It’s neither. I wish there were some sources cited. Wikipedia says Brown & Brown (1987) found that the biggest correlative factor a child being circumcised is whether the father is, but doesn’t explain how it got so widespread in the first place.
IDK I think there’s more to materialist analysis then just saying “it is what it is because of rich white men”. No support for rich white men they should all get gulaged but when people shrug that off as all the explanation you should need it always makes my eyes glaze over. Just feels super lazy, and especially so in this case because it’s not just a white tradition and it can be found in non-patriarchal societies as well.
I’m not the person who walked into a convo that was objectively talking about Western non consensual genital cutting, saw the posters venting about their victimhood, and decided to mention the tiny proportion of non patriarchal humans that also do it. If you have any empathy for what we went through, then you wouldn’t “um akshually” in this discussion.
By the outbreak of World War I the circumcised penis was the mark of the English elite
At the height of its incidence circumcision affected only 30 to 40 percent of British boys, but this was not distributed evenly
through the population: while two-thirds or more of public school boys were cut, the proportion in the working class or living in rural areas was much lower
Frank Mort suggests that Victorian anxieties particularly centered on dirt and disordered hierarchies of social power, while Joanne Townsend has commented that the Victorian understanding of hygiene, disease,and public health was a response to the "disorder brought by the Industrial Revolution. Public health movements were a way of gaining control
over the physical environment and the bodies of … the working class.‘’
A stronger case can be made that the sanitarians were more interested in disciplining the bodies of the middle and managerial class than those of the masses they were expected to direct
-The Demnonization of’ the Foreskin & the Rise of Circumcision in Britain (Robert Darby)
In the West, circumcision was driven by the upper class. I can find more evidence, but I’m a bit lazy atm.
Stolberg attributes the success of the campaign to demonize mastur-
bation to several political, ideological, and economic motives, including
religious concern with "uncleanness;’ bourgeois fears about self-control,
and the “financial interests of the London venereal trade.‘’ He also shows
how the symptoms blamed on masturbation addressed contemporary
anxieties about virility, gender identity, and selfhood and were consis-
tent with prevailing understandings of bodily function and disease cau-
sation. Stolberg particularly mentions the role of medical entrepreneurs
eager to increase the sale of their goods and services, and notes that mas-
turbation gave the medical profession” a welcome opportunity to demon-
strate the importance of medical expertise for promoting individual as
well as social welfare.‘’
This is a materialist takedown?
It’s neither. I wish there were some sources cited. Wikipedia says Brown & Brown (1987) found that the biggest correlative factor a child being circumcised is whether the father is, but doesn’t explain how it got so widespread in the first place.
Circumcision was an ideology of the ruling class.
IDK I think there’s more to materialist analysis then just saying “it is what it is because of rich white men”. No support for rich white men they should all get gulaged but when people shrug that off as all the explanation you should need it always makes my eyes glaze over. Just feels super lazy, and especially so in this case because it’s not just a white tradition and it can be found in non-patriarchal societies as well.
It’s a 28 second clip, and we’re all talking about the West here.
Sounds like a defense
If you genuinely believe that I don’t think you’re able to think clearly about this issue comrade
I’m not the person who walked into a convo that was objectively talking about Western non consensual genital cutting, saw the posters venting about their victimhood, and decided to mention the tiny proportion of non patriarchal humans that also do it. If you have any empathy for what we went through, then you wouldn’t “um akshually” in this discussion.
Kinda wierdly ableist
deleted by creator
-The Demnonization of’ the Foreskin & the Rise of Circumcision in Britain (Robert Darby)
In the West, circumcision was driven by the upper class. I can find more evidence, but I’m a bit lazy atm.
lazy cut/paste of a pdf
Stolberg attributes the success of the campaign to demonize mastur- bation to several political, ideological, and economic motives, including religious concern with "uncleanness;’ bourgeois fears about self-control, and the “financial interests of the London venereal trade.‘’ He also shows how the symptoms blamed on masturbation addressed contemporary anxieties about virility, gender identity, and selfhood and were consis- tent with prevailing understandings of bodily function and disease cau- sation. Stolberg particularly mentions the role of medical entrepreneurs eager to increase the sale of their goods and services, and notes that mas- turbation gave the medical profession” a welcome opportunity to demon- strate the importance of medical expertise for promoting individual as well as social welfare.‘’