Circumcision's Final Century (Eric Clopper)

let's start with the most tactile part
of this problem in the common cultural practice of male circumcision so cutting off the foreskin from the penis especially commonly done in the United States America especially common commonly done in the Islamic faith and in Judaism I've seen ballpark estimates in articles that maybe 50 percent of the nerve endings in your penis are lost but those numbers whether the particular author says 50 percent of 30 percent they're a little bit misleading because as Eric Eric Lauper discusses at some length in his new YouTube video it's it's the 50% of nerve endings that really count he was who count as 50% or 30% if it's 30% it's 30% that are located at the end of the penis that really matters in terms of your perception or your experience of sexuality now of course it's also in a structural sense destroying the the shape and function of the penis so there's there's more to be said about what the impacts are of of male circumcision just on how men have sex but in terms of how we perceive the world how we see and feel Eric Klopfer in his new video titled sex and circumcision American love story he uses an interesting and provocative but I think slightly flawed philosophical allegory he explains to you that when he was a young man he had very poor vision but he was not yet a layer that he had poor vision because he had never he'd never tried using eyeglasses he'd never been able to compare the the limited vision he had to what the world looked like when he when he put it on my glasses and he assumed that everyone else perceived the world in the same slightly blurry way that he did growing up with impaired vision and then he had something this was you know he suddenly realized you know how limited his experience of reality was when he finally did get a pair of eyeglasses that the correct his vision now his experience at circumcision obviously it's a somewhat imperfect parallel because there is no pair of eyeglasses there is no way he can restore to himself the contrast and feeling the experience the perception the world of having those nerve endings working again in the the end of his penis or having the structure and function of the foreskin the glans etc etc however I'd invite you to make this comparison instead and the reason why I'm challenging them on this is that people who take his position and in very broad brushstrokes of course I share his position for example I do regard circumcision as a barbarity in modern times that should be abolished etc broadly speaking on I'm in agreement with my civilize them however if you present the claim that this is a devastating procedure that removes 50% of the nerve endings in the penis that totally destroys natural sexual function etc etc you have to deal with the confounding evidence the contrasting point of view of men who have undergone circumcision as teenagers or as adults for various reasons but something once in a while people do it for health reasons once a while for religious reasons they for example people who convert to Islam and then as an adult and then undergo circumcision the point we have plenty of witnesses around who will from their subjective perspective describe the changes relatively subtle or relatively minor or will claim optimistically or not I mean they may not be lying to themselves on others who will claim there's really no no difference at all so how do we reconcile these facts some of which are obviously objective and quantifiable scientific facts like about numbers of nerves which by the way is very difficult to quantify start looking into that stuff look into the medical literature on that put in case coming up with some notion of the the loss of the actual nerve endings the function of the tissue etc etc and then the subjective experience of what sex is but by the the minority people who came have that contrasting experience in the same way that you might with putting on and taking off your glasses right now if you close one eye if you just shut one eye in at the other eye open you're seeing with 50% as many nerve endings and your imagination is filling in the blanks and you see almost as well so when I when I close one eye and I behold the world around me I don't feel that I'm getting half as much information that I mean half as much experience of reality in terms of detail or vividness of culture vividness of color or even perspective I mean I'm aware it's a scientific fact I'm losing my depth perception when I close one eye but I can't really tell I mean just in the moment looking around the room if I close one eye it's remarkable how well the mind adjusts how well it creates an illusion of having 100% functionality with only 50% of the nerve endings active and now by contrast and invites you to keep both eyes open both eyes looking straight ahead and cover one eye with your hand so that one eye is completely dark but it's not your eyelid that's closed your eyelid is open and you're blocking the eye with your hand isn't that a very different experience and you'll really notice it if you move your head around while having if you try to look around the room well having one eye in this sense blocked rather than closed your mind is now struggling to do just as good a job to provide you with just as good a perception the world around you but you can actually perceive the absence of what would be coming in through your other eye you have this this black this blacked out image there's blank image almost interrupting what you're seeing through the other eye now I think the effects of male circumcision are actually comparable to both of these experiences I think that those of us who are lucky proceed a situation of really being crippled or disabled in the way that you are when you're covering one eye and that eye is open we proceed from a situation where the the damage done to the tissue and the nerve endings is really hampering our our sexuality the basic function of the penis and the experience through your whole body and what-have-you I think that we adapt in the same way that your imagination and mind's eye adapts to simply having one eye closed what seems like we're perceiving almost as much even though we know that we're not as a simple fact we know that we're not words like retardation and [ __ ] obviously are very loaded but they're often useful because and one of the effects this has been discussed in literature on circumcision not just in European culture not just in Jewish culture but I've seen this discussed in forms of circumcision indigenous peoples in Australia and other small groups living on small islands in Southeast Asia and so on one of the functions was to delay delay effective in puberty I don't really mean puberty here but delay young men becoming sexually active young men competing for wives mates what-have-you competing with older men this has been perceived and discussed in anthropological literature that doesn't mean it's a fact but it's certainly something that's been discussed in social sciences and I think it's fair to say that in adapting in making the shift from having this kind of impaired vision to having what seems like a complete vision in in making that transition you probably are really delaying men reaching their full sexual maturity their ability to use their sexuality effectively by several years and again this is of course largely just an accident of this bizarre or social custom that we're still driving around the 21st century but certainly anthropologists like to talk about it as if it were part of the the intended social function as if we're part of the design the function that that this custom serves within a given tribal society again well that's Aboriginal Australia islands of Southeast Asia or or otherwise um I think what Eric Clopper is going up against here it's is a few different forms of deep-seated prejudice and one of them is just the the type of frigid s thats built into medical expertise itself so the other day I think this was just yesterday I was talking to a medical doctor who is now well known within the vegan demi-monde here I'm not gonna name him but he's a real old medical or my impression is that he's a general practitioner he's a GP but obviously there's always excitement when you have a medical doctor who can advocate for veganism as a diet and he does advocate for ethical veganism not just for veganism on health grounds or or some of that's not just veganism as a way to lose weight and reduce your risk of getting a heart attack or this sort of thing um I was talking about the problem discussed on this channel recently of what are SSRI drugs various classes of so called antidepressant drugs what are their effects and so on and it was just with unbelievable hubris that he would throw back at me comments such as quote I only care about the stats I don't care at all I don't give a damn at all about the mechanistic data linked to this I don't give a damn about the the theoretical basis for the health claim like the theory of what the action is supposed to be or the etiology of the disease he said repeatedly I don't give a damn about the underlying condition that he only cares about the stats about these numbers indicating efficacy no I think I think it would be impossible to get him to admit that by the end of the conversation I had budget disposition I had forced him to reevaluate his dismissal at that moment that was laughing because it was so absurd to me and I said well you know you you sound really self-righteous when you say that you sound really self-righteous when you say you don't care and you don't give a damn but you know you should care these are ultimately your patients unlike these are medicines that have impacted the lives of millions of people negatively and there are class-action lawsuits and books published and a lot of expert literature showing the negative impacts these drugs can have and have had this is not just my opinion it's had a lot of negative effects so we're talking with us and you're saying so self righteously that you don't give a damn oh you know for example the actual mechanism of action of what happens when you take these drugs you're just gonna look at this statistic nice elation you don't care about the fact that these drugs were originally marketed and presented to the American public on the basis of a theory that they corrected a chemical imbalance in the brain and that that theory was disproven in the early 1980s I think the definitive year is 1982 but it continued to be marketed that way people continue to believe and take the drugs in that basis so you have a drug where of the actual the the theory behind its action the theory claiming that cures an underlying condition has been debunked there are questions about the mechanism to respond to that by saying no I'm just gonna look at this one statistic and isolation and that's that's all I care about he's so self-confident because he thinks that's the most scientific position he can take and from my position it's laughable because it's pseudoscience masquerading as science right and they know ultimately numbers represent things I mean this is no great riddle in scientific literature and the type of number he's clinging to or he did at the beginning of the discussion I say by the end of the discussion I think I'd budged his perception of a point Oh for example the numbers you're talking about what do they actually represent I said most of these studies you're talking about three-week evaluation of self-perceived improvement self-perceived aDNA so you give someone a drug for three weeks and ask them are you feeling better that's not really object that snot really an objective fact that number right there are all kinds of objective facts I said well measuring how well they're doing at three weeks is very different from measuring it after one year it's very different to measure various objective indicators with the DMP the drugs have been as opposed to just subjectively perceived well-being right placebo effect is not the only factor here but placebo effect is is one very real factor a self-reported subjective well-being or happiness is very very slippery and of course I've dealt with this a lot in my criticism of science applied to Buddhist meditation you can have someone meditate and ask them are you feeling better and then you can generate this as a statistic though they're there two point seven point you're they're there eight point three points better on this scale you can make it look like an objective scientific fact but this is a completely subjective opinion represented as a number that's all that's going on here and the actual number what's being represented normally when you get into the footnotes in the details starts to come apart but anyway even in just pointing out to him the significance of the number of weeks that have passed in these studies the particular study he had open like he had a PDF open I think what we were talking was actually study weeks to believe the effects there was over eight weeks well eight weeks there's a lot less than a year so I'm so birth false opinions rarely last long because everyone takes such a salutary pleasure in refuting them but false facts can endure for a century and can be highly injurious and the consensus view on antidepressants is a great example of a false fact or even a constellation of false facts that people have come to treat as science when for me as an outside observer looking at it with a little bit of detachment I can see it's laughably pseudo scientific laughably so likewise we have a situation where the medical establishment especially in the United States of America has assembled a constellation of sort of false facts and reassuring assumptions and these have come to be regarded as frankly a form of medical pseudo scientific orthodoxy which is something much more powerful in the United States of America then either the police and the Jewish faith or the belief in the Islamic faith and it certainly has no real coherent relationship to religions like Protestantism and Catholicism the United States religions for whom circumcision has simply become something normal without any really clear and coherent dotted line linking it to its publicity or the authority of the church or or what-have-you now look I don't think for my regular NSF I have to spell this out but if you're vegan living in the world as a vegan you feel that at all times you're surrounded by these sorts of you know invisible okay is invisible the world one is ubiquitous and yet easily ignored atrocities you know they all these terrible things going on cows are being slaughtered to produce food that's unnecessary unethical and unhealthy there were animals being tortured to death you know all around you and slaughterhouses are undercity in laboratories what-have-you devastating impacts for ecology and personal health and unspeakable pointless immiseration of these animals themselves and everyone ignores it not even because they like it but because it's normal and there's a really important contrast here I'd say between you know the passive consumption of meat people who eat meat because they've never questioned why and you know means someone who say someone who really enjoys hunting someone who loves the process of hunting down and killing animals who really sees that as a very positive thing the vast majority of people who eat meat fall into the passive category they eat meat and they have no particular reason for eating meat they their parents did it they just didn't question it they grew up in a culture norm and then you have a small but vocal minority of passionate hunters who are gonna you know we're really gonna advocate for this now as vegans we can win if we just convert to veganism if we didn't even make sympathetic to veganism those passive meat-eaters because those are people who when they see the reality of what's happening at a factory farm when they you see the reality of millions of tons of cow manure polluting rivers and lakes and oceans um they can look at that and say wow it's not worth it and somebody's maybe deeply committed to a certain ideology as a hunter that same person may go and visit a slaughterhouse and they may really eventually guess this is worth it they may feel that this is their ideology that they would subscribe to you they would valorize this culture of millions of people remaining dependent on billions of animals dying every year in the same way in terms of the future discourse or any circumcision you have a very very small minority people who actually like this actually feel positively about this operation and the vast majority of people are going through the motions the same way that people will mindlessly go and buy buy a hamburger McDonald's without thinking about what is it without thinking about the ecological consequence the ethical consequences you know I think it's important of the detachment and maturity to realize that the circumcision debate can win just by addressing and converting those people the people who are passively participating in the the you know the the the custom of genital mutilation not the people who are really avid true believers in it and the people who are passively participant that that definitely includes the vast majority of Jews the vast majority people who are culturally Jewish people like Jerry Seinfeld people who are not Orthodox Jews but who simply happen to be born in the Jewish Jewish faith the vast majority of them also can be convinced to come over to an anti circumcision position easily enough and when you get the majority those people at least sympathizing with your position you have one now I think that is a perspective that Eric Eric clapper is lacking I'm going to give the link to his video below this video and you guys can see it for yourself and join your conclusions I could in future do a critique of his video I could make a separate video here talking about what I disagree with more I think he stepped off the right path but even this one comment you can see that I'm drawing attention to the fact that he is choosing to really antagonize and target that small hard core of true believers the tiny percentage of people who really think that circumcision is a good idea as opposed to reaching out to and bringing onto a side that much larger public who are indifference to the issue and who with just a little bit of education and outreach can at least be made sympathetic to if not avid supporters of an anti circumcision position as a basic question of human rights okay guys to be honest you I think I had about five or six more topics to cover in this video but we're past the twenty minutes mark so for right now that's a wrap you can support my channel on patreon for one dollar a month I know I have just a couple of supporters who really want to talk to me more about this issue about the future of circumcision or I don't know anti-circumcision activism I think overall if you're looking at the Eric Clopper experience this latest controversy of him presenting his thesis and a live lecture and then he was fired from his position at Harvard University because he dared to make this you know somewhat offensive political statement against against circumcision this is obviously gonna be the biggest topic discussed in this for quite some time I can ask some of the same questions about this that I asked about vegan activism I don't think the way to address this is with a mood of hatred anger or a sense of injustice and that's exactly what Eric klopper chooses to summon on stage to give this dramatic performance there's a lot of hate in anguish there's a lot of anger and there's a sense of trying to take revenge against injustice in his performance um in a much more sublimated and subtle way within veganism there were leaders like earthling IDI who also say that and demonstrate that i listen to a lecture just the other day i think yesterday from earthling ed and he was he was really talking about hatred and rage and anger and how he felt it was important they can touch with that as as if he can activist when you're doing this kind I was listening to thinking wow I could edit this together with what I say about doing outreach and education importance I put on love what I call cold love having a cold detached form of love and you're outraged I can say Wow here's earthling Edie his philosophy is like the exact opposite of mine like 180 degrees - interesting here so in the same way I could say someone like Eric law or someone doing this kind of this kind of overreaching activism you have to find a way to do it that that's that's based in love and again not just love for the hapless victims but it's difficult describe I just did a video talking about this um you know love in the sense of you're reaching out to help the person you're preaching to because you're confident that what you're preaching is for their own benefit that you are actually helping them you're not just for buting them or insulting them you know just denigrating them or letting you know how ethically inferior they are to you you feel confident that if they knew what you know rationally they would come to the same conclusions that you come to and that you are in a very fundamental sense helping them to be a better person by giving them that option and opportunity there's a kind of love there where I can reach out to someone who's been a meat-eater their whole life and a hunter I can say to them look here are the facts now what what kind of person you want to be and I can certainly reach out to someone who has supported kessaris not castration circumcision male genital mutilation someone who's supported that custom their whole lives and I can say to them hey these are the consequences this is the scientific reality this is the historical background and now you have to take responsibility for your own decisions in life you have to look in the mirror and ask what kind of person do you want to be and as difficult as it may be to to muster an attitude of detachment and compassion and even love for the people you're educating that is exactly what you've got to do and if you can't do that I think you've got to get off stage because when you do it a sense of anger and hatred frustration revenge injustice well you know feeling wanting revenge for an injustice I think you discredit your own movement you discredit yourself and to be blunt you also soon enough for yourself to the brink of insanity and I see that with many vegan activists who do drive themselves crazy with veganism normally over a couple of years but it catches up and you know I think it'll deserve to be asked about Eric clapper who's now promising to have a long career dedicated to lobbying government on this issue either he's gonna change tactics partly for his own sanity and partly to do outreach and education more effectively ie he's gonna drop this you know mantle of resentment and anger and hatred or he's gonna drive himself crazy and I realize it's partly for theatrical reasons that he's doing this but I don't have to name names there are plenty of people here in the vegan movement where you can pretend they're just doing this for a theatrical reasons but ultimately the question we have to ask is not merely if someone acts insane but if their beliefs attitudes and behaviors betoken that that they really are insane politics itself is in large part of performance and I do regard Eric Lauper as someone who is struggling to make the transition from being something like a professor of physics physics was his field to to being a performer and to being a politician I think now the whole world is gonna watch as he takes the next step from his one-man play from this emotional meltdown on stage to what I hope is a more cerebral positive and engaged future that may indeed be you know a significant step as Western culture Christian Jewish and Islamic culture start to challenge the assumptions of millennia about male genital mutilation