In most of northern europe number of boys circumscised is vanishingly small if you rule out people who do it because their god wants them to – that is, Muslims and Jews. It is a very clear consensus.
If we’re talking about infant circumcision, then why mention exceptions for Jews and Muslims? Infants are not Muslims, Jews, or any other faith. Considering them such is like someone putting a little cheese-hat on their infant and claiming he’s a Packer fan.* The child has no conception of football whatsoever; the parent is just projecting themselves onto the child.
*Except replace “putting” with “removing” and “cheese-hat” with “sensitive part of the genitals”.
Well, sorry about that one. Being an uncircumcised European in a place where circumcision is very, very rare (apart from the Jewish and Muslim communities, of course), I have to go by the data I can get. I admit that the data is nothing more than conversations about the topic with various Americans I have met in different places.
The reaction has always been “WTH - you can do it without lotion?! Lucky bastard! [or something to that effect]” One guy actually called his parents back in the States (we were in Nepal at the time) and yelled at them for making him depend on lotion every time he wanted to masturbate.
If you can do it without lotion - good on you 
So can I.
You have a fundamental misapprehension of what it means to be a Jew and what it is to be a Muslim. This grows out of a post-enlightement belief that religion is a matter of choice and also that it is a matter of doctrine or belief which can be accepted or rejected.
Muslims muddy the water a bit as circumcision is carried out anywhere from infancy to puberty depending on the local culture and customs. However, the reason Jews and Muslims circumcise is that god told them to. Matters of research and evidence are unlikley to have any effect at all on their decision in this area.
You owe me a new keyboard.
Let me assure you that your friend is most certainly in the minority. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.
I think I explained in the original thread that we left him uncut, but for financial reasons rather than ethical ones - our medical aid wouldn’t cover the procedure, and we couldn’t afford it at the time, so, not having strong opinions one way or the other, we just left things as they were…
Grim
My boy is four. We elected not to circumcize him. I’m circumsized, so I was a little apprehensive, but we finally decided that not doing it was:
- more natural
- reversible (he can get it done later if he wants)
In the end we didn’t see a good reason to do it. I mean, he might be in the minority (although non-circumcision is more prevalent than it used to be) but how often is he going to be comparing his penis to others’? I never stood around in the locker room staring at other wangs. He has cousins that he plays with all the time who are around the same age, and they are not circumcised either, so it’s not like he’ll feel like a freak.
Nobody’s mentioned that before this, but there is a clear financial point here.
Circumcisions are elective procedures, for which doctors & hospitals charge. With millions of them wvery year, this is a significant financial incentive for doctors to recommend in favor of circumcision.
No, I do not. Your mistake is based on a pre-Enlightenment belief that magic is real.
In this thread, the part of Der Trihs will be played by BlackKnight, since he hasn’t made enough enemies lately.
Seriously, if we’re allowed to use definitions from centuries ago for no reason, communication is going to be difficult.
Hey, listen man, I don’t make policy around here, I just work on this planet. I haven’t made any mistake of which I am aware; no male in my household is circumcised – neither my husband nor my sons. If my sons were circumcised it would not have been a matter of religion but of somethign really rational like, I dunno, so they would match their father or so other boys wouldn’t make fun of them or any of the other really rational non religious reasons people do it in the states.
However, being a Jew is for all but the converts a matter of identity, not a matter of faith in the way you seem to mean it. Many Jews do not believe in god, but most of them do have their kids circumcised because, well, I suppose because they believe in each other. Hard evidence from recent and distant history suggests that you don’t even necessarily get to decide whether you are a Jew as there are people who will be happy to supply that identity for you based upon your parentage and without regard to your beliefs.
Muslims have a slightly different take, as their history is considerably varied. However, in their case I believe it is also a matter of identity.
People do what they do and this is why communication is difficult. I was being descriptive, not prescriptive.
Ctrl + F: “death” - Not found
Anyone with half a brain can maintain proper hygiene, and anyone who fosters disease from lack thereof is either handicapped or utterly stupid. Unless one is born with some handicap or some bizarre foreskin mutation that threatens the penis in some way shape or form, risking the life of a child for the sake of cleanliness is nonsense.
And penises are aesthetically indistinguishable when erect, circumcised or not. Genital mutilation is a primitive Judeo-Christian ritual, and should not even be considered without damn good reason.
That’s all there is to it. It seems crazy to me that people make a decision like this for somebody else, before the subject can even comprehend it. It’s a one way street. Why not just wait til the boy can form an opinion? And by then, when you ask him, “Hey, wanna mutilate your genitalia? It’s such a pain to clean it, eh?” I’m betting you get a No.
My hubby is circumcised, but our son is not–and our son-to-be, due in about two months, will not be either. Hubby was just as against it as I was, if not more.
Our reasons were:
-
No real compelling medical reason. Why cut off something nature designed them to have? The “it’s cleaner” argument seemed weak in all of our reading, and some of the older medical journals were claiming it was a “cure” for such perversions as homosexuality and masturbation. Yeah.
-
We want it to be our sons’ choice. If they are older and want to be circumcised, they can and will be. But getting a foreskin back wouldn’t be so easy.
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Hubby feels being circumcised has lessened sensation, as the head of the penis is constantly exposed.
FTR, our older son is 3 1/2, and has never had any sort of problem with any aspect of his genitals.
I’ve never been with an uncut man, so I can’t give opinion there. However, if it were left fully up to me, I’d leave them uncut. It works, don’t mess with it. Ultimately, though, I give the decision up to dad. He’s got a penis, and I don’t. I’ll give in to his knowledge on the subject.
The only thing I will add is this. If you do elect to get him cut, MAKE SURE THAT DAD TELLS THE DOC TO NUMB HIM!!! Mom may be, at the moment, too tired to remember, and dad too nervous, so write it down. Yes, in this day and age, you might wonder what doc wouldnt? I’ve met one who doesn’t. The screams that came from that baby boy still make me shudder. His reasoning? “They wont remember anyway.” >:(
Bingo
This has been the point I’ve belabored for years when the subject has come up. This procedure is a tidy little low risk money maker for the medical providers. They will do everything they can to make sure that little gold mine is not disturbed.
[QUOTE=Blut Aus Nord;11689136Genital mutilation is a primitive Judeo-Christian ritual, and should not even be considered without damn good reason.[/QUOTE]
So is the Jews or the Christians that make the Muslims do it?
And the west African tribes, and the Polynesian groups?
Don’t do it. When people describe it as mutilation, what do you people hear?
If you think “exaggeration”, consider the same arguments for circumcision are exactly the same as the arguments for slicing off the ears.
It is certainly cleaner to have fewer body parts to clean, so fewer ears must certainly be better.
There is slightly less chance of cancer since cancer will certainly not occur in the removed body part, so again, fewer ears must be better.
If you lived in a society where everyone had removed their ears, you would be under enormous pressure to pay for the extra elective medical procedure. Who wants their kid to be a freak? It must be hard to hear the term “mutilation” if your ears have already been removed.
I concede I should have said “faith or culture” instead of just “faith”. But it doesn’t even matter. No infant is culturally Jewish any more than an infant is religiously Jewish.
Of course, people will always push their own identity onto the child. That doesn’t make it the child’s identity in any way.
Controvert’s post makes me think of this horror story: The Mill (an episode of the Pseudopod podcast). It has nothing directly to do with the topic at hand, but it’s a counter to anyone who thinks “do it so he looks like daddy” is a good argument.
That’s my reasoning as well - i would put it as making a positive decision either way, don’t cut, or not cut just because its the default.
EXCEPT - if you got it cut to match daddy, while I like that you (generic you) actually made a decision I would like to reserve to point and laugh at you for being so insecure (and repressed?) as to need to get surgery on you son so that his penis looks more like yours.