An innovative if too-clever argument against circumcision.
Marotta applies the framework of social justice to the issue of circumcision in this nonfiction work.
Are children oppressed? The author, a filmmaker, thinks they are. “If social justice is about protecting the vulnerable, the minority, and the oppressed, then there is no minority more vulnerable or oppressed than children,” he writes at the beginning of this volume. “Children are the weakest members of society in every society, and any movement based in social justice must eventually face the reality that children are oppressed.” Despite the broadness of this claim, the specific form of oppression Marotta is primarily interested in is circumcision, a topic he’s previously dealt with in his documentary, American Circumcision. The author encourages readers to think about circumcision through the lens of critical theory, applying the ideas of writers like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi to the topic. Marotta discusses concepts including biopower, the state’s subjugation of people’s bodies, and Intactivism (the idea that every human being has a right to their own body). In addition to matters of bodily autonomy, the author argues that circumcision upholds notions of Western cultural supremacy, enforces sexual essentialism, forces a circumcised (or uncircumcised) identity onto children, and causes generational trauma. He also outlines a path toward restorative justice to address these issues. While Marotta’s arguments may resonate with readers who agree that circumcision is ethically wrong, he often oversteps with unpersuasive claims, like his assertion that circumcision is a form of pedophilia: “Although some adults may not feel immediate sexual pleasure, they derive other forms of pleasure. When adults say the circumcised penis ‘looks better’ they are deriving aesthetic pleasure from their children’s genitals. We could call this aesthetic pedophilia.” Though his adoption of the language and concepts of contemporary social justice movements seems to be sincere, the fact that he can fit them so easily (if unconvincingly) into the discussion of circumcision does not bolster his argument so much as make readers question the soundness of the concepts in even their original context.
An innovative if too-clever argument against circumcision.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2022
ISBN: 9781735113425
Page Count: 367
Publisher: Hegemon Media
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
