# Attn circumcised: your mother is likely a sex offender **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 15, 2012, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278 "2012-07-15T04:51:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ele_the_Stoic)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/181 "2012-07-26T06:38:49Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > It is a different thing when Jews do it. And my point is that that creates a double standard. A loophole that allows one to game the system. What happens when a non-practicing in-name-only Jew has their son circumcised, and can’t even point out where circumcisions are mentioned in the Torah? > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I don’t think the medical reasons amount to a justification. At. All. Why not? Because your dick having some extra skin is more important than living a long, prosperous life free of cancer? > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Cite common sense for yourself! The medical reasons amount to a judgement against the child. The authorities claim the foreskin is dirty; it MUST be removed. No way this child can care for it- apparently the child is stupid or something. The foreskin will attract STDs; it MUST be removed. No way this child can wear a condom- apparently the child is stupid or something. And apparently also some kind of slut or whore. You’re applying western standards of living to all people who perform circumcisions. In some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, they don’t have access to condoms. I’m pretty sure the AIDS epidemic there isn’t due to everyone being in one giant, cross-country orgy. **Newsflash** : You can get it from being raped. **Developing story** : Sex with a virgin was thought to be a cure for HIV in some parts of Africa, leading to rape. **In Further news** : You don’t even need to get raped to contract it, the virus really doesn’t notice a person’s intent. **And now sports** : You can transmit HIV to the fetus in utero, and blood transfusions. Also, common sense citation: [QUOTE=Common Sense] People don’t generally do things for no reason. They kind of want a reason. [/QUOTE] [Citation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-return_spectrum) > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > So. The (one week old!) child is a dirty, stupid whore, and therefore its foreskin MUST be removed. Yes, I call that, “no reason whatsoever”. Also punitive if not tortuous. If you don’t like it, I guess you can fuck off. Such _language_. You’re the one making blanket generalized statements that all adults who have their sons circumcised are sexual predators, and now you’re getting angry because you’re Freuding some shit into my argument that was never there? > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > The bullshit is the continuing acceptance of circumcision. The law is a 3rd party. Part of my (and many of yours) penis is missing. My parents take part in the blame. There’s your stop. The law comes after and tries to separate the two, a repeated avenue of denial in this issue. When does “denial” become people just plain disagreeing with you? Or is there such a thing? I’m pretty sure the law just disagrees, and not because the lawmakers were terrified to talk about their penises, or were _absolutely furious_ that some people had theirs in-tact. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > The foreskin has an especially sexual function, though all its functions are not sexual. To target it, and it alone, for amputation amounts to a sexual assault. I am sorry you don’t like that. Who are you trying to protect? I am the Illuminati. I protect the large, multinational pharmaceutical companies that pump drugs into your drinking water. Also, what is this “special sexual function”? I was under the assumption, and many evolutionary biologists tend to agree, that the foreskin evolved to protect the head of the penis from injury that could lead to scarring, and the inability to release semen. They seem pretty sure evolution didn’t give us foreskins just so our dicks would be more vaginodynamic. I may as well [toss this here](http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/08/study-shows-circumcision-results-in-no-loss-of-sexual-sensation/), too. Turns out the sex I have is exactly the same sensations as Uncircumcised Joe. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > If there is a medical necessity, I am sure you can demonstrate it for every individual case. If you are talking about statistics it starts to sound like you are accusing me of being a whore. In which case you can fuck off. Look at some wiki quotes: Yes, by arguing circumcision has valid medical reasons and citing impersonal statistical analysis about reductions in cancer and STD transmission rates, I am calling you, as an individual, a whore. …What? And kudos for using a report that’s 13 years old. Nothing of scientific value has been discovered since the late 90’s. Especially not with regards to cancer or the nature of HIV transmission, and AIDS’ impact on pateints’ lives. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > You’re arguing with a lot more people than just me. You need to re-examine your faulty position if you can’t mount a better argument than this fucking bullshit. I’m not even trying, man. I have better things to do in life than obsess about what my penis looks like. It’s just interesting to watch how radically you defend your position. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I don’t have a choice about how I present myself; they chopped half my dick off. So I guess you ought fuck off until you come around. You don’t have a choice about whether or not you act like a pretentious asshole online… because your penis got hurt…? Pretty sure that has nothing to do with it. You’re being an asshole, because I’m calling you out, and doing it in a tone you don’t like. Even if you knew I’m right, you won’t admit it, because you want to spite me. You won’t give me the “satisfaction” of being right, but you end up just making yourself look obsessed with your own penis. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/182 "2012-07-26T15:47:00Z")
> [@Ele the Stoic](#): > > But is highly relevant in developing countries with low rates of prophylactic use. Well, the OP is addressing members of a US based site, though I cede his argument is more general than that. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/183 "2012-07-27T19:56:29Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I don’t have a choice about how I present myself; they chopped half my dick off. That must have been where your sanity was located. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/184 "2012-07-29T04:06:55Z")
Pardon my absence, I just can’t be on here all the time. Also, gawd, this subject is disgusting :mad: > [@Ele\_the\_Stoic](#): > > And my point is that that creates a double standard. A loophole that allows one to game the system. > > What happens when a non-practicing in-name-only Jew has their son circumcised, and can’t even point out where circumcisions are mentioned in the Torah? It is not so difficult. In the latter case the parents shouldn’t bother. You’d need a positive religious legal reason to proceed, which your "JINO"s apparently would not be able to produce. > [@](#): > > Why not? Because your dick having some extra skin is more important than living a long, prosperous life free of cancer? Such dip-shittery. The cancer risk is laughably low as a justification for amputative surgery on a previously healthy week-old infant. Will you look for yourself at the numbers? From the [National Cancer Institute](http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/penile)? > [@](#): > > Estimated new cases and deaths from penile (and other male genital) cancer in the United States in 2012: > New cases: 1,570 > Deaths: 310 In a country of 300-400 million people, there were ~1500 cases. ~300 deaths; a 20% mortality rate for a disease that afflicts, what, 1 in 200 million men? Maybe we exclude everyone under 18, even then the risk is an order of magnitude at least away from one in a million. Only a urologist with a financial interest would recommend circumcising every male child. Its like goddamned Herod you stupid motherfuckers. What is wrong with you all if it is not denial? > [@](#): > > You’re applying western standards of living to all people who perform circumcisions. In some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, they don’t have access to condoms. I’m pretty sure the AIDS epidemic there isn’t due to everyone being in one giant, cross-country orgy. **Newsflash** : You can get it from being raped. **Developing story** : Sex with a virgin was thought to be a cure for HIV in some parts of Africa, leading to rape. **In Further news** : You don’t even need to get raped to contract it, the virus really doesn’t notice a person’s intent. **And now sports** : You can transmit HIV to the fetus in utero, and blood transfusions. The Catholic Church promotes no condoms, which has an effect. But also, you are basically saying that the infant is going to be statistically guilty of rape, and will therefore be less dangerous if circumcised. It is all just a sick excuse. I admit I don’t fully understand the motivation behind mass circumcision. > [@](#): > > Also, common sense citation: > [Citation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-return_spectrum) Gee thanks for that. I’ve asked for it before and have repeatedly not got an answer. Analagous medical ethics are along the lines of cases of advanced diabetes complications or gangrene: “If we do not amputate the extremity we will likely lose the limb, if not the patient.” Medical ethics bend to the breaking point around the issue of circumcision- why do you think that is? Consider the [Hippocratic Oath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Original): > [@](#): > > I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. Why would you impose 100% loss-of-extremity to prevent a 1 in 10 million condition with a 20% mortality rate? > [@](#): > > Such _language_. You’re the one making blanket generalized statements that all adults who have their sons circumcised are sexual predators, and now you’re getting angry because you’re Freuding some shit into my argument that was never there? Oh what. I already declared the “unabashed punitive” voice. It is harder than it looks, you ought to show more appreciation. And don’t give me your Freudian hand-waving bullshit. The medical reasons are in fact accusatory, in a way that we would find inappropriate in anything but a Philip K. Dick [novel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report). > [@](#): > > When does “denial” become people just plain disagreeing with you? Or is there such a thing? I’m pretty sure the law just disagrees, and not because the lawmakers were terrified to talk about their penises, or were _absolutely furious_ that some people had theirs in-tact. Denial occurs when a conclusion B follows from A, but the subject’s mind will not accept the connection. My theory includes the notion that the associations of A and B are incompatible, and so the mind compartmentalizes them in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. I’ve seen worse theories frankly. I suppose the law is being warped by financial and religious interests. I am open to alternative theories. > [@](#): > > Also, what is this “special sexual function”? I was under the assumption, and many evolutionary biologists tend to agree, that the foreskin evolved to protect the head of the penis from injury that could lead to scarring, and the inability to release semen. Generally, proponents of circumcision assess the “downside” of the procedure of having a value of Zero. The forced cluelessness reminds me of clashing with evangelicals. > [@](#): > > I may as well [toss this here](http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/08/study-shows-circumcision-results-in-no-loss-of-sexual-sensation/), too. Turns out the sex I have is exactly the same sensations as Uncircumcised Joe. By what mechanism? Magic? Look, in my case I fear the long-term consequences of circumcision mean I am sort of going asexual. This isn’t really fair to my gf. She is the kind of person who throws away better personal opportunities to teach English to African refugee children for not much more than minimum wage, or to tutor the underprivledged high school students, all because she values what will do the most good most. And she’s unselfconsciously gorgeous. Why would you want to disrupt _her_ sex life? Even if you hate men and male sexuality with all your heart and think every single one of us ought to be surgically altered to the brink of [anhedonia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia), can’t you at least stop to consider that this can affect other people as well? Asexuality could be the kind of thing that undermines a marriage. If you are responsible for that, under the[eggshell skull rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull) for instance, one’s vapid thoughtlessness could reach out across the decades to unabashedly punish the _mother_ of someone’s gf for apparently no defensible reason whatsoever. Why would you neglect to include these effects in your risk-reward analysis? > [@](#): > > Yes, by arguing circumcision has valid medical reasons and citing impersonal statistical analysis about reductions in cancer and STD transmission rates, I am calling you, as an individual, a whore. > > …What? Look, your position is so stupid I was doing you a favor by folding your comments in to some of the others in the thread, suggesting dirtiness and STDs as a result of leaving a person intact, as if these are not preventable if not curable conditions that do not require preemptive amputation. > [@](#): > > And kudos for using a report that’s 13 years old. Nothing of scientific value has been discovered since the late 90’s. Especially not with regards to cancer or the nature of HIV transmission, and AIDS’ impact on pateints’ lives. What an idiotic comment. The ‘risk’ you are protecting us from is practically non-existent in the case of the cancer, and preventable in the case of HIV. Are you a urologist’s lawyer? > [@](#): > > I’m not even trying, man. I have better things to do in life than obsess about what my penis looks like. > It’s just interesting to watch how radically you defend your position. It’ll make more sense after you realize I am right. Also realize that the only way the results from my POV can ever make anyone happy AFAICT is if I stir up antipathy in an audience, and then tell them about it. See **Guinistasia** , even a terrible person like me can find a way to care! Have some [comedy music](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EAV4U7y7jA&feature=related) to go with your sentiment! But my issue isn’t cosmetic. It isn’t even in this thread. This got dropped into the pit, the thread quickly devolved into an almost total knaviary, I switched gears. Hopefully people will get tired of the dick jokes and be able to take the subject seriously in the final thread. > [@](#): > > You don’t have a choice about whether or not you act like a pretentious asshole online… because your penis got hurt…? > > Pretty sure that has nothing to do with it. You’re being an asshole, because I’m calling you out, and doing it in a tone you don’t like. Even if you knew I’m right, you won’t admit it, because you want to spite me. You won’t give me the “satisfaction” of being right, but you end up just making yourself look obsessed with your own penis. The tone, again, is the “unabashed punitive” voice. If you don’t like it you need to quit your support for routine circumcision. Psychoanalyzing me is just a dodge; stop it. This isn’t even about me, let alone my penis. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/185 "2012-07-29T04:38:20Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > In a country of 300-400 million people, there were ~1500 cases. ~300 deaths; a 20% mortality rate for a disease that afflicts, what, 1 in 200 million men? Maybe we exclude everyone under 18, even then the risk is an order of magnitude at least away from one in a million. There are about 151.4 million males in the United States. That means that, with 1,570 new cases, the rate is actually about 1 in 100,000 annually, not 1 in 200 million, as you preposterously suggest. If we restrict it to men over 18, the male population is about 110 million, meaning that 1,570 cases is a rate of about 1 in 70,000 annually. Personally, i agree with you that these levels of male genital cancer don’t constitute a compelling argument for circumcision, but if you want to retain any credibility at all in this thread, you could at least get your mathematics right. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/186 "2012-07-29T05:10:30Z")
Quit comparing yourself to a rape victim. You weren’t fucking raped, you’ve never been raped, and unless you had a botched circumcision, you did NOT have “half of your dick chopped off.” > [@](#): > > Look, in my case I fear the long-term consequences of circumcision mean I am sort of going asexual. WHAT “long term-consequences”? Do you think you’re somehow going to be impotent or something? Have you HAD issues because of your circumcision, specifically? Or are they all psychological and emotional? Seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/187 "2012-07-29T06:53:22Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I don’t have a choice about how I present myself; they chopped half my dick off. Any yet you’re still a colossal prick. > [@Guinastasia](#): > > WHAT “long term-consequences”? Do you think you’re somehow going to be impotent or something? Have you HAD issues because of your circumcision, specifically? Or are they all psychological and emotional? Seriously. A botched circumcision leading to restricted blood-flow to his brain would explain a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ele_the_Stoic)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/188 "2012-07-29T08:45:19Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > It is not so difficult. In the latter case the parents shouldn’t bother. You’d need a positive religious legal reason to proceed, which your "JINO"s apparently would not be able to produce. So it’s a legal reason now? As in, we have to present the doctor with proof of our “religiousness” before he can perform a circumcision? We’re going to walk around carry “certified jew” and “authentic muslim” cards? Cuz religious law is completely unenforceable here, and means absolutely jack to the real law. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Such dip-shittery. The cancer risk is laughably low as a justification for amputative surgery on a previously healthy week-old infant. Will you look for yourself at the numbers? From the [National Cancer Institute](http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/penile)? I am fully aware of how distant the risk is even in the worst circumstances. It still exists, and circumcision still helps prevent it. I’m also aware that it’s not _your_ choice if it’s a worthy tradeoff when the parents are considering whether or not to have a circumcision performed. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > What is wrong with you all if it is not denial? Disagreement with your base thesis, of course. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > But also, you are basically saying that the infant is going to be statistically guilty of rape, and will therefore be less dangerous if circumcised. It is all just a sick excuse. I just want to let you know, you are completely pulling this “statistical rape” stuff directly out of your ass through willful misinterpretation of my points. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Gee thanks for that. I’ve asked for it before and have repeatedly not got an answer. Analagous medical ethics are along the lines of cases of advanced diabetes complications or gangrene: “If we do not amputate the extremity we will likely lose the limb, if not the patient.” Medical ethics bend to the breaking point around the issue of circumcision- why do you think that is? Not long ago doctors weren’t even allowed to perform surgery. Barbers did. I think ignoring the Hippocratic oath there, and allowing for surgery to be performed by knowledgeable specialists with information about the human body and how it works in sterile operating rooms was a good idea. The Hippocratic oath used to mean something. Used to; before people realized how stupid it was. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Why would you impose 100% loss-of-extremity to prevent a 1 in 10 million condition with a 20% mortality rate? Because the parents wanted it. And they have near dictatorial _legal ownership_ over the baby. Quite literally almost on the same level as chattel slavery. Pretty much the only thing they can’t do is kill them, or try and kill them. You seem to operate on some emotional “babies are people” type of assumption - an assumption which, while noble in its face, is completely unsupported by law. If babies were equal people with adults, they would be eligible for the death penalty. But they’re not, because they literally are not as cognitively developed, and don’t have grasp over the concepts of cause and effect. Babies are not truly legally on the same level as adults until after their 21st birthdays. 18 doesn’t cut it anymore - you can only do _almost_ everything a full citizen can. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > The medical reasons are in fact accusatory. I fail to see how. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Denial occurs when a conclusion B follows from A, but the subject’s mind will not accept the connection. My theory includes the notion that the associations of A and B are incompatible, and so the mind compartmentalizes them in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. I’ve seen worse theories frankly. I suppose the law is being warped by financial and religious interests. I am open to alternative theories. I have one: The law is the codified result of society’s thoughts on how things should operate after thousands of years of civilization testing the boundaries with different possibilities. Society has declared that unduly interfering with a parent’s wishes in the raising of their child is frowned upon. Has nothing to do with cognitive dissonance, it’s much simpler - this is the way it worked acceptably throughout history. It wasn’t broke, so we didn’t fix it. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > By what mechanism? Magic? Look, in my case I fear the long-term consequences of circumcision mean I am sort of going asexual. This isn’t really fair to my gf. This _literally makes no sense to me._ Fear is meaningless in this. How many circumcised men throughout history have been father to dozens of children? I don’t even understand how you came to this conclusion outside of purely psychological grounds. Missing part of your skin, wherever that skin may be from, does not have any bearing on your sexual functioning. You’re ascribing traits to the foreskin that are simply _not there._ Oft repeated and assumed traits, sure, but science doesn’t lie. There is _no measurable difference._ Johnny Uncut simply is not having harder orgasms and making your ex-girlfriend more satisfied than you ever could, no matter how militantly he claims he is. How could he _possibly_ know? He has only one reference point. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > She is the kind of person who throws away better personal opportunities to teach English to African refugee children for not much more than minimum wage, or to tutor the underprivledged high school students, all because she values what will do the most good most. And she’s unselfconsciously gorgeous. Why would you want to disrupt _her_ sex life? Whether my penis has extra skin has no bearing on her sex life. Foreskins do not produce greater orgasms in girls. Honestly, man, this is the root of your argument, whether you admit it to yourself or not. You’ve been hinting at it since page one - you feel inferior to uncircumcised men because you feel neutered, and like less of a man. That’s not stupid. What is stupid is attaching yourself to that feeling of insecurity so strongly that even solid, independently verifiable proofs cannot shake it. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Even if you hate men and male sexuality with all your heart and think every single one of us ought to be surgically altered to the brink of [anhedonia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia), can’t you at least stop to consider that this can affect other people as well? Of course I realize it can affect other people. A lot of girls really dislike uncircumcised penises, and think they’re hideous; that’s an effect. What is not an effect of circumcision - as demonstrated by scientific inquiry and analysis - is that foreskins increase sexual pleasure. They just plain don’t. Meanwhile, it _is_ demonstrated that circumcision has medical benefits. However unworthwhile they may be to you. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Asexuality could be the kind of thing that undermines a marriage. If you are responsible for that, under the[eggshell skull rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull) for instance, one’s vapid thoughtlessness could reach out across the decades to unabashedly punish the _mother_ of someone’s gf for apparently no defensible reason whatsoever. Why would you neglect to include these effects in your risk-reward analysis? Because it is completely disconnected. Lots and lots of people who get circumcised go on to live very long, fulfilling lives filled with plenty of kids. Arguing that it _can_ result in asexuality and destroy a marriage and thus a person’s life causing them to commit suicide is ignoring the rest of the population. Correlation does not imply causation. Give me a million years and I can find you a million uncircumcised asexuals. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Look, your position is so stupid I was doing you a favor by folding your comments in to some of the others in the thread, suggesting dirtiness and STDs as a result of leaving a person intact, as if these are not preventable if not curable conditions that do not require preemptive amputation. I appreciate the sentiment, but please don’t do me any more favors. They’re not helping to advance your argument, and are in fact completely derailing them. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > What an idiotic comment. The ‘risk’ you are protecting us from is practically non-existent in the case of the cancer, and preventable in the case of HIV. Are you a urologist’s lawyer? No, like I said, I’m in the Illuminati. And again… Not all circumcisions happen in the western world. The world doesn’t revolve around us here in North America and Europe. For a very large portion of the world’s population, HIV is _not_ preventable short of absolute abstinence. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > It’ll make more sense after you realize I am right. Good argument. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Also realize that the only way the results from my POV can ever make anyone happy AFAICT is if I stir up antipathy in an audience, and then tell them about it. And? Your inability to convert others to your side doesn’t make your arguments better. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > But my issue isn’t cosmetic. It isn’t even in this thread. This got dropped into the pit, the thread quickly devolved into an almost total knaviary, I switched gears. Hopefully people will get tired of the dick jokes and be able to take the subject seriously in the final thread. What’s really sad, is I am taking this seriously. I’m not going nuts torturing myself wondering what masterful and witty argument you’re going to come up with next and how I can counter it with my faulty illuminati-logic, but I sure am taking them seriously. > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > The tone, again, is the “unabashed punitive” voice. If you don’t like it you need to quit your support for routine circumcision. Psychoanalyzing me is just a dodge; stop it. This isn’t even about me, let alone my penis. It’s _entirely_ about you and _especially_ your penis. You’ve made that abundantly clear through paragraphs like the one above. Maybe you want and believe there to be a greater purpose to your arguments, but at the end of the day, you yourself implied it makes you feel inferior by saying it’s not fair to your girlfriend. Have you asked her what she thinks? What was her reasoning for preferring uncircumcised penises? If it’s anything other than “No, it makes no difference to me”, then she’s a vastly superficial, vain, and selfish person. ---
**Author:** ![Freakenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b782af/32.png) [@Freakenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freakenstein)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/189 "2012-07-29T13:22:10Z")
Try2B, I have no beef in this fight, I just saw the title and was ‘what the…?’, so I entered and I am even more ‘what the…?’. You seem to think that it’s ok for Jews and Muslims because they have done it so long. I’d like to know in what year it changed from child abuse to a cultural tradition and how children responded mentally to that? Also in what year it will become a fine tradition in America instead of child abuse? You are clearly playing with two balls here ( it’s a perfectly clean football metaphor here around… ), so try to be comprehensible. Sorry if you already answered to this, but I just got overwhelmed after three pages. But I think You have a point, the first guy to do this really was a perv and he just got the rest duped with eloquence. ( This is My first post so I may send this wrong way or to wrong place or something… ) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/190 "2012-07-29T19:08:24Z")
No, you sent it to the right place, and good call, my friend. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2012, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/191 "2012-07-30T01:26:30Z")
By and large, I agree with you, but wanted to nitpick just a little. (God knows we need some intelligent dissent in this thread; our accuser certainly isn’t providing it!) > [@Ele\_the\_Stoic](#): > > . . . The Hippocratic oath used to mean something. Used to; before people realized how stupid it was. . . Seems to me there is much of wisdom in it. Sure, it fails to serve our modern ethics, but like the Ten Commandments or the Magna Carta, it is worth respecting and admiring. It was a very early attempt to codify right and wrong. Overall, it got more right than wrong! > [@](#): > > And they have near dictatorial _legal ownership_ over the baby. Quite literally almost on the same level as chattel slavery. Pretty much the only thing they can’t do is kill them, or try and kill them. . . . Well, no, our accuser has some justice on his side: parents are not allowed to harm their children. They can cut off a foreskin or two, but not an arm. They can shave the kid’s head (how many of us grew up with “military” haircuts?) but they can’t scalp the kid surgically. If our accuser could demonstrate that circumcision was actually harmful, he and other abolitionists might have a valid point. > [@](#): > > Missing part of your skin, wherever that skin may be from, does not have any bearing on your sexual functioning. You’re ascribing traits to the foreskin that are simply _not there._ Oft repeated and assumed traits, sure, but science doesn’t lie. There is _no measurable difference._ Johnny Uncut simply is not having harder orgasms. . . This: the claim of “harm” is not supported. > [@](#): > > How could he _possibly_ know? He has only one reference point. . . . This is easy: lots of men have been circumcised as adults, and have, in fact, two reference points: “before” and “after.” And their reports have universally been “Meh: not much difference.” This is what utterly kills the claims of the abolitionists: solid scientific evidence that…it doesn’t really matter a damn! > [@](#): > > No, like I said, I’m in the Illuminati. . . . Orthodox Illuminati or Reform Illuminati? (No one counts “Liberal Illuminati” as being Illuminati at all.) > [@](#): > > What’s really sad, is I am taking this seriously. . . . Well, now and then a serious answer to a nutcase argument is a good idea. It shouldn’t all be derisive rejection. A sliding scale is in operation, depending on how nutty the argument is. For a really stupid one, like our accuser’s, a 9 to 1 ratio is about right. ---
**Author:** ![Robb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a183cd/32.png) [@Robb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robb)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2012, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/192 "2012-07-30T01:56:57Z")
What do you think you proposed as a subject for debate? ---
**Author:** ![SticksAndString](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3bc359/32.png) [@SticksAndString](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SticksAndString)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/193 "2012-07-30T18:35:25Z")
> [@Battle\_Pope](#): > > My wife tried that but the doctors asked us to stop as we were making the operating table shake too much. LOL When we took our tour of the maternity ward at the hospital, the nurse who was giving the tour warned the guys that if they wanted to sleep in our room (there was a couch that turned into a cot thing), they would have to wear pajama bottoms, or at the very least, non-see through boxer shorts. They’d had implement that rule after coming in to check on the new mom/baby and found waaaay too many nekkid daddies passed out on the couch-cot thing. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/194 "2012-07-31T05:00:57Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Personally, i agree with you that these levels of male genital cancer don’t constitute a compelling argument for circumcision, but if you want to retain any credibility at all in this thread, you could at least get your mathematics right. I got the ‘apologia’ vibe off that poster. Often that is associated (correlated? caused?) with a devastating innumeracy. I pitched a softball to see if he could hit it- I can’t blame you for jumping on that one. I rolled the dice, I didn’t get the number. It was worth a try. If I weren’t good with numbers I would never have attempted such a stunt. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/195 "2012-07-31T05:15:05Z")
> [@Freakenstein](#): > > Try2B, I have no beef in this fight, I just saw the title and was ‘what the…?’, so I entered and I am even more ‘what the…?’. > > You seem to think that it’s ok for Jews and Muslims because they have done it so long. > I’d like to know in what year it changed from child abuse to a cultural tradition and how children responded mentally to that? Also in what year it will become a fine tradition in America instead of child abuse? > > You are clearly playing with two balls here ( it’s a perfectly clean football metaphor here around… ), so try to be comprehensible. > > Sorry if you already answered to this, but I just got overwhelmed after three pages. > > But I think You have a point, the first guy to do this really was a perv and he just got the rest duped with eloquence. > > ( This is My first post so I may send this wrong way or to wrong place or something… ) No, it really is a different thing raised in a culture of religious law. The point isn’t how long they’ve done it. Look- for one thing I don’t decide who is or isn’t a member of this or that religion. Ask them. -I don’t replace people’s religious leaders. The unobservant are free to take my advice. Judaism and Islam really are valid exceptions. You’ll have to wait for the final thread for the full explanation why. The medical reasons really are garbage- they violate another Hippocratic principle, the admonition against [therapeutic nihilism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_nihilism). They put radical, amputative infant surgery at the front of the line, without even giving preventative medicine a chance. It really isn’t more complicated than using a toothbrush you know. Routine circumcision is so stupid, its secular proponents ought to be punished unabashedly! ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/196 "2012-07-31T05:22:04Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Quit comparing yourself to a rape victim. You weren’t fucking raped, you’ve never been raped, and unless you had a botched circumcision, you did NOT have “half of your dick chopped off.” I wasn’t raped. All my comments on this point come down to the fact that a rape victim stops being raped, but you can’t stop being amputated. Does everything have to be relative? Does one sucky thing take away from another? I’m sorry I brought it up, in my groping for context I only stumbled into guilt. ETA: what percentage of my dick is it ok to chop off? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/197 "2012-07-31T08:11:16Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I got the ‘apologia’ vibe off that poster. Often that is associated (correlated? caused?) with a devastating innumeracy. I pitched a softball to see if he could hit it- I can’t blame you for jumping on that one. I rolled the dice, I didn’t get the number. It was worth a try. If I weren’t good with numbers I would never have attempted such a stunt. What the fuck are you talking about? Are you arguing that you threw out an incorrect number on purpose, just to test the other person? If that’s what you’re saying, i simply don’t believe you. You claim to be “good with numbers,” and yet when you actually try to use them, you apparently suck at it. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/198 "2012-07-31T09:12:05Z")
FWIW, my son isn’t circumsized, and he is now four. And yes, he has had one medical problem that may not have occurred if he had been snipped. Something under his foreskin got infected and there was redness and swelling and it was a very painful few days for him. Needed antibiotics, too. We, his parents, micht have prevented it by routinely retracting his foreskin with each bath. But that is very hard with a boy who doesn’t even like baths all that much, hates having his hair washed, and now we have to add painful fillding with his penis to the mix? Good lord, then I might as well forget getting him to bathe at all or fight him tooth and nail each time. So I didn’t. (IIRC, with toddler boys, the foreskin doesn’t retract on its own as it is still attached, and the parent would really have to “break” a thin piece of skin to retract it. After age three or four, it becomes easier. All if this is a long story to say that I might see at least some benefits to circumcision. If the benefits outweigh the cons, that is another matter on which I have no opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/199 "2012-07-31T11:25:59Z")
For such an inflammatory OP, this thread has turned out surprisingly dull. One might say that it doesn’t have much in the way of a point. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278/200 "2012-07-31T13:22:13Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > One might say that it doesn’t have much in the way of a point. Cut it out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attn-circumcised-your-mother-is-likely-a-sex-offender/628278.md?page=11)