[–] classy_nigger 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
How about what would be acceptable to do to the adult if they were incapacitated and needed surgery?
This is not an objective concept, and it does not speak to the question of "who has the right to dictate what happens to the child's body?". I don't see any reason that a doctor, who might as well decide that transgenderism is necessary, should have more of a right than either the parent or the child. Or, if the parent is deciding what is "medically necessary", then this will not stop them from circumcising their child.
If a parent cannot unilaterally decide to circumcise (or castrate or whatever) then they must not be the (sole) possessor of the child. I'm sure you also do not want to place the child's custody solely with himself either. The answer you are looking for, I think, is that the child has some joint custody of himself with the parent. The most familiar of those arguments is that ownership of the child switches at some age (e.g. 13 a la Bar Mitsvah). That argument has the problem of deferring to God or tradition, and does not preclude circumcision in any case. I am not familiar with any argument that has non-binary values ownership such that a parent cannot circumcise their child, but can stop them from transitioning genders.
An unfinished idea: What if both child and parent can, by right, veto the other's decisions regarding the child's body? They must both will for something for anything to happen, by right. Although that seems easily abusable by any parent, who can essentially coerce the child by vetoing all eating until the child agrees to circumcision, so that the child must decide between death and circumcision.
[–] prairie 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
That's a good example. It could be argued that a critical time window is lost if it's deferred to adulthood. That's the way these work, a crack for a wedge to be driven into to justify whatever.
I'm noticing that there's a more general issue of trying to somehow make rules that prevent anything bad from happening (which is where I was coming from, as I can see now). This is the road to ruin because it eats away in a million ways one's freedom, and opens the door to abuse. You're arguing something principled, so that for responsible people it gives them the power to make their own destiny (and that of their offspring). There's no substitute for loving parents, and a whole prescription of detailed child rearing gets in the way of this, and normalizes shitty people.