Not in the least. You make a great point.

And here is where FGM and IMC are similar. The above sounds like the rationale mutilated women give for promoting/perpetuating the practice. All the women in their families are cut, and they’ve internalized the message that cut = good while uncut = bad. Is that any reason to continue a practice that has no *real* benefit to boys’ bodies?

Yeah, I hear that. All my partners have been circumcised. My father is; my brothers are. It’s totally normalized in a lot of sectors of American society, I think.

I absolutely didn’t start thinking about it until I took anthropology classes, and started to wonder, “Sup with that?” And then a friend of mine went to Australia and had a few partners with intact foreskins — something about an incident as pedestrian as that was frame-breaking for me, made me start to wonder why I viewed these altered bodies as so deeply normal.

I just thought I’d through a few of my cents so trolls on FGM threads would stop moaning that this discussion is dead. I’m open to responses.

I agree with what you say about ASD. However, I have known people who are autistic or have autism in the family who don’t necessarily have a lot of knowledge about the theory of biology behind it. We don’t know Ballgame’s history, and it might be better to assume he does have a personal stake.

I noted on another blog that someone was using my description of unremembered trauma to suggest that we should expect boys to manifest a number of problems we don’t see in girls because of infant circumcision. That’s not necessarily true, for a variety of reasons. First, you have to assume that there are no parallel disadvantages affecting female babies. Second, you have to remember that psychiatry functions from a male default, so those traits which occur more in women are more likely to be marked while those that occur in men are defaulted — potentially even if they are results of trauma.

I admit that a lot of my knowledge of autism is based on the research of Sascha Baron Cohen, who is justly criticized by feminists. Nevertheless, last I was paying a great deal of attention, it seemed that autism was caused by certain atypical physiological brain formations (some symptoms of which could be mimicked in neurotypical individuals with specific brain injuries).

I think Ballgame would have better luck tying male infant circumcision to other gendered psychological manifestations, although the problems with correlation and causation will remain.

No, I’m pointing out that you are using two different data sets that do not compare well, and you are using them to pretend that correlation equals causation: The French have less disparity in autism rates; the French have a lower circumcision rate; therefore, circumcision causes autism.

You also don’t seem to believe that Asperger’s as a disorder was diagnosed only recently in the US, or that it has been (and still is) underdiagnosed in girls. Is this because you have a reflexive aversion to anything that suggests girls might ever have a disadvantage, or are you really that uninformed?

The last I checked, ’speaking English’ and ‘having an alcohol-free fetal existence’ were not considered to be traumatic.

Really? Then you are deliberately overlooking all sorts of studies that show the beneficial effects of moderate amounts of alcohol, especially in the form of red wine. Perhaps all this Puritan absention is to blame?

Setting your rhetorical sneering aside, again: it boils down to your advancing a correlation-equals-causation theory and declaring that anyone who disagrees with you is a Luddite who supports circumcision. You don’t give a rat’s ass about autism, or people with autism, except as talking points to go after your pet issue, and your utter ignorance on the subject of autism couldn’t be plainer.

Not at all. It is your logic which is implying that the circumcision theory is just as implausible as the ’speaking English’ or ‘not drinking wine’ theories. Mandolin’s quote helpfully explained why trauma may have a lasting impact on the brain. The last I checked, ’speaking English’ and ‘having an alcohol-free fetal existence’ were not considered to be traumatic. But, perhaps, in mythago’s world…?

[T]here is an entire classification of autism-spectrum disorder that was not really known in the English-speaking world until 1995, and not really understood as it manifests in females until a few years ago.

Thanks for finally advancing a genuine counter argument here instead of rhetorical sneers. Now, I hate to be ungrateful, but sadly I have to punch a couple holes in it. You’re implying that the reason the French boy/girl autism ratio was 2.3 to 1 while the US ratio was 4 to 1 is because — up until “a few years ago” — US doctors were failing to diagnose an entire class of autism disorder that girls suffered from. Now that would only be relevant if the French doctors were aware of this feminine form of autism and diagnosing it … almost a decade and a half before those in the English-speaking world were.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be case. The French study I cite used two different criteria, a narrow one and a broader one. The narrow one used criteria most similar to DSM-III. That is the one that generated the 2.3 to 1 boy/girl ratio. (The broader criteria, which basically doubled the number of diagnoses of autism, generated a 2.1 to 1 boy/girl ratio.) For your rebuttal to hold water, the French would somehow have to be picking up on nearly twice as many cases of female autism using DSM-III-like criteria than Americans were detecting over a decade later using DSM-IV criteria. Or, the French would need to have missed nearly half the extant boy cases of autism using both the DSM-III criteria and a broader set of criteria which doubled the overall number of French autism cases discovered. I suppose that’s not impossible but it strains credulity. I certainly think the circumcision theory is a hell of a lot more plausible.

By the way, more evidence that trauma may contribute to autism can be found in a recent Danish study that linked autism with “breech births, premature births and problems immediately after delivery.”

Yes, based on correlation. By your logic, lack of prenatal wine consumption and speaking English rather than French are equally plausible causative factors in autism.

What, exactly, and how does this new knowledge bear on the argument at hand?

Because there is an entire classification of autism-spectrum disorder that was not really known in the English-speaking world until 1995, and not really understood as it manifests in females until a few years ago. If you don’t see cases of autism, they don’t factor into your statistics, which are therefore not very helpful.

The way to rebut the idea is to either produce better evidence or a better interpretation of the evidence at hand.

Heh. We’ve been over this before. “I’m right unless you rebut me” is not a valid argument. You need to offer evidence other than “a correlation exists”.

No, mythago, I said that X is a plausible causative factor in autism. With all the vehemence with which you deny saying that ‘circumcision couldn’t possibly be related to developmental disorders like autism’, you imply that you agree, but then you also claim that it’s inherently ridiculous, so I find your stance here to be a real puzzler.

And yes, the differential gender ratios I point out ARE evidence for circumcision being a contributing factor … not conclusive evidence as other explanations are possible as well, but evidence nonetheless. The way to rebut the idea is to either produce better evidence or a better interpretation of the evidence at hand. Merely making dark allusions to arguments which might exist does not rebut my contention that circumcision is a plausible factor here.

‘The studies were done in different years.’ So? ‘We know so much more about autism now.’ What, exactly, and how does this new knowledge bear on the argument at hand? This Atlantic Monthly article from 2003 provides some indirect support to the idea that more sensitive infants may be prone to ’shut down’ in response to powerful stimuli. Now, if you have more recent studies that compellingly demonstrate this is not the case, by all means, do share!

Dude. You never posted any “evidence”. You posted correlation-is-causation musing about how the French do X less than we do, and reported autism rates are lower, therefore clearly X is a factor that is causative of autism. To turn around and insist it’s my job to disprove a theory with no evidence is inherently ridiculous, even by Internet standards.

Oh, and co-musing by Mandolin isn’t “evidence’. Neither is what you posted at FC: you cited a five-year-old American report and a 1996 French report as ‘evidence’. If you thought about autism much more than “ooo! can use in argument vs. circumciscion!”, the inherently ridiculous nature of waving this around as ‘evidence’ ought to be apparent to you. (For example, you might have a clue about how the understanding, and reporting, of autism-spectrum disorders has changed since 1996.)

I’m opposed to routine infant circumcision, actually. But I don’t rest that opposition on scare-tactic stupidity.

Did you catch the part where ballgame suggested the evidence of a link is that France has lower rates of autism as well as circumcision?

That’s a somewhat inaccurate rendering of what I said, mythago, but I guess it’s close. I’d be very interested to know why you think the male-to-female ratio of autism is 4 to 1 in the US, but only 2.3 to 1* in France, or at least why you think the circumcision connection is inherently ridiculous given the highly plausible mechanisms for such a connection outlined by mandolin above.

(*That’s right, 2.3 to 1, not 3 to 1 as I suggested initially. Please read my FC post for an explanation.)

It was reported today that a boy lost his glans in a hospital circumcision.

America, land of the mutilated.

No, it’s something women have to deal with more all the time in every sphere of life, and to a much greater degree than men.

And yet you can choose not to wear make up.

I have no choice. None whatsoever. I am not pressured socially, I am forced physically, and I have been my entire life.

EDIT: Ah, sorry, I read this as you saying that makeup was worse than circumcision. On a reread, I see that’s not what you’re saying.

—Myca

No, it’s something women have to deal with more all the time in every sphere of life, and to a much greater degree than men.

Well, I don’t see the significance of the age in which it takes place - so society thinks you’re a-ok when you’re 7. Not so much when you’re 12 and over. What does that do for you, for 80% of your life that you’re a functioning, participating member of society?

In terms of your question, I think you’re probably right, it makes not much difference at all. But I do think the age at which something takes place says something about how the relationship between self, society and body is culturally defined.

But I don’t think the makeup and weight loss examples really compare, for the simple reason that those kinds of annoying, repetitive prods to correct our preternaturally faulty selves are something everyone everywhere deals with - though no doubt women deal with it more than men concerning sexual matters. (Then again, what isn’t a sexual matter? Even the pressure on men to have a loud, commanding voice is in a way a sexual matter.)

Circumcision, by contrast, is an irreversible procedure, that invades bodily autonomy not just in a metaphorical sense, that is not just socially pressured but forcibly coerced. I don’t mean by this that male circumcision by definition is worse than any of the *mere* things that are reversible, leaves bodily autonomy, or are not forcibly coerced, but that from the whole anthro analytical position we’re angling at, it does stand out.

I think there are a lot of ways in which the female body is considered inherently wrong. Women are supposed to diet to make themsleves eternally smaller, for instance. To make our faces acceptable, we must veil ourselves in makeup as well as engage in time-consuming and expensive beauty rituals. [edited for typos]

True, but even these “wrongs” (and I still want to come up with a more precise term, or at least a more precise working definition of what that word means in the context of this discussion) do not emege as realities in a woman’s life until some years after birth, not in terms of her hearing the messages about her body, but in terms of her having to do something to her body to follow those messages. We don’t, in other words, routinely, medically, cosmetically alter the female body immediately after birth the way we do the male body (I don’t think), and your point about male circumcision as “civilizing” may in fact cover this. Clearly, according to our version of masculinity and manhood, men need civilizing. (This is also, interestingly, the function that many on the right believe fatherhood is supposed to play in men’s lives; it civilizes us, directs us outwards, away from selfish pursuit of our own desires, gives us purpose by harnessing our energies for the good, first, of the family and, then, of the community.) And, clearly, the foreskin, being primarily an organ of pleasure (though it also has immunological functions, scientists have found), is connected (pardon the pun) to that part of us that is the least easily civilized, that is most obviously and most readily undermining of everything “civilization” (in a male dominant context) is supposed to stand for.

Which says what about how the male self is situated in relation to the male body in US culture? And how does that compare to how the female self is situated in relation to the female body? (which are less precise questions than I would like to ask, but it’s back to work for me)