Comment by natroniks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by natroniks | Hacker News Reader

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> The indelibility robs the person of the agency to choose not to belong to that community.

Most males born in the US are circumcised regardless of religious affiliation. It's not like circumcision alone makes someone part of the Jewish community. As I revealed earlier, I am a circumcised Jew, but What authority is controlling me? I am free to observe (or not) Jewish practices and traditions as I deem fit. Now having a US passport, or a driver's license, or a mortgage, or student loan debt? Those definitely place me under under control (financial or otherwise) of an authority. Being circumcised? I don't see how or by whom I am controlled.

> Could they leave anyway? Sure, the same way a person with gang tattoos can leave the gang.

Comparing membership of Jewish to membership of a gang seems pretty judgey. Maybe you're just anti-religion, and that's cool, but lets not compare Judaism, a world religion with thousands of years of history, to a gang. Unless you think all Christians also belong to a gang? Or like the vast majority of the world?

In ancient tribes where the practice arose, circumcision may well have been an effective and irreversible marker of tribal identity. If it has since become sufficiently widespread that it is no longer effective in that goal, then perhaps we can add that to the list of reasons why the practice belongs in the past.

I mention gangs not to equate them with any particular religion, but to highlight by example the difficulty of leaving a group identity when that group has permanently changed you.

Groups control their members through various means, the most insidious being engrainment of group attributes as identity. Once a person adopts an idea not merely as something they believe but as a core part of who they are, the idea becomes far harder to challenge as it starts to feel like personal attack rather than debate.

Identity is what controls you, when you cannot choose it. So I partly agree with your example - being a US citizen is not easy to choose (though not impossible), and your status and identity as a US citizen shapes many aspects of your life. If you could freely choose citizenship, it would be a far lesser part of your identity and you would be far less controlled by it.

That is why agency to choose, or not, to be circumcised, and thus agency to adopt that into your identity, is important.

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