Not sure whether making analogies to cannibalism really supports your case for “no, men don’t go haywire after learning about circumcision being unnecessary”. From a position of someone who believes that child genital mutilation is perfectly okay, you are simply comparing the incomparable.
When I look at Mason’s tweets, I wonder whether they would also apply to women in those African countries where female genital mutilation is seen as normal. I would expect that if you told them that other countries in the world don’t do that and consider it a horrible thing… most of them would shrug, and a few of them would start crying. (Maybe I am wrong. But this is a situation that actually happens, not just a thought experiment, so maybe someone could actually confirm or refute this.)
Or telling women a hundred years ago that it’s unfair that they can’t vote. Then imagine a guy tweeting “most women are happy, some go haywire, we should probably treat this as an infohazard”. (By the way, what happened to “my body, my choice”?)
Please try to interpret my cannibalism comparison in the sense that it was meant. Something psychologically horrifying but physically inconsequential vs something psychologically horrifying AND physically consequential. You can’t just refute a comparison by saying “those two things are incomparable”.
Even if they weren’t comparable, the point of the example is so that people will acknowledge that the experience of being deeply horrified by something is not just in the immediate physical consequences. And that there are other cases where we regard this phenomenon as a reaction to being genuinely violated in some way and not just a weird mental glitch.
Edit: In the documentary American Circumcision, the director did go to Africa and interview women and it was basically how you described it.
Your framing here gets me thinking about elective appendectomies. It’s a little piece of the body that doesn’t have any widely agreed-upon utility (some experts think it’s useful, others don’t), and it objectively does cause problems for some people if left in place, and sure there are some minor risks of infection or complication when removing it but there are risks to any surgery...
Appendectomies seem like a great way to test whether we’re at the crux of a pro-circumcision argument. If the ”...and that’s why it’s appropriate to remove this small and arguably useless body part” logic is sufficiently robust to get an appendectomy before rather than during the organ’s attempt to murder its owner, we’ll know the argument pulls real levers in the medical system.
Not sure whether making analogies to cannibalism really supports your case for “no, men don’t go haywire after learning about circumcision being unnecessary”. From a position of someone who believes that child genital mutilation is perfectly okay, you are simply comparing the incomparable.
When I look at Mason’s tweets, I wonder whether they would also apply to women in those African countries where female genital mutilation is seen as normal. I would expect that if you told them that other countries in the world don’t do that and consider it a horrible thing… most of them would shrug, and a few of them would start crying. (Maybe I am wrong. But this is a situation that actually happens, not just a thought experiment, so maybe someone could actually confirm or refute this.)
Or telling women a hundred years ago that it’s unfair that they can’t vote. Then imagine a guy tweeting “most women are happy, some go haywire, we should probably treat this as an infohazard”. (By the way, what happened to “my body, my choice”?)
Viliam, those would also be valid comparisons.
Please try to interpret my cannibalism comparison in the sense that it was meant. Something psychologically horrifying but physically inconsequential vs something psychologically horrifying AND physically consequential. You can’t just refute a comparison by saying “those two things are incomparable”.
Even if they weren’t comparable, the point of the example is so that people will acknowledge that the experience of being deeply horrified by something is not just in the immediate physical consequences. And that there are other cases where we regard this phenomenon as a reaction to being genuinely violated in some way and not just a weird mental glitch.
Edit: In the documentary American Circumcision, the director did go to Africa and interview women and it was basically how you described it.
Your framing here gets me thinking about elective appendectomies. It’s a little piece of the body that doesn’t have any widely agreed-upon utility (some experts think it’s useful, others don’t), and it objectively does cause problems for some people if left in place, and sure there are some minor risks of infection or complication when removing it but there are risks to any surgery...
Appendectomies seem like a great way to test whether we’re at the crux of a pro-circumcision argument. If the ”...and that’s why it’s appropriate to remove this small and arguably useless body part” logic is sufficiently robust to get an appendectomy before rather than during the organ’s attempt to murder its owner, we’ll know the argument pulls real levers in the medical system.