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Debates on infant circumcision have been the bane of BL discourse for a very long time. Being the canary in the coal mine that BL tends to be, it's not surprising that the issue arises again in modern politics. That the anti-Semitic left should oppose circumcision is not hard to understand, especially as its problematization perfectly suits that puritanical individualism that takes consent as the ultimate moral arbitrator in the liberal Western tradition. The fascist Greens will have a hard time maintaining their perverse alliance with the growing power of Islam in the U.K. on that front, as the joint statement diogenes refers to concedes; surely they will cave. Still, it delicious that the "Muslim Greens" (what double entendre that is!) have found a way to re-frame the issue in terms of that all-hallowed concept of consent. In this way the Muslims cave too. How old must a child be to "consent" to it? Interestingly, in North Africa, circumcision was and still is commonly practiced at around the age of four, the idea of delay not implying some need to attain an "age of consent", but of the need for the boy to have the capacity for consciousness of the significance of the event, of what is being done to him, and of the happy celebration of it. This seems to be a common characteristic of the practice in Islam; I find it quite admirable, and am appalled by this Greenish liberal re-framing of the issue in terms of the liberal bugaboo of consent. Yet more ruination of tradition, accommodation to the logic of market, capital, and sheer volunteerism... Banning certain non-Christian traditions in Britain is not anathema to me; in fact it is demonstrably essential to sustaining the culture (the society) against immanent collapse. But concerning circumcision, Christianity offers no reason to ban it: it suggests only that it is not required under the New Testament. ("You can become a Christian and not have to worry about your willy being snipped!") Surely a Judeo-Christian culture such as Britain's, one that harbors significant Muslim and Jewish minorities, cannot justify State intervention in this cultural practice. (Personal imaginative speculations concerning Reform Britain remain exactly that.) The anthropology of circumcision is complex. Cultures outside the Judeo-Christian and Muslim practice it too, often as a part of coming of age rituals, not as an "antagonistic" distinction from outsiders, but as a sign of adulthood, of inclusion, of many things. It gives rise to a diversity of meanings quite in and of itself. But all of these meanings have one thing in common: they are affirmations of masculinity. That, I suggest, is the ultimate motive for the Western Left's desire to eliminate it. To decide not to circumcise your boy: fine. But to ban the practice entirely is to ban a practice that serves as a guarantor, sometimes the guarantor, of masculinity in many cultures, including those very close to home. Circumcision works as a sort of prophylactic: a tiny piece of natal biology is sacrificed, in order that the male may be more whole, more of a man, more native. I won't say that the idea of banning circumcision in modern Britain comes down "to just another way" of interrupting masculinity. You can cite health risks, for example; real concerns. But these are secondary to the greater part of its logic, which is anti-masculine. No surprise then that feminazi Greens yet again push the Overton Window in a direction that should terrify all of us. (Well, it would have, had not far greater horrors begun lurking on the immediate horizon.) p.s. Kit once brilliantly said – I paraphrase – "Boychat is a place where people come together than have only one thing in common: and they cannot agree on what that is. But issues like this do seem bizarrely important, wherever we stand on them: how society treats the young, especially young boys, retains a central place in culture and politics. |