#circumscision

Saying “the outgroup is being inappropriate about how they’re assessing this issue” isn’t the same as supporting the issue.

I don’t know much about how various modern Jewish communities feel about the issue of body autonomy as it has been raised with regard to infant circumcision, but I’ve read very nuanced critiques by African feminist anthropologists who have basically said “look, we don’t like non-consensual female circumcision either, but the West refuses to even acknowledge any potential cultural context that it has and overwhelmingly acts off of white saviorism to ‘speak out’ about this ‘issue’ as if actual Africans haven’t actually been speaking out on their own already... and the explosion of this regional issue into a global one has created an unchallenged platform for pointing to this practice as evidence of African ‘brutalism’ and ‘primitivism.’”

And since “you can’t just use ‘it’s antisemitic to be against circumcision’ as an argument” discourse is gaining traction (again), I feel like it might be worth throwing in my own unnecessary and irrelevant two cents that “your analysis of this situation is biased and founded in the ideals and virtues of your own monolithic culture, and the fact of the matter is that regardless of whether or not we come to an agreement about the act and its nature (which we might!), a conclusion of ‘this is bad’ which comes from outside of the culture in question must be challenged in a way that a conclusion of ‘this is bad’ which is appropriately informed and sensitive of the culture doesn’t need to be” is a perfectly reasonable take.

Like. I value bodily autonomy just as much as the number of activists speaking out against circumcision right now, but it’s also ridiculously shitty to turn to imperialist values as definitive proof of why something is universally bad (after all, these same people would probably eagerly argue why it’s necessary to put head-shaping helmets on flat-headed babies despite the fact that babies cannot consent, because it’s For Their Own Good as determined by Western science and its values that conflate “conforming to a normative understanding of The Body” and “health”).

You can, in fact say “culture is relevant to this discussion” while also arguing that The Cultural Thing Is Bad. “Culture is irrelevant” is a bad take.