Like most middle school children, I took a physical education class.  On Mondays, we brought gym clothes and a towel for the showers, and on Fridays, we brought the clothes and towel home to wash them.  A requirement to pass the class was to verify that we showered before continuing to other classes.  We all needed to shower and walk to our teacher’s office off the locker room, wet and wearing a towel, then he would check us off a list on his bulletin board.

I found the practice a bit goofy.  We spent a class learning the rules of volleyball or softball, then spent a week playing those sports by the rules we had just learned.  While I understand that we don’t want students walking into the classes that followed dripping with sweat from PE, the practice of walking into our teacher’s office, soaking from the shower and wearing a towel, only to be checked off in a cryptic list was silly.  Still, I participated.

Our diverse world and its implications

A couple of my physical education classmates were hearing impaired; though I seem to remember that they read lips.  Their presence rarely impacted anyone, though we did need to make a couple of adjustments.  Our teacher (and other students) needed to make sure that we looked these other students in the face when talking to them; mouthing our words more explicitly also helped.

In my early days of school, I had two classmates who struggled to read.  It would’ve been easy to label the brother and sister pair as ‘stupid’.  As I read the words myself and listened to what they read out loud, it was clear that they transposed letters within words.  Years later, I learned that this phenomenon is a common occurrence with dyslexia.  Today, I know many extraordinarily talented people who are dyslexic.

As we learn more about our world, we understand more conditions for which we need to account and make concessions.  Have you ever color-coded something to make it easier?  Did you take into account colorblindness?  When I attended school, I had never even heard of the terms ADD or ADHD; today, I make adjustments for people who struggle with it.

How do schools make the appropriate adjustments for students who are transgender?  Oh, did I happen to stumble upon a politically charged topic?

Learning about that community

Many years ago, I worked on a survey we would send our team about DEI.  One of the suggested questions was, “What are your preferred pronouns?”  At the time, I balked at the idea.  I found it to be too ‘in your face’.  Though I understood the term ‘transgender’, I had not yet learned the term ‘cisgender’.  Once I talked to people and listened to their stories, I realized that I had erred.

I eventually listed my pronouns on both LinkedIn and Twitter.  The amount of venom and vitriol slung at me on Twitter for merely having the words “(he/him)” next to my name amazed even me.  At first, you could have civil discussions and disagreements on Twitter.  Yes, naturally you could block the haters, but there were far too many of them.  The signal-to-noise ratio was almost zero.

Most of their arguments center around two points:

• There are only men and women, and their biological sex is determined.  God created us in his image, and he doesn’t make mistakes.  They’ll maintain that genders are determined by their biological ‘equipment’, but continue to refer to God with male pronouns.
• They maintain that if school students learn that transgender people exist, we condone genital mutilation on children.  They’ll paint a picture of a classroom teacher convincing their son that he’s, in fact, a girl… then having parts removed over the course of an average school day.

Today, I’ll focus on more of the second point, the one about genital mutilation on children.  With that said, I’ll take a moment to reflect upon those mandatory showers from our PE class from the beginning of the post.  Those showers led me to discover differences between other boys and me.  One of those differences?  Most boys my age were circumcised; I am not.

Circumcision is more common in the United States

I was born in Spain and raised in Puerto Rico until age 10; both of my parents were Chinese.  As an interesting observation, here are the rates of circumcision by country.  If we were to follow cultural standards, China’s rate is 14%, and Spain’s rate is 6.6% today.  If they were similar back in the late 60s, it would certainly explain why they did not have me circumcized.

The rate is 71.2% in the United States; the vast majority of men in this country are circumcized.  I remember high school health class when we discussed circumcision, and some alleged that there were marginal health benefits (like lower risk of urinary tract infections).  However, they largely described it as unnecessary.

Canada and Mexico, our closest neighbors, have rates of 31.9% and 15.4%, respectively.  Do we really believe that the rates of urinary tract infections are that much higher in Canada and Mexico than here in the United States?

I understand that Jewish boys will typically be circumcized, but that doesn’t even begin to approach the 71.2% figure for the United States.  The simple truth is that there’s really no compelling reason to circumcize a baby boy.

Let’s put it all together

Now that we have collected all the pieces, let’s put it all together.  We’ll break it down into the individual clauses so that there’s no ambiguity:

• The penis on a young boy is genitalia.  I assume that this is not up for debate.
• We needlessly conduct circumcision on children’s penises.  There is no compelling evidence of significant health benefits that warrant the procedure.  The rates in countries like Spain are below 7%, but they do not exhibit the proportional ill effects.
• Circumcision is mutilation.  It is unnecessary, and forgive me for being graphic, but we’re lopping off the tip of the penis.  If this were any other body part, like the nose, we’d easily call it mutilation.
• Most often performed on a child, before they can consent.

For the sake of comparison, if you do not object to the circumcision of a baby boy, you are, in fact, condoning genital mutilation on children.  I won’t debate that it’s completely legal, socially acceptable, and even expected among some (Jewish) people.

However, you can’t deny that it’s genital mutilation on children with your blessing.  What was that expression? “Your shit don’t stink.”

Why not come up with a better answer?  One that is not so transparently hypocritical.