Anti-Semitic images amplify need to defeat S.F. ballot measure

Having grown up in liberal Northern California, I’m having trouble understanding what San Francisco is doing with this on its ballot.  It is very obviously anti-Jewish, especially since it would not allow for any religious exceptions.  My husband and sons are circumcised and they have no problems.  My father was circumcised on his 8th day by a mohel, which was a covenant with his G-d. A practice that has been going on for over five thousand years.
I think that Mr. Hess should go back to San Diego and Mr. Schofield needs to leave all the little boys alone and in the care of their parents.  Does he think that we circumcise our boys without thinking about it? I don’t want the government telling me if I can or can’t have my son circumcised.  That is between his father, his doctor and myself as his mother.
I have to wonder what the true motivation is behind this ballot measure.  It does stink of anti-Semitisim.

I am the person who found Foreskin Man on the internet—months ago—and e-mailed the link to Abby Porth of the SF JCRC on May 31, which helped break the story.  I can demonstrate Lloyd Schofield is not being honest when he tries to disassociate himself from Foreskin Man.  There is a YouTube video by the intactivist group, “Male Circumcision and HIV” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhnLIxaZVGU which shows Foreskin Man (including a poster with Monster Mohel) being distributed at the Folsom Street Fair while gathering ballot signatures with Schofield in attendance.  Other videos show local intactivists spewing out incendiary antisemitic claims http://www.circumcisionandhiv.com/2011/05/proteanview-circumcision-jewish-doctors-and-africans.html and marching in male genital costumes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKg63wmlozM .

Oh, Stephen Mendolsohn, I’m afraid it is you who isn’t being honest. As the blogger (and videographer for the video you reference), I take seriously your epithet of anti-Semite. I have gone through and read the only five Jewish themed posts out of almost 500 total posts, excluding the one you point to, on my site. Nothing I wrote is even remotely anti-Semitic. In fact, the posts in which I have touched on Jewish circumcision make pretty clear that I do not subscribe to any theory of Jewish conspiracies or the like. In fact, I go out of my way to reject this position in the comments of several of the posts. In case you think this is self-serving, they all predate your accusation. However, if I were wanting to twist my own words, I would have chosen one of these posts rather than the Proteanview post on my site to make out as some sort of endorsement of anti-Semitism because at least you would be using my own words rather than someone else’s. I understand that your focus is to expose any anti-Semitism you perceive. However, you should spend some time reflecting on what you read or watch before you start flinging accusations because the issue here, aside from your perceptions and reading comprehension, is anti-circumcision, not anti-Semitism. And no, Stephen Mendelsohn, they are not the same.

Matthew Hess is neither a liar nor a fool, but he was certainly naive not to expect the reaction Foreskin Man #2 has had, or that it would be taken in context with Foreskin Man #1 which protrays “Dr Mutilator” as even more monstrous.

Further evidence that the Intactivist movement is not antisemitic is the view of the REAL antisemites, the KKK and the American Nazi Party.

The ANP website doesn’t mention circumcision, the KKK’s only in a biblical quote used metaphorically. The Nazis led me to Henry Ford’s notorious “The International Jew”. He wasn’t against it either. Ending circumcision just doesn’t appear to figure on the anti-semitic radar. They probably think infant circumcision - like theirs - is the “white American” thing to do.

“Can anyone say ‘blood libel’?”

Jewish anthropology professor Leonard Glick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4UEbsg-k5Y) suggests that it is the other way around - that it was brit milah and especially metzitzah b’peh that gave rise to the blood libel. Christians seeing Jews doing that to their own children could only guess what they might do to Christian children, and he shows an old antisemtic woodcut of Jews crucifying a boy - it’s always a boy - but they are drawing blood from his penis.

The legal language of the proposed ban is taken from the existing Federal ban on all female genital cutting, no matter how minor, and with no religious exemption - though millions of Indonesian and Malaysian parents have doctors cut their daughters (in what seems a quite minor way) in the name of Islam.

they certainly come close.

And it is a horrific joke when those supporting the ban on circumcision compare female genital mutilation with the tradition of male circumcision. As a Jewish male who was circumcised as an infant, I have no trouble throughly enjoying sex nor do any of my circumcised friends. On the other hand, FGM significantly reduces female enjoyment of sex and frequently leads to a lifetime of terrible infections. Not so male circumcision.

Moreover, physicians worldwide dealing with the AIDS epidemic have recommended that circumcision significantly reduces the chances of being infected with this horrific disease.

Hence one might conclude that those who support the ban on circumcision have little concern for those who might contract HIV because of laws which would outlaw circumcision or because of naive parents who won’t have their male children circumcised do to the influence of these self-promoting phallocratic fools who advocate their opposition to it…

The present anti-circumcision movement supporting their initiative may not be as anti-Semitic as the KKK, neo-Nazis, and the ANP, but they too serve the bigotry bar quite well. A look at both the ignorance of their cartoons and literature is a clear litmus of this…

You betray both your ignorance of female genital cutting and the intactivist movement with your comments. FGC is not one practice but many. It does not only include removal of the entirety of the external female sexual organs but more often involves removal of less flesh than male circumcision, which is largely done in similar fashion across the world where it is practiced. Intactivists are not embodied in one person who puts out a comic book but are represented in many communities and among many religious traditions including among Jews. I feel your anger and lashing out. I understand you feel you are under attack. However, you are not. The comic you reference is the product of one person and does not represent me or my efforts to end genital cutting. Engage the argument, Dan. Talk about what this is about. Not what it is not about. Individual freedom and freedom of religion is a personal right. Not a community right. It stops where the body of another begins. Even a genuinely sick person has the right to refuse medical treatment. Without talking about consent, you don’t address the issue we are pushing. It’s set to be a long long debate.

Mr. Wilton (now that’s a funny name for an opponent of circumcision) because once you and your phallocratic twit comrades are throttled in an initiative which once more makes SF a national laughingstock, this subject will be forgotten.

Indeed, once this initiative dies the death it most surely will, you will have to find something else to do with your life. It won’t surprise me if your the next cause you champion will be support of Arab terrorism. Or perhaps you will spend your waking hours making like Anthony Weiner.

As for awareness of FGC, I spent a year in Africa with a health care provider and I can’t tell you how many times she witnessed women who had suffered FGC come into clinics with the most horrific of infections.

Men with circumcisions do not suffer from such incessant infections. In fact, quite the contrary as they no longer have a receptacle which harbors all those germs, including HIV.

Oh, I almost forgot—in your ignorance, you either ignore the findings that circumcised men suffer a far lesser rate of HIV infection or you bloody well don’t care. I suspect both.

As for the “removal of less flesh” manifest in FGC than male circumcision, that sometimes little nub which is excised is the clitoris, the primary seat of female genital pleasure. But again, this is clearly a subject about which you demonstrate little knowledge…

When will the Jewish faith realize that the first Amendment does not protect acts of violence against third parties in the name of their religion? Circumcision is NOT protected as freedom of religion, just as the feds said that female circumcision is not protected. Here’s why…

You’re cutting on someone elese’s body to satisfy your own religious beleifs, that may or may not reflect those of your son. Yes, male and female circumcision are identical…you guys might hate to hear the truth, but you need to. When Muslims circumcise their daughter, they cut off the clitoral hood, which is identical to male circumcision. There have been similar reports that have claimed that female circumcision also reduces HIV (Rebecca Stallings, et al 2005) as well as urinary tract infections, which statistically women get more of than men do. I can only imagine how pissed off women would be if we told them that immediate genital surgery after birth was needed before men saw them as “normal”.

If you’re Jewish and feel this is anti-Semetic, please stop your complaining now. Muslims got no religous exemption or consideration whatsoever when the federal government banned female circumcision in 1995, which clearly was anti-Islamic and violated their rights regarding a custom that dates back as far as the Jewish male circumcision. This is a fight about gender equality, not an attack on Jews. If you can’t see that, maybe you’re not as smart as the sterotypes have us believe. Nobody is saying that Jews cannot be circumcised, it only says Jewish parents cannot force their religious beliefs on others in the form of permanent body altering surgery…on their genitals of all places. Your religion ends where somebody elses body begins, and the Supreme Court has held that as far back as 1910…religious freedoms do not allow people to harm others or infringe upon their rights, which are instilled upon them at bith, as natural born citizens.

The only thing this bill does is ensure the religious freedoms of all Jews, not deny it. If when your son turns 18 and wants to be circumcised, his covenant with God will be just as strong and meaningful, as it was his choice. On the contrary, there are many people who are born Jewish and no longer consider themselves such, mainly because they were forced to have part of their genitals severed for a God they never believed in. Remember, the Torah tells Jews to not harm children or to force people to convert, which circumcision does both, to a non consenting child. Children cannot legally enter a covenant with God, nor any other binding contract, and since they are unaware of what is happening to them and there is no medical necessity, it violates medical ethics, as well as their first and fourteenth amendment rights.

Unless either male circumcision is banned or female circumcision is once again legalized, this fight will never end, because this is about equality, and specifically, gender equality. We live in America, where everyone is created equal, so I don’t see how anyone can not see how having a ban on female cutting of any kind, and not protecting men isn’t equal. It’s far from it. We’re told as children that we are equal, and the last line of the pledge of allegiance is “with liberty and justice for all…” Men certainly qualify as “all” and until there is liberty and justice for all, this battle will not end, regardless of how much opposition is put up by Jews. This is not anti-Semetic. I will say it again, this is not anti-Semetic. It ensures your children have the same religous freedoms that women enjoy on a daily basis, no more, no less.

I’ll simply repeat my response to this Jew hater which I penned in my initial rejoinder to his idiotic comments in J’s headlined piece under the heading of the anti-Semitic cartoon. The loathing of Jews MisterEquality brings here is simply not worth a separate endeavor for a response:

Not only does MisterEquality (now there’s a misnomer if there ever was one) expose his ignorance of science vis-a-vis AIDS research in which physicians overwhelmingly recommend circumcision as protection vs HIV-this guy probably also doesn’t believe in evolution-but his commends clearly demonstrate his hatred of Jews.

I could start with his comments that AIDS researchers are biased in favor of circumcision because he says that the majority of researchers are Jewish, when worldwide the scientists who articulate this are of a plethora of ethnic and religious backgrounds. This moron is saying that if a doctor is Jewish, he automatically relegates good science to his religious practices. Shades of Hitler!

But why argue with with a bigot? Whatever credibility the anti-circumcision forces have is throughly undercut, so to speak, by people like the cartoonist who drew Mr. Foreskin and “MisterEquality.” May I suggest to them that they will be more than welcomed by David Duke once their ridiculous campaign is thoroughly trounced by the voters in November…

Of course, I must admit some people oppose circumcised penises for purely aesthetic reasons. Remember how Charlotte says she recoiled in Sex in the City when she saw the “uncut” penis for the first time in a potential lover? She told her girlfriends, “I couldn’t have sex with him. His penis reminded me of a shar pei.”

Do you have anything else to say that’s not inflammatory or a red herring argument? I’m Jewish, I respect the people and the religion, but I don’t accept or tolerate the cutting of someone ELSE to justify MY religion. My religion ends where his body begins. Just because I don’t obsess about cutting up the genitals of baby boys doesn’t mean I’m anti-Semetic…it means I have a problem with one tradition that some Jews practice. Not all Jews circumcise, so I’m not the only one who thinks this is pretty sick. Why do we call God perfect, and then cut up something he gave us to make us “better”? The Torah was written by mortal men, not God, so the Torah is not the true word of God, nor is circumcision mandatory, because it contradicts God’s other commandments, as well as Jewish morals. Jewish morality trumps written doctrine, and being Jewish, I often question the Torah, as it was changed over the course of several hundred years, and adapted by other Rabbi’s. Therefore, there’s no true way to prove one way or another that circumcision is mandatory or the true word of God. It’s impossible for anyone to prove that just by referencing the Torah, a book written by mortal men. And no, I didn’t have a swastika tattooed on my penile shaft. Thanks to the sick pedophile Rabbi that gave me my “covenant”, I contracted herpes after he went down on me, which is supposedly some other great Jewish tradition. My penile shaft is also scarred and bent…I was in the hospital for a week due to this great “coveanant”, and as a result I’ve needed several repair operations to fix skin bridges due to an improper circumcision. The Rabbi was a complete asshole when he did it, cut too much, and as a result, my sex life has been in shambles because the skin is so tight that I can’t maintain an erection. All this for a covenant with God I didn’t even want.

I confirm what I said before…this is sadomasochistic pedophilia at its worst, and it needs to stop.

They come on this site simply to harass. So as I say to aloch, grf, janice, xexon and other haters, we should simply ignore you so that you may go back to your circle jerk with other bigots.

I know of several pro-Palestinian lefties whose girlfriends say they have sexual problems. And you see this dysfunction projected into hate.

Poor MisterEquality can’t get it on with his boyfriends. Boohoo. And the resultant hatred of Jews, like his, is apparently “hard to come by.”

Bye, Bye bigot. But before the door of site slams you on your posterior, do have the cajones to not hide behind your screen moniker and tell us your real name so we might avoid any unintentional contact with you.

BTW, since you have herpes and are so obsessed with phalluses, may I suggest you study to be a herpetologist?...

Ah, I see, so if I don’t agree with your religious beliefs, I’m anti semetic and that gives you the right to attack my supposed sexuality.

Have fun being a sadomasochistic pedophile. I wouldn’t have had herpes if a fucking fag Rabbi hadn’t infected me. It’s times like this and people like you that make me think that maybe Hitler had the right idea…I’d much rather be dead, as well as the rest of my “people” if all my people do is OBSESS about cutting baby phalluses, and if that isn’t pedophilic, I don’t know what is. Who else cuts on a boy’s junk and then gives him a partial blowjob except a perverted Rabbi? Oh, I’m sorry “Monster Mohel”

My sex life has been destroyed and I’ve been infected with Herpes, and have had multiple other illnesses as a result, all because of some religious voo-doo fored upon me by sick pedophiles. Yep, Hitler DID have the right idea. Any group of people who prides itself in infant sexual torture, and then has people like you defending it under the guise of relifion needs to prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law.

And yes, this is coming from a Jew. You all sicken me. Funny how people say that female circumcision is done to reduce sexuality, and a Rabbi said on MSNBC just last month that the sole purpose of male circumcision is to control the “animalistic instincts”. If that’s not hypocricy, I don’t know what is!

So you can continue to call me anti-semetic or bash my sexuality, whatever you perceive it to be, but in the end, you’re still a sadomasochistic pedophile. You’re obsessed with cutting a baby’s penis and using some old book a pedophile wrote to justify it, that can’t even be proven, I’m supposedly “obsessed” with having them left alone the way your “God” made them…supposedly perfectly if it was in his own image.

And people like you call me crazy for wanting this banned…sick freaks.

And as you may be sure, the anti-Semitism of MisterEquality reflects the vast majority of those who are shilling for this sick initiative…

Go ahead and bash me. I’m Jewish you idiot. Keep using your red herring argument to promote an outdated form of sadomasochistic pedophilia. Go ahead and do the proverbial Jewish bitch when the argument doesn’t go your way.

You failed to read that because of this sick tradition, I now have herpes and have needed multiple corrective surgeries. Fuck you and this sick religion if all you want to do is promote harming others and destroying sex lives in the name of “God”. I’m glad I’m no longer associated with this perverted sick excuse of a “religion”. I always knew there was something wrong with Judaism, and why I always got a sick feeling whenever I tried to do anything Jewish, and it’s clear, most Jews, like Dan Spitzer, are sick pedophiles who obsess with cutting the genital of other people, and then saying “God said so! A book that other people wrote thousands of years told me so!”

Please see the following article from “Pediatrics,” the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2007), which discusses the proven medical benefits of circumcision

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/5/1006.full.pdf

The Ban Circumcision movement is not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but medically illiterate. It is a fringe group which has no credibility and which has no place in the public forums of legitimate society.

Again, anti circumcision is not anti-Semetic. It’s not the people we’re against, it’s the practice that they follow.

You’re basically complaining and calling people racist because they don’t believe the same things you do. You begin to lose credibility if the best you can come up with it “blatantly anti-Semetic and medically illiterate”

If you failed to read any of the real medical facts behind circumcision, you’ll find that none of the claimed benefits hold water when tested under scrutiny. All of these bogus claims have been brought up after the fact to try and keep the practice going to justify what you’re doing to your children and make yourselves feel better about it in the end. Circumcision has no place in modern medicine, when it was solely introduced to control sexuaiity and conformity, not for any health related concerns. These were only brought up when other people began to question the authenticity of circumcision.

Again, quit trying to pass your voo-doo pedophilia on the rest of society. It’s not working.

I would like to share my opinion, and I must say this is quite a sensitive issue if they’re going to involve the human right into the topic of circumcision. Babies, obviously, doesn’t have the reasoning skill to decide whatever is good for them yet nor have the ability to take care of themselves. Then, the discretion of taking care of them and making decision for them is in the parents, and their right for the child and authority over them is equally something that should not be removed. As for comparing it with the female circumcision, speaking of health-matters, the construction of the male and female genitalia is so different that the sanitation of the part also takes on the different approach. The difference is that females can do without circumcision because they are usually clean about themselves than males are (this coming from a guy who shared room with other guys in college), which tend to make guys more prone to irritation and infection. Females can do well without unnecessary pain, and that it shouldn’t be seen from guys as “unfair treatment”. On the other hand, should a person not decide to have circumcision that is not a problem at all, just that they should take extra measure to clean their private well to save themselves (and their partners) from health problems.

I’ve read some article regarding this issue (San Francisco to vote on circumcision issue) and I’m still confused as to why some group of people should force their belief or choice to the rest of the residents in San Francisco. I believe that in San Francisco, different religious group exist and they practice circumcision for variety of reasons. Some does it for sanitary reason, and that’s alright. Some does it for religious reasons, and that is definitely not something unreasonable, because it’s part of the tradition that they religiously follow both for their faith and being clean. Some prefer to do the circumcision during the child’s infant-hood so that they won’t remember or endure the pain in their adulthood and the healing capability is still good. Isn’t that also a sign of good-will of the parents towards the child? And if the law passed, wouldn’t the child born among family that exercise circumcision feel “removed” from his kin that he’s prevented by law to undergo the same religious experience as his family and relative had (At least, not until he’s 18 - when, in my opinion, it’s more inconvenient to undergo such procedure due to increased involvement with various societal activity)? If one person doesn’t support circumcision in infants, then it’s fine that they have such preference and do what they think is right when they become parent. But isn’t it inconsiderate to force that on other group of people with different ethnicity and religion? The ideology that they’re fighting for is making the ideology of another suffer, and that I think is unreasonable.