- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
The case against circumcising infant males is solid and doesn't need to be repeated in depth. Short version is that yes, it inevitably leads to less sensitivity, it is inherently risky with numerous botched circumcisions every year and other downsides occur as well. The medical "benefits" range from the dubious to the downright mythical. Usually including the bizarre myth amongst circumcised men that it's hard or unusual to wash an uncircumcised dick. Which makes about as much sense for most men as saying if you don't cut off your ears you can't wash behind them.
We can go into the arguments for and against circumcision and probably will but really the whole thing is a diversion given that any male can choose to have it done as an adult if they wish, so not doing so as an infant is in no way preventing a man from being circumcised. It is only ensuring that the man has a choice. And given that barring some medical necessity or mental illness pretty much no adult male decides "yeah, I want to lose my foreskin" that's an incredibly strong reason to show that people would choose otherwise given the chance.
However, I see two barriers to stopping circumcision. One is a social one - young guys are often pretty defensive about their one-eyed trouser snake and don't like to be told or to feel that there's something wrong with it. Hence counter-narratives or even bizarre boasts like a dude I heard claiming that he could last longer because his penis felt less. Thats... not a boast, it's called self-control (or being over 25). That's a social barrier but something which isn't but which props up that social barrier is the second one - profit. It's worth an absolute fortune and so there are wealthy parties with strong incentive to cast it as a positive thing and encourage parents to circumcise their infant.
I think if circumcision can be devalued in the public mind - which it should be as the facts are on the side to stop it - then it can go away over time. It's a lot harder to convince a man that has a normal fully-intact penis that it's better not to have one, than to convince a guy who doesn't remember ever having his own. But what would really give things a push would be removing the financial incentive to do so. I found a lawsuit in Massachusetts that attempts to partially do that by suing Medicaid for performing unnecessary medical procedures.
This is something of a tactical play as it doesn't attempt to establish that the circumcision is harmful but that it is medically unnecessary because under state law, medicaid can only be used for necessary medical interventions. It seems to have gone forward though I don't know where it went from there. The money to be lost by those doing the circumcisions is going to be significant if they succeed.
But why isn't there more of a case of class actions against it by people feeling they've been done harm? Well one reason I found that is a barrier is statute of limitations. A person can't (apparently) sue directly when under 18 and after 18 it's too long since the procedure was performed. So the action has to be done on the child's behalf by the parents - the very people who made the decision to have it performed in the first place, usually.
A particularly horrible anecdote in that article, btw, is when a court sent a mother to prison until she agreed to give consent for her son to be circumcised. Her husband brought the charges.
Because the judge ruled that case solely based on a child-care contract rather than any medical arguments or the interests of the child, that remains a heart-breaking story but doesn't set any precedents either way for a class action suit.
But still, given the huge numbers of people circumcised as infants, below or above 18, even a small percentage of them attempting this would seem to me to be a large number of people sufficient to start some kind of legalised suing over harm done. It's not a single accused, but there have to be group bodies that do this in sufficiently large numbers to target by a group and even on more individual basis, it's an issue with strong feelings behind where I could see others chipping in to fund it.
So what's stopping larger attempts to sue over what was done to people as infants? And how can those obstacles be overcome?
We can go into the arguments for and against circumcision and probably will but really the whole thing is a diversion given that any male can choose to have it done as an adult if they wish, so not doing so as an infant is in no way preventing a man from being circumcised. It is only ensuring that the man has a choice. And given that barring some medical necessity or mental illness pretty much no adult male decides "yeah, I want to lose my foreskin" that's an incredibly strong reason to show that people would choose otherwise given the chance.
However, I see two barriers to stopping circumcision. One is a social one - young guys are often pretty defensive about their one-eyed trouser snake and don't like to be told or to feel that there's something wrong with it. Hence counter-narratives or even bizarre boasts like a dude I heard claiming that he could last longer because his penis felt less. Thats... not a boast, it's called self-control (or being over 25). That's a social barrier but something which isn't but which props up that social barrier is the second one - profit. It's worth an absolute fortune and so there are wealthy parties with strong incentive to cast it as a positive thing and encourage parents to circumcise their infant.
I think if circumcision can be devalued in the public mind - which it should be as the facts are on the side to stop it - then it can go away over time. It's a lot harder to convince a man that has a normal fully-intact penis that it's better not to have one, than to convince a guy who doesn't remember ever having his own. But what would really give things a push would be removing the financial incentive to do so. I found a lawsuit in Massachusetts that attempts to partially do that by suing Medicaid for performing unnecessary medical procedures.
This is something of a tactical play as it doesn't attempt to establish that the circumcision is harmful but that it is medically unnecessary because under state law, medicaid can only be used for necessary medical interventions. It seems to have gone forward though I don't know where it went from there. The money to be lost by those doing the circumcisions is going to be significant if they succeed.
But why isn't there more of a case of class actions against it by people feeling they've been done harm? Well one reason I found that is a barrier is statute of limitations. A person can't (apparently) sue directly when under 18 and after 18 it's too long since the procedure was performed. So the action has to be done on the child's behalf by the parents - the very people who made the decision to have it performed in the first place, usually.
A particularly horrible anecdote in that article, btw, is when a court sent a mother to prison until she agreed to give consent for her son to be circumcised. Her husband brought the charges.
The boy was four, the judge refused to allow a child psychologist to talk to the boy though it was stated the boy himself didn't want it, the judge assessed it on the basis of a child care contract the mother had been presented with by the father and at some point signed. They brought her into court from prison and made her sign consent for circumcision then and there and she was crying when she did. The judge told her she would remain in prison indefinitely until she signed it. They made her believe it was the only way she would get to be with her child.
Because the judge ruled that case solely based on a child-care contract rather than any medical arguments or the interests of the child, that remains a heart-breaking story but doesn't set any precedents either way for a class action suit.
But still, given the huge numbers of people circumcised as infants, below or above 18, even a small percentage of them attempting this would seem to me to be a large number of people sufficient to start some kind of legalised suing over harm done. It's not a single accused, but there have to be group bodies that do this in sufficiently large numbers to target by a group and even on more individual basis, it's an issue with strong feelings behind where I could see others chipping in to fund it.
So what's stopping larger attempts to sue over what was done to people as infants? And how can those obstacles be overcome?
