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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

Most people are familiar with the sound of a baby crying, and they think that's the worst sound a baby makes. It isn't. A normal baby's cry sounds absolutely nothing like a baby screaming in agony, which is a fact I discovered the first (and last) time I saw a video of a circumcision.

Today we look back and can't imagine how people of centuries ago saw things like slavery and religious oppression as normal. Sometimes I wonder if we are equally blind to our own failings, and whether to the people of two or three hundred years hence we won't be known as the people who wrestled with racism or late-stage capitalism, but only "that civilization who mutilated a third of their infants".

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and also "that civilization which tortured billions of animals in factory farms for the daily pleasure". the past and present were and are barbaric for a whole clusterfuck, we shouldn't shortsell it as a single-issue failing.

This inflicted pain and damage appears to have no significant impact on adult quality of life though. Circumcision may also even reduce the bacterial load and hence reduce chances of infections and cancer: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/10/acc-is-infant-circumci...

It's a non-issue.

It's a form of genital mutilation. It would be wrong to call it a non-issue. It is moral one at the least.

I have no issue with consenting adults getting circumcised for what ever reason they want too. A baby, however, cannot possibly consent to such a thing.

What matters the most is the cohesion, functioning and productivity of society, which is unaffected by circumcision.

The notion of consent is arbitrary. You could also regard religious cults as primary, then you would need their consent to imposing your personal aesthetics.

That mindset could be used to justify all sorts of barbarism. The beginning of humanity's downfall was when we invented "society"

Actual barbarism would impair the functioning and productivity of society. The harm in this case is so negligible that it does not matter.

Smashing one in a hundred babies to death with a frying pan wouldn't impair the functioning or productivity of society either. Seems like a pretty poor way to measure barbarism to me.

> A baby, however, cannot possibly consent to such a thing.

Well, a baby cannot consent to anything. The parent's consent is the baby's consent.

Now I'm genuinely curious - I'm not affected, so I can't relate: Circumcision is genital mutilation, sure, but is it really "that" bad? Does it affect quality of life, from child to adult (excluding botched circumcisions)? Based on my understanding, I would rather focus on female genital mutilation in undeveloped parts of the world. In comparison, male circumcision seems to be ... ok. It's fine. Or is it? Please let me know.

(I'm not talking about the ignorance of infant's sense of pain here, that's clearly immoral).

> This inflicted pain and damage [...] is a non-issue.

hmmmm.

Read the [...]. The harm is to minimal that it is a non-issue.

Genital mutilation is abhorrent. End of story.

It is very minor mutilation though, it does not matter.

Your comment presumes that only a persons quality of life as an adult is important, which is a take I don’t think is defensible.

Even a few days or weeks after the mutilation the consequences are extremely minor. It is a very low-priority issue.

So the idea is that not consented mutilation is defensible as long as the consequences after a few days or weeks are extremely minor? Just repeating this back to you so we're on the same page.

That would be an out-of-context quote.

I'd say that attempting to prohibit this tradition has a net negative impact on the integrity and functioning of society because the harm in question is very minor but the reaction to such an attempt will be major. I'm sure you are trying to twist this into "but then I could anesthetize and then circumcise you", however, in that case I'd retaliate so drastically that it would negatively impact the functioning of society much more than say 100 circumcisions, hypothetically speaking.

I’m not trying to twist this into anything, I literally only repeated your own words back to you. So now this isn’t about whether the consequences are minor, but whether the person being harmed has the power to retaliate and how such retaliation impacts society? I’m having a really hard time following your rationale, and if I can be perfectly honest the impression I get is that you first decided that genital mutilations in infants is fine and are now retroactively looking for justifications.

Power is one factor informing policy, empathy is another. Neither is sufficient for a policy that sustains the system for long on its own. Only focusing on power would result in e.g. exploitation of Africa. But most don't like this due to empathy.

Focusing only on empathy often misses the point too as it tends to get politicized, overinflating minor issues as in this case, which will ultimately result in power conflicts, degrading long-term sustenance.

Cutting the outer ears off an infant would also have no significant impact on adult quality of life, yet if a parent tried to do that they'd be arrested.

As someone who didn't face circumcision complications until puberty, I'd like to track down the doctor who did it to me and see how he likes having pieces carved off of him.

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