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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

It’s unbelievable how far people will twist themselves in knots trying to find utilitarian justifications for what is, at the end of the day, non-consensual mutilation done for no reason other than “because tradition.”

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My kid was born in a US hospital and the woman who did the circumcisions was very pushy that we should get it done ASAP. We said we'd let him decide when he became an adult and she said "but if you let him decide he'll decide not to do it" which seemed like a pretty good argument to me!

I did hear from the staff that she got peed on pretty much every time.

It's seams like a very bad argument for me. What about tonsil removal ASAP? He may decide not to do that. What about a lobotomy ASAP?

Her argument was very convincing against her position.

However now you mention lobotomy...that might have made child rearing much simpler. A bit late for me, but you might consider proselytizing this issue for the good of parents everywhere...

Bonus that a child who had a premptive lobotomy would never regret the decision or wonder what life would have been like without it. There is literally no downside...

I think you're agreeing with gumby -- they meant 'good argument' either sarcastically, or as in 'a good argument not to do it now'.

People downvoting the above - see the cached version of the article to see why the utilitarian / public health justifications are incorrect.

I agree - it's on the wrong side of history. When we look back will be shocked at what we did to ourselves and our children, simply because we could not evaluate a study correctly.

In the case of infants it's certainly non-consensual

In the case of adults there is an issue with the "informed" part of informed consent

There is massive historical momentum behind it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision#R...

If someone sliced off the tip of his kid’s pinky finger because he claimed God told him to do it, we’d lock him in a padded room. But the tip of the kid’s penis is not only totally fine, we’ll try to convince more people to do it!

I don't think most people do it "because tradition" unless you believe for some reason that most people are Jewish. They do it variously for religious reasons, health reasons, aesthetic reasons, or maybe just because some guy wants his son's dick to look the same as his. At the end of the day, the kid doesn't even remember. Should people get circumcised as a matter of policy? No. But if you do it to your kid that's your call and if the kid later has a problem with it that's on you. As a general matter it seems that a lot of men with severe psychological hang-ups over circumcision have issues that I have a very difficult time attributing to their lack of foreskin.

When it's done on a woman, we call it "genital mutilation", but when done on a man it's "status-quo"

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