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Well, sure. It being around for a long time shows that it's not a novel practice with unknown consequences, and people being familiar with it means that it's pretty tough to convince people that it's somehow disastrous or monstrous when roughly half of them have a lifetime of experience to the contrary.
More generally, it seems obvious to me that this entire argument is yet another round of the usual Progressive word games. Circumcision is not an obscure practice, the outcomes are not in doubt, and those outcomes do not justify the histrionics activists inevitably deploy. Circumcised men get on just fine. If some think the practice harmed them, they are free to act differently with their own children, but there is no crisis here, and attempting to force the outcome you prefer will cause vast amounts of harm for very, very little benefit.
Our current experiment with prepubescent transition rather indicates otherwise; we've just in the last few years started letting parents put their children through incredibly invasive surgeries on the very slimmest of justifications, of a sort that would have been absolutely beyond the pale as recently as a decade ago. In any case, it seems to me that circumcision is considerably less harmful than losing a fingertip, and I think if people decided they needed to do weird ear stuff with their kids, we'd probably let them.
I disagree. Kids don't have a good understanding of the consequences either way; parents do, because in most cases they've lived with the consequences all their lives. More generally, I do not see why we should consider children free agents capable of making serious life decisions. Baring the small fraction committing severe abuse and neglect, there is not going to be anyone more committed to a child's welfare nor more invested in good outcomes for them than their parents. I absolutely do not trust teachers or other agents of the state to make better decisions for children than parents on net, and deeply resent their attempts to usurp parental powers while conspicuously neglecting the attendant responsibilities.
I am not arguing that it is disastrous. Clearly millions of men live fine lives despite being circumcised. However, it does seem monstrous to me, a totally unnecessary and creepy violation of infants' bodies.
I am not a progressive. I think that banning circumcision is something that people of all political stripes should be able to get behind. As for histrionics, I mean I think that some level of histrionics is justified by the fact that parts of babies' dicks are getting cut off for absolutely no reason other than that a bunch of people are too stupid to not cut parts of their babies' dicks off.
How would banning circumcision cause vast amounts of harm?
I would be as against parents non-consensually forcing kids to transition as I am against parents deciding to circumcise their kids. If you want to compare apples and apples, we should compare teenagers deciding to get circumcisions with teenagers deciding to get gender transition medical intervention, not compare infants being forcibly circumcised to teenagers deciding to get gender transition medical intervention.
We would not. Current social norms are that for a parent to cut part of his or her infant's ear off would be a very bad thing to do, something worth serious legal penalties. It would be very hard for me to imagine such norms changing any time soon.
I feel the same way, but none of that is any justification for letting parents cut parts of their kids' dicks off for absolutely no good reason.
I had it done to me, would rather it had not been done, and nonetheless do not consider it creepy or a violation of my body. What explains the difference in reactions, do you suppose?
Good. Stop talking like one, and stop thinking like one. Stop pretending that your idiosyncratic values are universal truths that need to be enforced by the power of the State, because you were able to draw a facile comparison between one thing and another thing and so apply a negative-affect label. Leave other people the fuck alone, and let them leave you alone, and pursue happiness as best you see fit in your own life.
If one parent did it, sure. If a whole bunch of parents started doing it, and "studies show...", they'd do as they pleased and everyone would smile and nod. The part you're missing here is that there is a fundamental difference between individual quirks and social norms. Circumcision is a social norm. Some weird bullshit someone makes up tomorrow is not a social norm. These two things get treated differently, because they are different. Social infrastructure is not in fact arbitrary, and pretending it is will only make you look foolish.
By removing one of the few remaining principles of tolerance we haven't yet managed to demolish, and establishing common knowledge that absolute political dominance is the only way to secure the future of one's tribe. Enforcing a circumcision ban on the Jewish community means telling them they don't get to be Jews anymore. If the government can pull that off, no one is safe. If no one is safe, the system you rely on for clean water and electricity will no longer function.
Every time I have this conversation, I find that my opposite seems to believe that Laws are magic, and that if they can just get their wishes codified, everyone else is forced to do things their way. The popularity of this view is both depressing and maddening. People obey the law because the alternatives are worse. If you make laws in a sufficiently unreasonable fashion, the alternatives no longer are worse, and people will avail themselves of them.
Americans do not share a common set of values. The only way we can survive sharing a country is by leaving each other the fuck alone, and even this requires a great deal of geographic segregation to be practical. The more the government's power is extended, the less the leaving each other alone works, and the more inevitable serious conflict becomes. It is already quite inevitable enough. There is no need to weld the accelerator to the firewall.
Religious belief is a good reason. Personal preference is a good reason. The harm is negligible, your personal disgust is not an argument to the contrary, and the second-order benefits are literally incalculable. You may not like circumcision, but you really, really, really will not like a no-holds-barred fight over the mechanisms of state power.
Oh come on. I just got told how evil and unprogressive it is to not leave other people alone, and let them pursue happiness as best as they see fit. Other than full anarchists, everyone puts some limits on other people pursuing happiness, hell even anarchists do when it infringes on the rights of others. If someone is actually making an argument for why a practice is wrong, you should address those arguments, not moralize about "pursuing happiness".
Yes, we impose some limits on the pursuit of happiness. Specifically, we impose a fairly specific and somewhat constrained set of limits, mostly based on long tradition. That is very different that imposing novel and arbitrary limits by fiat.
People generally obey the current laws. this does not imply that changing the laws to make some large percentage of them criminals if they do not drastically change their behavior will cause them to conform to the new laws. Instead, they will probably fight you. This might be worth it if the heretofore-tolerated behavior is as odious as chattel slavery, but to the extent that "odious" is a free-floating label subject to arbitrary manipulation, it is also an existential threat to anyone living in a values-diverse society.
I am not moralizing about "pursuing happiness". I am pointing out that adherence to the law is a peace treaty, and sufficiently arbitrary laws violate that treaty.
No persuasive argument for why the practice is wrong has been presented, only expressions of personal disgust. The case for serious harm is a non-starter, when so many men who have in fact been circumcised do not perceive themselves to be seriously harmed by the practice. The best argument is that children can't consent, but our system is not built on the presumption that newborns get a say in anything, to the point that we not only flirt but aggressively hands-under-clothes make out with the idea of literal infanticide. It is the norm that parents make decisions for their children, and while there are some exceptions to that norm in the case of egregious mistreatment, expanding those exceptions arbitrarily destroys the norm and everything it supports. And as it turns out, the norm supports an awful lot, because while Orthodox Jews aren't a massive section of the population, Christians are, and we are under no illusions that our own practices will not be next in line for prohibition at gunpoint.
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