The United Nations designates February 6 of each year as an “International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.” This year,  in remarks accompanying his Angelus prayer before a crowd at St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis denounced the practice of involuntary female circumcision, saying that it “demeans the dignity of women and gravely undermines their physical integrity.”

For some reason, though, the UN doesn’t designate an “International Day of Zero Tolerance for Male Genital Mutilation,” nor to my knowledge has the Holy Father ever publicly applied his church’s catechism to the practice of involuntary male circumcision.

According to that catechism, “except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”

Why is it considered unacceptable to genitally mutilate infant girls, but acceptable — or at least not important enough to vocally oppose — to genitally mutilate infant boys?

There are certainly religious explanations. The Pope’s religion is an offshoot of Judaism, which practices male but not female circumcision, while female circumcision is confined to some sects of Islam and to some animist sects.

But the bigger reason seems to be simple popularity.

More than a third of male infants worldwide are circumcised. In western cultures, pseudo-scientific “medical” claims, ranging from a variant of “balancing the humors” to the notion that it reduced the desire to masturbate (a practice also pseudo-scientifically tied to various ailments), popularized the practice in the late 19th century.

Moving into the 20th century, male infant circumcision became nearly universal in the US. As each pseudo-scientific claim supporting it fell, another rose to replace it, but we invariably eventually find that infant male circumcision is almost never therapeutic, let alone universally so.

Some parents still allow their sons to be circumcised for aesthetic reasons (so junior’s penis looks like senior’s, for example), or because  fake health claims continue to circulate, but the big reason seems to be “well, that’s just what people do.”

Fortunately, the popularity of male circumcision seems to be decreasing. That’s a good thing. But it’s disturbing that we continue to entertain it as acceptable at all.

If circumcision was invented from scratch — as religious ritual or “medical” procedure — today, we’d throw its inventors in prison or cart them off to mental hospitals. Hacking off healthy parts of infants’ bodies is a violent and barbaric practice, and we should treat it as one.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

On February 1, ABC News suspended Whoopi Goldberg, of popular talk show “The View,” for two weeks over “wrong and hurtful” comments concerning the Holocaust.

The Holocaust, Goldberg said, is “not about race. It’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.” She characterized the Nazis and the six million Jews they murdered as “two white groups of people.”

Oddly, Goldberg’s construction is partially correct insofar as it tracks pretty closely to the modern identification of  race as “a social construct.” The term “white” originated specifically as an identifier for persons not permitted to be held as chattel slaves, and Jews of the European diaspora did generally fall under that definition, despite the many other persecutions they suffered.

On the other hand, the Nazis certainly defined “Aryan” and “Jewish” as racial categories in their own “social construct,” so Goldberg was in error as to the attitudes involved. Like the proverbial Facebook relationship status, “it’s complicated.”

But there’s also a bigger question involved here. Who “owns” the Holocaust when it comes to claims of historical or current victimization?

While Jews, whatever their “race”, constituted a plurality of Holocaust victims, they weren’t the only victims, or even the majority of the victims.

Yes, the Nazis murdered six million Jews.

They also murdered nearly twice as many others, including (per Wikipedia)  non-Jewish Russian civilians, Soviet prisoners of war,  Polish Catholics, Serbs, disabled people,  Romani,  Freemasons,  Slovenes, homosexuals, Spanish Republicans, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some of these murders were predicated on racial or ethnic grounds. Others weren’t.

The only positive aspect of the Nazis’ orgy of persecution and murder is that it inspired a continuing, persistent sentiment and determination: “Never again.”

But even that positive aspect is continually tarnished in one of two ways.

One is inapplicable invocation: For nearly any political cause, someone’s nearly certain to cite the specter of the Holocaust as an analogy to their travails. In doing so, they often, though not always, abuse the memory of the dead to score trite, trivial, or simply inaccurate political points.

The other is inapplicable claims to sole  ownership of Holocaust victim status by organizations (and states) claiming to represent the Jewish people.

“No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s [sic] systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” tweeted the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt.”

As Greenblatt continues, right after distorting the Holocaust, “Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”

Any time the Holocaust gets compared — credibly or not — to any issue that doesn’t bear directly on the Jewish community, Greenblatt and others can be counted on to raise the rooftops, demanding that such comparisons only be made in support of their preferred causes.

There are good and obvious historical reasons for Jews to take an ongoing interest in the Holocaust, and to be especially energetic in opposing an encore of any kind.

Those good and obvious reasons don’t justify Greenblatt et. al’s assertions of monopoly ownership, or of veto power over the use of Holocaust analogies to current events.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

“They can have Neil Young or [Joe] Rogan. Not Both.” Thus the ultimatum from legendary musician Young, over his concerns with what he deems  “misinformation” on the subject of COVID-19 vaccines, to streaming service Spotify.

Spotify, unsurprisingly, chose Rogan. It invested an estimated $100 million in bringing the Joe Rogan Experience podcast exclusively to its platform, and that investment is likely paying off in a big way. His talk show is currently more popular, by far, than Neil Young’s music (although the latter is probably enjoying a bump on other platforms and in other formats, and songs have a much longer shelf life than talk shows focusing on current events).

Still, it’s sad that this kind of thing is happening.

Other artists are joining Young’s exodus from Spotify. Fewer choices for listeners is bad for artists and bad for platforms.

It seems to me that we have a much better answer for situations like this than “they can have me or they can have him, not both.”

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1927, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Rogan is implementing the “more speech” prescription by  promising “balance” between dissident and establishment views on the podcast.

Rogan and his guests — many of whom who seem well-qualified to discuss COVID-19 and vaccines even if (maybe because!) their opinions run counter to, say, Anthony Fauci’s — are already voices in the wilderness compared to the might of an establishment narrative that runs 24/7 in official government statements and on most news media.

Given that the toll of government policies largely based on that establishment narrative comes to nearly 900,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the United States so far, it’s hard to argue that Rogan owes  “balance” to those working to silence, rather than refute, skeptics. But still, good on him for channeling Brandeis.

There’s a way for Rogan and Young to both be “the better man” here. Rogan should invite Young to appear on the podcast, and Young should accept. Not to have it out over COVID-19. Just to make nice, shoot the breeze about everything, and maybe smoke some cannabis together. Good times.

Right now, Rogan is “the better man.” I wish Neil Young hadn’t taken that particular route, but this southern man still needs him around, anyhow.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY