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Notes -
Let's talk about infant male circumcision. Common in the United States, considered beastly in most European countries. But they don't spend much time criticizing the United States about it, perhaps due to fear of being called anti-semitic.
Reasons not to do it:
The foreskin has functions
Bad for the infant's brain due to inadequate aenesthesia
Complications ranging from meatal stenosis to more grisly and life-changing outcomes
Etc etc
Anyway, besides just introducing a topic I believe is underdiscussed both on the Motte and in general, my questions are this:
How do you rate the importance of this issue relative to commonly discussed culture war stuff? If it is true that circumcision is a serious violation akin to rape, then it seems very very important.
and
Does anyone on this board support routine infant circumcision, or is this thread just going to be full of a lot of devil's advocate stuff?
I am strongly opposed to all cosmetic surgical alterations of a child's genitalia. At least with gender reassignment surgery there's an argument to be made that by modifying a teenager's genitalia you're alleviating their emotional distress. We can debate the efficacy of the method for attenuating distress until the cows come home, but at least the method itself is actually defended on utilitarian grounds.
The same cannot be said of circumcision (male or female), which is justified on the basis of tradition and religious ritual alone. (Or occasionally with the explicit aim of attenuating sexual sensitivity and thereby reducing an individual's quality of life).
The same can, and often is, said of circumcision though: if circumcision is traditional in your culture, then not getting circumcised will make you different. Being different often causes emotional distress, both due to internal feelings of not fitting in and external harassment.
This is something that puzzles me. My uncut friends never expressed that they felt any angst or emotional distress about being uncircumcised growing up. One of them even went to a school district where a lot of the student body was Jewish, and he was never harassed about the state of his genitalia. All of them had healthy dating lives and most are now married with the intention of keeping their kids uncut. At my school I also remember this being a non-issue. No one's really scrutinizing dicks in the locker room.
Is it really so common for people to be harassed over whether or not they're circumcised?
Between feelings of not fitting in and harassment, I'd personally say the former is more common. On the harassment front, the majority of the women I've had sexual experiences with commented negatively on the fact that I was uncut, viewing it as unclean. On the not fitting in front, the biggest challenge isn't so much the circumcision itself as the cognitive dissonance with other issues. For instance, seeing friends take seriously feminist arguments that men expressing preferences for shaved genital hair is wrong while knowing they see no issue with women expressing preferences for circumcised penises.
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What about penis inspection days?
Speak plainly and with effort, please.
It's a joke/meme.
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