Thread by @RichardHanania

Circumcision is the only case in which our culture removes a healthy body part as a routine part of medicine.

As I explain in @QueerMajority, the evidence supposedly justifying such an extreme practice is laughable, and it needs to end. queermajority.com/essays-all/was…

You could of course find benefits. Cutting off your arm would have benefits. Imagine we dulled the sense of taste so people wouldn't eat fatty foods, and then used science to say this is a good thing.

The benefit has to be *extreme* to justify such a drastic change to the body.

One might compare circumcision to gender affirming care, but we don't do that to babies! The person has some say in what happens to them. How did we get to the point where we consider the human penis a mistake of evolution?

One study shows that circumcision is tied to a lower rate of urinary tract infections. But you need to slice 111 penises to prevent one infection, most of which are a minor problem. This is not how you make rational tradeoffs.

How did Christians start getting circumcised?

It was to prevent them from touching themselves.

Westerners look down on Muslims mutilating girls because they're afraid they might like sex.

We're not so different after all.

The foreskin exists among practically all mammalian species, which indicates it's doing something important. What is that? I don't know. Burden of proof is on those who think the whole thing is a mistake to prove their case. Again, we don't do this for any other body part.

Thankfully, immigrants are helping us move away from this barbaric practice.

And some states are cutting Medicaid funding, which research shows helps save penises.

This is one public policy area anti-circumcision activists can focus on.

Muslims will argue they have "reasons" for female circumcision too. We dismiss them, not even seeing whether they might have a point here or there. The only reason we don't do the same for male circumcision is because of our cultural bias.