That’s why it is better to look at a meta- analysis (that is, a review of a lot of studies) rather than just one or two.
Looking over the list of studies as a whole, which use various methodologies and approaches, the overall conclusion is unmistakable: there simply is not a significant, measurable difference in any of the categories under investigation.
Certainly one can quibble with the methodology of some of the studies. However, when the studies are so evenly balanced (most finding no difference, with the remainder almost equally split between “circ better” and “circ worse”) the notion that, objectively speaking, being circ’ed is going to be bad for function is untenable, based on what science is available to us.
Naturally this doesn’t take into account subjective features - some people are going to find being circ’ed traumatic (heh look at the OP in this thread).
I would say that the benefits(preventing possible infections in the future) would outway the inconclusive evidence of decreased penile sensation. I have an uncle who had to deal with multiple foreskin infections as a child(ages 4-6), and was cicumsized for medical reasons. So I know that that does happen, wheras the decreased penile sensation is inconclusive.
And since I(as a circumsizee) have no personal complaints as far as penile sensation, and have never even had to worry about foreskin infection as a result of the operation, it is the better option in my opinion.
I think the foreskin infection thing is cultural, in countries where circumcision is not common its used as a last resort if other things don’t work. In countries where circumcision is common you could probably complain of an itch and be advised circumcision is the answer.
For probably the 100th time on these boards, sorry I don’t have time to respond promptly to everyone.
I think I already explained why this seems to have a British origination. I’ll go back to that if you really want.
Your narrative is way off. The ‘categories’ thing is a good place to start. I described my theory of denial in the abstract in another thread, in this post and this post.
What are the categories? Ultimately I think they are neurological structures organized around a particular subject. It could be as simple as a word and all its associations. It might be something more complex. The categories tend to group into ‘constellations’ of categories.
Are you familiar with a pachinko machine? It is kind of a cross between a pinball and a slot machine. You pull the lever and it shoots a pinball up to the top, which then wriggles its way down between the pegs until it either lands in one of the ‘baskets’, which causes bells to ring and maybe you get more pinballs, win money, lights go off or whatever. Otherwise it works its way to the bottom and falls out of play.
This is a good analogy for what I’m getting at with ‘categories’. If the pinball is a stimulus or some notion, and the whole machine is your mind, the ‘baskets’ are the categories. A notion passes through. If it falls out the bottom, it doesn’t react with anything and if you have a reaction at all it amounts to ‘meh’. If it lands in one of the baskets though, then it sets off a reaction which presents the contents of a category to the conscious mind.
I’m going to pick a nasty example of a category because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand and is explanatory, please don’t take offense. Take the category of ‘Japs’. To me there are no people who fit into this, and except in people’s warped perceptions there never were. The category amounts to a collection of awful depictions of the Japanese during WWII, so visiting it is like thumbing through a small collection of propaganda- drawings of Japanese people depicted as bugs or mean-spirited little animals, notions that their blood is actually green and so on. If someone says ‘Japs’, this collection is what it means. It is a category of things.
The explanatory thing about this category is that these are not my ideas. I did not invent a single one of these images or notions. They were there before I was born, I could not escape witnessing them in my reviewings of WWII, and now I have neurostructures which represent these images and notions. Wouldn’t it be great if I could be rid of such structures and re-dedicate that neuromatter to something better? Well what if I could?
If you look at my theory of denial (maybe a better name would be ‘the logic of illogic’), you can see how the disruption of these categories can come into play. My theory is that a person doesn’t consciously make the logical link A->B because doing so would drag two sets of associated, conflicting categories into communication (I think biologically, conflicting categories may literally not have any neurological link). Once brought into communication with each other, the inherent incompatibility means that something has to give.
Long story short, it appears that for me there was a denial of A->B involving the issue of circumcision. Once I either consciously or unconsciously made the logical connection that my circumcision is essentially the same as a female circumcision, it brought all the associated categories into conflict. The result of this conflict appears to be that some of my old categories are now screwed up.
Back to the pachinko machine. Before, when the pinball worked its way into one of the baskets that represented a category wound up with my own self-concept, a reliable set of notions was presented. Now there is more ‘wiring’, such that, for the most notable example, when the pinball activates some categories wound up with my self-concept I get the usual stuff plus also, seemingly inexplicably, a bunch of images of starving Ethiopians, or dusty Somalian circumcised women facing some rotten fate, or Tutsis in Darfur missing a limb because of a machete attack. Warlords and swollen stomachs. And so on, really all my worst notions of the worst parts of Africa.
I can see where it is going. For some reason the African categories are more ‘durable’, whether or not they are more accurate. The African categories will remain for now, and the affected self-concept categories are going to be destroyed I think. Which is to say their connections will be dissolved and they’ll be either raw or fragmented neuron arrangements. Which will probably get re-purposed. Overall this has gotta affect less than 1% of my brain, it is simply more remarkable than the everyday thing.
My theory is that the brain does not prefer going through this, and anger without a subject is one result of violating denial. One surprising (REALLY surprising) thing I noticed is that the affected self-concept categories are not my ideas. Some of what I took to be myself wasn’t really myself at all. I never really had quite the 3rd-person perspective on it until recently. I expect to experience less inner conflict once this is though, though I don’t expect to think circumcision is worth a crap. Yah, the UN wants to circumcise Africans, but if not for the meddling of the Catholic Church they could much more easily distribute condoms to combat AIDS, without chopping anything off of anybody. And so on, I really try to be concise.
Whether my old and disintegrating self-concept categories were purposefully placed there or are just things I picked up is debatable.
TL/DNR: I got pissed off/it hurt when my neurostructures spontaneously re-arranged themselves.
This is true. Hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it comes down to whether you’re OK with your culture’s medical proclivities. I’ve got some problems when it comes to the medical habits of the average American(no need to get into THAT), but circumcision isn’t one of them.
You can’t take that away. The dismissal is simply because there are a lot of us who are circumcised, and we know it doesn’t normally lead to any of this odd trauma. When you know that something is no big deal, and a person is making it into a big deal, it’s hard to take that person seriously.
It doesn’t help that a lot of his language is the same as that used by people who try to stir up controversy over rather mundane things, either. Not that I’m accusing him of that: I think it’s more likely that either he is obsessed unhealthily about this, or he just doesn’t get how he’s coming off.
Not the answer, Guin. Believe it or not, there is a structure to my approach to this. Borrowing concepts from persuasive rhetoric- ethos, pathos, logos- and viewing something through each lens, one can put together a profile. See what I mean:
ethos: trampling the Hippocratic Oath underfoot to make a buck. Unnecessary surgery is malpractice.
pathos: victimhood. Horror. Anger.
logos: set the dial to Lewis Carroll. No one has been able to provide a justification for this practice because there isn’t one.
People apparently don’t want to accept the wrongness of circumcision, so they resort to the illogic of ad hominem. Which is consistent with the results of my little profiling method and bolsters my point.
My writing on the topic conforms to the profile of the subject, which bugs people and draws accusations of ‘yer nuts’. But changing the subject to me is just that, changing the subject. It is circumcision that is nuts.
Compare with a profile of something really horrible, the march up Iwo Jima Hill:
ethos: it is a massacre, if not a genocidal massacre.
pathos: for the men involved it is suffering, horror, fear, determination, duty. War pathos.
logos: Victory in the Pacific.
See how in this case logos trumps the other considerations? There was a reason to march up Iwo Jima Hill, and so no matter how horrible an event it was it is generally considered worthwhile, and the people who came back were lauded as heroes rather than criminals. Circumcision doctors are merely greedy butchers if you just think about it.
There is no logos in circumcision to rein in the negative ethos and pathos, so I let 'em run wild. Don’t give me advice, give me the justification and then I’d have to backtrack on this whole thing.
I don’t think about the fact that I was circumcised as a baby because that is all I have ever known. Does it lessen the pleasure I get from having sex? Who knows, I still find it very fun.
I will say that I find it a silly, pointless and barbaric tradition that we should have out grown a long time ago, though it is nowhere near as awful as female circumcision.
The religious reasons for it, I believe are pure bullshit. If someone wants a covenant with a magical sky pixie, shouldn’t they be able to decide if they want to do it themselves? And how is cutting off a piece of themselves do anything positive.
Hey, I think I’ll cut of the tip of my right pinkie to show Cuthulhu that I want to be eaten first when he arises out of the abyss and destroys the world. It makes as much sense as cutting off a foreskin of a penis for the Judeo/Christian/Islamic diety.
