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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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...I think the case against male circumcision has been overstated by advocates and adopted by guys who were circumcized as infants and wouldn't know the difference.

It is certainly my belief that most, maybe all advocates are in the business of overstating their case, whether to make it seem more urgent, or to demand X in hopes of at minimum securing something less than X as a "compromise." In this particular case, botched circumcisions are sufficiently horrifying that the severity is difficult to overstate--but the incident rate is probably not.

This isn't directly on point...

Still, it's relevant. "Preventing children from having their properly functioning bodies interfered with, even when the adults in their lives are totally cool with it," is one of those things I think the law--judicial, legislative, and executive all--must be empowered to do, if it is empowered to do anything at all. If the law cannot protect the bodily integrity of minors, even against their own expressed wishes, much less the wishes of their parents, it's hard for me to imagine how the law can be permitted to paternalistically protect minors from anything at all.

And maybe that's the right answer, certainly I know some anarcho-libertarians who would bite that bullet. But despite the occasional temptation I have never really been able to get excited about governance quite that small.

Sure, there’s a natural law argument against circumcision. The petty annoyance of chafing against boxers and the risk of botching are both underrated. A man with normal hygiene has no real advantages from it. Etc, etc.

But it’s massively, massively overstated by advocates to the point of being an entirely different argument than the one reflected in reality, not merely exaggerated.

And I agree with you about circumcision- I don’t think it should be widely available. But that’s from natural law, not due to arguments about the disadvantages.