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So you're in favour of legalising female genital mutilation for teenaged girls of African descent?
I've noticed pro-medical transition people making this argument more and more often lately. "Even if it doesn't work, people should free to do with their own bodies as they please." Okay, sure – but can you* at least acknowledge that you were mistaken** all these years you spent browbeating us about how medical transition is "safe and effective", conservative lawmakers trying to ban it are banning lifesaving treatment (no matter different from taking insulin away from diabetics) and "would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son"? If you've now come out as a principled libertarian who thinks people should be free to do with their bodies as they please while remaining agnostic on whether medical transition is an effective treatment for teenagers' psychic distress (in other words, whether it even qualifies as medical treatment at all) – can you at least be honest enough to admit that you spent quite a long time claiming or pretending otherwise?
Basically what I said here.
*Every instance of "you" in this paragraph is directed towards pro-medical transition people collectively, not towards you in particular.
**To be charitable. Uncharitably: lying.
Why not? We already allow childhood mutilation of genitals for males! In fact teenagers are probably more ethical to do on than babies cause the teenagers could always push back while the baby can not.
I get you mean the unspecified you, but that makes the rest of it kinda unfair right? My argument is that I'm a libertarian who believes in pretty maximal individual rights. But a lot of those pro transition people don't make that argument to begin with! A lot of them are fine with restricting freedoms, they just believe that transition is overall effective.
They don't need to admit something over my personal beliefs.
I'm going to push back on this- circumcision is yes bad but not as bad as FGM, and and one meets the threshold for child abuse while the other one doesn't.
My son isn't circumcised, my future ones won't be either, you don't need to convince me it's bad. But, as a circumcised guy, it's nowhere near as bad as FGM is supposed to be. There's a major difference in severity.
The most commonly practiced forms of FGM are at most as bad as circumcision (removal of the clitoral hood) and often significantly less (eg. ceremonial pin-prick on the clitoral hood), but remain illegal and condemned. If it is true that circumcision should be permitted because it is not as severe, then these types of FGM should be as well. Instead we use the existence of more severe forms to condemn all forms. For men, we have a separate category for the more severe form--castration.
Why, yes, women do nakedly advocate in favor of women and also entice men into advocating for women.
And when men such as you, in situations such as these, can't muster any straightforward advocacy in favor of men in a place where advocacy for men is damn near encouraged, instead tying themselves in knots about how it's so unfair that women get what they ask for while men don't get what they don't, you should know you are the traffic.
Just say you want men to keep foreskins if you think so. Such an argument doesn't have to refer to gender equality of foreskin-removing bans. It can, but you didn't even make that argument.
If not, explain why should anyone want to stop women from keeping theirs if they want. Foreskins are not zero sum, unlike some things that someone must do and so men do them. Communism was a shit system that didn't work and foreskin communism has no substance either.
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Below are a list of things that Western societies generally believe that minor children are too immature to engage in with informed consent:
Obviously there is enormous heterogeneity between jurisdictions (in some jurisdictions it's illegal for anyone to smoke weed regardless of age) and the age of consent varies a great deal just within Europe. Nonetheless, you will be hard-pressed to find an example of a Western jurisdiction in which prepubescent children are legally free to practise all or most of the above.
I'm legitimately curious which of the above you think minor children (esp. prepubescent children) should be legally permitted to practise.
A lot of those are actually false. Plenty of states have laws allowing underage drinking with parental consent for example. And various forms of child marriage (and yes, sex in those marriages often) with parental consent is still legal in the majority of states.
Yes in most of the US, you as a parent can consent to your child marrying and having sex with an adult.
Some of your examples are also "X not allowed without parental consent" which yeah, parents right to parent means they get to make choices. Some of them also follow into your "applies to everyone" category, no one of any age can make and spread porn of young minors for instance.
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