Another possiblity that hasn’t been mentioned yet - how hard was this procedure pushed in US hospitals over the years solely for the purpose of being able to charge the extra fee for the procedure?
Btw. How is masturbation changed for you circumcised males? I know I rely on the skin for my technique, but surely there are ways to go around it.
As for circumcising for medical purposes… I asked a doctor about it, and he said that there is minimum skin removed, as much as there is needed to remove for the problem to disappear. The top snippet, in other words.
I’ve heard “it’s a Jewish influence before” and while I don’t argue there’s no Jewish influence, especially in someplace like New York City, (it’s a fairly obvious question), it doesn’t explain why this was the standard practice even in places like Iowa where the number of Jews, even among doctors, is pretty darn small.
Yes, it really was the anti-masturbation crowd who got the ball rolling. Amazing as it seems today. In addition to circumcism in both infants and adults, various devices, many of them spiked, were employed to “discourage” even erections, much less masturbation, as well as techniques like infibulation (well, OK, that required a foreskin to work, but if it didn’t work there was circumcism and spikey codpieces) And the largest promoters of circumcism to promote non-masturbation were Christian doctors, not Jewish.
There is also quite a gulf from the Jewish rite of circumcism - performed 8 days after birth in a religious ritual and the non-Jewish circumcism which was not only performed shortly after birth, sometimes even the same day as birth, but was treated with all the routine chore attitude of snipping the umbilical cord.
The Jewish side of my family used to tell horror stories about Jewish mothers going to Christian hospitals and having their sons presented to them already snipped - which certainly would cause problems for the mohel a week later. Jewish mothers did not want to deliver in non-Jewish hospitals for that reason. For them, it wasn’t the cutting that was important, but that it be done with the proper ceremony.
It wasn’t that uncommon even through the 70’s and early 80’s for parents to specifically say NO CIRCUMCISM and still be presented with a child already cut - the custom ran that strongly through the medical system.
As opposed to the other one? 
I don’t think it’s changed much. You just hold the skin around the shaft and move it up and down. There’s still plenty of skin, it’s just not enough to cover the head.
A few years ago I was mystified when my American friends made comments about ‘lube’ - I had no idea this was an oblique reference to wanking. I’d therefore hazard a guess that some circumsised men use hand cream and the like to prevent friction burn.
Could you suppose then, that the amount of skin removed has been lessened throughout the years, or was the surgery futile to begin with?
IMHO, as long as good hygiene is practiced the procedure is futile.
Personally, I can’t imagine anyone not “practicing good hygiene” in the shower - it’s just too much fun not to “thoroughly practice”.
“Despite what mommy said to you,
It’s not just made for pissing through.”
I don’t know. Think of it this way though, you can rub a cat’s back so that your hand isn’t rubbing the actual skin, but you are moving the skin over its back. There doesn’t need to be a big flap of extra skin by his tail to do this though, the skin is just loose enough to be rubbed over his back.
I don’t have any foreskin left, but the skin is loose enough to not need any lube. Lube can be fun though.
It occurs to me that it is a good thing that I will probably never meet any of you in real life.
I was wondering the same thing. Someone needs to provide links.
Technically, yes, although he is only 5 months old and I’m still mystified about what they would have removed if I had elected to have him circumcised. What I mean to say is I have never seen an adult uncut penis.
My husband had no “he must look like me” issues. And we didn’t think it necessary to have surgery done on the kid simply because he was a boy and everyone else did it.
When I told my doctor that we weren’t having our son snipped, he told me he doesn’t advocate circumcision but will support the parents if they feel it must be done. I was happy to hear this because every non medical person I have spoken to on this issue seemed aghast that we would make this choice and some demanded to know what my doctor had to say on the issue. They were quite surprised when I told them 
I think we can do with less tips on masturbatory techniques, debates about mutilation and polls on aesthetics. Let’s at least try to stick to the factual question of how the trend got started.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
My case story (FWIW).
I was born in a small Iowa town, and was cut in infancy - days after birth. I believe it was because “everybody does it” to their male child. There was zero Jewish influence in my community. I know that my mother had a big hang up about masturbation (believing it was sinful), but my parents never explained why they had me cut. It wasn’t until I moved far away from home that I ever saw another male in the natural state.
When we started having kids, we decided not to circ our sons. But, we never had any (3 girls).
In one of my wife’s childbirths, we didn’t know the sex of the child, but we made it clear that we would want no circumcision. It turned out girl, but we gave her a name that is usually associated with males. When we got the bill for the delivery, the OB/GYN charged us for circumcision.
We had to have a talk about that.
Referring to the OP:
It is probably cultural inertia and medical pressure, as another poster said. My parents felt forced to snip me because the doctors all said so.
The problem is this: when cutting the infantile penis, it’s impossible, literally impossible, to know “how much” skin is too much. It’s impossible to know how much that individual boy’s penis will grow at puberty, whether he will be a “shower” or a “grower” (a ‘grower’ can get away with a whole lot less shaft skin when flaccid, but needs it to become fully erect). A number of the men on the restore-list claim that after restoration, they have gained as much as an inch in length and an inch in diameter, because they had insufficient skin to accommodate their natural, fully-erect penis - if it were allowed to attain its full natural size. So, apparently, they had more skin removed than their penises required.
Some of the men were cut so very tight that they literally got tears in their skin with erections during puberty. Some of them got cut so tight that every erection hurts, and they do not and cannot enjoy sex. Some had so much frenulum excised that they literally cannot get enough stimulation to trigger ejaculation. Ever. No matter what they do, with women, men, or their own hands.
So, not every man who was cut as an infant ends up with enough loose skin to masturbate with. In those cases, lube is absolutely essential. And even it may not be enough.
I think it’s a mistake to think of the foreskin as being ‘a flap of skin’. Rather, the penis is naturally enclosed in an oversized tube of muscle and skin. None of it is “extra”. But removing it can definitely leave “not enough” for even marginal function.
Some studies have shown that there is a reduced risk of cervical cancer in (female) partners of circumcised men.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/346/15/1105 :
http://www.cfpc.ca/cfp/2003/sep/vol49-sep-critical-1.asp :
I looked for articles that contradicted these studies, but all I could find were listed on what I considered activist websites, not medical websites.
If I were the guardian of a baby boy, I’d probably leave him uncut, despite these findings. He could always get cut later if he wanted to.
Hm, american ex husband snipped, previous german boyfriend not snipped. No particular preference to one way or the other. Tthe bf always insisted on washing up before and after s#x - though that may have been one of those german hygene thangs.
Spike Milligan was circumcised and had no idea why (he suggested to make it lighter). Now, he was born in Ahmed Nagar, India, at around the end of the Great War, so does that help at all? Are there lots of Indian doctors in the US?
Would you say these outcomes were common, or, as I suspect, exceedingly rare?