Poll: Circumcision

[Skalman]

I was circumcised as an infant. It has made no difference in my life.

Perhaps uncircumcised men lead glorious, sexually ecstatic lives free from the painful knowledge that their parents subjected them to some kind of torture, but I doubt it. Calling it mutilation or inhumane treatment is ridiculous, just as it is equally ridiculous to say that that circumcision is absolutely better than the alternative.

it's an autonomy issue - people too young to consent to a procedure should NOT be given a surgery that is entirely cultural and cosmetic. people would get their knickers in a twist if a baby girl's clitoral hood was removed for ANY of the reasons that we use to justify circumcision.

circumcision was designed explicitly to reduce sexual sensation - now it's become a cultural issue, and we look for reasons to justify our cultural practice.

i should probably stay out of this given that this is my 'hot button' issue, but i will say that i think it's child abuse and i think it should be illegal for all non-consenting individuals. that said, i think circumcision should be legal for both men AND women who have reached the age of consent - adults should be allowed to do whatever bizarre thing to their body that they choose.

This woman is wise and speaks the truth, listen to her!

I was circumcised as an infant. It has made no difference in my life.

Perhaps uncircumcised men lead glorious, sexually ecstatic lives free from the painful knowledge that their parents subjected them to some kind of torture, but I doubt it. Calling it mutilation or inhumane treatment is ridiculous, just as it is equally ridiculous to say that that circumcision is absolutely better than the alternative.

it's an autonomy issue - people too young to consent to a procedure should NOT be given a surgery that is entirely cultural and cosmetic. people would get their knickers in a twist if a baby girl's clitoral hood was removed for ANY of the reasons that we use to justify circumcision.

circumcision was designed explicitly to reduce sexual sensation - now it's become a cultural issue, and we look for reasons to justify our cultural practice.

i should probably stay out of this given that this is my 'hot button' issue, but i will say that i think it's child abuse and i think it should be illegal for all non-consenting individuals. that said, i think circumcision should be legal for both men AND women who have reached the age of consent - adults should be allowed to do whatever bizarre thing to their body that they choose.

I'm gonna have to call bulls*** here. There's no proper analogy between female genital mutilation (to use the correct term, as defined by the World Health Organization) and circumcision. FGM was designed specifically to dull sexual stimulation and decrease the chances a woman would commit adultery, but there exists no such history for male circumcision.

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

So your saying that someone who is in constant pain should have to wait till they are 18 to have the Procediure

Troll-bait.

I'd say.

Obvious troll is obvious.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

the debate is why should it be done at all if there's no real BENEFIT to having it done.

If there's no benefit either way, why argue? If you are there's not much you can really do about it.

 

[Seldon2639]

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, but is there any circumcised man here who is unable to feel stimulation and pleasure, or even feels "less"? I promise you, the orgasm one experiences as a circumcised man is no less than that of an uncircumcised man. Hell, if there is any desensitization, that would just mean we can last longer, no?

 

[Skalman]

the debate is why should it be done at all if there's no real BENEFIT to having it done.

If there's no benefit either way, why argue? If you are there's not much you can really do about it.

Well, because many people think it's morally wrong to do it to infants or young children who have no say in the matter.

 

[Skalman]

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, but is there any circumcised man here who is unable to feel stimulation and pleasure, or even feels "less"? I promise you, the orgasm one experiences as a circumcised man is no less than that of an uncircumcised man. Hell, if there is any desensitization, that would just mean we can last longer, no?

Well, I said lessens, not removes.
And lasing longer can be achieved just as well through mental training. There's really no need to go all scissor happy...

 

[Ignignoct]

the debate is why should it be done at all if there's no real BENEFIT to having it done.

If there's no benefit either way, why argue? If you are there's not much you can really do about it.

The reason to argue it is because some people don't know why they do much of what they do, and accept it as customs or tradition.

Also, this is a message board, where people congregate to discuss, and indeed, argue things.

News at 11.

 

[Jumplion]

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, but is there any circumcised man here who is unable to feel stimulation and pleasure, or even feels "less"? I promise you, the orgasm one experiences as a circumcised man is no less than that of an uncircumcised man. Hell, if there is any desensitization, that would just mean we can last longer, no?

Well, I said lessens, not removes.
And lasing longer can be achieved just as well through mental training. There's really no need to go all scissor happy...

But see here, most of the people here who were circumcised "without their consent" (including me) have never had sex before their circumcision. Therefore, if I have sex it wouldn't matter if I was circumcised or not because I've never felt it before. It doesn't matter if it decreases stimulation because I've never done it without circumcision before.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

the debate is why should it be done at all if there's no real BENEFIT to having it done.

If there's no benefit either way, why argue? If you are there's not much you can really do about it.

The reason to argue it is because some people don't know why they do much of what they do, and accept it as customs or tradition.

Also, this is a message board, where people congregate to discuss, and indeed, argue things.

News at 11.

I know very well what it is, but it seems like a very futile thing to argue about when there are a whole world of other topics.

 

[savandicus]

I'm really quite suprised at how many people are actually circumsised, i thought it would be alot less, shows how wrong unbased conceptions are.

Benifits

Some think its more attractive
Less chance of infection
Slightly reduced sensitivity means you last longer and feel (slightly) less pain if someone hacks it off with an axe.
Interesting fact about yourself to bring up in conversation

Disadvantages

Some think its less attractive.
It hurts for a week or two after you've done it

I think thats about all the differences there are between the two. There really isnt any difference between the two.

 

[Shas]

Causing pain to maybe prevent pain. sounds good.

Mine's circumcised, and before today (looking it up on wiki) i didn't know what an uncircumcised looked like. (i had a different picture in my head of a foreskin[and not the other head XD]) and seeing it now, i thought it looked icky. but that's just me. The easiest solution would be for one of you non-virgin and uncircumcised with an open mind to get it cut off and see how it feels after, whether it feels less or not

 

[Aschenkatza]

And based on the medical studies, there is no advantages of circumcision. It just seems like a rather barbaric, and possibly scarring practice.

Sorry to jump in there, Gormourn, but recently it's been found that being circumcised reduces the risk of catching HIV, as the virus attacks the cells in the foreskin. It still doesn't make you immune though.

Evidence to support
Medical: "Each Year slightly more than half of the U.S. newborn males, about one million, are circumcised.
Numerous studies indicate that circumcision decreases the incidence of childhood urinary tract infections (Kinkade et al. 2005) and adult penile cancer (Kinkade et al., 2005; Loughlin, 2005).
There is also strong evidence that circumcision provides increased protection against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS(Auvert et al., 2005; Baeten et al., 2005 Reynolds et al., 2004).
Evidence also suggests that circumcision reduced the risk of genital warts infection but may provide no protection against other STD's, including genital herpes, gonorrhea, and syphillis (MacLean, 2005; Reynolds et al., 2004)

Just something else I found too...
Sexual: "... It might be assumed, in fact, that the glans of a circumcised man is less sensitive, because of the toughening effect of constant exposure to chafing surfaces..."
-taken from the text "Our sexuality" by Crooks and Baur [10th edition]

 

[seidlet]

I'm gonna have to call bulls*** here. There's no proper analogy between female genital mutilation (to use the correct term, as defined by the World Health Organization) and circumcision. FGM was designed specifically to dull sexual stimulation and decrease the chances a woman would commit adultery, but there exists no such history for male circumcision.

removing the clitoral hood would be absolutely analagous to removing the foreskin - the clitoral hood is the prepuce of the female, completely homologous with the prepuce of the male. of course, most female circumcisions are NOT situations where the clitoral hood is removed, but involve practices even more heinous. i was largely giving a hypothetical.

as far as the history goes, the practices of female and male circumcision are older than recorded history, so we can't know their EXACT origins - it's possible that circumcision arose independently in different cultures for different reasons, but it is a widely accepted theory that it was practiced initially in at least SOME cultures as a means of suppressing sexual sensation. the rise of circumcision as a routine cultural practice in the western world, however, was absolutely connect to sexual taboos, including the prevention of "self-abuse", aka masturbation. i recommend reading circumcision: a history of the world's most controversial surgery by david gollaher or 'a surgical temptation: the demonization of the foreskin' and 'the rise of circumcision in britain' by robert darby if you're interested in how all this came to be.

We can argue whether any of the reasons still apply, but when it was originally instituted (in a desert environment), it was far more about hygiene than about cosmetics. Excluding modern sanitation, it has a much greater impact on the spread of diseases (including the chances of contracting diseases which afflict someone with what can charitably be termed "crotch rot"), as well as being generally more cleanly.

women can develop 'crotch rot' as well, you know. in general, women are more likely to contract genital infections than an uncircumcised man. of course, what was done in the ancient world isn't really the point here - but it seems to me that it would be FAR more dangerous to perform surgery without modern sanitation than it would be to let nature take it's course.

Incidentally, no, it's not about autonomy. Parents make medical decisions all the damned time. Children have no autonomy in terms of medical proxy, with good reason. If what you're saying is that no medical procedures should be preformed on on a child unless absolutely medically necessary, you'd be removing a *lot* of medical procedures. Braces are usually more cosmetic than necessary, same thing with retainers, or even those few children born with tails and need to get them cut off. You can say those aren't as "traumatic", but then you'd need to define the limits of traumatic, and prove that circumcision counts.

obviously children don't possess full autonomy, but it's completely absurd to suggest they don't have ANY - if i were to, say, tattoo my child, i would likely wind up in court. to use your example of braces and retainers [which honestly, i don't think is remotely comparable to cutting off part of a person's body, but i'll go with it] - if it's done for PURELY cosmetic reasons, i think it's abhorrent. it's one thing if a child's crooked teeth is effecting their speech or otherwise impeding their development, but straightening a child's teeth because you can't accept that your child is 'imperfect' seems to me a rather twisted line of logic - and again, it's culturally based. personally, i find perfectly straight teeth unattractive, but i LOVE septum piercings - would you really support me taking my child in to get their septum pierced?

as for vestigial tails, as far as i'm aware, they're completely non-functioning anomaly, making it a very poor analogy. EVERY male baby is born with a foreskin - there are fewer than 50 cases of a human tail reported in medical literature. Correcting a rare deformity is NOT equipollent to removing a functioning, normal part of the human body.

 

[Overlord_Dave]

And based on the medical studies, there is no advantages of circumcision. It just seems like a rather barbaric, and possibly scarring practice.

Sorry to jump in there, Gormourn, but recently it's been found that being circumcised reduces the risk of catching HIV, as the virus attacks the cells in the foreskin. It still doesn't make you immune though.

Evidence to support
Medical: "Each Year slightly more than half of the U.S. newborn males, about one million, are circumcised.
Numerous studies indicate that circumcision decreases the incidence of childhood urinary tract infections (Kinkade et al. 2005) and adult penile cancer (Kinkade et al., 2005; Loughlin, 2005).
There is also strong evidence that circumcision provides increased protection against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS(Auvert et al., 2005; Baeten et al., 2005 Reynolds et al., 2004).
Evidence also suggests that circumcision reduced the risk of genital warts infection but may provide no protection against other STD's, including genital herpes, gonorrhea, and syphillis (Maclean, 2005; Reynolds et al., 2004)

Just something else I found too...
Sexual: "... It might be assumed, in fact, that the glans of a circumcised man is less sensitive, because of the toughening effect of constant exposure to chafing surfaces..."
-taken from the text "Our sexuality" by Crooks and Baur [10th edition]

Hooray for citations! I got my info from a New Scientist article, but couldn't remember where... Wikipedia isn't necessarily the best list of sources about a particular fact/fiction.

 

[Ignignoct]

the debate is why should it be done at all if there's no real BENEFIT to having it done.

If there's no benefit either way, why argue? If you are there's not much you can really do about it.

The reason to argue it is because some people don't know why they do much of what they do, and accept it as customs or tradition.

Also, this is a message board, where people congregate to discuss, and indeed, argue things.

News at 11.

I know very well what it is, but it seems like a very futile thing to argue about when there are a whole world of other topics.

LMAO...

Go make the thread you want to talk about, then!

Leave us silly kids to argue what you don't want to argue about.

 

[Aschenkatza]

Hooray for citations! I got my info from a New Scientist article, but couldn't remember where... Wikipedia isn't necessarily the best list of sources about a particular fact/fiction.

Hehe, I'm taking a human sexuality class so I have my book glued to my side. Always happy to prove a point =P
D= I used to have a PowerPoint with a few slides about circumcision and some possibly medical problems that could come from it. However, the person who made the PowerPoint'[My professor] took them down from the site to put up the next few. I'll definitely have to email her for the file.
Would have really helped here... >.>

 

[Maze1125]

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, but is there any circumcised man here who is unable to feel stimulation and pleasure, or even feels "less"?

Yes, pretty much all of them, because
a) There are millions of nerve endings in the foreskin which are lost when it's removed and
b) The foreskin is designed to protect the glans from general wear and tear, without it even the rubbing of underwear is enough to desensitise it over time.

I promise you, the orgasm one experiences as a circumcised man is no less than that of an uncircumcised man.

How exactly are you promising that?

Hell, if there is any desensitization, that would just mean we can last longer, no?

There are ways of achieving that without the loss of pleasure.

 

[Maze1125]

Numerous studies indicate that circumcision decreases the incidence of childhood urinary tract infections (Kinkade et al. 2005)

That is true, the only problem is that is chance of getting an infection in the circumcision wound is greater than the difference between the chance of an uncircumcised child getting a urinary tract infection and a circumcised child.

and adult penile cancer (Kinkade et al., 2005; Loughlin, 2005).
There is also strong evidence that circumcision provides increased protection against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS(Auvert et al., 2005; Baeten et al., 2005 Reynolds et al., 2004).
Evidence also suggests that circumcision reduced the risk of genital warts infection

These are also true, but the reason they're true is because the foreskin can cause microbes during sex in-between the foreskin and the glans, and so, unless you're planning on your child having lots of unprotected sex before they can decide if they want to be circumcised for themselves, there is absolutely no reason to make the decision for them.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

I was =)

 

[Seldon2639]

Whatever the original reason was, the fact is still that circumcision lessens sensitivity of the glans and therefore stimulation and pleasure.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, but is there any circumcised man here who is unable to feel stimulation and pleasure, or even feels "less"?

Yes, pretty much all of them, because
a) There are millions of nerve endings in the foreskin which are lost when it's removed and
b) The foreskin is designed to protect the glans from general wear and tear, without it even the rubbing of underwear is enough to desensitise it over time.

You say "them", which means you aren't one. In the same way you challenge me to guarantee that there's no loss in sensitivity, you're not basing your evidence on personal experience, but rather on questionable science. The fact that there are nerve endings there doesn't mean that (a) nerves don't regrow or relocate, or (b) that there's any evidence that there's a lessening of pleasure. To the second, see the previous post from Aschenkatza: "It *might be assumed*, in fact, that the glans of a circumcised man is less sensitive, because of the toughening effect of constant exposure to chafing surfaces". It comes with a citation to a book and everything. The assumption that something follows logically does not make it true. Now, go circumcise yourself, and compare, then we'll talk.

I promise you, the orgasm one experiences as a circumcised man is no less than that of an uncircumcised man.

How exactly are you promising that?

I guess I'm not, but I can't imagine that the orgasm itself is somehow worse for me. Besides, the reason one orgasms is the release of neurochemicals (the release of which is caused by stimulation, but the feeling of orgasm itself is the chemicals) most notably Oxytocin and vasopressin. Unless you're claiming that a lack of foreskin somehow makes me less able to produce those chemicals (which seems unlikely, unless the pituitary is inexplicably tethered to the foreskin), the orgasm itself isn't different.

Hell, if there is any desensitization, that would just mean we can last longer, no?

There are ways of achieving that without the loss of pleasure.

Yeah, but if there's no harm to circumcision (dealt with above), and there's a health benefit (as covered by Aschenkatza), and there's even an arguable sexual benefit, I'm just gonna take a bow.

 

[Seldon2639]

Numerous studies indicate that circumcision decreases the incidence of childhood urinary tract infections (Kinkade et al. 2005)

That is true, the only problem is that is chance of getting an infection in the circumcision wound is greater than the difference between the chance of an uncircumcised child getting a urinary tract infection and a circumcised child.

and adult penile cancer (Kinkade et al., 2005; Loughlin, 2005).
There is also strong evidence that circumcision provides increased protection against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS(Auvert et al., 2005; Baeten et al., 2005 Reynolds et al., 2004).
Evidence also suggests that circumcision reduced the risk of genital warts infection

These are also true, but the reason they're true is because the foreskin can cause microbes during sex in-between the foreskin and the glans, and so, unless you're planning on your child having lots of unprotected sex before they can decide if they want to be circumcised for themselves, there is absolutely no reason to make the decision for them.

Uh... Huh, because we should always assume our kids are going to be smart and responsible. Hell, why would you assume that even as an adult the guy wouldn't say "well, it's worth the risk"? Remember, it's not just the parent's job to give the kid options, but to make the kid as good as possible. I don't plan my kid on being a slut, but that doesn't mean I won't make them as safe as possible. Trust, but verify (or, in this case: trust, but snip)