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ELL Blog

RANT: This World Is a Joke

Warning: This is a first draft and has not gone through a full copy-editing which I usually do for very important articles, which this is obviously not.

It is without a doubt that human beings en-masse aren’t actually capable of critical thinking. There are many cultures in the world, and many countries with differing levels of economic power, and standards of living. There are countries that have been a democracy 1 longer than others.

Some cultures practice certain beliefs. When discussing morality, I find it often that people’s morality is defined by the society they come from and not the values they have proved and developed themselves. This sort of thinking is very … simple minded and shows a lack of self-reflection and nuanced critical thinking that the human race believes they have. Humans pride themselves on the belief that they are intelligent but when met with a culture that has normalized something they find immoral, their first instinct is to condemn the other culture, but not look within to find instances of wrong-doing.

The specific problem I am talking about is Male Genital Mutilation, also known as Foreskin Removal and male baby circumcision. This practice is completely tolerated by every country in the world. Iceland stopped short of a full ban, by allowing a religious exemption, but that is part of the problem. If we can tolerate male circumcision because of religious tolerance, then why can we not tolerate female genital mutation that is part of a culture in a country in Africa? When googling “Why is FGM wrong”, the first argument is that FGM interferes with the natural function of women’s bodies. This is the worst argument as lust, envy, greed, vengeance (some say wrath, but I disagree with wrath’s definition), gluttony (obesity), and sloth are all naturally occurring in humans but we know that they are wrong (with some being self-harm rather than harm to another person).

It is quite preposterous for the WHO to advocate against FGM since 2008, but 16 years later, inform people nothing of Involuntary Male Circumcision.

FGM and MGM is wrong because there is no relief in health issues and neither does the baby consent to it. That is the only reason to argue against FGM and MGM. Many proponents of MGM come from a religious background and use the following argument. “It reduces risk of STI.” This is a very poor argument because abstaining from sex also reduces STI. Should we regulate when people can have sex (rhetorical question although sex between adults is already regulated)? Or maybe we should remove their penises entirely, because if they can’t have sex, then they can’t get STIs. But now you will say that penis is for reproduction. But some men have no possibility of reproduction nor are they free of hereditary diseases.

The purpose of the penis is explicitly to engage in sex for pleasure, and reproduction is a side effect of said activity. Therefore, the act of removing foreskin, and thus reducing pleasure, is synonymous with the act of removing the flesh of the penis head as well.

Let’s take it a step further. In Quebec, a person had their fingers removed due to psychological issues. Should we all follow suit because we can all develop the same psychological issues? No.

Aside on Abortion rights

The case for abortion is very simple. No country has property rights that prevent the owner from kicking someone out. A parent can kick their child out whenever they want. There is no legal contractual obligation to even keep the child once the child is born. Therefore, if a fetus is deemed to be trespassing (i.e. unwanted), it does not really matter if the eviction (abortion) results in its death. If the fetus could be preserved, I would be an advocate for it, just as I am an advocate that resuscitation of a fetus should not be the parents’ right. An abortion is a clear separation of legal duties, and what happens to the fetus outside of a womb, is the concern of society and the state, but not the mother. This is similar to how an eviction of a trespasser of physical land would work. It’s society’s problem and dealing to the issue, not the property owner. The property owner doesn’t decide what to do with the trespasser (except in cases of self-defence), society (police) does.


  1. A democracy is defined as people being able to become citizens by at the very least being the child of a citizen, and all citizens except for ones serving a sentence have the right and accessibility to vote and there is no law that can discriminate a sub-class of citizens. For example, before civil rights, was the USA really a democracy if segregation was enforced by states themselves? Absolutely not ↩︎