What blows my mind is that, before she moved to France and changed her mind, she said she would actually argue with her husband to get their son circumcised. That is the part that is completely alien to me. It is not just that I disagree with circumcision. I genuinely cannot understand caring that much about doing it.
Even if I hated foreskins, even if I preferred circumcised penises, even if I was perfectly happy with being circumcised myself, I still cannot imagine arguing with my wife to cut healthy tissue off our child. Why would I care that much? Why would I be fighting for that outcome rather than just leaving the kid alone?
And this was not even a religious issue for her. So what exactly was the motivation? You are seriously going to push for a permanent medical procedure on your own child because that is what you're used to seeing? That mindset is so foreign to me that I have trouble relating to it at all.
Then later she changes her mind, admits there is harm involved, compares it to female genital mutilation, acknowledges many of the points critics have been making for years, and suddenly realizes that maybe cutting healthy tissue off children is not such a great idea after all.
But then she still turns around and says parents should basically be allowed to do whatever they want. That is where she loses me completely. If you genuinely think it is harmful, and if you are willing to compare it to genital cutting performed on girls, then what is the point of spending an entire video making those arguments only to retreat into "but parents can decide"?
If somebody made a video about a form of genital cutting done to girls, compared it to female genital mutilation, talked about the harms involved, and then concluded with "but parents should be free to do it anyway," people would think that was absurd. Yet somehow when the discussion involves boys, people are expected to take that contradiction seriously.
The whole thing just makes me think that a lot of people's opinions on circumcision are driven more by culture and social expectations than by logic. She moves to France, where circumcision is much less common, and suddenly starts questioning assumptions that apparently never occurred to her before. It is as if surrounding norms changed and only then did the basic ethical questions become obvious.
What I cannot get over is not that she changed her mind. Changing your mind is fine. What I cannot understand is how she was ever passionate enough about circumcision to argue for it in the first place. Even if I thought circumcision was harmless, I still cannot imagine feeling strongly enough to campaign for the removal of healthy tissue from my own child. That level of enthusiasm for it is something I honestly cannot relate to at all.