Username checks out…
If only I could find an article about this on the internet…
Checks message board. Ah yes, one Cecil Adams penned a column on circumcision in 1994. The last word on circumcision - The Straight Dope
Also: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-straight-dope/Content?oid=884072
Cutting infant penises is bizarre. I cannot believe this is a contentious issue at all on a website such as this.
Foot-binding was not minor (well, there were minor forms, where the foot was simply tightly wrapped to make them look a bit smaller for special events, then unwrapped, that’s not what anyone objects to and was usually done by older girls or women to themselves), it was on a whole other level of child torture to the rest of that list; I don’t personally support ear piercing babies, but a lot of girls and women choose to have to it done at a later date, whereas no-one chooses to have their toes and bones of the feet broken and wrapped so tightly their foot’s forced into a 3 inch point they can barely hobble on leaving their toes to often rot off.
It’s contentious because a lot of men are happy with their cut penises.
I’m also glad that my penis looks exactly how an American girl expects it to look when we become intimate. Which is really why I chose to get it for my son. (And locker rooms too)
Boy, now there’s a self-perpetuating problem if I ever saw one…
And sad, since some of us “American girls” really don’t care either way. The notion that women will recoil in horror from an uncut penis is way overdone.
Except, there isn’t actually a problem for me or 99% of cut men I would guess…
so…you chose to perform a medically unnecessary procedure on a baby, without its consent, for cosmetic reasons?
What I don’t understand about that is that circumcised and uncircumcised penises look pretty much the same at the point where anything intimate is about to happen.
Denmark Doctors Declare Circumcision Of Healthy Boys ‘Ethically Unacceptable’
Here’s a lecture by Brian D. Earp, a Yale bioethicist, arguing that circumcision is unethical. Circumcision - a sexual harm?
So…you have a reason?
I’m still waiting for the connection to Obamacare. I’m pretty sure mandatory circumcision and/or mandatory participation in the circumcision of others are not enshrined in the law anywhere.
As for me - it was common when I was born and I’m not traumatized by the experience, but wouldn’t have it done for my son (if I had one, which I don’t) these days as the understanding of the medical benefits and demerits are better understood. We live and learn.
Americans get circumcised. Outside of US Americans and Canadians, it’s very rare for non-Jews and non-Muslims to get circumcised (with a couple of weird exceptions like Ethiopia and Oceania. Ethiopia probably due to Islamic influence and Oceania because ??? ) Because we are Americans, this confuses us and we assume that everyone gets circumcised. Circumcision was actually banned by Catholics for centuries and even today some Christian cutures consider it paganism. So to answer your question, non-Jewish, non-Muslim Germans do not get circumcised, nor would they have in the 30s.
Regardless, if I’m understanding you correctly you are uncircumcised and have no experience with having a circumcised penis.
If someone had cut off a small part of my genitals when I was a baby for no good (health-based) reason, I would be kinda mad. Even if it was some small area, that didn’t keep me from enjoying sex.
Both clitoral removal and the removal of the hood seem like poor comparisons, since the effect in both cases would probably ruin sex and seriously impair arousal. Instead, maybe the removal of part of a labia? A girl would heal, could probably grow up and enjoy sex nonetheless, but it’d seem arbitrary and cruel to do it, even if one-labia was “in fashion” for women.
I hope that baseless circumcision will eventually be banned. I’m not certain how we can adjust this with religious groups, but I wouldn’t accept them snipping parts of labias off of girls, so I don’t think I’m okay with taking the foreskin. Guys can get it removed themselves, if they so choose, as adults. Perhaps even as a religious statement, taking away the non-consentuality of circumcision by making it an adult decision as part of a religious or cultural identity.
Trafalgar Laura:
Sorry, but you can’t do that without a major impact on the practice of Judaism. The commandment is to perform the rite on a week-old baby boy. This is such an important part of the commandment that it even overrides the prohibitions of Sabbath. You take away the ability of Jews to do that, you’re basically killing freedom of religion in America (or whichever country adopts such a law, I can’t assume any given participant here is American).
In the US, a circumcision ban will never happen (well, never is a long time, but not in any type of foreseeable future.) Religious protection runs extremely deep here, both legally and culturally. I can’t imagine any Supreme Court in my lifetime upholding a circumcision ban, although I could certainly see it not being funded via any sort of insurance and cerrtainly not via public funds. In Europe though, I could see it happening. Their religious protection laws are much looser and I could see anti-Muslim crusaders trying to push it through a la hijab bans. Usually it’s Jews and Muslims fighting against such things with the help of Christian groups that worry about their own practices being infringed on. European Christianity though doesn’t have nearly the sway that US Christianity does and while Muslim numbers are increasing, the populace as a whole is much less likely to want to protect their freedoms.
You could replace the word “circumcision” in that sentence with many other things and still have it be true. USA! USA!
Ever heard the saying “my freedom to swing my fist ends where your nose begins?” I think the same general idea should apply with religion. Your freedom to practice your religion should end if it implies amputating healthy erogenous tissue from a baby.
The Quran commands Muslims to chop off the hands of thieves. But enlightened societies ban that particular religious practice. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in blood transfusions, but the State intervenes if a child needs a blood transfusion and their parents don’t consent.
That’s a terrible argument. Nothing stops an adult from getting it done at a time of their choosing, otherwise how can people ever convert to judaism? does having it done later mean they are not a proper jew? are babies who can’t be circumcised due to medical reasons not proper jews?
It is a form of barbaric bronze-age cosmetic branding, done to a helpless individual who is unable to protest.
Freedom of religion to me means that an* individual *gets to believe and practice in whatever way they see fit as long as it does not harm another person. I don’t see how enforced medical procedures are any reasonable exception.
Depends. Global Judaism itself is mulling various compromises on the practice of brit milah, as discussed in the Forward article I linked to in my previous post. As the article notes, the original biblical-era commandment appears not to have included the practice of periah or foreskin removal, being limited to milah or trimming the foreskin tip. If metzizah or sucking the blood from the newly cut penis is being discontinued for modern hygiene reasons, periah could conceivably also end up being removed from the standard definition of “circumcision”.
Furthermore, I don’t see how outlawing male infant circumcision due to the subject’s inability to give consent is inherently “killing freedom of religion” any more than outlawing so-called “female circumcision” or FGM on minor girls is. Many groups who practice FGM believe that their religion mandates the cutting of young girls’ genitals, yet it is illegal in the US to carry out such practices on girls under 18.
So if freedom of religion depends on the right to subject minor children to genital cutting, it looks like freedom of religion in the US is already gone anyway.