So everyone has times when their behavior doesn’t exactly match up with their stated positions/world views. It’s a normal thing. There are a few ways this can be dealt with. Someone can more or less subconsciously refuse to look at the discrepancy and continue on their merry hypocritical way–I think this is the majority reaction really; it is certainly the easiest. You can examine your world view more closely and decide that it no longer works for you and you should change it to align with your behavior. You can examine your behavior more closely and decide that it is inappropriate and you need to change it to align with your world view. Or, as Noah points out, you can look at your world view and behavior and decide they both kind of suck and change both. I think this last one is uncommon and maybe a bit drastic. 😉

This got really really long.

So yeah. I’ve been thinking about judgment a lot lately. I have always been a very judgmental person and I’ve been pretty ok with that by and large. I don’t really understand the benefit of trying to not judge people/things. That’s how you establish your own value system. But, and this is a big but, I think that there are ok ways to judge and less ok ways to judge. Specifically I don’t see any problem whatsoever with me judging the hell out of everything in the whole wide world inside my head or even ranting at Noah. The problem comes when I take my judgments and I expect other people to feel shame because of those judgments. Shaming is wrong. Period. End of story. That’s a hard and fast rule in my life. So if I think that judging isn’t inherently a problem but I think that shaming is flat unacceptable… that’s a tricky line to walk.

Recently I have reached a point in my own personal view of lactivism where I have reached the conclusion that as much as I am going to bring up all the health benefits (for mother and child) often and vocally and with great vigor… I don’t demonize people who use formula. I might express that I feel kind of sad that nursing didn’t work out, but I’m even careful with that. I have expressly told pregnant chicks that breastfeeding is absolutely the best health choice for her and the baby and that cannot be argued with, but there are a lot more factors in life. I won’t feel like she is a bad mother if she believes that nursing is something that she can’t do physically, emotionally, mentally, whatever. A mom who is happy to be a mother and who feels satisfied with her choices is more important than an angry martyr who is nursing against her will.

Ok, I feel very comfortable with how I have resolved that in my own head. I feel like I have reached a place where I am comfortable with my level of judging and yet I’m not shaming. But having worked through my own ‘stuff’ around that topic I have to then stop and go… I’m not being consistent… and that’s a problem. Fuck. I hate when I do that.

So uhm, circumcision. I’m really not sure how exactly this became such a knee jerk, reactionary topic for me. Ok, it’s genital cutting and that’s pretty intense whether you call it circumcision or mutilation… but… I’m not so intense about a wide variety of other parenting choices that are also a huge health/physical thing (like vaccines). How did this become, as I’ve been thinking and speaking about it lately, my hill to die on? Specifically, how did this become a topic about which I am willing to shame other people so emphatically? That’s… ok, that’s not cool of me. Why do I think I get to play god on this topic? There are a great many things in the world that make me terribly sad and feel tremendous empathy for people who make the choices I disagree with and I don’t feel the need to shame them. Why this topic?

So I’m going to take this a part a bit. I am fairly supportive of parents making broad medical decisions for their kids about things that may be questionably 100% necessary. Cochlear implants is a good example. That’s a noticeable procedure that completely affects the rest of a child’s life in a way that is ambiguously good–but I think that parents get to make that call. I support people getting most ‘deformities’ fixed because going through life looking very different is often a good way to be mercilessly abused by other children, even though I think that a good many deformities are just part of the natural variation of people and should be accepted as also normal. That is unquestionably a cosmetic procedure with risk (any surgery is risky) but I don’t question a parent’s right to make the decision. Why do I feel so unambiguously righteous in condemning circumcision?

I don’t know that I had even had any thoughts whatsoever about circumcision one way or the other until I was 18. I was working on the Californian’s for Same Sex Marriage campaign and I met a lot of really wonderful people. (When it folded into MECA I faded out.) Specifically there was an older man I worked with a lot who became a fairly good friend. That friendship lasted probably 7 years before we lost contact. He was gay (not a big surprise given where I met him) and he brought up the topic of circumcision. He was intact and he was telling me about the problems he had seen in circumcised guys and how he felt really bad for them. It was really surprising to me. I pretty much unilaterally decided that summer that I would not circumcise any child I had.

Fast forward through the years as I became sluttier and sluttier (yay!) I saw more and more problems first hand. When you sleep with a lot of people you get to see a wide range of genitals and sexual experiences. I’m willing to bet that my personal experience is that around 1/3 of the men I have had penetrative sex with have had some level of issue with their circumcisions. I’m not claiming this is a good scientific study–this is pure anecdata (though on a fairly large scale). I think I’ve only run into a couple of guys who genuinely felt traumatized by having been circumcised. Most considered their issues to be just ‘one of those things you deal with’ and not a big deal. I didn’t like seeing these guys have to deal with it because it was a continual low level issue.

Then I started doing serious research on the topic. I watched some videos of actual circumcisions being done. I saw the physical results on an infant of botched circumcisions and I became incensed. This was no longer minor issues in my mind–this became an atrocity. It helps that I’m all hopped up on Mommy hormones and I have been for years so I’m not at my most coldly logical. Ok. So I feel this way.

How in the course of this process did I manage to lose one of my core values? There are a lot of other things that I judge nearly as strenuously, but I pretty much keep my mouth shut and I certainly don’t shame anyone. I have crossed a line at some point and that’s not ok.

So at this point I get to look at my behavior and my core value and decide what I’m going to do about the mismatch. I’m really not ok with just deciding to be a hypocrite because “But this is REALLY IMPORTANT so it’s ok for me to shame people in this case!!!” Just no. So either I now believe that it is ok to shame people or I need to knock my shit off. I really can’t see me changing my opinion about shaming people. That is a long held deeply intense personal belief that is absolutely mandatory to my version of justice in the world. Well shit. I don’t like my other option though. I want to sit on my high horse. I want to declare that people who do this thing are terrible and awful and I don’t want to know anyone so callous towards children. But you know… I… ugh. I don’t know that I can really do that either. People aren’t black and white. I fucking hate growing up. I want my black and white thinking back. I want there to be good people and bad people and I can love the good ones and hate the bad ones. But… that’s not how it works. Everyone, no matter how good or bad they are on overall evaluation, is a mix. Good people can do very bad things sometimes. And people who are bad can do good things sometimes. It’s not reasonable or helpful to pick one issue and make it the deciding factor.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I don’t like having to look at things like this. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts. I feel bad that I have been doing something so counter to what I believe in. I feel bad that I have been treating people (even if only in my mind) inappropriately. That’s not acceptable. But I also don’t really know how I’m going to come to peace with this one in my head. I don’t know if this is the kind of thing that will get easier as my kids age and the rush of Mommy hormones fades. Why can’t I accept this as something where parents are doing the best they can and it’s not my place to judge? Well, I can judge… but I shouldn’t be shaming. How can I find compassion for people doing this thing that I find so awful. That’s what I need to be going for–compassion. In my heart of hearts there is some judgment for people who don’t even try to breastfeed, but I temper it with compassion and I don’t need to *tell* people that I am judging them. (Though it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.) Well… and I guess that I don’t really judge the individual too much. I don’t think I have ever concretely had the though ‘x is a bad parent because she didn’t even try to breastfeed’. For nursing I am fully capable of looking at each individual case and finding compassion for pretty much every (non-abusive) mother. I need to find that for circumcision and I’m not sure how yet. It’s really hard though. I really and truly can’t see any benefit to circumcision beyond religious and mutilation of the body for religion just seems… not something I know how to accept at this point.

I don’t know how this struggle is going to end but I’m going to have to work on it. Hypocrisy isn’t the answer. Deciding that shaming people is hunky dory under specific circumstances I get to cherry pick isn’t the answer either. Sometimes I hate the answer. I think this is going to take a while to resolve. That makes me feel bad too. I hate when I am not being true to my ideals. (I avoided the word authentic, Sarah.)