# Would you get your son's penis circumcised? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 24, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671 "2011-10-24T19:47:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/161 "2011-10-28T02:37:49Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > As an anecdote, a woman I work with, whom I consider a moron for many reasons other than this, “had” to have her son circumcised when he was about 8. She went into great detail how she had to be on him every single minute to “yank back that foreskin and scrub and clean and clean it—YUCK!” She was disgusted by the thing and harped on him constantly. I believe all that scrubbing injured it, he got infections and consequently “had” to get rid of the horrid thing. Which is what she wanted in the first place. Her husband made her leave him intact. :rolleyes: Indeed she got it very wrong. You’re not supposed to forcibly retract the prepuce before it loosens up naturally with time, which will have happened for the great majority of males by when puberty sets in but can happen at different ages for each. Forcing it can cause tissue tearing, inflammation and scarring that only makes matters worse. \*\*\* If \*\*\*it does not happen naturally THEN you explore the various alternatives from medication to circumcision (passing through the too often excluded middle of preputioplasty) depending on the severity of the condition. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/162 "2011-10-28T06:44:20Z")
I’m personally looking forward to the day when my son gets his first lip plate. He’s already had the holes bored through his earlobes and inserted wooden plugs! And my daughter, I mean, now that she’s gotten to her 7th neck ring, damn, the guys are going to be lining up! In case you can’t detect sarcasm, that’s about the level of respect I think circumcision (male or female) deserves. It’s a ritual mutilation, plain and simple. I think it’s especially bizarre that it’s gotten so entrenched in the West when it used to be a Gentile/Jew division as recently as the second World War. Attempts to retroactively claim some medical benefit for it are so much bullshit, especially when it can only be claimed through a narrow focus on disease prevention. There are complications from any surgical procedure and the very, very low rate of benefit from being circumcised is almost certainly offset by those occasions. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/163 "2011-10-28T13:25:45Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > I’m personally looking forward to the day when my son gets his first lip plate. He’s already had the holes bored through his earlobes and inserted wooden plugs! And my daughter, I mean, now that she’s gotten to her 7th neck ring, damn, the guys are going to be lining up! > > In case you can’t detect sarcasm, that’s about the level of respect I think circumcision (male or female) deserves. It’s a ritual mutilation, plain and simple. I think it’s especially bizarre that it’s gotten so entrenched in the West when it used to be a Gentile/Jew division as recently as the second World War. > > Attempts to retroactively claim some medical benefit for it are so much bullshit, especially when it can only be claimed through a narrow focus on disease prevention. There are complications from any surgical procedure and the very, very low rate of benefit from being circumcised is almost certainly offset by those occasions. - Circumcision did start out as a ritual process. - However, there are in point of fact medical benefits derived from the procedure. - The level of benefits are low, but lifelong. The level of complications are also low, but immediate. - The fact that the ritual has nothing to do with the benefits is neither here nor there. - The issue being a wash, many medical professionals are now reversing an earlier stance that it is not recommended at all, and stating that it ought to be a matter of informed parental choice - since either way appears just as good from an evidence-based POV. ---
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/164 "2011-10-28T15:18:51Z")
IMHO, the actual merits and drawbacks of the procedure are basically irrelevant. Your son’s body does not belong to you, so you have no right to modify it. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/165 "2011-10-28T15:41:34Z")
Okay, what about a baby born with a cleft palate, for example. Do the parents still have no right to “modify” their child’s body, in order to surgically address the issue? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/166 "2011-10-28T15:50:29Z")
> [@heathen\_earthling](#): > > IMHO, the actual merits and drawbacks of the procedure are basically irrelevant. Your son’s body does not belong to you, so you have no right to modify it. This is a very silly argument, as parents are IMHO righly given a certain amount of agency over all medical procedures performed on their children. Naturally this agency has to be exercised within a range of objective reasonableness. Hence the significance of the “actual merits and drawbacks”. The whole point to the American Association of Pediatricians’ policy is to indicate that, in their view, this procedure quite clearly falls within the range of reasonableness – i.e., it is neither mandated nor prohibited: it is a choice for parents, acting with agency as guardians of their children, to make. Similar choices are such things as certain kinds of othodontia, where cosmesis and functionality may be improved but which carry certain risks. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/167 "2011-10-28T17:51:55Z")
> [@heathen\_earthling](#): > > IMHO, the actual merits and drawbacks of the procedure are basically irrelevant. Your son’s body does not belong to you, so you have no right to modify it. That’s a silly argument. My son’s body most certainly does belong to me, in the sense that I take him whereever I want to and he has absolutely no say about it. (If it’s not clear, my son is a toddler who can’t speak yet.) ---
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671/168 "2011-10-28T18:05:40Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Okay, what about a baby born with a cleft palate, for example. Do the parents still have no right to “modify” their child’s body, in order to surgically address the issue? Not really comparable, since circumcision doesn’t fix an abnormality. I was using “modify” in [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_modification) sense, btw: > [@](#): > > Body modification (or body alteration) is the deliberate altering of the human body for any non-medical reason, such as aesthetics, sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, religious reasons, to display group membership or affiliation, to create body art, shock value, or self expression.[1] In its most broad definition it includes plastic surgery, socially acceptable decoration (e.g., common ear piercing in many societies), and religious rights of passage (e.g., circumcision in a number of cultures), as well as the modern primitive movement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-get-your-sons-penis-circumcised/600671.md?page=8)