When did circumcision become the norm for Americans? My understanding is that circumcision was generally never practiced in any largely Christian countries until America adopted it.
When did it become the standard for Americans to be circumcised? Was there resistance to it? Wouldn’t the antisemitic tendency of many Americans at the time cause them to look askance at the practice?
late 19th early 20th century. They thought it would reduce VD and Masturbation… that’s how they sold it to the more anti Semitic crowd…
This is GQ, so, Nightaudit, cite? Especially for the “they” who are selling it?
I thought it was the mid-1850s in the UK for reasons such as medical and masturbation.
I don’t believe that the U.S. was the first Christian country to adopt it.
And this practice has been going on for thousands of years.
i was referencing this part of his question:
" Wouldn’t the antisemitic tendency of many Americans at the time cause them to look askance at the practice"
The rise in the procedure has some basis in the Victorian eras obsession with “clean living”
and yes it has been going on for along time…and it was not just a Semitic thing either, didn’t the Maya and/ or Aztecs have a penis cutting ritual also? That marked a transition to adulthood, or pack with a god?
one of the first to promote the procedure was Lewis Sayre, a founder of the AMA. In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a supposed cure for several cases of young boys presenting with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a “reflex neurosis” theory of disease.
basically the premise of the theory is that: excessive stimulation of the genitals was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems. Aka you went crazy, and turned it to a reprobate…
The use of circumcision to promote good health also fit in with the germ theory of disease, which saw validation during the same time period: the foreskin was seen as harboring infection-causing smegma (a mixture of dead skin cells and oils). Sayre published works on the subject and promoted it energetically in speeches. Contemporary physicians picked up on Sayre’s new treatment, which they believed could prevent or cure a wide-ranging array of medical problems and social ills. Its popularity spread by the turn of the century, in both America and Great Britain, infant circumcision was nearly universally recommended.
Recent article on circumcision from Ars Technica.
Sayre is mentioned, alongside other freaks such as Peter — …*described the foreskin as a “malign influence” that could weaken a man “physically, mentally and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail or even in a lunatic asylum.” Insurance companies, he advised, should classify uncircumcised men as “hazardous risks.” * — Remondino and Kellog, but the take-up wasn’t that fast,
By 1940, around 70 percent of male babies in the United States were circumcised.
By the 1970s, for instance, more than 90 percent of US men were circumcised, according to one study.
As ever the British slavishly copied the Yanks, but it’s pretty rare over here now.
An estimated 3.8% of male children in the UK in 2000 were being circumcised by the age of 15
Wikipedia : Prevalence of circumcision
It’s more of a muslim thing than strictly jewish — unless you’re one of those interesting people who try to discount anti-judaism by arguing extensively that semitic means arab rather than jewish.
However even in Islam there are doubts, more amongst the Sunnis than the Shia regarding the obligation to have this thing done; but the main justification is that the Prophet Abraham did it to himself when he was 80, with an axe.
Do you mean ‘more of a MiddleEast/NorthAfrica thing’?
Because I don’t see how circumcision could be more muslim than jewish, seeing as how there were jewish people being circumcised hundreds if not thousands of years before there were any muslims
No if someone said Semitic; I think of the various groups from that general area such as: Akkadians , Ammonites, Amorites, Chaldeans, Canaanites, Hebrews, Israelites, Samaritans, Edomites, Arabs, Nabateans, Mandaeans, Moabites and the like… not just Arabs or Jews. Do Phoenicians count? and how about some of the peoples of Ethiopia? I was going to add Sodomites, but weren’t they a type of Canaanite?
It was the obstetricians and gynecologists who were responsible for realising his dream.
Obstetricians…um yes, because it is a quick lucrative procedure …
Islam is a daughter-religion of Judaism: there are a lot more muslims than jews in the world, and they are far more influential globally — partly because they sound off much more.
We can thank the ancient Hebrews not only for their own quaint and charming religious traditions and beliefs, but also for those of Islam and Christianity.
Thankfully, the rest of us Euros never took that Anglo hysteria all too seriously:
I really don’t think that circumcision being a muslim practice too - which I am aware is the case - has very much to do with the reason it became popular in the US. I would be very surprised to find that doctors in the Anglosphere in the 1930s or 1850s were copying any practices at all from Islamic countries.
In any case, circumcision seems to be broader than either religion - they circumcised boys in ancient Egypt. Even some pre-contact Australian Aboriginal groups did it. Who knows who invented it in the first place.
Man, they did even more horrible things to the male genitalia.
(NSFW)http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penile_subincision
A rather delicate question that I’ve wondered about is how women from countries where make circumcision is nearly universal make of the fact that it is very rare in European countries. I’m German and (consequently, I am inclined to say) unclipped, and the one American girl I’ve ever slept with mentioned in passing that she had never seen an uncircumcised member before. She didn’t say anything more about it (which I think was a polite thing to do), but I’ve ever since wondered whether women would be disgusted, even slightly, by this.
Some American women are, in fact, either surprised, freaked out, or disgusted by a human penis in its natural state. Some other don’t care, might note the difference in passing, and move on to some other topic of conversation.
Some probably would be slightly disgusted. I wasn’t. Surprised, maybe, but not disgusted. The gentleman in question was from India. I guess there are some American men who aren’t circumcised these days but I think they are mostly younger than my demographic. But maybe women today don’t see their first uncut one at 35 years old, as I did, so they wouldn’t be surprised OR disgusted.
ETA I forgot this thread was still in GQ. Sorry for continuing the hijack.
Best user name / post combintation ever! 
ETA: I slept with an American girl once. She didn’t mention what she thought about the matter, and I didn’t think to ask.