Illuminati” or whatever label you like apply to your rulers, when elements of our own culture are essential to their power.

Looking at nature, the more complex creatures spend more time in close physical contact than less complex creatures. Mammals nurse their young for example, creating a strong bond between the child and the mother. Mammals care a lot for their offspring, which makes sure many live a long lifespan. Intelligent mammals also tend to be more social. Chimpanzees and elephants will mourn their death. Physical intimacy goes beyond just the nursing of the young, especially in the highly intelligent creatures. Humans, Bonobo’s and Dolphins are the only creatures known to man that engage in sex for a purpose other than reproduction.

It is this physical bonding which begins after birth and ends with death that is the main obstacle to create an efficient warrior, because it generates love and compassion. The physical bonding process has to be disrupted. James W. Prescott is an American developmental psychologist who has studied how a lack of infant-mother bonding leads to violent behavior later in life. Looking at societies around our planet, he found that those with the most physical affection for its infants, showed the least amount of violence and crime.

He is very concerned about our modern treatment of children. As he mentions, a lack of breastfeeding disrupts the bond between parents and their children. Infants are also not allowed to sleep with their parents, and directly removed after birth from their mother. All of this disrupts the normal bonding process. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding up to two years of age and beyond. In American society however only 33.1% of infants are exclusively breastfed through 3 months of age. In American society, the bonding process is effectively sabotaged.

Perhaps even more important to sabotage the bonding process, is the induction of trauma in the child through physical pain. Extreme physical pain during infancy changes the child’s personality forever. An effective method is ritual male genital mutilation, commonly known as circumcision, which permanently damages the bonding process. Researchers found that:

“The persistence of specific behavioral changes after circumcision in neonates implies the presence of memory. In the short term, these behavioral changes may disrupt the adaptation of newborn infants to their postnatal environment, the development of parent-infant bonding, and feeding schedules.”

There are numerous studies showing how circumcision changes the young infants personality, makes them more susceptible to pain, and even causes post-traumatic stress syndrome. Scientists have found that even in Middle Aged men, circumcision caused a disposition towards violence, and hatred of women. It should come as no surprise that the Abrahamic religions enforce circumcision on their population. In fact, Jahweh demands from Abraham in the Old Testament that he and his male descendants mutilate their genitals. This is essential, to create a warrior culture.

The case of circumcision illustrates my point, that one can’t have both love and hatred. Circumcision is used to create an individual predisposed towards hatred. As various studies have shown, it physically hampers the act of love. This would explain the hatred of women, and insecurity and vulnerability that circumcised men describe. The symptoms reported are listed below:

* a sense of personal powerlessness
* fears of being overpowered and victimized by others
* lack of trust in others and life
* a sense of vulnerability to violent attack by others
* guardedness in relationships
* reluctance to be in relationships with women
* defensiveness
* diminished sense of maleness
* feeling damaged, especially in the presence of surgical complications such as skin tags, penile curvature due to uneven foreskin removal, partial ablation of edges of the glans and so on
* sense of reduced penile size, a part cut off or amputated
* low self-esteem
* shame about not “measuring up”
* anger and violence toward women
* irrational rage reactions
* addictions and dependencies
* difficulties in establishing intimate relationships
* emotional numbing
* need for more intensity in sexual experience.
* sexual callousness
* decreased tenderness in intimacy
* decreased ability to communicate
* feelings of not being understood

Based on these symptoms, I would describe the United States as it exists today as a circumcised nation.

The obstruction of sex caused by circumcision should come as no surprise, as the Old Testament essentially prohibits actual love between men and women. The woman is seen as the possession of the man, just as she is today in most cultures that strictly follow the Abrahamic religions. In the Bible, Jahweh instructs his followers to murder all the boys and women of their slain enemies, however, his followers can keep the virgin children for themselves:

31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Furthermore, the Bible teaches that if a woman does not bleed on her wedding night, she should be stoned in public. This again shows that the Bible prohibits men from loving women. If he suspects that the woman he marries is not a virgin, he can have her killed. Only a man who feels absolutely no love for his wife would have her stoned of course for such a thing.

It also goes to illustrate some other points that have to be made about warrior cultures and Abrahamic cultures. Any expression of love has to be done in secret. However, any expression of hate has to be done in public, and everyone has to see it. Kissing, hugging and sex are all acts of sin, especially if others witness them. Breastfeeding can not be done in public either. However, if one of Jahwehs crazed followers believes that the woman he married is not a virgin, she has to be stoned in public. The treatment of women also illustrates the apparent insecurity that develops in the mutilated followers of Jahweh.

This bizarre relationship between the genders was not universal. Many pagans did not treat each other this way. The Celtic Beltane festival was a celebration of free love. The Hindu’s of course have the Kama Sutra. The treatment of gays in Abrahamic religions further illustrates the point. Any expression of love between men is dangerous for the warrior culture as well. This lives on today. In the US military, homosexuals are welcome, in fact, any cannon fodder is welcome. Just make sure you do not openly exhibit any signs of being inclined towards loving your own gender, or you´re thrown out. Americans call this phenomenon `Don´t ask, don´t tell`.

Interestingly enough, circumcision is seen as important in the military as well. Many anecdotes exists of US military men who had gone through childhood unscathed, but were mutilated while serving in the military. They were given pseudo-scientific diagnoses such as “redundant foreskin”.
Another warrior culture is that of the Masai, who undergo a ritual circumcision as a right of passage as well.

The mutilated men feel a constant sense of insecurity, and feel threatened by others, especially unmutilated men, as shown in the list of symptoms above. This is of course very useful for the warrior culture. It creates a bond between members of the culture, and breeds hatred for those who have not been mutilated yet (not yet subjugated tribes for example). This expresses itself in multiple ways. In the Bible for example we find the bizarre story of David who is told by King Saul to go on a ridiculous rampage against the Philistines, and bring back 100 foreskins, in exchange for marrying (more accurately described as buying) his daughter. David however, is feeling generous, and brings back 200 foreskins.

We find this same principle of feeling insecure and threatened in many men, who seek to have their own sons mutilated as well. If nobody around you is still healthy, you are not constantly reminded how you are deficient yourself. We find this in the bullying of uncircumcised American children as well. We find it in the doctors who carry out the trauma again themselves. We even find it in the foreign policy of the United States. After the United States brought South Korea under it’s sphere of influence, circumcision became widespread there as well during the late 40’s, and still is today.

Different forms of creating an inclination towards hatred exist besides just circumcision as well of course. I have mentioned the taboo against any form of expression of love or affection for others (especially for other men) in public. Violence and hatred of others is of course important to propagate as well. In American television series aimed at children and teens, bullying of others is depicted as normal. It is not even depicted as bad, and even the main characters may engage in bullying of others. It is just a normal part of life in the prison that is the American High School. Americans do not complain about this. Instead, they become outraged about a womans breast being exposed during the Superbowl.

Violent games such as the ones developed by the military help create efficient soldiers as well.

In a warrior culture drugs need to be controlled. Cannabis and other natural psychedelics turn people into ineffective warriors. Drugs like cannabis create Woodstock, but the warrior culture needs Parris island instead. The ultimate warrior has to be cold as stone, and asexual. The circumcision helps accomplish this, but the shaving of the head-hair is important as well. This hair contains pheromones, scents that make people attractive. It also expresses their individuality and beliefs. The military does not need individuals. It needs insecure, traumatized, brain-damaged individuals full of hatred but devoid of love and individuality, and it creates and recruits them in whatever it can.

People who do not fit into the warrior culture tend to grow their hair long. Punkers, metalheads, hippies, do not fit into the violent and disciplined warrior culture that is best expressed in the military, but permeates throughout society, and they have a tradition of long hair.

The military is an evil institution. It takes young traumatized men that have grown up with a chronic lack of affection. They do not deserve hatred, they deserve pity. What it proceeds to do is strip them of their individuality, and baptize them in hatred. As this documentary shows, they are not treated as human beings. Their inherent lack of self-worth is used to indoctrinate them with the idea that they are only useful for one thing, to kill other people.

They are even taught to be proud of what they have become. They are taught to chant about murder and hatred. Ultimately however, most learn that they have been betrayed, but by then it is too late. Some are forever injured by the Anthrax vaccine. Others are poisoned with Depleted Uranium. Some are killed in battle. When they come home, many commit suicide, and little is done to help them.

Despite how proud they may feel to be in the military, the military as an institution has no respect at all for these young men and women. Even a pimp generally does not kill his own prostitutes. However, the military harms and kills the men and women that join it in whatever it can, physically as well as mentally. Young men and women grow up without affection and with a feeling that they are not truly valued, so they join the military. Ultimately however, the military betrays them as well, and they die, never having found the affection they sought.

Doctors refuse to perform circumcisions

May 23rd, 2010 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

Doctors in Sweden are refusing to perform circumcisions on boys.

Doctors in Sweden agree that once a baby is born, that baby has the rights of citizenship, including the right of autonomy concerning one’s own body.

Original article in English

Cultural Rite, Medical Wrong

May 23rd, 2010 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

Should doctors be in the business of cultural genital cutting? They have been for decades with boys, making all sorts of medical excuses for forcing a surgery on boys at birth. However the AAP is looking to get doctors back into the business with girls, a procedure that was common in the US decades ago, and has been criminalized in the US since 1997.

Here is an excellent article written on the subject by Professor Elizabeth Reis.

Support for female circumcision stirs up yet more controversy

May 23rd, 2010 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

Sadly the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended rolling back the ban on female circumcision- in an effort to become friendly to immigrant communities in the US, to thwart the growing problem of the immigrant families sending their children back to their home countries for genital mutilation surgeries.

Stopthecut.org does not support genital mutilations of any sort on any person under legal age.

Article in the Sydney Morning Herald

Article from the Guardian