My future after high school

[Ben15aussie]

So I just wanted to share that I'm feeling that when I eventually finish school and go to Uni I want to do a LLB (bachelor of laws and legal practice) and become a new generation lawyer specialising in reform and campaign and representation for two key areas: the youth INjustice system - which demeans and infantilizes natural young adults like me by misrepresenting us, absurdly, outrageously, offensively, completely arbitrarily, and falsely - as children, which we in NO way are (this is an even more outrageous injustice than circumcision, as it is an assault on an individual's very identity, and every individual has the right to be recognised in and by society in true and just terms, and not misrepresented by absurd, deranged, draconian, derogatory, demeaning, completely arbitrary, and just plain false condescending ageism and infantilisation; and in medical representation - this issue - fitting into broader medical malpractise, botched surgeries, and this crucial area of genital integrity. I feel there is a lot of opportunity for reform and progress in how genital integrity is recognised, treated and legislated for in the future. And it's not going to be achieved by the candle bearers of yesteryear. We need new generation lawyers to move society forward and I'm going to be one of them.

[Going Hooded]

Good for you. This is admirable.

[Ben15aussie]

Thanks, Going Hooded ☺️
So many laws read like they were make-work exercises on a Sunday afternoon in a 19th century lunatic asylum. The 21st century must be a time of drastic correction to our societies on multiple topics on multiple levels. Ben.

[greg_b]

Wonderful goal, hope you can do it.

You might find this organization interesting: Home - Attorneys for the Rights of the Child | ARC Law

Also this: Doctors Opposing Circumcision | Facts About Circumcision

And: "Is Circumcision Legal?" by Peter W, Adler (richmond.edu)

Cheers!

[Ben15aussie]

Thanks! 👍

[Going Hooded]

Wonderful goal, hope you can do it.

You might find this organization interesting: Home - Attorneys for the Rights of the Child | ARC Law

Also this: Doctors Opposing Circumcision | Facts About Circumcision

And: "Is Circumcision Legal?" by Peter W, Adler (richmond.edu)

Cheers!

I'd love to support Doctors Opposing Circumcision.

[SylLec]

One of the skills is certainly to have a facility to express yourself well and to argue, which you seem to have. It is to your credit that you have such ambition. We can only encourage you to reach your dream.

[Ben15aussie]

Thanks SyILec ☺️😃
I'm practicing writing all the time as I have been very active in my debating club last year and will be this year again. Critical thinking, writing arguments, and public speaking including speeches are all things I am practicing strongly and will for the rest of 3 years in senior school. As you mentioned, it's all skills I need to do a LLB and subsequently enter campaign circles and potentially make a progressive political run one day. In our system here, the greatest legal impact for change is actioned at the ministerial level. I believe circumcision should be illegal, and while campaign groups are crucial to the message, we need the right people in positions of actionable power to materialise these ideologies into practise. I believe that, one day, I could be a competent office holder, and when I am, I will remember the issues that brought me there and why I am there. Ben.

[tuguser]

Ben,
I commend your willfulness and your lofty goals. We definitely need fresh new blood to carry the torch into the 21st century and beyond. In relation to some of your points, I’d read that when the law was passed in the U.S. congress disallowing all female genital mutilation for newborns, that the original ‘bill’ had also included male infants. However, due to the fact that…
1) we have freedom of religious expression in America and
2) our diverse electorate includes many many people from the two main abrahamic religions (Judaism and Islam) which practice genital cutting as part of their religious rite, I doubt there will ever be a federal law forbidding these heinous and brutal practices from being routinely performed. It’s the main reason that the bill could not pass into law until after the bill’s authors removed male infants from it’s wording.

Perhaps the best I can hope for is that with each succeeding generation of other religious practitioners as well as our secular communities, this practice will simply fall out of fashion. Especially as I’ve been reading about a new Jewish practice called ‘Brit Shalom’, where the ceremonial rituals are performed sans circumcision. Good luck to you. KOT!

[Ben15aussie]

Dear Tuguser,
Thanks for your kind words. Thanks also for the interesting analysis of the American situation. If I end up holding office later in life then strengthening the bond and links between our nations would be another of my priorities. In fact I'd like to host an ongoing, large, rotating consignment of American troops in our Northern Territory for ongoing joint mutual training operations and strategic advantages, including continuing the strategic geographic location we can offer America for intelligence operations. I also believe that with China's rising interest in the Pacific, that having say 100,000 American troops operating out of our Northern Territory on rotation would be a great thing for both of us. We have the location but don't have the military strength. You have the military strength and our location is advantageous. Come on over. There should be no concern to hosting long standing friends.
In your constitution, is there a specific entry that deals with freedom and liberty regarding the body? Circumcision would obviously be a violation of it if there was, as the implication of such a thing would be liberty from unnecessary bodily modification with such rights being acquired upon birth. But also as you say, the freedom of religious "expression"...but this is still sidelining the individual's rights in favour of the claimed rights of other individuals to inflict a religious practise on a baby who has no knowledge of that religion. So I'd say that that entry into the constitution can easily become unethical and it is the rights of the individual which must take priority in your system, not the rights of others to inflict their cultural bias onto an innocent newborn.

[Ben15aussie]

Isn't it in the American Constitution that "all men are born free"? Where "men" means people in general and "free" was, I'm taking, in reference to slavery? Or was the abolishment of slavery long after the constitutions inception and "free" was in reference to the outcome of the War of Independence?
In any case, the notion of the individual being free should be recognised to include bodily integrity, and the freedoms should be based on the notion that such freedoms extend only to the point where others are not negatively impacted, for instance the right to religious expression should include the right to practise such culture oneself, but ones freedom should never remove a freedom of another, ie infant circumcision. Such a contradiction implodes on itself and defeats the very point of individual liberty.

[tuguser]

…there in lies the dilemma. The U.S. system of government is specifically designed to take incremental steps to change (if that should even occur or even be on the ballot) There are many personal rights in The Bill of Rights document. However, nothing in it pertains to bodily/ genital integrity. When the founding fathers wrote the document, practically no one in America was circumcised., so no one even thought of a need to protect such a thing.

The challenge that is faced now is that some of our Supreme Court justices, whose job it is to interpret the constitution…differ in their approach. Some justices are traditionalists who believe the document is unchanging as though written in stone and therefore to be interpreted as it was when presented more than two centuries ago. While other more progressive justices who see the document as almost a living breathing constitution, capable of growing, changing with the times and evolving.

[tuguser]

Right on…
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘we hold these truths as self evident, that ALL men are created equal…’, as brilliant a mind as he possessed, he was also woefully blind to the plight of his enslaved African Americans which he kept in perpetual bondage. He was almost certainly a deeply flawed man. Those lofty words written in the Declaration of Independence did not pertain to them, he was speaking strictly about himself and other white, land owning men of the gentry class.

[Ben15aussie]

In the parallel universe where I was born in America, that Ben would have eyes on the presidency in 20 years 😂

[Ben15aussie]

Another of my observations is that the oath of office is too restrictive, and extinguishes any attempt for progressive correction of holes and injustices. Being sworn in to "preserve, protect, defend the Constitution" implies that no work can be done on it to advance it; and anyone campaigning to do so would be absurdly and falsely labelled "unpatriotic" by conservatives and generally rendered un-electable. Every society picks its sacred cows, but what is the point of government if there can be no rational advancement to systems to extend the cast of the actual protection of individual liberty? (Rhetorical question there). I believe including in your constitution explicitly the right to bodily integrity would advance...how do they say it ..."a more perfect union".