I don’t know enough about the cultures and internal workings of Australia, Canada, the UK, etc. to give you a good answer for how precisely this shift took place. But the fact of the matter is that something took place in these countries that caused the practice of circumcision to be abandoned en masse.
The point I’m trying to get at is that there’s a risk that circumcision won’t decline in the US as it has in other countries, and that it will keep being practiced for centuries. The longer circumcision continues, the more culturally entrenched it will get, and the harder it will be to get rid of. Plenty of people who are part of genital cutting cultures defend it because it’s “part of their culture”. For example, here are some quotes from Andrew Freedman on why he defends circumcision:
“I circumcised him myself on my parents’ kitchen table on the eighth day of his life. But I did it for religious, not medical reasons. I did it because I had 3,000 years of ancestors looking over my shoulder.”
“I didn’t make any excuses that this was to avoid a UTI, or for medical reasons. My rationale was this: As a Jewish male in a long line of tradition, I didn’t want to be the link in a chain that broke.”
Thanks for sharing a write up of a potential new cause area—I’d love to see more of these and I think yours is really clear.
These two statements on the surface seem contradictory, given I haven’t heard of significant activist work on this in Canada, Australia, etc:
“It has been practiced in the United States since the late 1800s, and will only continue if nothing is done about it.”
“In the Anglosphere countries besides the United States, circumcision was once widespread, but has since declined precipitously.”
I don’t know enough about the cultures and internal workings of Australia, Canada, the UK, etc. to give you a good answer for how precisely this shift took place. But the fact of the matter is that something took place in these countries that caused the practice of circumcision to be abandoned en masse.
The point I’m trying to get at is that there’s a risk that circumcision won’t decline in the US as it has in other countries, and that it will keep being practiced for centuries. The longer circumcision continues, the more culturally entrenched it will get, and the harder it will be to get rid of. Plenty of people who are part of genital cutting cultures defend it because it’s “part of their culture”. For example, here are some quotes from Andrew Freedman on why he defends circumcision:
“I circumcised him myself on my parents’ kitchen table on the eighth day of his life. But I did it for religious, not medical reasons. I did it because I had 3,000 years of ancestors looking over my shoulder.”
“I didn’t make any excuses that this was to avoid a UTI, or for medical reasons. My rationale was this: As a Jewish male in a long line of tradition, I didn’t want to be the link in a chain that broke.”