What intrigues me is why it is still so popular in the US, when compared to other western countries. This must be a cultural explanation more than anything else.
If it were really such a good thing to do, wouldn’t the rest of the west be doing it?
Because there is more risk of complications if you wait until the child/adult is old enough to decide for themselves…and its also a hell of a lot more painful…at least you are bound to remember the pain much more than a baby who remembers nothing.
Parents routinely pierce their daughters ears while they are still babies (I’m disreguarding your cutting off of earlobes because frankly you sound like a loon trying to make that comparison)…as well as other elective type proceedures. I see no problem with it.
No idea. Is there something that says if the rest of the ‘western world’ does something and the US is different that this makes us automatically wrong? Is this supposed to be evidence that if THEY are doing something one way, to do it another is…what? Different perhaps?
Seems like the health benifit of getting your son circumsized is fairly small, so that makes it one of those coin toss type things…get it done or don’t get it done. The risk of not getting it done seems pretty small (i.e. that 1000 cases of penile cancer/year in the US…no idea how high it is in ‘western countries’ not including the US, but its higher in the UK IIRC).
Again…whats the big deal one way or the other? It doesn’t effect sexual performance…either way. The health risk to not getting it done is only marginally less than getting it done. One one side you have a ‘maintenance free tool’, on the other side you have a little bit more work to keep it clean and functioning properly. Women seem divided pretty much down the middle on whether they like it one way or the other (or they don’t care)…and really, thats the most important part right (well, I’m probably being sexist here…no idea how gay men feel about it one way or the other, or if they even care).
Why get worked up over this issue? It almost becomes like a crusade to some to get make sure that this vile practice is stamped out, blah blah blah (not that this particular thread has reached past levels or anyone in here, with the possible exception of the OP, seems to be going that way).
-XT
Really? So what’s your objection?
Yep.
Seriously, what is loony about the comparison? They both involve cutting off a perfectly good, if not strictly necessary, piece of tissue, and both involve relatively equivalent risks and side effects. And if cutting off the foreskin means penile cancer will never occur, then cutting off the earlobes means that the individual will never develop skin cancer on them.
That they both involve the removal of functional, healthy tissue from an individual who is incapable of consenting to such a permanent removal, and as such should not be performed.
Something like giving a child a haircut I have no problem with; it’s not a permanent, unnecessary change to the child’s body. If the parent performed electrolysis on their child’s scalp to permanently remove the hair, I’d certainly have a problem with that.
I’m a bit more uncomfortable with piercing a child’s ears, but there is a difference, in that if the piercings are removed, the holes will eventually close up; the foreskin or earlobes, once removed, will not grow back.
After I had it done I wasn’t able to walk for at least a year.
Because there are no health reasons to have it done at all (or if you can actually show that cutting them off will avoid skin cancer then I’ll need a cite on that…otherwise you are just making some bullshit up)…and no religious reasons either that I’m aware of? Because your ears are something folks see and notice, but your cock, generally speaking, is not usually on public display? Because the psychological damage to a child, especially in a ‘western’ nation, for having their earlobes cut off is going to be real…whereas, again, your son’s penis is not generally on public display? Because, again afaik, no one has a general practice of cutting off the earlobes of babies…but circumcision has been with us for thousands of years?
-XT
You seem to be willfully disregarding that one is a desired and culturally supported practice while the other is not. One practice is thousands of years old while the other has either never existed or never really caught on. One has medically supportable, even if marginally so, advantages. The other does not.
I didn’t say it would prevent all skin cancer, just that if the earlobes are not present, it is impossible to develop skin cancer on them.
Fine. What if the parents, rather than having their child circumcized, chose instead to tattoo decorative designs on their child’s genitalia (using properly sterilized equipement operated by a competent professional, of course)?
Shaving pubic hair seems to be all the rage these days. What if the parents performed electrolysis or some other procedure on their infant to ensure they would never grow any?
it was a year and a half for me. 
But that’s not exactly the same thing as preventing skin cancer is it? Which is what removing the foreskin does do, albeit it’s a pretty small percentage. So…there is a health BENIFIT, though small for one…and basically nothing for your example except that if you don’t have something you obviously can’t get cancer on it. Look, your analogy doesn’t work. Give up already.
And I have no doubt that some cultures do just that. If it doesn’t harm or mutilate the child then I have no problem with it if that’s part of their culture. FEMALE circumcision I have a major problem with because it DOES harm and mutilate the child. See the difference?
If its part of their culture and it has no harm to the child thats fine. You are really stretching here IMO.
-XT
I will agree that you don’t have a problem with it.
I do see the difference: male circumcision is bad, but female circumcision is worse. The former is merely making a permanent, unnecessary alteration to an infant’s body, while the latter is a permanent, unnecessary, and harmful alteration. Just because female circumcision is worse doesn’t make male circumcision ok.
It’s not harm that I’m worried about, but the unnecessary and permanent alteration to the body of an individual who cannot consent to it.
Well, at least you dropped the lame cutting off of earlobes analogy. Progress!
And I will agree that apparently you don’t give a shit about others culture but require conformity, even when there is no real harm done. We’ll just have to agree to disagree…or at any rate, you’ll have to live with the fact that there are plenty of folks who disagree with you on this point.
I guess our definition of ‘bad’ is just different. Again, just have to agree to disagree.
Well, that’s your decision when/if you have kids…since it’s YOUR legal, moral and ethical right to decide whets best for your children. Just like it’s your right to decide for them what kind of religion they will have and how they will be brought up…long before they can decide such things for themselves. Besides, its not ‘permanent’…they can always get it reversed when they are old enough if it bugs them, just like they could decide to get snipped later on if they decide that.
-XT
I still think it’s a valid analogy, but I have realized that I’m not making any headway in my argument using it.
I think cutting off a healthy part of an infant’s body is wrong, even if it’s not physically harmful.
It may be my legal right to have my child circumcized, but that doesn’t mean it’s moral or ethical.
But they have the opportunity to change their religion as they grow older.
It’s not truly reversed; the foreskin doesn’t magically grow back, but other, different skin is stretched to cover the glans.
Beg to differ. I don’t have a clitoris, but I’m perfectly content in calling FGM barbaric.
-andros-
(who is cut and quite happy, but sees no need for the procedure)
And appearently not if its (marginally) benificial either.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t moral or ethical either. Or, to put it another way, YOU don’t think its moral or ethical appearently. Do you suppose that your moral and ethical code somehow is the only correct one? 
Only if you assume that somehow the skin in foreskin is somehow special. I’ve seen no evidence that this is so, or that a reversal is not ‘truly reversed’ as you say. Doesn’t look like its that common of a proceedure either so I don’t think there is exactly a huge outcry to get foreskins put back on. I know the thought never even crossed my mind.
-XT
so how 'bout it ** Alsoran**? The question was posed slantendicularly, so I’ll be a little more direct. Are you male, or female? Also, I’m kinda curious: are you tatooed and/or pierced?
Oh yeah… welcome aboard!!!
I didn’t say it was wrong to do it, I’m somewhat assuming that if there were non-cultural health benefits for not doing something or doing something, then western countries would be similar in approach (not to say that non-western countries wouldn’t but they don’t often have the money or the health systems). As I originally said - it’s a cultural difference and it is interesting as to why it persists in the US.
sorry to short circuit reading rest of post, but as someone previously commented, in this area I have not issues but the whole subscription. (Ialso have the yearbooks, the codex, the commentaries, the cross-references and the talmud.)
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I am not glad to have lost the front of my dick, and if I could find the son of a bitch who cut me at the age of SEVEN DAYS (!!!) I will be pleased to return the favor, with significant interest, as it were.
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it is straight up child abuse, masqquerading as some perverted sex negative ritual which ought to make us retch at it’s implications. If it were the little momzer’s earlobe CPS would be all over the Moil in a second.
(And , yes, every so often there is an accident…)
Why:
There really can only be one etiology for this insanity. Once,it made sense.
Viz:
Pre culture, pre clothes.
Enter Homo Habilis. Every day, great swinging dicks stroll by all sheathed except when turgid or on the way thereto.
Habilis, no fool, but perhaps overly optimistic vis-a-vis the susceptibility to artifice of Mrs. H., thinks:
If I cut off this little bit here, it will look like I’m hard ALL THE TIME!!!
(ok,
sorry to short circuit reading rest of post, but as someone previously commented, in this area I have not issues but the whole subscription. (Ialso have the yearbooks, the codex, the commentaries, the cross-references and the talmud.) I must reply to PA while the fire burns, so to speak
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I am not glad to have lost the front of my dick, and if I could find the son of a bitch who cut me at the age of SEVEN DAYS (!!!) I will be pleased to return the favor, with significant interest, as it were.
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it is straight up child abuse, masqquerading as some perverted sex negative ritual which ought to make us retch at it’s implications. If it were the little momzer’s earlobe CPS would be all over the Moil in a second.
(And , yes, every so often there is an accident…)
Why:
There really can only be one etiology for this insanity. Once,it made sense.
Viz:
Pre culture, pre clothes.
Enter Homo Habilis. Every day, great swinging dicks stroll by all sheathed except when turgid or on the way thereto.
Habilis, no fool, but perhaps overly optimistic vis-a-vis the susceptibility to artifice of Mrs. H., thinks:
If I cut off this little bit here, it will look like I’m hard ALL THE TIME!!!
(ok, maybe not hard, but thinking about getting hard.)
It was the caveman’s version of socks in the jeans.
It certainly has outlived it’s usefullness.