Piercing a little girl's ears or circumcising a boy do not leave them impaired for life.
Two things. First, I doubt you have any idea what purpose the foreskin and labia serve, judging by the implicit discounting you give their presence through your similar discounting of the significance of their removal. They are definitely there for some reason and I doubt the reasons constitute "mistakes" on the part of the designer. To assume this is to claim to have the designer's knowledge and intentions tied to one's sleeve, which appears to me to smack of astronomical levels of hubris and presumption.
Second, you appear to be avoiding the questions I posed. So let me state them yet again:
- Do you respect the rights of the individual, regardless of age?
- Are you able to draw and justify that bright line in the sand separating good from bad practice and against which no argument will stand?
If you do not want to answer, that is fine, but answering with nonsequiturs seems disingenuous at best. I am assuming you to be far and away better than that, judging by some of your other posts.
It does not leave them with crippled bones, lifelong pain, immobility and is not a "major" procedure.
Is this the bright line in the sand? What defines "major procedure"? The strong implication here is that a minor procedure is acceptable regardless of nature. How do you square this with the principle of not violating the rights of another, or do you hold that this is not a violation? If not, why not? Once again, the line in the sand is implied, but you are yet to explicitly show where it is and why the chosen position is valid and void of the arbitrary.
Binding feet is akin to female circumcision in that it mutilates a persons body and causes them lifelong pain, suffering and impairment.
Are you drawing the line at mutilation? One could inflict hideous pain and suffering on a person without causing any physical mutilation whatsoever. Would that be acceptable, then?
Still, I see no treatment of the question of rights. If someone tried to pierce my ears against my will, I would probably injure them with great cruelty, drawing upon my many years of training to serve up one hell of an ass whooping. Knowing this, how likely are
you to attempt to pierce my ears against my will? Unless you are a complete idiot, which I strongly doubt to be the case, you now know to refrain from acting if such an impulse overtakes you, correct? Good. Perhaps more significantly, you may also feel that to attempt to pierce my ears against my expressed objection is also morally wrong, indicating your proper grounding in moral principle... at least to those who are capable of expressing such objections. But what of a baby? They are incapable, yet I'd bet money I do not have that were they able to understand the pain to be inflicted upon them beforehand, they would object in the only ways babies are capable of so doing. What, then, separates the prerogatives of the infant from those of the adult in terms of the most fundamental of natural and inborn human rights? It is merely the power to object? That would reek of might making right, opening a huge can of worms. Another way of asking is: why do we presume a baby will not object or that their objections, such as they may be, are invalid whereas we do not do this with adults?
For example, imagine a girl so hot that you would sell your mother to a whore house just to have her once. Imagine she lapses into a coma for some reason. No trauma.... she just dropped off and it looks like she will be remaining that way for the foreseeable future. Now imagine you are alone with her in the hospital room and you KNOW that nobody will be bothering you. You're looking at her and your helmet is about to explode with desire. All you have to so is get on top and let Mr. Monkey sing his song. Would doing that be morally unjustifiable? If so, why? She is offering no objection and your act mutilates her in no way whatsoever. Is it OK or is it not?
Now, before you answer with nonsequiturs, please try to answer the question as asked. You have, thus far, not done the best job of this, which indicates to me that your position is weak, you know it somewhere deep inside, are unable to give the answer that does not exist, and are mildly flailing in hopes of misdirecting the discourse, which in this case will never work because I am like a pit bull. Once I get to humping your leg, there's no stopping me until I am satisfied, one way or another.
The difference is as big as between "I'm going to discipline my child and give them an open handed spank on the bottom" and "I'm going to discipline my child and shock them with a cattle prod".
Ooooh... poorly chosen example, if mutilation happens to be your standard for drawing lines. Shock devices do not mutilate, though they smart like the devil... kind of similar to the way an ear smarts when driving a stud through it or lopping off the foreskin or labia of an infant without anesthetic.
I think you should give this some thought and answer the questions, not so much to please me but for the sake of clarifying your own understanding of the subject, the demonstrations of which thus far indicate a distinct lack thereof.
Hell, if I am wrong I would like to see how and why so that I may modify my position based on an improved understanding of the world. Seriously.
Thus far your responses have constituted appeals to authority and proof by assertion. You're batting 000, but I'm in your corner rooting for you!
Your false report is reported.
