Circumcision of baby boys: for or against?

captainbryce wrote:Completely against it. Sorry to say it but anyone who is for it is ignorant! I'm not cut and I couldn't imagine what jerking off would be like without my foreskin. I'm pretty sure the foreskin is one of the most sensitive parts of the penis as well. But that also makes me biased so I did some research on this before doing a paper about circumcision for my psychology class. The things I learned about circumcision made me sick and totally against it. I actually watched a couple of videos of circumcisions and I regret it. I think it's a violation of human rights to forcibly strap an infant down and cut off his foreskin without his permission and for no medical reason. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Anyone who's ever watched a video of a circumcision before knows how horrible it would be to put their child through that.
Plus, some of the reasons people use to justify it is so ridiculous. It's "cleaner"? First of all, if you take a shower everyday and wash your junk hygiene isn't really an issue. You brush your teeth everyday, why can't you wash your dick? It takes about 5 seconds! I'm sure your fingers would be "cleaner" if you had your fingernails ripped out at birth too, but is it a good idea? Probably not. And it doesn't make you susseptible to "infections" either. I've never had an infection before! On the other hand my cousin (who is circumcised) has had a urinary tract infection before, and so have two females that I know. Circumcision is pretty dumb! The only reason people do it is for looks, and the only reason people think it looks better is because everyone keeps doing it. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Leave little boy private parts alone! By the way, it's only in the US that people are still doing this. I lived in England for 3 years and realized that nobody over there circumcises their boys (so for the first time I was actually in the majority). Their children also seemed to be perfectly healthy, so why are we still doing it in the US? It makes no sense!

Tony Marino wrote:I can't understand it either but is now the American way for most Americans anyway. There are still some here that don't circumcise their boys. As far as looking different, yeah it does but I don't think it looks weird, funny or bad and besides when its erect, it kind of looks like it is circumcised.

Researchers have documented yet another health benefit for circumcision, which can protect men against the AIDS virus, saying it can protect their wives and girlfriends from a virus that causes cervical cancer.

Wives and girlfriends of circumcised men had a 28 percent lower rate of infection over two years with the human papilloma virus or HPV, which causes warts and cervical cancer, they reported in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday.

"Our findings indicate that male circumcision should now be accepted as an efficacious intervention for reducing the prevalence and incidence of HPV infections in female partners. However, protection is only partial; the promotion of safe sex practices is also important," Dr.
Maria Wawer and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore wrote.

Wawer's team piggybacked the HPV study onto a larger study that has shown circumcised men are less likely to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

"We enrolled HIV-negative men and their female partners between 2003 and 2006, in Rakai, Uganda," they wrote in their report in the Lancet medical journal.

They were able to get details on HPV infections for nearly 1,000 of the women, all identified by men as long-term sex partners such as wives. After two years, 27.8 percent of the steady partners of circumcised men had HPV infections, compared to 38.7 percent of the partners of uncircumcised men.

HPV infection is best known as the primary cause of cervical cancer, but it causes genital warts and can also lead to cancers of the anus, penis, head and neck.

There are dozens of strains of HPV, which are highly contagious and which infect the majority of the population within a few years of beginning sexual activity. Most people clear the virus but in some, it can cause changes that lead to cancer.

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide and is expected to kill 328,000 this year, mostly in developing countries.

GlaxoSmithKline and Merck make vaccines against HPV but they are not available to most women in developing countries.

Circumcision removes the foreskin of the penis, which is rich in immune system cells targeted by HIV and perhaps other viruses. Taking off the foreskin likely makes the penis less likely to carry a range of microbes, Wawer's team said.

"Male circumcision has now been shown to decrease HIV, herpes simplex virus-2, and HPV infections and genital ulcer disease in men, and also HPV infection, trichomoniasis, and bacterial vaginosis and genital ulcer disease in their female partners," Wawer's team wrote.

"Thus, male circumcision reduces the risk of several sexually transmitted infections in both sexes, and these benefits should guide public health policies for neonatal, adolescent, and adult male circumcision programs."

JM130ELM wrote:Just read this. Some of the anti-circ people around here not gonna like it, but here's the article.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:I really don't have any strong feelings for it one way or another. IMO, it's a parent's decision and one which either way is fine. Snip or no snip, it's no big deal. I am surprised people really got any strong feelings about what other people choose to do anyway. Do what you want for your kid and let it be that.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:^^^^It's been done successfully for eons. Maybe there is a double standard but in all honesty, I feel it's within a parent's right to do or not do, in infancy anyway. Religious or hygiene, I feel it should be up to the parents given that it doesn't really make a difference one way or another.

captainbryce wrote:

Marc wrote:I'm circumcised and have no issue with it. Don't think it really it matters all that much one way or another. I see circumcision as more of a "unnecessary, but whatever..." than I do as some kind of grievous injustice that anti-circumcision zealots try to perpetuate. That little bit of extra foreskin around the dickhead is neither sacred or a burden. Leave it alone or snip it. Either way a dick is a dick.

If it's unnecessary, then why do it? Nobody is saying that the foreskin is "sacred", but the fact is it does serve a purpose. Why would anybody remove part of someone else's body without their consent if it's unnecessary? How is that NOT anything but an injustice? That's just a completely idiotic thing to do. I hear arguments like yours all the time but they never make any sense. "It's not necessary, therefore it doesn't matter one way or the other". That's backwards logic! Something should only be done BECAUSE it's necessary or beneficial in some way! The fact that it's not necessary is reason enough for not doing it (especially if their are risks and drawbacks involved)!

JM130ELM wrote:Just read this. Some of the anti-circ people around here not gonna like it, but here's the article.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:@Bryce: My point is that it isn't some procedural with this huge complication rate. If somebody does it for whatever reason, it just doesn't strike me as a problem.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:IMO, if somebody has issues with circumcision, they should just not do it to their sons, simple as that. If everything a parent did had to be justified to somebody, you'd find a lot of things would be stopped.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:Religious, aesthetic, or hygiene, it doesn't really matter why it's done. I think in order to tell people to stop something, the burden of justification falls on you instead of telling them that they gotta justify continuing to do it. As of now, the reasons against it seem largely personal.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:If people do have a problem with circumcision, they are not required to pursue it. That's the point.

Well I think they really don't have any ground to see it as child abuse at all. Sometimes interfering with other parents' parenting is not protecting a child from abuse but imposing your views on those parents. IMO, it's a dangerous line to call circumcision child abuse.

I feel people do it for many valid reasons, just as they have valid reasons for not doing it.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:If people do have a problem with circumcision, they are not required to pursue it. That's the point.

Well I think they really don't have any ground to see it as child abuse at all. Sometimes interfering with other parents' parenting is not protecting a child from abuse but imposing your views on those parents. IMO, it's a dangerous line to call circumcision child abuse.

I feel people do it for many valid reasons, just as they have valid reasons for not doing it.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:^^^^Because it is government telling parents what they can and cannot do. When you try and blur the line of what is within a parent's right, you start making it so laws can be made to stop them from doing anything somebody else doesn't like, even if it doesn't hurt the child at all.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:Many of the very things we've discussed on this board that parents should have a right to do could easily be taken away cause some busybodies got too much time on their hands.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:Parents do plenty to their children that isn't a necessity. Unless it's outright abuse, it shouldn't labeled as such. And there's really no cause to call circumcision outright abuse. Millions of children are circumcised and lead happy, healthy, and safe, non-abusive lives.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:Discourage the procedure with the anomalies that were botched if you want, but some busy-body can always throw statistics around too. It's one thing to be against the procedure and want to discourage it; it's another to outright try to make it illegal. There's just no justification for it.

thepossiblepolice wrote:
Do you feel the same way about female circumcision? Recently the AAP stated that they would allow female circumcision in order to be more culturally sensitive...The outcry was so loud that they reversed that standing.

thepossiblepolice wrote:
Do you feel the same way about female circumcision? Recently the AAP stated that they would allow female circumcision in order to be more culturally sensitive...The outcry was so loud that they reversed that standing.

captainbryce wrote: I will be so bold enough to answer that for him. Of course he doesn't! Nobody in the US supports female circumcision which pretty much makes any supporter of routine male circumcision a hypocrite! Now the tired argument in their defense will be the obligatory "but they're not the same thing because female circumcision is so much worse" defense. But there is no logic in that argument at all because the issue isn't whether one is more severe or not, the issue is the right of the parents vs the right of the child....

Shale wrote:

thepossiblepolice wrote:
Do you feel the same way about female circumcision? Recently the AAP stated that they would allow female circumcision in order to be more culturally sensitive...The outcry was so loud that they reversed that standing.

captainbryce wrote: I will be so bold enough to answer that for him. Of course he doesn't! Nobody in the US supports female circumcision which pretty much makes any supporter of routine male circumcision a hypocrite! Now the tired argument in their defense will be the obligatory "but they're not the same thing because female circumcision is so much worse" defense. But there is no logic in that argument at all because the issue isn't whether one is more severe or not, the issue is the right of the parents vs the right of the child....

Actually there is logic in separating so-called "female circumcision" from male circumcision. What is called "female circumcision" is a misnomer, or euphemism that is an outright lie. If it were truthfully named it is called CLITORIDECTOMY and if the same procedure were done on a male it would be called PENECTOMY.

The only similarity between clitoridectomy and male circumcision is that both procedures are done for some ridiculous archaic religious teaching, with the plight of the women in backward male-centric cultures much worse with the intentional removal of any physical sexual pleasure. And likewise, in our non-religious circumcisions done for "hygiene" reasons, the original intent was to discourage easy masturbation in our sex-negative puritan culture.

I have been fighting with news media on this for years and berate the local journalists as well as the AP medical writers who should know better. Euphemising such brutal mutilation of women as if it were just cutting away a little skin is a disservice of any journalist, and some have finally been calling it what it is.