Episode 168: Just the Tip of the Circumcision Debate
Episode 168: Just the Tip of the Circumcision Debate
It's a big one.
Hold onto your hat (if you still have it) because this week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss the science and religion of circumcision. Then, a fight within the intactivist movement leads to accusations of bigotry. Finally: Should Jesse grow his foreskin back? You decide.
Ryan Fan: No, Corn Flakes Were Not Invented to Stop Masturbation
From Ritual to Science: The Medical Transformation of Circumcision in American
American Pediatric Association: Circumcision Policy Statement
Study on circumcision and HIV transmission in Africa
Brian Earp: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
CDC: Trends in Circumcision for Male Newborns in U.S. Hospitals: 1979–2010
https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/safe-bris.page
John Colapinto: “The True Story of John/Joan”
Alex Bryne: The Origin of “Gender Identity”
Mother Jones: Holy Scalpels, Foreskin Man!
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon: Interview With the Creator of Foreskin Man
Harvard Crimson: Harvard ‘Reviewing’ Employee’s Nude, Anti-Semitic Rant in Sanders Theatre
Cut: Slicing Through the Myths about Circumcision
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon: On The Impermissibility of Infant Male Circumcision
Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon: How to Deradicalize a Movement
Beyond the Bris: Standing Against Anti-Semitism
Brendon Marotta: The Path to Childrens’ Justice
Brendon Marotta: Bruchim's Founders Have Been Engaged In A Slander Campaign Against Me
Episode 168: Just the Tip of the Circumcision Debate
Why is it so hard for Jesse to understand that it would suck to have somebody waltz into your store in masks and steal shit, knowing you are completely powerless to stop it? YOU JUST GOT ROBBED. That’s gonna make you feel crappy, ripped off, dehumanized, unsafe.
Yeah, it’s not “your” stuff, it doesn’t come out of your paycheck, but it’s a place where you spend a huge chunk of your waking hours. Even if the job sucks, it feeds your family. You’re probably at least sort of friends with your coworkers, and maybe some of your regulars. And a gang of assholes just showed up and showed they have less than zero respect for you. I’m an antisocial cynic but even I am not so feeling-less as to just shrug my shoulders and let that pass.
If somebody came into your office and took a huge dump on the carpet, you wouldn’t care at all unless you were the janitor?
(None of this is meant to say that retail workers should be OBLIGATED to defend store property. But if they have the feeling that they should, I totally understand that)
Circumcision is such an insanely inflamed topic in moms-of-baby-boys circles that, as someone who neither buys the medical arguments for circumcision nor thinks that circumcising infant boys is a terrible ethical breach, I've spent years trying to avoid the topic online. So I thoroughly enjoyed this episode's deep dive into Internet Bullshit: The Circumcision Edition. Great research and presentation, Jesse. And this was probably Katie's funniest sign-off ever.
When I was still hospitalized after the birth of my baby boy, my Southern mom asked me if I was going to have him circumcised. (Circumcision was nearly universal among white Southerners when I was growing up, I'd guess for reasons that started with 19th-century beliefs about hygiene and turned into a "Let the boy look like his father" tradition over time.) I said no, I wasn't, and she said, "You know he'll always have terrible recurrent infections until you circumcise him." I wanted to ask her if she thought that ~70% of the world's men and boys were going around getting recurrent penile infections all the time, but I chickened out and just said, "My baby, my decision."
Fast-forward a few weeks to my attempt to meet other moms at the local La Leche League meeting in my lefty town. Somebody asked if I'd had my baby circumcised, congratulated me for not having done it, and added, "Men who don't have foreskins lose sensitivity and thrust more violently during sex." I guess I could have asked her if she thought ~30% of the world's men were going around having violent sex all the time, but I chickened out and got the hell out of there.
Thank goodness my kids are older and I can now talk to the other parents about uncontroversial issues like sex ed and gender identity.