Post a controversial opinion

having 4skin is 2 cool

Prince tracks that should have stayed in the vault

take a trip to south america and talk to the catholics there

wtf...

Mr Infinity, are you possibly using 'christian orthodox' to mean something different than 'orthodox christian' and why on earth would you do that...

― Frederik B, Monday, June 5, 2017 9:48 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh in the usa, most boys are circumcised, there are quite a few orthodox christians in the usa who are fine with and practice it...sorry if this breaks yours and others' euro-centric vision of the world

randomly googled this which is one greek orthodox church that speaks positively about it: http://www.stgeorgegoc.org/pastors-corner/fr-ricks-sermons/meaning-of-circumcision

i mean i can tell you about my catholic upbringing, some of my family members' rank in their parish, or about my devout mother and her education, but really this does little to convince someone who only believes people practice a religion based on a doctrine written in a book

it's far more than just rules in a book or an encyclopaedia entry

my uncle does a lot of missionary work and spent most of his time in south america btw

take a trip to south america and talk to the catholics there

no it's pretty rare here, circ was mostly done for medical issues later in life but there are non-invasive ways to treat phimosis etc now so it's even rarer. I've seen & been w/ lots of south american dick in my time so trust

O and to be off-topically uncontroversial: the circumcision of newborn males is not even remotely comparable to female genital mutilation. Not morally comparable, not societally comparable, and (except for a few relatively rare cases) not medically comparable.

It's like that thing where "a man fears that a woman may laugh at him; a woman fears that a man might kill her." Yes, they're both afraid, but the two fears are not equal in severity or scope.

A normal middle-aged American man who was circumcised at birth in a hospital, but who has gone on to have a healthy and active sex life, may occasionally wonder about what things would be like had he not been circumcised. It is not part of a system of oppression against his personal autonomy or his right to sexual expression.

Been a while since we've seen that one wheeled out

take a trip to south america and talk to the catholics there

no it's pretty rare here, circ was mostly done for medical issues later in life but there are non-invasive ways to treat phimosis etc now so it's even rarer. I've seen & been w/ lots of south american dick in my time so trust

― epigone, Monday, June 5, 2017 10:24 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, it's generally only done for medical reasons in chile afaik?

Observation suggests that every possible opinion about circumcision is controversial.

xxxp

never said it was the majority, but it is still a lot:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuncisi%C3%B3n#Distribuci.C3.B3n_geogr.C3.A1fica

7,4 % en Brasil,3 6,9 % en Colombia, entre el 10 % y el 31 % en México

http://larepublica.pe/12-11-2014/mitos-y-beneficios-de-la-circuncision

Se calcula que en la población masculina adulta 3 de cada 10 son circuncidados”, explica el médico urólogo del Centro de Litotricia, Jorge Álvarez.

My indifference to James Corden looks tame now.

lol

A man who as far as we can tell consists mainly of foreskin tbf

randomly googled this which is one greek orthodox church that speaks positively about it: http://www.stgeorgegoc.org/pastors-corner/fr-ricks-sermons/meaning-of-circumcision

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Monday, June 5, 2017

Because a Greek Orthodox church in Chicago is representative of practices in, say, Serbia? You'll need to find a non-American example that's more than just an outlier.

Anyhow, in my native language I found nothing of the sort.

huh? i never said it was representative of serbia or europe

i'm in the usa dude

the red white and blue

I think rescinding someone's acceptance to college over what they posted in a PRIVATE facebook group is gross and chilling, but I'm sure many people here will be all too happy to tell me why it's a Very Good Thing.

i think that's an uncontroversial opinion

hmm I guess I'm hanging around the wrong corners of the internet then because most of what I've seen has been very laudatory of Harvard's decision.

i'm actually fine with it. i havent read about the case you're referring to, but i bet this kid painted a very different picture of himself in his application essay. not a freedom of speech issue

no, it's not a freedom of speech issue, no one is entitled to admittance to Harvard. that doesn't mean it can't still be gross.

I envision a lovecraftian leviathan of foreskins that have united like voltron to claim revenge on the cutters

It is an outstanding thing.

Harvard is a private institution that tells propsective freshman that their acceptance is conditional upon their subsequent behavior in their acceptance letters. Everyone who actually reads the letter knows that they need to behave or else they could put their admission in jeopardy. Furthermore, these kids were in a private group with a whole bunch of people that they didn't actually know, intentionally and purposefully associating their real names with reprehensible shit as a first impression to their classmates. It's not like a subset of them got together and only passed super gross stuff around among themselves; they had to show their asses to the wider audience first, which is how the school found out about it in the first place. This is also the type of thing that would get a current student brought in front of the Administrative Board for breach of student conduct and likely made to take a year sabbatical before they could finish their degrees (the schools, both undergrad and graduate, are very loathe to kick students out once they've started studies, which is why they tried to handle so many date rape situations internally and got into trouble with Title IX violations). Finally, anyone who is dumb enough to actually participate in this type of thing, particularly associated with their real names, as a first impression to the community where they intend to spend the next four years, is actually too stupid to be at Harvard.

yeah, fuck racists imo, DJP otm

Like, do you think these kids would have been offered admission had they walked into their interviews namechecking sexually explicit material and making pinata jokes about beating Mexican children? They absolutely would not. Basically, these kids helped out some waitlisters and hopefully will reflect on the consequences associated with their actions as they get their degrees at Penn.

is there anything in the harvard crimson rule book about cancelling your degree if you declared war on a country?

I think rescinding someone's acceptance to college over what they posted in a PRIVATE facebook group is gross and chilling, but I'm sure many people here will be all too happy to tell me why it's a Very Good Thing.

― evol j, Monday, June 5, 2017 2:12 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark

there's no such thing as privacy on Facebook

as they get their degrees at Penn.

stone cold

yeah solid subtweet

there's no such thing as privacy on the internet in general IMO

there's no such thing as privacy on Facebook

― 龜, Monday, June 5, 2017 6:25 PM (three minutes ago)

it is kind of amazing how many ppl do not grasp this, the thing is called "social media" ffs

This is also the type of thing that would get a current student brought in front of the Administrative Board for breach of student conduct and likely made to take a year sabbatical before they could finish their degrees

I find this very hard to believe, given that the student who hung a Confederate flag out her dorm room window wasn't disciplined in any way.

And yeah, I am basically against this move, because I think 17-year-olds, even Harvard-bound 17-year-olds, are idiotic in predictable ways, and yes I am more willing to give them a pass than I am some middle-aged clown who makes a surgeon's salary trolling liberals and weeping about the silencing of his views

I mean I haven't seen what they posted and don't want to, but based on my college experience there are hundreds of incoming first-years whose earnestly expressed political views are way more morally degraded than anything in those memes

i'm sure they'll spend daddy's money on a fine degree elsewhere

xp rivers cuomo for example

you sure, eephus?

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

I'm all for the action taken but I'm also never for judging a meme by the newspaper description

the sheer breadth of shit that was mentioned as subject matter for these memes gives the impression this was a collection of people with transgressive senses of humor, unless you want to believe they were all racist, anti-Semitic child molesting rapists.

I find this very hard to believe, given that the student who hung a Confederate flag out her dorm room window wasn't disciplined in any way.

Which one? There have been several.

"Likely" is overstatement, though; the point I meant to make was that punishment to actual students is possible and that once they'd begun taking classes, you almost literally have to murder someone or steal from cancer-ridden children before the school will cut ties with you (note: these are not hypothetical situations, but actual things that happened while I was an undergrad).

"transgressive" sense of humor means dead baby jokes. i think this goes beyond that.

I definitely knew first-years in college whose political views disturbed me much more than if they'd cracked wise about the Holocaust or pedophilia.

I mean, I have a transgressive sense of humor. I always have, including when I was an undergrad. If I had witnessed this shit as a propsective freshman, my response would have been "fuck these kids" and, if the school didn't consider that a breach of conduct worthy of rescinding the offer of matriculation, I don't know if I would have gone. Neither, based on the reaction I got from my wider college social circle, would literally ANY of the other people I met while I was there.

Which brings me back to my original point; if these kids were too dumb to realize that doing this shit on a Facebook group in front of a bunch of their peers whom they didn't actually know was a terrible idea, they are too dumb to be at Harvard.

bet some real unsavory characters make it to the U of Phoenix boards. suppose it's ok if Harvard wants to use a finer comb.

I wonder if someone saw one of these memes and was genuinely offended (which would be shitty, the one aspect of this story that nags is that it seems kids had to post an offensive meme to the larger group to prove their worthiness to join the offensive memes group, and really no one who didn't sign up for that shit should have to have it shoved in their face) or it it was some white kid being a damn snitch.

lmfao

Are you really intending to argue here that a white person couldn't be genuinely offended by this behavior or that the critical detail that makes this entire scenario actionable can be handwaved as an inconvenient detail to the chilling effect this has on people's abilities to just be their shitty selves without repercussion?

lol

I know this is the controversial opinion thread and all but

DJP, I meant Bridget Kerrigan and for all I know maybe you get in trouble for that now, but not then.

The guy who stole from kids with cancer is still an alum in good standing!

the only criticism i can muster is that it was borne of some overly persnickety sense of what a "harvard man" (adjust gender as needed) is supposed to be, even though people who hold similarly vicious ideas are for sure getting in, and in fact teaching there.

three cheers for the little shitbags being exposed, that's great.

Your president is literally stealing from kids with cancer tbf

christ, i didn't mean that was the determining factor of whether this was a justifiable decision or not, just curious because that's not the kind of detail that's ever going to be in the story.