Circumcision

[bluebell]

16 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Not if you fit him with dentures. 

Hey, I don’t claim it’s a good idea. Neither is routine, neonatal circumcision. 

But still, there is no true comparison.  You don't have to fit a boy with anything to allow him to function normally without his foreskin.  

Quote

There are many men who have felt violated, victimized and resentful because without their consent they had a normal, functioning body part surgically removed at birth. You can disagree with them, but shouldn’t a person be given a say in what happens to his own body when it pertains to a thing like circumcision, where the claimed benefits are so tenuous and have so long been in substantial dispute?

If i'm remembering what i've read right, I think about 10% of circumcised men resent it later.  And a certain number of uncircumcised men resent that they weren't and end up having it done later for health and cosmetic reasons (and report no change in sexual function or pleasure, which I thought was interesting).  If a man wants to resent his parents for making a decision they sincerely believed was best for him, then that's a little sad, but personally I'm willing to live with the chance.

I don't believe that the benefits are in substantial dispute though.   

Edited November 18, 2017 by bluebell

[Hamba Tuhan]

38 minutes ago, bluebell said:

 If you remove a child's teeth, they can't eat normally.  Removing a child's foreskin does not inhibit their ability to do anything normally though.  

Again, with all due respect, what you have written here reflects a lack of understanding of the normal male body. Removing foreskin completely alters the mechanics of sexual intercourse. I really doubt the moderators are keen to have us go into details, but, at a minimum, it introduces friction. Can circumcised males still engage in intercourse? Of course! Can they engage in it normally? By definition, no. And that means that their female partners also don't. In fact, studies suggest that when it comes to sexual functioning, it may well be female partners who most feel the impacts of foreskin removal.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Hamba Tuhan

[strappinglad]

I had a good friend that got circumcised when he was 12. He definitely remembers it. The idea that someone remembers an event that happened at an age under 1 year is hard to believe. To feel violated and victimized because of it is ...

Edited November 18, 2017 by strappinglad

[Scott Lloyd]

21 minutes ago, MorningStar said:

I let my husband decide with our boys.  I figured if anyone would be passionately against it, it would be him.  He didn't feel like it had impacted him negatively and didn't have a problem without our boys being circumcised. We also had several friend whose boys had to be circumcised at an older age and we decided if it were going to happen, we would rather they not remember it.  

A thing hurts just as bad in the moment whether or not one is apt to remember it. Ability to remember should not be a determining factor as to whether or not to have it done. I’ve had some uncomfortable dental procedures in my lifetime, but they are no more traumatic to me now than if I were not able to remember them. 

Also I question how likely it is that one would need to be circumcised later in life. Urinary tract infections, for example, are treated more effectively with antibiotics. Other conditions that might be treated with circumcision — or might be prevented by it — are quite rare. 

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Again, with all due respect, what you have written here reflects a lack of understanding of the normal male body. Removing foreskin completely alters the mechanics of sexual intercourse. I really doubt the moderators are keen to have us go into details, but, at a minimum, it introduces friction. Can circumcised males still engage in intercourse? Of course! Can they engage in it normally? By definition, no. And that means that their female partners also don't. Some studies suggest that the impacts of circumcision on women as a consequence of altering the mechanics of normal intercourse may be some of the most serious consequences of the procedure.

I'm just reporting what i've read.   Men who have chosen to get circumcised as adults for cosmetic reasons (and/or because their wives and girlfriends wanted them too) claim that sex is the same afterwards as it was before (with no loss of pleasure or function).   And many women prefer circumcised men as sexual partners.  

[Scott Lloyd]

59 minutes ago, bluebell said:

But still, there is no true comparison.  You don't have to fit a boy with anything to allow him to function normally without his foreskin.  

If i'm remembering what i've read right, I think about 10% of circumcised men resent it later.  And a certain number of uncircumcised men resent that they weren't and end up having it done later for health and cosmetic reasons (and report no change in sexual function or pleasure, which I thought was interesting).  If a man wants to resent his parents for making a decision they sincerely believed was best for him, then that's a little sad, but personally I'm willing to live with the chance.

I don't believe that the benefits are in substantial dispute though.   

But if some end up wanting it later, at least they get to make the decision instead of having it made for them. 

Neither pulling out all of a child’s teeth and having him fitted with dentures nor having his normal, functioning foreskin removed at birth is a good idea, but the fact is, many people function just fine with dentures. 

You indicated earlier that you advocate circumcision of newborns because you are aware of old men who needed it done and how painful it was for them. Many people end up needing dentures when they are old. Shall we pull out all of a person’s healthy teeth at middle age or younger on the pretext that he might need it done when he gets old and is less able to cope with the pain and trauma?

If you don’t believe the claimed benefits of circumcision are in substantial dispute, I suggest you haven’t paid much attention to the plethora of credible content on the internet that rebuts the claims. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

41 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

I had a good friend that got circumcised when he was 12. He definitely remembers it. The idea that someone remembers an event that happened at an age under 1 year is hard to believe. To feel violated and victimized because of it is ...

I used this example before, but if inability to remember is a determining factor, why use anesthesia when operating on patients who have Alzheimer’s?

Edited November 18, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Hamba Tuhan]

35 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

If you don’t believe the claimed benefits are in substantial dispute, I suggest you haven’t paid much attention to the plethora of credible content on the internet that rebuts the claims. 

I appreciate your good-faith efforts, Scott, but entrenched cultural practices are, as the literature points out, resilient -- and this one has been doggedly so in American culture for some reason that I don't think anyone has yet figured out.

I've had identical discussions before with a former housemate from Sierra Leone on female genital mutilation (which has all kinds of variants in practice, including many that are far less radical than foreskin removal). He was similarly unmovable in his opinions, citing numerous health benefits, no impacts on sexual function, cleanliness, etc.

It is what it is what it is.

Until laws are finally enacted to guarantee that the right to genital integrity is not dependent upon the sex of the child, change in the US is going to be very slow, I suspect. There have been movements towards this end in Europe over the past couple of years, but Jewish and Muslim contingents have so far scuttled any real change. We'll see what the future brings. Meanwhile, fully 83% of the males living on planet earth have no idea (and never will) what many of you Americans are even going on about.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Hamba Tuhan

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

A thing hurts just as bad in the moment whether or not one is apt to remember it. Ability to remember should not be a determining factor as to whether or not to have it done. I’ve had some uncomfortable dental procedures in my lifetime, but they are no more traumatic to me now than if I were not able to remember them. 

Also I question how likely it is that one would need to be circumcised later in life. Urinary tract infections, for example, are treated more effectively with antibiotics. Other conditions that might be treated with circumcision — or might be prevented by it — are quite rare. 

The differences is that most of the pain in adult men (from the experiences i've read) happen in the recovery.  It took a couple of weeks and was pretty hard to deal with, lots of swelling, etc.  For infants, it's not like that.  My sons were all fine a few minutes after the procedure (no crying, eating normally) and did not experience any significant discomfort that I could see after that (they were all calm babies that only cried when they were hungry and exhibited no reaction during diaper changes, no different than my daughter when she was an infant).

So that's why circumcision is considered to be more traumatic for adult men than for infants.  The risks for complications from the procedure are also increased for adults.

I've read that adult circumcision is fairly common but i haven't seen any statistics on it.  It looks like the typical health reasons for doing it are phimosis, penile cancer, repeated penile infections, and sexually transmitted diseases.

[bluebell]

22 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But if some end up wanting it later, at least they get to make the decision instead of having it made for them. 

Neither pulling out all of a child’s teeth and having him fitted with dentures nor having his normal, functioning foreskin removed at birth is a good idea, but the fact is, many people function just fine with dentures. 

If you don’t believe the claimed benefits are in substantial dispute, I suggest you haven’t paid much attention to the plethora of credible content on the internet that rebuts the claims. 

Men who resent being circumcised have some options for foreskin restoration, but the results are not the same as being intact (from what i've read).  

There is a plethora of content on the internet regarding the topic.  I'm not sure that much of it is credible.  A lot of the websites i've been on read similar to anti-vaccination websites (I'm not comparing circumcision with vaccinations, only the tones of the websites that exist for each topic).  Most of them are radical enough that it's hard to take them seriously.  Comparisons of removing teeth = circumcision is a good example of the kind of content a lot of them seem to employ.

[Scott Lloyd]

19 minutes ago, bluebell said:

The differences is that most of the pain in adult men (from the experiences i've read) happen in the recovery.  It took a couple of weeks and was pretty hard to deal with, lots of swelling, etc.  For infants, it's not like that.  My sons were all fine a few minutes after the procedure (no crying, eating normally) and did not experience any significant discomfort that I could see after that (they were all calm babies that only cried when they were hungry and exhibited no reaction during diaper changes, no different than my daughter when she was an infant).

So that's why circumcision is considered to be more traumatic for adult men than for infants.  The risks for complications from the procedure are also increased for adults.

I've read that adult circumcision is fairly common but i haven't seen any statistics on it.  It looks like the typical health reasons for doing it are phimosis, penile cancer, repeated penile infections, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Penile cancer is extremely rare. The American Cancer Society has denounced infant circumcision as a preventive for cancer of any kind. 

The other conditions you mention are rare also — too rare to justify circumcising each and every newborn whether he needs it or not — except STDs, and there are better ways to treat and prevent them that don’t involve circumcising each and every newborn. 

Regarding circumcising men when they are old, please see the portion I added to one of my recent posts. I said that many people need dentures when they are old, but we don’t use that to advocate pulling all their teeth when they are younger on the reasoning that they will be much less able to cope with the pain and trauma when they get old, should they need dentures then (which they probably won’t). 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

23 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I appreciate your good-faith efforts, Scott, but entrenched cultural practices are, as the literature points out, resilient -- and this one has been doggedly so in American culture for some reason that I don't think anyone has yet figured out.

I've had identical discussions before with a former housemate from Sierra Leone on female genital mutilation (which has all kinds of variants in practice, including many that are far less radical than foreskin removal). He was similarly unmovable in his opinions, citing numerous health benefits, no impacts on sexual function, cleanliness, etc.

It is what it is what it is.

It is as I characterized it earlier: the inertia of custom and culture. 

[bluebell]

23 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I appreciate your good-faith efforts, Scott, but entrenched cultural practices are, as the literature points out, resilient -- and this one has been doggedly so in American culture for some reason that I don't think anyone has yet figured out.

I've had identical discussions before with a former housemate from Sierra Leone on female genital mutilation (which has all kinds of variants in practice, including many that are far less radical than foreskin removal). He was similarly unmovable in his opinions, citing numerous health benefits, no impacts on sexual function, cleanliness, etc.

It is what it is what it is.

Until laws are finally enacted to guarantee that the right to genital integrity is not dependent upon the sex of the child, change in the US is going to be very slow, I suspect. There have been movements towards this end in Europe over the past couple of years, but Jewish and Muslim contingents have so far scuttled any real change. We'll see what the future brings. Meanwhile, fully 83% of the males living on planet earth have no idea what many of you Americans are even going on about.

If i'm understanding you correctly, it seems that you feel like male circumcision is immoral for for both secular and religious reasons.

If that's true, do you believe that God was wrong for commanding circumcision of infant males or do you believe the bible is not translated correctly in regards to that topic and God never commanded such a thing?

 

[Scott Lloyd]

22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Men who resent being circumcised have some options for foreskin restoration, but the results are not the same as being intact (from what i've read).  

There is a plethora of content on the internet regarding the topic.  I'm not sure that much of it is credible.  A lot of the websites i've been on read similar to anti-vaccination websites (I'm not comparing circumcision with vaccinations, only the tones of the websites that exist for each topic).  Most of them are radical enough that it's hard to take them seriously.  Comparisons of removing teeth = circumcision is a good example of the kind of content a lot of them seem to employ.

The websites I’ve seen advocating routine circumcision strike me as biased and doctrinaire as well as slanted, so I guess it boils down to what one finds credible. 

I think it telling, what I just read from Hamba about his flat mate who advocated FGM, using arguments eerily reminiscent of those used to rationalize infant male circumcision. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

8 minutes ago, bluebell said:

If i'm understanding you correctly, it seems that you feel like male circumcision is immoral for for both secular and religious reasons.

If that's true, do you believe that God was wrong for commanding circumcision of infant males or do you believe the bible is not translated correctly in regards to that topic and God never commanded such a thing?

 

I think Hamba already addressed this when he said earlier that ritual circumcision in ancient Israel was quite different from the radical procedure of today. 

Bug I should let him respond to this. 

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Penile cancer is extremely rare. The American Cancer Society has denounced infant circumcision as a preventive for cancer of any kind. 

It doesn't sound like they have denounced it.  This is from their website-

Although infant circumcision can lower the risk of penile cancer, based on the low risk of this cancer in the US, it would take over 900 circumcisions to prevent one case of penile cancer in this country. The reason for the lower risk in circumcised men is not entirely clear, but it may be related to other known risk factors. For example, men who are circumcised can’t develop the condition called phimosis, and don’t accumulate material known as smegma (see next section). Men with smegma or phimosis have an increased risk of penile cancer. The later a man is circumcised, the more likely it is that one of these conditions will occur first.

They also say this-

Men who were circumcised as children may have a lower chance of getting penile cancer than those who were not, but the same protective effect is not seen if the foreskin is removed as an adult. Some studies even suggested a higher risk of penile cancer in men who were circumcised as adults.

Yes, it's rare, but even the ACS agrees that it does prevent penile cancer to some degree (the degree depends on how well and often grown men clean under the foreskin).

Quote

The other conditions you mention are rare also — to rare to justify circumcising each and every newborn whether he needs it or not — except STDs, and there are better ways to treat and prevent them that don’t involve circumcising each and every newborn.

I don't know how rare they are when so many of us in this thread personally know people who have had to be circumcised as a boy or adult for health reasons. 

Quote

Regarding circumcising men when they are old, please see the portion I added to one of my recent posts. I said that many people need dentures when they are old, but we don’t use that to advocate pulling all their teeth when they are younger on the reasoning that will be much less able to cope with the pain and trauma when they get old.

Again, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  It's a fact that the risks of circumcision complications and recovery increases as the age of the male increases.  The risks of dentures is pretty much the same no matter the age. 

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

The websites I’ve seen advocating routine circumcision strike me as biased and doctrinaire as well as slanted, so I guess it boils down to what one finds credible. 

I think it telling, what I just read from Hamba about his flat mate who advocated FGM, using arguments eerily reminiscent of those used to rationalize infant male circumcision. 

I don't go to any of those websites either.  I researched medical sites and talked to my doctor.  

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I think Hamba already addressed this when he said earlier that ritual circumcision in ancient Israel was quite different from the radical procedure of today. 

Bug I should let him respond to this. 

If i understand right, he would like laws enacted that guarantee "the rights to genital integrity" which would also end circumcision for religious reasons.  He hasn't addressed whether or not he believes babies during OT also had that right.

[Hamba Tuhan]

30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

If that's true, do you believe that God was wrong for commanding circumcision of infant males or do you believe the bible is not translated correctly in regards to that topic and God never commanded such a thing?

As Scott has noted, I've already addressed this issue in an earlier post. The procedure known in our day as 'circumcision' was not practised by the Jews until the second century AD. Attempts to justify foreskin removal based on Biblical precedent are historically unaware.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Hamba Tuhan

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

So instead of promoting condom use, we advocate cutting off a functional body part. And we do it routinely to newborns, those who of all people are the least able to have a say in the matter. 

That strikes me as a pretty radical course of action, again, akin to extracting all of your child’s teeth because you don’t think you can trust him to practice good dental hygiene. 

That seems a false dichotomy. But certainly if the "solution" is only condoms then HIV is demonstrably going to flourish. Whether you think that is better than cutting off a relatively insignificant bit of skin that most American men already have cut off and don't mind ultimately depends upon your personal values. For my personal values it's a very good tradeoff.

If you think teeth are as functionally important as foreskin of course then that's a more factual discussion. I'm not sure many would agree with you. Although again perhaps that depends upon the non-factual part tied to personal values. Maybe you personally do value foreskin as much as your teeth. That's something only you can decide. Again though I think most Americans would tend to have different value judgments in that regard. I can't really debate the value part of this as that's fairly subjective and not exactly open to evidentiary argument. The more factual parts about function and consequences I think we can debate. Again I just point people to PubMed for that.

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Maybe you personally do value foreskin as much as your teeth.

For what it may be worth, I do! Quite possibly more so.

[clarkgoble]

On 11/15/2017 at 12:20 AM, Hamba Tuhan said:

One of the things that makes me sad is that Utah is currently the only state in the American West where circumcision is still prevalent. When I've discussed this with LDS American friends, they've tended to fall back on the excuse that it's in the Bible and so must be commanded/good/something. I then wonder if they've read the New Testament or the Book of Mormon. (I certainly don't expect most people to understand that what is called circumcision today wasn't even practised in Biblical times.)

I missed this statement earlier. Where are you getting your statistics on this? The statistics I've seen such as at MGMBill (an activist group seeking to ban circumcision) that purportedly quotes a presentation to the CDC has Utah among the lowest.

For surrounding states and Utah:

State	Rate	Year of Reporting
Arizona	16%	2013
Colorado	56%	2013
Idaho	N/A
Utah	33%	2013
Wyoming	73%	2013
Nevada	10%	2013
Montana	50%	2009

Nevada and Arizona are lower - perhaps due to the large hispanic population. But all the other states are considerably higher. I'd add that the main cause for the drop in circumcision appears to be whether it's covered by Medicaid for the poor.

 

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I missed this statement earlier. Where are you getting your statistics on this? The statistics I've seen such as at MGMBill (an activist group seeking to ban circumcision) that purportedly quotes a presentation to the CDC has Utah among the lowest.

Oh, I'm happy to see that. I haven't looked at the data in a number of years. Thanks.

[bluebell]

11 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

As Scott has noted, I've already addressed this issue in an earlier post. The procedure known in our day as 'circumcision' was not practised by the Jews until the second century AD. Attempts to justify foreskin removal based on Biblical precedent are historically unaware.

So you would have no problem if people circumcised their children today as they did in the OT (where only a portion of the foreskin was removed)?

[Hamba Tuhan]

On 19/11/2017 at 1:28 AM, bluebell said:

So you would have no problem if people circumcised their children today as they did in the OT (where only a portion of the foreskin was removed)?

It would certainly be a better outcome for the children involved -- avoiding the damage to function -- but this is still not ideal. I genuinely don't grasp the logic that grants people the right to authorise the amputation of any part of a child's body for 'cultural' reasons. I understand that it's impossible for Americans, Muslims, and others for whom circumcision is 'normal' to grasp this, but try to imagine if, say, a certain group of people were in the habit of lopping off the earlobes of their daughters for cultural reasons. That's precisely how circumcision appears to the 83% of the world where it has not been routinised and legitimised by a complex of ever-changing 'health' justifications  ...even though the tissue in question is always perfectly healthy.

If earlobe-lopping peoples were to migrate to America, do you really think everyone would just shrug their shoulders, mumble something about parental rights, and just let it keep happening to those girls?

By the way, I also am 100% in support of laws banning the stoning of people for idolatry or blasphemy. Does it bother you that we have laws that go against the Old Testament on those counts?