queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2001-12-02 02:57 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2001-12-02 02:57 pm
Circumcision, Continued
I find that many circumcised males have a tendency to get huffy when anyone speaks out against the institution of routine nonconsensual unanaesthetised circumcision, feeling that their own dicks are being judged inferior. Considering the fact that most anti-circumcision websites speak of circumcision with words like "male genital mutilation," I do think this reaction is understandable so I wish to address it here.
I do not think it is polite or healthy or civilized to try to convince someone who is happy with their genital configuration that they should start viewing themselves as "mutilated." Just as I would not try to tell a happy post-op MTF transsexual that she had "mutilated" herself, so also I would not try to tell a happy circumcised male that he had been "mutilated." The word "mutilated" is an aesthetic judgment which cannot be objectively justified. Objectively speaking, we can say that a body modification has taken place, and we can say whether it took place with or without consent. But we cannot judge, objectively speaking, whether that body modification is aesthetically pleasing or not, "mutilation" or "art" (and yes, even art can be unwanted, painted upon someone who did not consent to be a canvas for it). And it does not make good sense to me for a movement supposedly aimed at "helping" the victims of forced circumcision to promote derogatory aesthetic judgments about the victims of such violence.
So it was not by accident that in my last post I used the phrase "sexual assault" rather than "mutilation." A person who has been sexually assaulted does not become an inherently uglier, less attractive person for having been assaulted. They are not doomed to live a "mutilated" life of inferiority and incompleteness. They are simply a person who has had something done to them without their consent, and when I speak out to say that they should have been asked for consent, that does not imply that they are now ugly because they were not asked. I have a much deeper and more complex sense of aesthetics than that. Often it is precisely though surviving victimization that people become most beautiful.
I do not think it is polite or healthy or civilized to try to convince someone who is happy with their genital configuration that they should start viewing themselves as "mutilated." Just as I would not try to tell a happy post-op MTF transsexual that she had "mutilated" herself, so also I would not try to tell a happy circumcised male that he had been "mutilated." The word "mutilated" is an aesthetic judgment which cannot be objectively justified. Objectively speaking, we can say that a body modification has taken place, and we can say whether it took place with or without consent. But we cannot judge, objectively speaking, whether that body modification is aesthetically pleasing or not, "mutilation" or "art" (and yes, even art can be unwanted, painted upon someone who did not consent to be a canvas for it). And it does not make good sense to me for a movement supposedly aimed at "helping" the victims of forced circumcision to promote derogatory aesthetic judgments about the victims of such violence.
So it was not by accident that in my last post I used the phrase "sexual assault" rather than "mutilation." A person who has been sexually assaulted does not become an inherently uglier, less attractive person for having been assaulted. They are not doomed to live a "mutilated" life of inferiority and incompleteness. They are simply a person who has had something done to them without their consent, and when I speak out to say that they should have been asked for consent, that does not imply that they are now ugly because they were not asked. I have a much deeper and more complex sense of aesthetics than that. Often it is precisely though surviving victimization that people become most beautiful.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2001-12-04 12:20 am (UTC)(link)Certainly not. But you do not offer it as a compromise, only as a (false) example of how unreasonable I am being. I would strongly prefer that the procedure only be practiced under anesthesia. Further, I don't think it should be done for religious purposes outside a setting where medical care is immediately available -- that's a terrible accident waiting to happen.
Anyway, that's a distraction from the other legitimate questions, such as the question of consent. Which, I reiterate, is irrelevant. By the time a male is old enough to consent to be circumcised, he is old enough for the loss of sensitivity to be permanent -- and the decision has, again, been made for him. You merely argue that the decision should always be against circumcision rather than for. And even though you have a principle at stake, that you categorically refuse to modify your own body, someone else's worldview can easily be such that circumcision is preferable. I'm living proof of that.
On the question of trauma...everything is traumatic to children, particularly medical procedures. No one has wondered whether we ought not give children innoculations, even though they are clearly very painful and can cause swelling and sometimes dangerous reactions. In the end, I don't think it matters in the slightest whether infants undergo one more procedure like that. (And if anesthesia were used as it should be, the trauma objection would have no weight at all.)
I think we're beginning to repeat ourselves.
-Mike