An Invisible Harm

I recently watched a Hank Green video about how we rarely appreciate the deaths and diseases that don’t happen. Lives saved by vaccines or clean air laws look the same as normalcy. That idea stuck with me, but it also made me think about another kind of invisible story that is harder to talk about but weighs on me deeply.

I am more bothered by circumcision than I let on. I feel like my bodily integrity was violated. I first felt the horror of circumcision from Brian D. Earp, the bioethicist, and the more I learned, the more I felt like an intimate part of my body had been forcibly removed without my consent. I’m angry at the justifications, at the dismissiveness, at the medical system, my parents, and the culture that didn’t protect me but actively caused this harm. I’m also bothered by how it looks and feels. My body was supposed to be smooth, uninterrupted, with sliding action, pleasure, protection, and separation from my underwear. When I look down to pee or feel friction, I’m reminded of it, and I try to push the pain away.

Part of the pain is being reminded that this is part of a larger pattern of systemic problems. Inadequate Equilibria talks about how systemic forces act against trying to improve the world, even when solutions are obvious. In my mind, this feels like it should be an obvious fix. Just stop! It feels like low-hanging fruit, and I get agitated when people talk about bioethics as if some harms are truly unsolvable. Movies like Dark Waters and The Report resonate with me because they address similar challenges. They show characters going through tedious paperwork and years with seemingly no progress while people on their own team slow down with hesitancy and procedure or the opposition obstructs justice. The people trying to fix the system get worn down.

A few years ago, I thought this would be the problem I would solve. I tried investigating how other systemic problems were solved, like slavery where people and systems were deeply entrenched in their beliefs. I learned how hard it is to confront injustices and that sometimes you won't live to see your work completed. It made me realize the right thing will always be there even when people ignore it.

Later, I learned about scope sensitivity and that there are even more important and pressing problems that need my focus. I’ve tried to accept it, to find solutions elsewhere, to focus on other things. But it comes into my mind almost every day.

I feel embarrassed that I’m even bothered by this. That there are more important things to do. That people will think I’m weird. When I talk about it to doctors, friends, and family, they are dismissive. They act like something that happened a long time ago shouldn’t bother me now. Even when non-intact sexual partners acknowledge the injustice, I feel like the weight of this problem on me is not understood. I am envious of people who got to keep their body part. I feel like I should have gotten to keep my body whole too.

I really wish I could accept it or feel whole but I don't know how to hold this pain. It makes it really easy to feel helpless, powerless, like a victim, when it could also stand as a symbol of resilience despite struggle, and of the idea that the world still needs people to improve it.

I want having intact bodies in the future to be so normal that people don’t even think of circumcision as a problem. I want people to look back and wonder how anyone ever thought it was acceptable to cut off a part of someone’s body without their consent. I want it to be one of those harms we no longer have to talk about because it’s been prevented. That’s the kind of invisible success I want to see in the world.