Following on from Princhester here - where do you draw the line ?
Is it OK to tattoo the word “sin” on your newborn’s dick ? Is it OK to perform a circumcision on a 10 year old boy ?
How about other ritual genital mutilations (insertion of shells beneath the skin etc.) ? Ritual facial scarifications ?
You’re still talking apples and oranges. A body-part altered in infancy is going to be different from a body part altered in adulthood, if for no other reason than that the infant brain is constantly making nerve connections and will react differently to a bodily injury than the adult mind would.
Absolutely, I think the study you suggest is a good one, since the men in those cases would be accepting circumcision as a part of their religion, as a duty, rather than for medical reasons, or for aesthetic or even fetishist reasons. However, it still cannot tell us anything about the experience of someone who has gone from cut to restored. And you’d have to follow up for many, many years, as keritinization of the glans penis appears to be a cumulative process.
Well, didn’t I say exactly this? I did. This is the same reason you can’t ask men who sought circumcision because they were unhappy having a foreskin, and ask them about their sexual satisfaction afterward, and apply it across the population. Their motivations also skew their perceptions and the results.
I guess I see things this way: It’s a relatively quick healing process for an adult to recover from circumcision. Absolutely it’s painful, but it’s reasonably quick. He will not be at the healing process for years. Whereas if a man wishes to restore, he’s facing years of effort, and yes, discomfort, inconvenience, etc. How do you weigh the short-termed pain of the few against the long-termed inconvenience of the other few?
In the place where I live, washing facilities are available at any hour of the day. End of problem. In point of fact, I find the idea of jumping into bed with a partner who hasn’t bothered to wash slightly icky, regardless of the number of skin folds they possess, or their location.
The pro side should be providing a scientific basis for the perpetuation of an institution of unnecessary harm; that’s the way it would work in any other case.
Thanks, Mangetout, you said what I said in a sentence rather than a paragraph.
And yeah, I’d offer that most body parts don’t taste very nice come afternoon if you just showered in the morning. Boobs, arms, legs, faces, necks, weiners, whatever, they all accumulate tang and saltiness after a few hours. I don’t see how the foreskin contributes to a “weird” flavour by the afternoon? It’s not like uncut penises taste like outhouses and cut penises taste like strawberries and cream a few hours after washing. They both taste like DICK.
No, actually, it doesn’t, because nobody has proved harm in the first place! Jesus, I get that you people are obsessed with yours and other people’s dicks, but that’s no excuse for assuming that your side is right without evidence. Circumcision is something commonly practiced without any ill effects at all. Before you have the right to tell people that a harmless practice should be outlawed, you have to prove that it is harmful. I don’t have to prove a damn thing, I have thousands of years of history on my side.
First, let me state that I’m a home birth midwife, and refused to circumcise my sons. I dont’ believe in routine circumcision based on cosmetic reasons (so he’ll look like dad) because there is no good medical reason to do so and the procedure done in hospital is risky. I am very anti-circ on that basis.
Because God commanded that it be so. If you don’t believe in God, you’ll never understand this argument.
I fully support the right of parents to parent their children as they see fit. I personally happen to believe that vaccinating your children is far more harmful to them than circumcising your boy. But I’d never deny someone their right to vaccinate, just as I shouldn’t be denied my right not to.
I can’t believe that he hates them only for this reason. It might be what he’s focusing on, but that’s not the basis for his hate. My mother didn’t breastfeed me, my mom vaccinated me, worse, she smoked with me while pregnant and I’ve had a lifetime of respiratory ailments. But I’m not holding those things against her. I’m also very short, should I blame her for stunting my growth by drinking coffee? His parents did what they thought best with the knowledge they had at the time. That’s all ANY parent can do. I too have gotten very angry in the past at parents that vaccinate, circumcise, formula feed, diaper with disposables, feed their kids sugar and preservaties etc. Those things are all very harmful. But that doesn’t mean they should be held to my standards just because I think they should.
Humans should have a lot more compassion for each other. Everyone is at a different point on their paths, and not every has come to the same realizations of what’s harmful and what’s not. While I wish no child should ever have to be circumcised outside of religious rites, it’s not my right to force them into leaving their boys intact, just as it’s not their right to force me to circumcise my boys.
Geez, well, even at my age I am someimes uninformed on many things sexual.
When I was a young married lass, my then husband about killed himself laughing, before explaining the facts of life to me, when I asked about how gay men had sex. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine anything other than a sort of sword fight with their swords, and couldn’t imagine how THAT could be fun.
Weirddave, I do see where you’re coming from. I don’t believe circumcision causes explicit harm, nor do I believe that circumcising your son is condemning him to a life of unsatisfactory sex and a dry, sad glans. All I’m saying is that the procedure is, to me, an antiquated and totally unnecessary remnant of older times. It became popular due to religion, and I don’t see many justifications other than “religious reasons” for just deciding a kid should be without a part of his genitalia.
This is, I think, one of those “can never be won” arguments, simply because most every guy has a very special relationship with his cock. He cherishes it, respects it. Most guys are going to automatically “side” with whatever the status of their own penis is: if it’s uncut, then uncut penises are great; if it’s cut, then cut penises are superior. It’s not something that you’re going to change many male minds about. The only people who can really be influenced to change their minds or be neutral about the subject is women. Like me, for example. I’ll admit that I used to be staunchly anti-foreskin; I thought they were icky and should generally be abolished. This was until I realised that I was simply conditioned to think the cut penis was the only way a weiner should be. Now, and especially after interacting with a pretty goddamn awesome uncirced penis, I’m fairly pro-foreskin, though I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with circed penises. Mostly I try to convince other girls that foreskins aren’t as gross as they think. I think of it as my public service to all the foreskin-having guys out there.
I’m cutting off (ha!) the rest of your questions, because they don’t need to be answered individually.
I would consider “mutilation” to be something that either impairs ability or alters appearance until it is unattractive by societal norms. Circumcision does neither. Therefore, I have no problem with it.
I could buy that people have a right to use ‘god’ as a justification to cut off a part of their own bodies, but where this argument loses with me is where it extends to the body of someone else.
Hypothetical:
Family adopts a 12 year old boy. Family’s religion dictates that boys are circumcised. Adopted boy is not already circumcised. Would you see it as their right to circumcise him, being the legal parents and doing so as a matter of choosing their kid’s religion?
Where are you figuring that people feel “it’s up to ‘you’ to in essence “prove” somehow that it was a good decision…”? Who here, has said that people who are uncircumcised, or their mates have to “prove” anything about their private parts, or the decisions that led to their condition?
What people here ARE saying is “we have just as MUCH right to our choices as anti circs do to theirs and our choices/preferences are JUST as valid as yours”. How do you then translate that as you and your fellow anti circs having to 'prove" your choice is a “good” one?
What people are also saying is “look, i’m cut, I’m happy, or MORE than happy with it, and I do NOT appreciate it being referred to as mutilated, or have it made into some issue that I “should” somehow be all angry, deprived feeling and so on about”. And that they be ALLOWED that without the constant refrain of “but it’s so WRONG, aren’t you enraged…ad nauseum”!
Circumcision IS harm (Physical injury or damage). I’m not obsessed with other people’s dicks, on the contrary, I’d rather they were left in charge of their owners.
CanvasShoes, I am not saying that all or even most or even many pro-circs are asking me to prove such a thing. I am saying that when someone says something like
it feels to me as if I’m being asked to prove that the natural state of the penis is fine and does not require forced alteration by another party. I’m sorry if I worded my thoughts on this confusingly.
Shoot the hostage.
FWIW, Catsix, it’s my understanding that neither Judaism nor Islam require circumcision of converts.
Ah, okay. Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to get on your in your post, just wondering where you’d gotten that idea.
But at any rate, I can’t speak for miller, but I don’t think he was talking to opinions like yours but of those like JDT’s and the other crazies in the threads linked to on the first page of this thread. And to those who’ve somewhat referred to how their parents “ruined” their lives by having this performed.
I have to agree wholeheartedly with him there, whatEVER happened to a person in childhood (whether it be circumcision, child abuse, molestation), however horrible you’re (collective you) a grown up now, deal with it yes, but don’t use it as an excuse for all of your problems in life. I’m pretty sure he was talking to them, and not to opinions such as yours.
Not harmful, except for the little boys who, even in westernised countries where they are cut in hospitals, occasionally die, get gangrene and have to have their penises removed, are accidentally de-glansed, or who have so much skin taken off that erections in childhood are excrutiating, never mind when they mature and their penises grow to adult size. (And this doesn’t count the young men who die every day even now in ‘rite of passage’ circumcisions all over the world.)
Oh, right. They don’t count because there aren’t very many of them. Right, I forgot.
Not harmful, because any man who decided that he wished he’d been left normal, that he likes the appearance of the natural thing only his doesn’t look that way because he had surgery as a baby, or because his entire frenulum has been removed and he just about can’t get enough of the right kind of stimulation to reach orgasm…well, such a man is just a whiner and he should be happy he HAS a cock, and to shut up, and get the 95% of sex that’s really in his mind straight and everything will just be fine.
Right. Those men don’t count because they obviously have mental problems, disregard them, they don’t matter.
Not harmful, because everyone should be happy with the state of body they’re altered to have, just because most people are. Right.
Excuse me. I understand the rules of this argument now. Weirddave is right about all of this - the lack of harm, the thousand years of undocumented history, the utter sexual delight felt by every single cut man - because minority experiences, by their very nature, are irrelevant and must be dismissed out of hand.
You win.
There are some men whose ability to enjoy sex has been effectively ruined by circumcision. You don’t mostly hear about them. They live quiet, non-sexual lives because they’ve given up on even trying. But they do exist. And it might well have been avoided.
As for the men who are working on restoration, I see no reason to say that most of them are using circumcision as an excuse for all their problems. At least, I don’t hear them saying this on the mailing list. Many of them do feel better about themselves, calmer, whatever, as their restoration proceeds, and I fail to see how this is a bad thing. Some of them are doing it for aesthetics. Some because they hope for better sensitivity. Some because they feel they’re missing a part of themselves. I’m sure there are other reasons, as many reasons as there are men. Some are angry. Some are just delighted to find a way to restore. This is part of how they’re “dealing with it”, and I’m boggled at the people who seem to think it’s a waste of time. It’s not a waste of time for them or they wouldn’t bother.
And the penises are jerking all over the place, folks.
Er, knees, I mean. The knees are jerking. Sorry.