Not to drag the discussion down or anything but isn’t the “dick cheese” factor a point in favor of circumcsion. Snippage allows for slightly better hygene and reduces the chance of penile cancer to zero. I think those two things alone make a marginal case in favor of circumcision.
As far as the “involuntary” nature of it, well, I’ve never met a guy in my life who ever seemed to resent the fact that he was circumcised or care at all. That includes me.
Maybe some guys find the time and energy to fume about it but I’ve never met one who said so out loud.
My wife and I have got one in the oven right now, so we’ve had this discussion recently. Just like with the first kid, we’ve decide that if it’s a boy we’re going to circumcise. It just seems like the cleaner thing to do on balance (and I really don’t want to have to learn how to clean a baby’s foreskin nor do I want to have to explain down the line why Daddy’s Johnson looks different than sonny’s.
Just to clarify one again, I am 100% opposed to female circumcision (aka mutilation, and I don’t think it’s too extreme to use the same term for male circumcision- if not, how much healthy tissue actually has to be cut from it to make it mutilation? How many thousands of nerve endings are expendable in the name of, well, tradition? Also, I still haven’t found any info about the conditions of male circumcision in countries where female mutilation also occurs)
But there ARE men complaining about being circumcised (circumcision.org, http://www.circumcisionvideos.com/onlinewbwr.htm), as well as plenty of women who’ve had the procedure done who have absolutely no problem with it- why are they completely ignorant of their own victimization while circumcised men are not?
This is almost a word for word repetition of a common justification for female circumcision (replacing “women” with “men”)
I realize that this isn’t exactly a burning issue. I just find it so extremely odd that this procedure, supported at one time in America (along with female circumcision, believe it or not), for the sole reason of curbing masturbation (which was obviously the cause of TB, epilepsy, insanity, etc.), is so ingrained in society that people barely even question it. It’s just interesting what things, no matter how barbaric the may seem at a fundamental level (e.g. cutting a defenseless child’s genitals when most parents won’t even let them sleep alone in a room), can become completely routine.
I don’t want to get into a big argument over male circumcision because that’s not the point of this thread, but I do want to say that the ‘dick cheese’ thing doesn’t hold a lot of water with me. The male is not circumcised, and because he has good hygiene habits (like washing thorougly) he never really has dick cheese.
So far as I know, it’s not advised to try to retract a baby’s foreskin to clean under it because there’s no significant problem with dick cheese buildup while the foreskin is still attached to the glans, and that most boys who are uncircumcised figure out how to retract it on their own when it starts to detach normally.
What does hold water with you? You have been shown medical and hygienic advantages of circumcision, and have dismissed them without good reason. We are not talking about your personal preferences, but about the actual science involved. You’ll notice we are not discussing “what looks better” or “what is easier to perform fellatio on” or “what respects the rights of the child” or whatever, which are indeed more subjective items. No, we are talking hygiene and health benefits which doctors seem to agree are conferred by circumcision.
As for dick cheese, though I am not in the habit of arguing by analogy: when I have short hair, it is easier to clean and stays clean longer (1-2 days); if I have longer hair, it gets dirty much more quickly (half a day). I hope that explains the general thinking.
This is not a discussion about cultural or esthetic practices… is it?
Do you have a cite for the male complaints that we can read online? I don’t fancy ordering a video. A quick search threw up this, which would tend to support your point. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with sensitivity, but I was cut as a child.
Also, do you have a cite for women who have been circumcised and yet say that it does not impede their sex lives?
Considering that the health benefits are far from proven, that well-respected medical institutions no longer recommend the practice or even think it should be done routinely, I don’t think you’ve shown me any such thing as scientific proof that lopping off all those nerve endings is acceptable.
You want me to change my mind? Prove that it is so medically necessary it has to be done in infancy when the person being cut can’t consent.
Nor have you actually shown anything to the contrary. And Ambushed provided a lenghty series of arguments for health factors, all of which you have ignored or dismissed. To recap the simplest ones that are not in dispute, some of these are explained by Cecil:
complications from infant circumcision are extremely rare (0.2 to 0.6%)
circumcision effectively brings to zero the chances of developing penile cancer
Circumcision eliminates foreskin problems including inflammation and failure to retract (which “persist in non-circumcising nations such as the UK despite presumed familiarity with proper foreskin hygiene”)
circumcision improves or at the very least facilitates penis hygiene
no smegma
These are well established claims. Additionally, there is some conflicting evidence that circumcision may help prevent some STDs.
There is no evidence to suggest that circumcised men enjoy sex any less than uncircumcised men, despite your loaded claim about “lopping off all those nerve endings”. Cecil’s take on your argument:
“The chief evidence for this seems to be research by John Taylor. Dr. Taylor opposes circumcision, has not formally published his research, and is not a specialist in neurology. His remarks on the structure and purpose of the foreskin are highly conjectural and include such statements as, “We haven’t done a strict quantitative study [but] to my mind [certain nerve endings] are rather more commonly found here in the prepuce than they are in the glans of the penis.” It would be foolish on the basis of such work to make any definite statements about the foreskin’s contribution to sexual sensitivity or anything else.”
I’m not interested in proving medical necessity for infant circumcision or changing your mind, since neither of these is the point of your hijack. But the facts would appear to be rather different from what you have presented without the necessary support.
I will note however that the complication rate for infant circumcision is extremely low, as quoted above; it does however rise to 2-10% when the procedure is performed post-infancy (Williams, British Journal of Surgery, 1993), since it is a more traumatic procedure later in life. It would therefore make more sense to undergo the procedure as an infant if it is elected for medical and hygienic reasons, given that the risks are so very low. I won’t bother discussing cultural and esthetic points of view, since everyone justly has his or her own opinion on these.
Most surgeries are not “medically necessary”. If you want to get technical, all surgeries are optional. You can always just get sick or die, you know.
There are decisions that all parents must make about their children without getting their consent, and there are cases that failing to do so has or should have criminal penalties.
In this case, some of the very real medical benefits of male circumcision fail to acrue if the surgery is not performed during infancy, such as the 100% prevention of penile cancer. Furthermore, circumcision later in llife is more dangerous and more painful, and so that decision is a less responsible choice.
Also, we should realize that evolution doesn’t create perfect bodies, especially for the modern era. We retain foreskins only because we used to run around naked and we needed to protect our peckers from getting caught in brambles and such. Considering all the numerous health benefits of male circumcision, we should consider male circumcisions to be a simple surgical correction of a problem evolution hasn’t gotten around to fixing yet.
There are generally 3 different types of female circumcision/genital mutilation.
As Abe mentioned, there are other forms of male genital cutting besides circumcision:
I just wanted to add that I’m not trying to support male or female genital cutting. Oh, and both quotes were from “Understanding Human Sexuality”, 8th edition, JS Hyde and JD DeLamater, 2003.
The effect of circumsion on penile cancer rates now seems to be thought overstated: American Cancer Society article
Talking out of my hat though, the recent linking of viruses to various cancers makes me think any ease of cleaning is worth what is a rather small sacrifice. At least I notice no sacrifice, seems to work just dandy.
Let me pile my numberage on top of the “entirely different worlds” thing. Male circumcision doesn’t have anything even remotely vaguely close to the effect on the individual as female circumcision does. I got cicumcised, so I dunno what advantages I have or whatever. Not having to deal with smegma seems like a nice enough thing, so I’m pretty content with it overall. I probably will give any theoretical children I may or may not have the choice for themselves, though.
Being sans penis, I suppose this really isn’t any of my business, but I’ve always been of the opinion that if it’s a functional and healthy body part it shouldn’t be cut off. The foreskin is there for several reasons.
As for the “preventing penile cancer” issue, breast cancer risk would be reduced virtually to zero if all women had radical mastectomies post-puberty, but nobody’s advocating that, are they? If you cut off a body part, sure, it won’t get cancer. Don’t you think it’s a little extreme to cut off a piece of a kid’s genitals when he’s not old enough to know what’s going on, let alone have a say in the matter, just to prevent the possibility of a cancer that’s not very common anyway?
I say, if a kid wants to have his foreskin removed when he’s old enough to understand what that means, it’s his body and he should be able to make that choice. I understand religious arguments, but if you aren’t Jewish, those arguments don’t hold water. And since male circumcision in this country was popularized to prevent masturbation, and most American men have been circumsized in the last what, 70 years? and pretty much every one of them has masturbated, I think that the campaign to keep boys from jacking off has pretty much failed miserably. The very slight, IMHO, percieved benefits from circumcision don’t outweigh the fact that you’re CUTTING OFF A PIECE OF THE KID’S PENIS without his consent.
You do realize that EVERYTHING IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE is done without his consent for the next 12-16 years.
I’m here to say, I have been circumcised and the idea that my parents took some choice away from me has never entered my mind- except on a purely intellectual level brought out by something like this thread. At this level, I still got no problem with it.
Does male circumcision IMPROVE the male sexual experience? It would seem to me that removal of the foreskin would allow for greater stimulation of thenerves (on the head of the penis), and therefore prolong/improve orgasm.
Is there any research on this?
