> I've also saw more than one person disown their parents after being sucked in to the anticircumcision movement - men who had until that moment seemingly normal lives but were then convinced their sex lives would never reach their potential because of a decision their parents had made....
That's a really good point. Before the internet, and especially social media, people had weird and arguable toxic ideas, but it was almost always impossible to form a geographically-based community around them, so they'd almost always peter out and their effect was limited. The internet broke geographical limits, allowing intense purely ideological communities to form around almost every idea and validate them, no matter how wrong and misguided. In our very online times that can have serious social consequences, sometimes for good but often for ill.
This is one of those things that is specific to the Jewish religion, in which it serves as an irreversible symbol of membership and has done for about three thousand years ... and also a subset of Americans, who do it for reasons which they suddenly find difficult to explain to their adult children.
If it's important for adult life, but not actually urgent, leave it until the child is old enough to be asked for their meaningful consent.
I think you're underestimating just how many American men are circumcised. The WHO puts it at between 76 and 92%.
Did it take a lot of sucking into considering that they've been subjected to genital mutilation?
Anyway, it was an example I saw, I had intended to remain neutral on the subject.
How about undergoing a non-essential and medically unnecessary surgery without your consent? Doesn't that bother you at least a little bit?
I was baptised as an infant and most of the people I know were as well, but I recognize it for what it is - roping me into a membership in an organisation which requires me to jump through many hoops to leave, because it needs the numbers (at least on paper) to maintain power.
Fortunately this is reversible, but circumcision isn't.
Nope. My parents were 20 and 21. Family, their Priest and Doctor all pushed them to do it. I have no recollection of any of this. My dick looks like most of the dicks I've seen in the change room and in porn. Why would this bother me? It's so abstract as to be ludicrous.
All sorts of things were done without my consent that have had a much larger impact in my happiness and well being: being raised Catholic for instance, something you brush off as "reversible".
You can't really know how bad it was if you were too young to remember and can never have any bearings. The only way we can really know is from empirical analysis or people that went through it at an older age.
I'm one of those people that people just feel comfortable opening up to.
In college, one friend told me his dad was asking him if he resented his father's decision to circumcise him. His father had to get a medical circumcision due to recurring infection due to difficult sanitary conditions in mandatory military service in his country of origin (where circumcision is uncommon). The father's experience was terrible, decided his son should never go through that, and circumcised his son. Years later, he was second-guessing the decision. My friend wasn't sure how to respond to his father, since it was clearly weighing heavily on his father, but it was totally a non-issue for the circumcised son.
Another friend told me that he was circumcised at 12 due to recurring infections (in a first-world G10 country), and is a big advocate for infant male circumcision.
Anyway, there are statistically significant benefits from male circumcision, though they are often over stated. On the other hand, the downsides to circumcision are also minor for most men. For the average male in a G10 nation, circumcision seems to be low-risk low-reward procedure, though with large fat-tail distribution on both the risks and rewards.
It's fine to disagree with decisions someone (shouldn't have) made on your behalf, but learning to judge people by intent, not result, is part of adulthood.
Punishing someone who loves you for doing the best they knew to do is one of the most cruel things I can imagine.
In other words, disliking someone for something they did to you does not automatically mean they deserve punishment and you should hurt them return. Especially since causing harm to a loved one also already hurts oneself.
They have choice of being estraged and happier, under less stress and less pressure. Or keep contact and have to deal with manipulation, stress and so on.
Finally, adulthood also means that you know that not just intent matter. The people are affected by consequences of your actions regardless if intent. Too many people write about this as if once you have good goal, you dont have to learn more or think what you are doing. As long as you dont care to check whether you might cause harm, you dont get any responsibility dor what you do.
If someone tells you that everybody around them is always lying they are usually the liar. The same way some people who can't seem to work anywhere without having constant drama are the source of the conflict.
You are not doing your sons any favors if you circumcise them when it's not necessary.
It remains genital mutilation though.
The apple never falls far from the tree.
I've also saw more than one person disown their parents after being sucked in to the anticircumcision movement - men who had until that moment seemingly normal lives but were then convinced their sex lives would never reach their potential because of a decision their parents had made.