How do you feel about circumcision?

[SenseOfTumour]

Also, considering there's a health risk to the procedure, causing infections and possible death, if it's SOO important to get rid of that useless piece of tissue, why are we not performing appendectomies the moment an infant pops out? The appendix is a useless organ and can burst and kill you later in life, let's get rid of it!

OF course not, because taking a scalpel to a baby isn't something we should do as a matter of course, there should be a genuine medical reason for it, not just a 'well, it might do something, maybe, eventually'.

If it IS cosmetic, and a survey I saw said the main reason is 'to be like the father', lets get the baby any tattoos the father has, reverse liposuction so he has a beer belly, and kill off some hair follicles at the front so he's receding at the age of 3 months.

Just so I'm not being completely one sided, can we stop calling it genital amputation? Even if it's factually correct, it's FOX levels of scaremongering - if you asked a thousand parents if they'd allow their child to undergo 'follicular amputation' in the first year of their child's life, I reckon you'd get a good 900 'no' answers, the rest of em bothering to listen long enough to realise you mean a haircut.

 

[Sewora]

I'm from Sweden, and I'm not circumcised. Most parents and doctors alike refuse to have children circumcised because it's considered a breach of human rights in this (What I consider is) matured part of the world where religions and old beliefs have been tossed out the window in favour of modernization and development.

Circumcision has been proved to be more negative than positive these days. And if you do some research you'd find out that one of the major reasons circumcision has been so widely spread in the US for example is because it was believed to function as a prevention to masturbation amongst children and teenagers. Which at the time was considered bad in itself, and a sign of mental instability.

Circumcision causes alot of negative effects. For example, a man can have an orgasm simply by stimulation of the foreskin, because it's one of the most erogenous zones of the male body.
It also functions to maintain a PH balance and lubrication. Fact is that without a foreskin you're alot less clean than with foreskin.
It also reduces friction during intercourse for both the male and the female.

Contrary to popular belief, the foreskin does in fact fill a function, and without it your glans actually becomes dry and hardened (not to such a degree that it becomes like your heel, but significantly so that an uncircumsized glans is alot softer and smoother.)

And the whole deal about esthetics.. I have never met a single woman here who thinks a circumsized penis looks good, becuase they look odd, mutilated and wrong. It's completely regional depending on what you are used to, not what is actually most esthetic in general.

The benefits of being uncircumsized:
- Lubrication
- Cleanliness
- Less chance of infections and other disease
- Improved sexual sensation
- Erogenous zone
- Easier to masturbate

Circumcizing a child is the equivilent of removing an arm or a leg from a child, simply because you think it's the right thing to do.
And female and male circumsizion IS in fact the same thing. It just seems more cruel when done to women, because you're not used to it. Just like male circumsizion seems incredibly cruel to me and many of the people I know.

Circumcision is rapidly becomming less and less common, and I think it's a good thing that humanity is evolving on a worldwide level.

 

[Rawne1980]

2. I don't remember the pain.
rebuttal: If someone was raped using a roofie, does it matter? Even if they don't remember?

Your logic is equally flawed.

rebuttal: An infant lacks the ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. They also heal faster (because they are still growing rapidly) than an adult would. That means that their pain passes more quickly, and is forgotten without becoming a part of their personality.

Whereas rape, even while unconscious, is a terrible and scarring experience due to the feeling of violation. Just knowing you have been raped is terrible, even if an individual can't remember it. Also, even while asleep, an adult brain still records data - it still transfers that data to long-term memory. So even if you're raped in your sleep, part of that experience is retained.

So an infant will truly forget, whereas an adult cannot truly forget. Hence your point is not valid.

See? It still matters. You seem to lack many facts about circumcision by your post above.


Watch that video, it even has sources to back it up.

There is absolutely no reason to.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. There are plenty of medical reasons to have a male circumcised:

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/malecircumcision/infopack_en_3.pdf

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/malecircumcision/infopack_en_4.pdf

These are info packets from the World Health Organization, which I think we can agree upon is a reliable source for this kind of information. I'll tell you to read the links if you want a list of all the health benefits of male circumcision but some of the highlights are:

-Decreases the chance of urinary tract infections of babies/children
-Decreased instances of cervical cancer in female sexual partners
-Ease of penile hygiene leading to fewer infections
-Lower rate of sexually transmitted infections
-Lower rate of penile cancer
-Helps prevent the spread of HIV

Now, I will agree that it is a choice, but I don't think that it should be either illegal or mandatory. I personally am very happy my parents had me circumcised.

Look up. If you actually look into it, there are studies that disprove your assumptions and some of those benefits are not actually benefits at all.

I had an infection when I was 7 and had to be circumcised.

There you go, no assumptions just an absolute fact. Sometimes a person needs it on medical grounds.

 

[Xaio30]

Circumcision sounds kinda... pointless?

 

[AWAR]

My opinion is that we shouldn't cut parts of our babies' penises, even for religious reasons.
The argument that it looks better is laughable to say the least, I think uncircumsised penises are more aesthitically pleasing and their prominence in arts confirms that.

Spoiler

The fore skin also has thousands of nerve endings so removing it could alter the sexual experience.
The whole thing began because of religious superstition anyhow..

 

[Newtonyd]

I think what you're all forgetting is just how horrifying an uncircumcised penis looks like. Circumcision isn't "chopping off body parts", it's just a simple, safe procedure, that the baby will never remember. Hell, it makes him more normal.

That's a whole lot of opinions. Anyway, who cares if a baby's penis supposedly isn't 'pretty' if it's not circumcised. Is it that important? If it's such a simple, safe procedure then let the adult figure it out for themselves around the time they actually want to start using it.

Female circumcision is a more dire mutilation, but who says women need all those folds of labia? They're probably hard to keep clean anyway, so they may as well go.

Right?

 

[NoeL]

The idiot part was because your argument seemed to be "I think this is wrong, therefore it is wrong for everyone."

That's pretty much my argument (I also have good reasons for thinking it's wrong). How is that idiotic?

I didn't miss your point by the way, I just didn't agree: I don't oppose the other things you listed. If you want to tattoo your child or re-shape their earlobes go nuts.

Fair enough, we just disagree. Would you feel differently had your parents decided to tattoo a big cock on your forehead? Or a swastika? Or am I right to assume you wouldn't like that very much, and would probably undergo painful and expensive treatment to get it removed?

That right there is the core issue. If you're content with not having a foreskin, cool - it's not an issue for you. But you're ignoring the men, however few, that DO care that they're missing a foreskin (imagine your parents had tattooed a cock on your face, to use an analogy). Is it right, is it fair, that those men be forced to pay for a body modification they DO NOT WANT because someone else, with no justifiable reason, elected to change their body whilst they were incapable of resisting?

To use another analogy, imagine there was a guy going around kidnapping women, drugging them, then giving them a nose job or something while they were unconscious. Let's say hypothetically 99% of those women were either in favour of, or impartial to their abduction + "fun cut". Should that be a legal procedure? Should we turn a blind eye to that 1% that suffered because the other 99% don't care? By making it illegal and protecting that 1%, nose jobs aren't being banned. The women that want the nose job badly enough to endure the pain still have every right to get it done (though to make the analogy closer let's say the abductors drugs and method allowed for a significantly less painful and shorter recovery time than other available clinics). Protecting that 1% doesn't deny the rest of them nose jobs, should they elect for them. Can you give ANY reason why we SHOULDN'T protect that 1%?

Well they are petty, but I guess I can forgive you.

How are they petty?

I may have worded that poorly, I for one am more than glad for you to have the freedom to voice your opinion. My issue was that you seemed to want to treat your opinion as if others had to accept it. If you want to say that you think circumcision is wrong, then more power to you.

If on the other hand you want to say it should be made illegal, and want to actively go out and interfere in other people's lives, then I have an issue with it.

And you have that right to take issue, just as I have the right to go out and "interfere in other people's lives". If a child is being abused, the state "interferes" to stop that abuse. Do you agree with that, or do you think parents should have the right to abuse their children? If someone wants to be circumcised, have at it. I have absolutely no problem with someone walking into a hospital and saying "hey Doc, chop my dick off!". That's their choice, they're not harming anyone else, let them do what they want. Where I DO have a problem is people that view their children as their property rather than individuals.

In an ideal world children would share a common education an upbringing, but due to emotional ties between children and their parents and she sheer logistics of it this isn't a realistic proposal. For the sake of practicality I'm ok with letting parents raise their children how they want, despite the unfortunate victims begat by extremist parents and raised in bigotry, hatred and intolerance. For those reasons we can't really protect peoples' minds from being abused, but we can at least protect their bodies. A ban on CHILD circumcision (adults are still free to get the elective procedure if they want it so bad) and other "fun cuts" is the least we can do.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Taditionally it was more hygenic, but in today society it's mostly not an issue. In my eyes it's a mutilation of a person who is to young defend itself and therefore I'm against doing it to children (If there's no medical reason to do so, like phymosis). This especially aplies for the circumcission of girls an young women, which may be Off topic but I don't see a reason not to remind it still exists.

If an adult person wants to do it, he still can do it of course.

 

[thePyro_13]

I don't think it's fair to do something so irreversible to a child. Would you tattoo them, because it looks better?

You're removing their ability to choose entirely. Leave it on, they can have it circumcised later if they want, they can't grow it back if they don't take well to it.

 

[AngloDoom]

There is absolutely no reason to.
And fucking aesthetics is NOT a valid reason to chop part of their dick off. Why don't you let them grow up a little and then decide if they want a "better-looking penis".

Pretty much this. Unless you're doing it for religious or health reasons, circumcising your baby is equivalent to getting a tattoo of your favourite band on your baby, or giving them piercings. It's not your decision to make.

Hell, the people who say "I think a circumcised penis looks better" often have been circumcised at birth and it leads to me wonder whether they prefer the look because it's more familiar, or whether they genuinely would circumcised their own penis later on in life if they were given a chance.

If you are circumcising an infant simply because you think it looks good then I simply don't think it should be allowed. In fact I genuinely despise it.

 

[Denamic]

Because cosmetic surgery without the consent of the kid is completely okay.
Of course, it's also completely fine it it's a religious ritual mutilation.

It's retarded.
If you're an adult and decide to get a circumcision, fine.
But don't force it on a child that's unable to make informed decisions, unless it's for medical reasons.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

There is absolutely no reason to.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. There are plenty of medical reasons to have a male circumcised:

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/malecircumcision/infopack_en_3.pdf

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/malecircumcision/infopack_en_4.pdf

These are info packets from the World Health Organization, which I think we can agree upon is a reliable source for this kind of information. I'll tell you to read the links if you want a list of all the health benefits of male circumcision but some of the highlights are:

-Decreases the chance of urinary tract infections of babies/children
-Decreased instances of cervical cancer in female sexual partners
-Ease of penile hygiene leading to fewer infections
-Lower rate of sexually transmitted infections
-Lower rate of penile cancer
-Helps prevent the spread of HIV

Now, I will agree that it is a choice, but I don't think that it should be either illegal or mandatory. I personally am very happy my parents had me circumcised.

Overread this one. These are good arguments, but it still leaves a bad taste, since it's a surgical modification done on the most privat parts of the body without you ever beeing asked. You may not remember the operation and you may never know it otherwise. But I don't think these are valid arguments to do such a thing if there's no absolute valid reason. And aesthetics doesn't count.

 

[Nunny]

Its a pointless procedure that continues through either ignorance or some sick "it looks better" thing.

If they realy want it, let them do it when they are older and can give consent.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

no its not always pointless. I had mine done for real, genuine medical reasons. Dad wanted me done straight away but the doctors flat out refused, and i had to have it done when i was older. Im just glad i dont remember it, i was like 4.

 

[k-ossuburb]

I'm as much for it as I am for tattooing newborn babies and giving them all nose piercings. Because, hey, they'll all look so much better and "normal" and just like their daddy!

 

[NoeL]

Pretty much this. Unless you're doing it for religious or health reasons, circumcising your baby is equivalent to getting a tattoo of your favourite band on your baby, or giving them piercings. It's not your decision to make.

Fixed. Seriously, why should a child have to endure mutilation because their parents believe crazy shit?

 

[Kennetic]

Because cosmetic surgery without the consent of the kid is completely okay.
Of course, it's also completely fine it it's a religious ritual mutilation.

It's retarded.
If you're an adult and decide to get a circumcision, fine.
But don't force it on a child that's unable to make informed decisions, unless it's for medical reasons.

Parents make decisions like that until the age of 18 for the reason that children can't rationally make those decisions yet. FYI I'm not calling you out in particular, I've just seen these posts alot and yours just happened to be here when I decided to post.

 

[somonels]

Have you ever felt like all the opposers are uncircumcised?

 

[Twilight_guy]

I don't have an opinion. I think people should be able to have it done since its part of some religion's beliefs but I don't really care other then that. (I'm kind of bothered by some people who think its the worst thing to ever happen to the human body. I don't know many people who have experience circumscribed and uncircumcised life but I think unless you fit in that group its not far to say if its a terrible terrible thing or not).

 

[Arfonious]

I think male circumcision is horrible, comparable with female circumcision and should be banned