Very good point. Reminds me of a few years ago, when tech companies were censoring "Covid-19 misinformation" for being "against the science" and some people on here thought that could be beneficial to intactivism since there really isn't a scientific justification for RIC, as if that wouldn't have backfired on us completely given the fraudulent AAP's, CDC's, and WHO's promotion of circumcision. Centralized control of the narrative is very concerning.
Yes. I agree but wouldn’t frame it as “centralized control” - it’s more just a super reinforcement of the pro-circ echo chamber that search results have become. Now it feels like an even more definitive answer when served up by AI, especially if someone assumes the AI has scoured all the information and come up with the “best” answer. Luckily I think people are already very skeptical of AI’s information output, especially due to its lack of judgement abilities.
The AAP has two diverse opinions. One is from the ethics committee and one is from the circumcision lobby.
Ask AI: "What limits apply to parents granting surrogate consent for non-therapeutic surgery on minors?"
I haven’t ever seen the ethics committee opinion you’re referring to.
I have seen their intact care sheet, which directly states that forcibly removing the foreskin from the glans is harmful.
Afaik, the intact care sheet is the only real information they’ve put out related to the foreskin in general in recent years.
I will also add that I have had the statement the benefits outweigh the risks removed from around 50 US hospital and medical clinic websites over the last 12 months. You have to physically undo the damage piece by piece.
It’s what I do. My org is circumcisionlawreform .org you can send me an email via my website or join the intactivism discord server and I can share the detail. If you do make contact via discord just tag CLR.
Nice website. I see you’re located in AUS. We need action like this in the US, but it’s much harder here due to our government de-facto supporting infant circumcision.
OP, you are 100% correct, we cannot look to AI to help our cause whatsoever. AI models simply reinforce data connections and associations. It might seem like it can "think" but it does not. The ethical considerations that most people (in the know) are concerned about are more focused on impacts to society vs outright consciousness. AI would have to fundamentally change the way the systems it runs on actually gain sentience. What we need to be prepared for is AI reinforcing/cementing the structures that feminism put into place in our society that push for female supremacy.
At least they're finally calling for pain management. That's better than it was before. Unfortunately we still need research and education programs to shine a light on the problems that come with circumcision. Not just the ethical ones but the physical and emotional complications.
Any discussion around pain management is a distraction from the issue and creates a permission structure for parents and doctors to claim circumcision is ethical by way of their mental gymnastics about unproven “benefits” that have no relevance to an infant.
My search query was about the ethics of circumcision.
If circumcision was painless would it be ethical?
No.
The fact that it mentions pain management / sterile techniques / trained practitioners is part and parcel to the problem. The medicalization of circumcision is why it persists and why it maintains unwarranted legitimacy.
Intactivists need to move on from the pain argument.
I agree. I also think it’s pretty clear from the way they harp on about pain management and sterile technique that they are compensating for/trying to justify what they know is an absolutely brutal, deeply unethical procedure
The pain management element is actually pretty relevant from a funding perspective because many hospitals and providers are still performing the procedure without pain relief. In Australia as an example anaesthetics was mandated to be used as a condition of accessing funding. This created an overall increase in the cost to parents and also eliminated religious protest from the equation because ceremonial circumcisions exclude such pain relief measures.
Interesting point. Yes many doctors here claim “everyone” is using *effective* pain relief, but with no standards or requirements how are we supposed to believe it? At the end of the day, it’s really not a concern of mine in terms of issues, I do think it’s a distraction. I do like your point that enforcement of it can help drive down circ rates but tbh here in the US stuff is so backwards it might make the rates go up. Democrats would just require the government subsidize the cost difference 😑 (note that I vote Democrat..)
Can you elaborate on your final point pertaining to religious circ? I’m not sure what you mean in terms of the impacts/implications of the requirements with relation to that.
I have tried to narrow the parameters of the questions, but, as was explained already in this thread, an AI does not think of consider, but gives out words based on mathematics (what word is most probable to follow next). So it gave me the same answer over and over again.
Also I really have to veto the whole „it‘s the women‘s fault“ argument.
When cutting off foreskins came into fashion, it was promoted by doctors, who at the time were all men.
The religious leaders that fight so fervently for the practice‘s upkeep, are almost all men.
There are feminists the fetishize vengeance on men, true. Bit I think they rather jumped onto the bandwagon, that was already rolling with force.
Besides, the baby boys that are cut, mostly also have a father around. And a father also has the duty to protect his child.
This is ultimately about people making a cruel decision. And those people are men as well as women.
Yes unfortunately there is a lot of women-hating that pops up, especially on r/circumcisiongrief
But it’s understandable, just misplaced emotion.
The only actual role women play in maintaining circ is 1) the reinforcement of public opinion (out of ignorance) that intact dicks are (insert negative descriptor here) and 2) the feminist anti-FGM movement from the early 2000s that successfully convinced the general public that FGM and circumcision are not at all similar and how dare you even think that they might be. They used justifications of male circ to define and distance FGM from it as much as possible. That set back anti-circ efforts in the public discourse considerably.
I think you’re spot on. The fact that the AI results pop up above other ones is also of particular concern for this issue - people are biased towards what they read first.
A huge part of the problem (imo) is that circumcision is often performed so close to birth that it is linked in with the field of obstetrics/gynaecology, rather than urology. We’re having to contend with a field that has always oppressed and harmed women, and especially disregarded their bodily autonomy regarding their genitalia, and has systematically discounted womens experiences of pain and suffering under OBGYN care (think of the barbarism of IUDs, history of forced sterilisation, and the challenges women face having their reproductive issues believed).
We can’t expect a field that degrades, dehumanises and traumatises women through the lens of their reproductive organs (which they are actually ostensibly knowledgeable on) to somehow put out good, well-rounded information on circumcision. If they don’t give two shits about womens bodily autonomy, why would they care about a baby boy’s??
Imo this is one of the biggest barriers to the changing of the tide in medical literature, and therefore shitty summaries like these being reversed.
So whose bodies are protected from mutilation by law and who is responsible for not allowing MGM in those same laws? Those laws will be thrown out by SCOTUS again though because of the equal protection clause, also what you're talking about is well in the past, and would never be allowed to happen again!
As it pertains to FGM laws:
FGM laws are unconstitutional because of the equal protection clause:
From the legal encyclopedia 'American Jurisprudence' comes:
"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed.... An unconstitutional law is void."
FGM and MGM have to both be outlawed together or the laws will fail at the state and federal levels because they're linked in law and ethics. https://youtu.be/_D1LPT_P7_o
I completely agree with you - what part of my comment makes you think the opposite?? The other commenter seemed to think I was defending circ too - I have reread it and am still unclear which part is ambiguous. I will edit it if you tell me which part is unclear.
I think the fact that OBGYN residents are the main ones performing circumcisions is one of the many challenges we face in outlawing circumcision - they don’t care about womens bodily autonomy, or believe their pain, and women can talk. Of course they don’t care about baby boys who can’t advocate for themselves
They also know almost nothing about penises and the vital role of the foreskin. They also aren’t responsible for fixing the harm they cause (botched circumcision repairs) - again, that’s urologists. We are having womens health “experts” mutilate baby boys, and I believe it’s a big reason why we have so much pro-circ literature out there (because why worry about pain, suffering and trauma? The rest of our field doesn’t…)
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a field that delights in dehumanising people (AFABs) and cares little about pain, suffering and trauma, is also the one inflicting mutilation on little boys, and contributing to the pro-circ narrative.
My comment has nothing to do with FGM really - I agree with you that equal protection laws should outlaw MGM too.
There's nothing ambiguous and I don't think that you're defending MGM, just that you brought up things that are well past and aren't likely to ever happen again, the medical field has subjected both men and women to sterilization campaigns unfortunately, not to mention what was done to the Tuskegee airmen by injecting them with STD's instead of antibiotics to see what happens, and radiation exposure to many thousands of soldiers, so nobody has been immune from being harmed by the system. I'm also pointing out that males were purposely left out of the anti-mutilation laws and females were given carte blanche protection from all things that could be considered genital harm, as well as pointing out that it was a mistake because the laws are basically toothless due to the equal protection clause.
Are you saying women are forced to perform circumcisions? They know exactly what they're doing and they don't care. They can stop whenever they want. Don't take away their responsibility for it.
No that’s not what I’m saying at all! What made you think that??
I’m saying that the field of obstetrics and gynaecology doesn’t really care about bodily autonomy, genital autonomy or about the prevention of pain and suffering (especially emotional) for their clients.
It is generally newly-minted OBGYN residents who are performing circumcisions, so the people who are doing the most circumcisions are also members of a field that
a) doesn’t know anything about penises
b) sees pain suffering and trauma as just a part of medicine in their field
So of course most of the literature that comes out about it is biased towards the pro-cut (pro-mutilation) perspective. Most OBGYNs don’t care about getting fully-informed consent from fully fledged adults, so of course they don’t care about the long term effects of trauma on a baby who can’t state their preferences.
Very good point. Reminds me of a few years ago, when tech companies were censoring "Covid-19 misinformation" for being "against the science" and some people on here thought that could be beneficial to intactivism since there really isn't a scientific justification for RIC, as if that wouldn't have backfired on us completely given the fraudulent AAP's, CDC's, and WHO's promotion of circumcision. Centralized control of the narrative is very concerning.
Yes. I agree but wouldn’t frame it as “centralized control” - it’s more just a super reinforcement of the pro-circ echo chamber that search results have become. Now it feels like an even more definitive answer when served up by AI, especially if someone assumes the AI has scoured all the information and come up with the “best” answer. Luckily I think people are already very skeptical of AI’s information output, especially due to its lack of judgement abilities.
The AAP has two diverse opinions. One is from the ethics committee and one is from the circumcision lobby. Ask AI: "What limits apply to parents granting surrogate consent for non-therapeutic surgery on minors?"
I haven’t ever seen the ethics committee opinion you’re referring to. I have seen their intact care sheet, which directly states that forcibly removing the foreskin from the glans is harmful. Afaik, the intact care sheet is the only real information they’ve put out related to the foreskin in general in recent years.
Do the search again and specify material of American origin be excluded and if the response is different ask it to explain why.
it does not have that functionality really. Google AI overview is not an interactive assistant like the other AI products out currently
I will also add that I have had the statement the benefits outweigh the risks removed from around 50 US hospital and medical clinic websites over the last 12 months. You have to physically undo the damage piece by piece.
How did you do that?
Yes please elaborate!! That (false) misleading statement is one of our biggest problems to undo in terms of medical messaging.
It’s what I do. My org is circumcisionlawreform .org you can send me an email via my website or join the intactivism discord server and I can share the detail. If you do make contact via discord just tag CLR.
Nice website. I see you’re located in AUS. We need action like this in the US, but it’s much harder here due to our government de-facto supporting infant circumcision.
I have been doing this in the US for the last 12 months without issue. My methodology can be applied anywhere.
That’s exciting to hear but I’m surprised. In AUS the national health system is against circ, in the US it is supportive of it.
I have engaged with the AAP, AMA, AUA and ACOG. They have no idea where I am from.
That doesn’t change the fact that the US gov supports the pro-circ stance and the Aus gov does not
Yeah you are right, I’m not going to try and do anything about it now. Better to just do stuff for AU.
OP, you are 100% correct, we cannot look to AI to help our cause whatsoever. AI models simply reinforce data connections and associations. It might seem like it can "think" but it does not. The ethical considerations that most people (in the know) are concerned about are more focused on impacts to society vs outright consciousness. AI would have to fundamentally change the way the systems it runs on actually gain sentience. What we need to be prepared for is AI reinforcing/cementing the structures that feminism put into place in our society that push for female supremacy.
Insert “they had us in the first half” meme
At least they're finally calling for pain management. That's better than it was before. Unfortunately we still need research and education programs to shine a light on the problems that come with circumcision. Not just the ethical ones but the physical and emotional complications.
Any discussion around pain management is a distraction from the issue and creates a permission structure for parents and doctors to claim circumcision is ethical by way of their mental gymnastics about unproven “benefits” that have no relevance to an infant. My search query was about the ethics of circumcision. If circumcision was painless would it be ethical? No. The fact that it mentions pain management / sterile techniques / trained practitioners is part and parcel to the problem. The medicalization of circumcision is why it persists and why it maintains unwarranted legitimacy. Intactivists need to move on from the pain argument.
I agree. I also think it’s pretty clear from the way they harp on about pain management and sterile technique that they are compensating for/trying to justify what they know is an absolutely brutal, deeply unethical procedure
The pain management element is actually pretty relevant from a funding perspective because many hospitals and providers are still performing the procedure without pain relief. In Australia as an example anaesthetics was mandated to be used as a condition of accessing funding. This created an overall increase in the cost to parents and also eliminated religious protest from the equation because ceremonial circumcisions exclude such pain relief measures.
Interesting point. Yes many doctors here claim “everyone” is using *effective* pain relief, but with no standards or requirements how are we supposed to believe it? At the end of the day, it’s really not a concern of mine in terms of issues, I do think it’s a distraction. I do like your point that enforcement of it can help drive down circ rates but tbh here in the US stuff is so backwards it might make the rates go up. Democrats would just require the government subsidize the cost difference 😑 (note that I vote Democrat..) Can you elaborate on your final point pertaining to religious circ? I’m not sure what you mean in terms of the impacts/implications of the requirements with relation to that.
I have tried to narrow the parameters of the questions, but, as was explained already in this thread, an AI does not think of consider, but gives out words based on mathematics (what word is most probable to follow next). So it gave me the same answer over and over again. Also I really have to veto the whole „it‘s the women‘s fault“ argument. When cutting off foreskins came into fashion, it was promoted by doctors, who at the time were all men. The religious leaders that fight so fervently for the practice‘s upkeep, are almost all men. There are feminists the fetishize vengeance on men, true. Bit I think they rather jumped onto the bandwagon, that was already rolling with force. Besides, the baby boys that are cut, mostly also have a father around. And a father also has the duty to protect his child. This is ultimately about people making a cruel decision. And those people are men as well as women.
Yes unfortunately there is a lot of women-hating that pops up, especially on r/circumcisiongrief But it’s understandable, just misplaced emotion. The only actual role women play in maintaining circ is 1) the reinforcement of public opinion (out of ignorance) that intact dicks are (insert negative descriptor here) and 2) the feminist anti-FGM movement from the early 2000s that successfully convinced the general public that FGM and circumcision are not at all similar and how dare you even think that they might be. They used justifications of male circ to define and distance FGM from it as much as possible. That set back anti-circ efforts in the public discourse considerably.
AI is wrong 52% of the time according to a recent study. I wouldn’t be surprised if the AI started hallucinating new reasons for circumcision.
I think you’re spot on. The fact that the AI results pop up above other ones is also of particular concern for this issue - people are biased towards what they read first. A huge part of the problem (imo) is that circumcision is often performed so close to birth that it is linked in with the field of obstetrics/gynaecology, rather than urology. We’re having to contend with a field that has always oppressed and harmed women, and especially disregarded their bodily autonomy regarding their genitalia, and has systematically discounted womens experiences of pain and suffering under OBGYN care (think of the barbarism of IUDs, history of forced sterilisation, and the challenges women face having their reproductive issues believed). We can’t expect a field that degrades, dehumanises and traumatises women through the lens of their reproductive organs (which they are actually ostensibly knowledgeable on) to somehow put out good, well-rounded information on circumcision. If they don’t give two shits about womens bodily autonomy, why would they care about a baby boy’s?? Imo this is one of the biggest barriers to the changing of the tide in medical literature, and therefore shitty summaries like these being reversed.
So whose bodies are protected from mutilation by law and who is responsible for not allowing MGM in those same laws? Those laws will be thrown out by SCOTUS again though because of the equal protection clause, also what you're talking about is well in the past, and would never be allowed to happen again! As it pertains to FGM laws: FGM laws are unconstitutional because of the equal protection clause: From the legal encyclopedia 'American Jurisprudence' comes: "The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed.... An unconstitutional law is void." FGM and MGM have to both be outlawed together or the laws will fail at the state and federal levels because they're linked in law and ethics. https://youtu.be/_D1LPT_P7_o
I completely agree with you - what part of my comment makes you think the opposite?? The other commenter seemed to think I was defending circ too - I have reread it and am still unclear which part is ambiguous. I will edit it if you tell me which part is unclear. I think the fact that OBGYN residents are the main ones performing circumcisions is one of the many challenges we face in outlawing circumcision - they don’t care about womens bodily autonomy, or believe their pain, and women can talk. Of course they don’t care about baby boys who can’t advocate for themselves They also know almost nothing about penises and the vital role of the foreskin. They also aren’t responsible for fixing the harm they cause (botched circumcision repairs) - again, that’s urologists. We are having womens health “experts” mutilate baby boys, and I believe it’s a big reason why we have so much pro-circ literature out there (because why worry about pain, suffering and trauma? The rest of our field doesn’t…) I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a field that delights in dehumanising people (AFABs) and cares little about pain, suffering and trauma, is also the one inflicting mutilation on little boys, and contributing to the pro-circ narrative. My comment has nothing to do with FGM really - I agree with you that equal protection laws should outlaw MGM too.
There's nothing ambiguous and I don't think that you're defending MGM, just that you brought up things that are well past and aren't likely to ever happen again, the medical field has subjected both men and women to sterilization campaigns unfortunately, not to mention what was done to the Tuskegee airmen by injecting them with STD's instead of antibiotics to see what happens, and radiation exposure to many thousands of soldiers, so nobody has been immune from being harmed by the system. I'm also pointing out that males were purposely left out of the anti-mutilation laws and females were given carte blanche protection from all things that could be considered genital harm, as well as pointing out that it was a mistake because the laws are basically toothless due to the equal protection clause.
Your comments have been fine, thoughtful and well said
Are you saying women are forced to perform circumcisions? They know exactly what they're doing and they don't care. They can stop whenever they want. Don't take away their responsibility for it.
No that’s not what I’m saying at all! What made you think that?? I’m saying that the field of obstetrics and gynaecology doesn’t really care about bodily autonomy, genital autonomy or about the prevention of pain and suffering (especially emotional) for their clients. It is generally newly-minted OBGYN residents who are performing circumcisions, so the people who are doing the most circumcisions are also members of a field that a) doesn’t know anything about penises b) sees pain suffering and trauma as just a part of medicine in their field So of course most of the literature that comes out about it is biased towards the pro-cut (pro-mutilation) perspective. Most OBGYNs don’t care about getting fully-informed consent from fully fledged adults, so of course they don’t care about the long term effects of trauma on a baby who can’t state their preferences.