The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
Most people who are in support of circumcision absolutely aren't doing it for logical reasons, they're doing it entirely because of emotion.
I have a friend who's very pro-abortion and very much in favour of the idea that you should let people have their Bodily Autonomy, but then he also believes that circumcision is "no big deal". These two positions ("Abortion should be allowed because bodily autonomy is such an important right to preserve that it trumps any moral status the foetus might have", and "Cutting off parts of non-consenting infant boys' genitals is perfectly fine") are clearly incongruent positions, but he holds them anyway. I've seen him mercilessly make fun of a guy who was a bit touchy about the topic of circumcision, having had it done to him.
A good amount of the most entrenched supporters of circumcision are culturally attached to the practice, and they're more likely to have had it done themselves (or had it done to their own kids). So they're more likely to already think it's normal, and additionally if they accepted that circumcision was a bad thing they'd also have to entertain the idea that they have been "mutilated" and that their parents actually did something to them that wasn't good (or, worse, they'd have to accept that they mutilated their own kid). There's also the paediatricians who carry out the procedure, who have a financial stake in it and also who I would expect would probably not be able to live with themselves if they realised that it was a moral wrong.
That's an uncomfortable thing to have to face, so they end up rationalising it to themselves in a variety of ways. "Well, I had it done to me and I'm perfectly fine". That's like me being locked inside a room since birth and then me saying that I'm fine with not seeing the outside world. Now, I don't have the full information here, do I. It's mainly because I have no point of comparison that I can say I'm okay with it - just because I don't know I've been deprived of something important doesn't mean I haven't been. Then there's "Well, it's yknow, not a big deal and lots of people have it done" as if the commonality of a practice has any bearing at all on its moral rightness or wrongness.
Anyway, I sympathise, and I'd recommend you take a look at a very long thread I wrote about the topic of male genital mutilation with circumcision as a main focus. I think you might like it.
To be fair, I'm "against" circumcision by default (being uncircumcised myself), and this feeling is also based purely on emotion rather than reason. However, I don't really understand where logic comes into the picture anyway. There are very few things whose mere verbal descriptions are enough to make me wince in pain. Circumcision is one of them, and "having my fingernails yanked out with pliers" is another. My opposition to these things is not based on any rational argument; it's as close to a terminal value as I can think of.
This is one of those areas where I have a severe empathy gap - I can't even imagine what it's like to have any other perspective. Reading arguments about it causes me anxiety, not because I feel personally attacked by either side, but because I feel like I've been transported to some incomprehensible alien planet. I would never in a million years have invented the idea of circumcision, and even having consciously learned about it I still intuit that it must be some massive joke that everyone but me is in on. ("You actually thought it was a real thing! You should've seen your face!") Even so, the anti-circumcision arguments also seem like the writings of aliens because they present the view of someone who could have supported it but decided not to.
Circumcision in the religious context is an initiation ritual, it's a mark of belonging to community. Initiations often contain an element of sacrifice. This can be derided as mere exploitation of the sunk cost fallacy or a way to trap people, (eg when the mafia requires that you commit a crime to enter the org, so they can be sure you won't go to the police as you'd also implicate yourself), but it can also be seen more charitably as a test of commitment, a filter for serious loyalty etc.
Circumcision can be seen as a symbolicized, minimized form of child sacrifice. Now you don't sacrifice your firstborn (who would be your main inheritor), you simply ritualistically chop a bit off of your kids most valuable part, the one that will continue your genetic lineage. It's symbolic but sort of indicates your willingness to sacrifice for the community and that you have skin in the game.
Why secular and Christian Americans do it is more complicated and circumcised people come up with a jumble of nonsense post hoc reasons. It's almost as worthless to ask them as asking single women how to be successful in dating as a man. Tons of mental stopsigns involved.
I would assume it's probably some sort of judaizing Protestant Christian influence originally.
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