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Notes -
At a Q&A I asked Scott Alexander if he was going to circumcise his kid and said he was in favor of it and his wife was against it. I'll be honest, I'm kind of shaken. I'm sometimes able to argue persuasively against male genital mutilation, but I wasn't on that day. I sort of made a fool of myself, I guess. It's a painful subject for me.
It's also just kind of shocking and dismaying, because I think that noticing that male genital mutilation is bad is something almost anyone with basic rationality skills should probably be able to notice, and he didn't. Now I want to ask Yudkowsky. I'll choose my words more carefully.
He mentioned the adversarial collaboration on SSC on the subject, which to me had a lot of obvious holes and flaws in it.
Purposes of the foreskin:
Prevents the covered skin from contacting clothing. Clothing contact desensitizes the penis through a process called keratinization. If you're circumcised, you'll notice that the circumcision scar and the places below the scar are what's sensitive, and everything above that isn't very sensitive. That's not normal.
The foreskin has densely packed nerve endings.
The foreskin provides lubrication, both through natural lubricant and through a gliding motion.
Protective against health conditions including meatal stenosis.
I can also rebut the purported positive outcomes of circumcision, and talk about the risks of the procedure. I have videos of men with botched circumcisions talking about their suffering.
I don't really want to get into a debate about circumcision here. I just wanted to provide an example of what someone arguing the point looks like.
My question is this: Is anyone else shocked/saddened that Scott is pro-cutting?
Kinda surprised, in that it's highly irrational to cut an infant boy. Kinda unsurprised, certainly not shocked, because Scott's been on a Tradition turn lately where it fits right in.
And anyway, penises just seem to be one of those inconsistent things for a lot of people. Not to get all CW in WW, but my wife and I were listening to the newest Meg hit in the car, and the chorus is all about a guy having "Big Dick Energy," and I laughed that small dicked guys need their own Meghan Trainor in pop music. And she said "Well it's not about the dick it's about the personality." Which is like, even more offensive, you end up saying that their body is defective and as a result so is their brain! Imagine the tweets about a modern top-40 song with a guy saying he wanted a girl with a "skinny personality" as opposed to a "fat personality!"
At least that's a controllable trait. I can imagine what "fit girl energy" might mean when applied to a girl that's kinda chunky. Isn't the appropriate analog "big tit energy"?
There is no analogue, because generally men describe ugly women as having good friendly open personalities, and thin women as having relatively arrogant personalities. A guy might reasonably be said to want a thin girl with a fat girl's personality: a hot girl who eats whatever she wants and isn't stuck up or chilly. From La Boheme
While it's nonsensical to say a girl wants a tall man with "Short man syndrome," or a guy with a big dick who is yet still "is compensating for something."
The conventions are just all out of balance. Much as I recall Elliot Engel pointing out in a lecture that the worst thing (outside slang) you can call a woman acting like a man is Masculine (which has no negative connotations) while the worst thing you can call a man (outside slang) that is acting like a woman is effeminate (which has no positive connotations).
What makes you say this? Sounds more like a media trope than anything else, especially when attractive women benefit from the halo effect.
Yes, I'm talking about media/linguistic tropes and connotations. Shallow Hal doesn't really get gender-flipped, the closest I can think of is probably that one episode of Sex and the City. Or think of a stand up comedian, like your generic mainstream dirty comic, a Dane Cook and an Ali Wong, saying the same thing but gender-flipped. It doesn't land.
It's relationship to reality is secondary, it's still relevant what the media is saying, in the same way it is relevant that the media will say "LOL straight white men are the worst!" even though various metrics will tell us straight white men don't face problems in real life.
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