I wasn't saying female circumcision isn't horrible, and pointless, but that still doesn't explain why the male version is OK.Varya said:
And for the record, if you kick a woman in the right spot it can hurt like hell too. ;p
Poll: Circumcision - What is your opinion?
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And for the record, if you kick a woman in the right spot it can hurt like hell too. ;p
The majority of the posts on this thread are simply laughable. I have no idea what you mean when you talk about a loss of pleasure. Still a virgin, but I actually noticed an improvement in my masturbation after I had it done. It's actually possible to clean it now, which is a bit of an improvement on not being able to because of an overtight foreskin. I generally prefer the way it is now and I wish I'd had done it a lot earlier.
On the topic of female circumcision, GTFO. Comparing male and female circumcision is bloody stupid. One is a potentially beneficial medical thingyflabob, the other is cutting away the only really sensitive bits of a person's sexual organs with the sole intention of removing the pleasure.
On the topic of female circumcision, GTFO. Comparing male and female circumcision is bloody stupid. One is a potentially beneficial medical thingyflabob, the other is cutting away the only really sensitive bits of a person's sexual organs with the sole intention of removing the pleasure.
The issue for me isn't letting the child make a decision: it's the irreversible nature of any 'mistakes' or misjudgements that are made. Using your example, if you blew your money away you certainly would not be able to get it back immediately, but over time you could. Circumcision does not work like that.maninahat said:
Don't get me wrong, I don't think kids should have the say-so over their genitals particularly either. It would difficult to say when exactly it would be best to 'ask permission' from a child or indeed ask their opinion, but this is still a much more preferable option to just doing it.
To me, it would be like tattooing my baby with a rock-band logo from birth.
No it isn't - unfortunately, because it is in fact a topic worthy of debating. However, no guy wants to admit that their manhood is 'inferior' to someone else's so both sides have a massive bias. Maybe all blokes should leave this thread and leave the debate to the women who can be more objective...mr_rubino said:
For my part, I disagree with your assertion that there is science behind a pro-circumcision stance. I don't know of any widely accepted RCT that has shown any strong medical reason to routinely circumcise infant boys, and any meta-analyses have found no significance in those that claim they do. That's not to say the possibility isn't conceivable, just that there isn't enough evidence yet to justify it.
However, it is a fact that any surgical procedure carries a risk of complication. One study I found (Bollinger, 2010) estimated that 117 neonate boys die every year in the US during circumcision. And that's just fatalities - rates of non-fatal infections/haemorrhages etc. are much much higher.
I would suggest that the correct medical decision is to not routinely operate, (y'know, with 'doing no harm' and all). No risk trumps any risk at all when there is no identified medical benefit.
The opinion of the British Medical Association is: 'Male circumcision that is performed for any reason other than physical clinical need is termed non-therapeutic (or sometimes "ritual") circumcision. Some people ask for non-therapeutic circumcision for religious reasons, some to incorporate a child into a community, and some want their sons to be like their fathers. Circumcision is a defining feature of some faiths.'
My broader point therefore is: circumcision of babies is not a medical issue; it's a social one. People do it to their kids cos they, and their dad and his dad and his dad had it done, and because they want their child to fit in. Nobody likes having their dick laughed at, and in the US uncircumcised penises are odd. And in the UK circumcised penises are odd. It's swings and roundabouts as all such issues are. Bringing medicine in (just because the procedure is done in a hospital) distracts from the reality.
But as a social issue, my personal opinion is that cutting off part of a non-consenting child's body for no justifiable reason is morally wrong.
Obviously circumcision for medical reasons (such as phimosis) is completely a different situation, and FGM is another (obscene) matter entirely.
1. Male circumcision is bad just like hurting a child is bad. Female circumcision is worse just like raping a child is worse (ok, that is probably a LOT worse, but argument still valid, you try and come up with examples of parallel badness, it isn't to easy I tell you)CrystalShadow said:
2 Se answer one.
There are numerous flaws in this reasoning.gwiddison said:
First of all, penile cancer is one of the rarest forms of cancer you can get, circumcised or not. Even if the incidence of penile cancer were doubled among uncircumcised men, it would still be so low as to be not worth concern.
Second, studies are conflicting on this point. If you look at rates of penile cancer in countries that have far lower circumcision rates than the US, you might be surprised to find that they are not any higher. That doesn't account for other risk factors, but it does further suggest to me that this isn't anything to be concerned about. Instead, it's a rationalization.
On to urinary tract infections. This may be true, but urinary tract infections are rare in men, and even rarer if you maintain a reasonable standard of cleanliness. If you shower regularly and clean yourself down there (which feels good, so why *not* do it?
), your risk of urinary tract infection is negligible. So, also a non-issue.Finally, STDs. It is true that your risk of contracting some STDs is higher *per encounter* if you are uncircumcised. However, the risk is identical if you wear a condom, and you *should* wear a condom anyway. Also, I think you haven't looked into the mathematics. Let's make up some figures to explore a simple mathematical concept that commonly gets lost in this:
For sake of argument, let's say your chance of getting an STD from a given sexual encounter is 10% if you are uncircumcised and 5% if you are circumcised.
That would make the uncircumcised man *twice* as likely to get a disease. So after one encounter, he has twice the chance of contracting a disease. But who has just one sexual encounter? Let's carry this further. The chance of not having a disease after N encounters with risk R of getting a disease is (1-R)^N. So with R of .1 for the uncircumcised man (hereafter Man A) and R of .05 for the circumcised man (hereafter Man B), the chance of being disease free after a single encounter is .9 for the Man A and .95 for Man B. But what if you have a more typical.... 20 partners during your wild single years? Man A's chance of being disease free is .9^20 (roughly 12%) and Man B is .95^20 (roughly 35%).
So where, originally, Man B had a 5% chance of getting a disease vs Man A's 10% chance, after twenty partners, he has a 65% chance vs Man B's 88% chance. At the start, the uncircumcised man was *twice* as likely to have contracted a disease, but after 20 partners, he's only half again as likely to have contracted a disease. And both of them have probably gotten an STD in that time, so they really should have both been using condoms all along, in which case they enjoy equal odds.
In short. Also a non-issue.
I don't know where the 50% comes from, but the "loss" comes from two places: first, men who are circumcised in adulthood report lost sensation, and second, there's the scientific fact that there are an enormous number of sexual nerve endings in the foreskin. It's quite possible there are other factors at work, but that's where this idea usually comes from.
It prevents calcification of the glans, it preserves nerve endings involved with sexual pleasure, the sliding of the foreskin is useful in intercourse (requires less lubrication), you never have to use lotion to masturbate, some women report increased stimulation (like a ribbed condom), and of course there are always the risks involved with any surgical procedure. Even in developed countries like the US, circumcisions have been botched. Also, they do it with no anesthetic. Have you ever watched one? Those babies are in agony.
And the drawbacks to having a foreskin are complete non-issues. Personally, I take the opposite point of view, that if there is no strong case for performing a surgical procedure, don't perform it.
Heh, not to rub it in or anything, but it does me good on a regular basis. And having never had a urinary tract infection or an STD, I'm going to have to say I'm overall satisfied with the experience.
I tend to see two reactions from circumcised males. Either they feel angry and betrayed or they try really hard to rationalize circumcision and convince themselves and others that it's a good thing. Fact is there's just no good reason to get circumcised. Believe me, if there was, I'd do it. It's an inexpensive and fairly simple procedure. All this pro-circumcision stuff just sounds like sour grapes to me. "I can't have a foreskin therefore it must not be worth having"
It's a shame we do this to men. I really don't want to make men who've been circumcised feel bad about it. It feels like kicking them while they're down. But I feel it's wrong to circumcise babies, and my concern has to be for them, and not for the men who've already had it done to them, and it's the furthering of these misconceptions and shoddy arguments that convinces people to keep doing this to their sons.
Do you know how much it hurts to get a circumcision? After getting it, a grown man would never want to have sex again... Okay, maybe not that extreme, but it would be a pretty traumatic experience to say the least.
I still don't see your point. As far as I can tell your talking about insignificant differences. So what if my favorite color is green instead of red, or if I play the drums but not the piano. I still live a healthy life.sumanoskae said:
I will say this, yes your subconscious can file away things that memory can't. I apparently almost drowned as a baby, and might be why I never learned how to swim. However, not having a flap of at the end of my penis has no baring on me at all, even if it could grow back I wouldn't want it to. The idea of it just sounds gross to me.
the penius is often refered to as your third leg right? Well lets say when you were born they decided to chop of your toes so you were more like everyone else, how would you feel? Of course now you'll lose a bit of balance but look, You don't have to clean inbetween your toes no more? Now that its not there anymore it can't get infected, and plus look at how good it looks, instead of all these bony little twigs coming off your feet its nice and rounded, doesn't it look wonderful!?
^ great argument huh /sarcasm
^ great argument huh /sarcasm
How doesn't that make sense? It's soft tissue, it shouldn't be exposed to the elements,would you cut off your eyelids? Basically the same thing, if a bit more extreme. The foreskin protects against foreign elements like dirt, but of course you have to clean it, but it really isn't that hard to do. No difficult motions or anything, most of us know how to pull our foreskin back and forth, just have to remember to give the little bugger a scrub. BOOM no cancer, still got your skin.maninahat said:
For me, having less sensation is better because I cum way too fast(to the point of needing to masturbate before I have sex so I won't blow my load too fast), so this argument carries more weight than most in this thread.Shiny Koi said:
My "bias" is particularly massive. Heh heh.EvilPicnic said:
Ok, sorry about that.
But seriously, there is one difference in the bias. Circumcised men are stuck with what they have. Uncircumcised men are not.
Isn't that sort of like leaving the debate about female circumcision solely up to men? I mean, isn't it sort of a *problem* that they don't have a stake in it?
There are risks associated with circumcision. It is an operation, and all operations have risks. *Occasionally* it goes wrong.
There was a case recently in NZ where it all went horribly wrong and some kid ended up in hospital. I'll see if I can find it.
Here we go:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/3139627/Four-year-old-hospitalised-after-botched-circumcision
There was a case recently in NZ where it all went horribly wrong and some kid ended up in hospital. I'll see if I can find it.
Here we go:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/3139627/Four-year-old-hospitalised-after-botched-circumcision
It matters not because of what happened to you per se, but what could happen. A child should not be deprived of a choice, exposed to a risk, go through pain, (no, not even if the child wont remember) for a procedure with no proven benefits and several proven risks.Suilenroc said:
There is damage done. That has one of the highest densities of nerves in your body and mutilates the child, it is also suppose to make sex less pleasurable for the woman (that is anecdotal but still makes sense-less to stimulate the woman). If you had you pinky tip cut off it would not impair your ability to function and would have the same benefits of circumcision.jawakiller said:
Besides if the grown man wants one later for cosmetic reasons he can have it done, there is no reason to do it to babies.