Male Circumcision

Does every topic aggravate you as much as this seems to (judging from your posts in this thread)? I hope pro-life/contra-choice arguments don't cause you to suffer a stroke.

 

No it isn't. Everyone with a functional conscience agrees that there are and should be limits on parental authority.

 

You're god damn right I'm painting with a broad brush. If you think it's not unethical to torture, starve or rape your own children then you are morally defective. Period. Doubly so if you think you have the right to do those things. If you don't think that, then you have a functional conscience and you agree with me that parental authority is not absolute and *maybe* we can get down to discussing what those limits should be and how they relate to the topic at hand.

Or you can keep up this bullshit where you deliberately misrepresent what I actually said and I'll find something else to do with my time.

 

I stumbled across an article on digg earlier today and brought me back to a conversation I read here. This place brings back good memories.

I had lunch with a friend recently and she decided to bring up the question since she had trouble finding things online. Funny enough this article appeared today: Intactivists online: A fringe group turned the Internet against circumcision. - Slate Magazine

It does seem a bit one sided but it was an interesting read. Even the comments section looks to be getting heated as well. I honestly never thought too much about it growing up or as an adult. I probably will however when I have children.

 

On another board I comment on, it is strange that the far right civil libertarian, gun guys, foreigners, the hipsters and peace hippies all agree that it is bad. And when this topic came up, instead of arguing against each other, anyone who dared support it was shot down by everyone. It was quite strange and I liked it.

Anyways, even though San Francisco was a little ahead of themselves in trying to ban it, it looks like it could be banned in parts of Europe soon.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mo177/wonderful_news_from_europe_norway_and_denmark/

 

I wished I had never been circumcised. Seriously. I only sired one daughter, so it wasn't an issue. But if I were still having children, and they asked me about circumcising a newborn boy, I'd definitely say "Hell NO."

 

I got halfway through that Slate article and gave up because it was clearly linkbait steeped in trollage. The author was attempting to pass off as reasonable the idea that anti circumcision folk's perspective is problematic because they are overly reliant on nonscientific ideas and "lore, devilishly clever sophistry". This seems to ignore the fact that the primary driver of circumcision has historically been religion, which epitomizes "lore, devilishly clever sophistry." The fact that the vast majority of circumcised people were circumcised long before there was any clear objective evidence of any public health benefits to circumcision kind of undercuts his argument here.

Plus, he relies on research to bolster his position, but he can't be bothered enough to place the research in context. So he comes across as thinking that circumcision alone is a viable means of preventing AIDS transmission, which is fucking absurd. He butchers science as a portion of an argument against pe0ople for butchering science. For that alone, he deserves no credibility. But on top of his shitty understanding of teh science, he also totally oversimplifies and caricatures actual arguments against circumcision.

 

While I don't disagree with the CDC, I think the list of benefits are underwhelming if subjected to any sort of context. If you take the money you're going to spend on your newborn's circumcision and instead invest it in condoms and stress their use, you will reduce their risk of STI by a much larger amount than by chopping off part of your baby's penis. Assuming that penile cancer is caused by an STI, ditto for that. The CDC implies as much: they don't recommend circumcision, they just say that the benefits outweigh the risks. This is a relatively meaningless statement given that circumcision is such a low risk procedure.

What the CDC can't necessarily speak to is the ethical or moral appropriateness of circumcision in light of its irreversibility and use on defenseless infants (see this thread).

 

If they don't cover abortions or cosmetic surgery, why should my premiums go up even by a few dollars to pay for this?

Are they calling the prostitutes that the truck drivers use "partners" now? Those studies were anything but "rigorous", and they stopped them early because they got the results they were looking for to make the headlines, which is the next point:

That is the result they were after. But, they don't know if the uncircumcised or newly circumcised men came into contact with more HIV positive women in the study. The uncircumcised men were more likely to get HIV from having sex because they had working penises for the 6 weeks while the circumcised men were healing... I'll give them that. They had 1,000 guys or so in each group. 997 circumcised guys didn't get HIV, 994 uncircumcised guys didn't get HIV, but that is a 50%!!! reduction. And a lot of lazy or complicit media who keep repeating it over and over.

But, they didn't have a condom control group to know if it really had anything to do with the foreskin or not. And they don't know how much sex was had, or how many times with an HIV infected woman.

HPV vaccines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I kind of doubt that is the reality when scaled up to the full population. If you look at the scale of HPV infections in the US vs Europe, foreskins make no impact. Now, we have a new vaccine that will help to reduce it much more than any circumcision procedure could hope for.

There are other ways to reduce UTIs.

And the HPV vaccine above will reduce cancer of the penis, as if that is a big problem in Africa. I would bet most guys would be dead by the time they are the age when that would happen anyways.

And where are the studies on circumcised vs uncircumcised middle age men needing Viagra and other similar drugs to get it up? How about the money being spent on this going toward vaccines, treatments, and new research? What are the chances that HIV will have a vaccine in the next 15-20 years and make the whole argument go away?

I'm thinking this is just a ploy by religious groups to use government to make themselves seem rational. Or the medical industrial complex just wants a few more million.

 

I'm pretty sure I did this thread to death on the old TFP. Anyways, I did my research, had my son circumcised. If you think I'm a bad parent I don't care.

 

As it happens, today is the second anniversary of my son's brit milah-- we brought our little guy into the Covenant two years ago today, surrounded by friends and family, in my wife's congregation, aided by the services of our good friend, her cantor, who is a mohel who has been doing circumcisions for over thirty years-- never a single botched circumcision, never a resulting medical problem, and no dissatisfied customers yet.

This is me, holding my little newly covenanted guy, who is sleeping peacefully after being circumcised with minimal bleeding and minimal crying.

Two years later, he is a happy toddler with a fully functioning penis, who loves coming with his parents to synagogue, where he can watch and learn and look forward to his life as an engaged Jewish adult someday.

Nothing a medical report can say will ever be as compelling to me as living a Jewish life, bringing my son into the Covenant, and raising him as a participatory Jewish boy. No cultural bigotry will ever make me feel bad about this joyous, wondrous part of my life and my son's life.

End of story.

 

That's a super cute baby.

 

I AM CIRCUMSIZED MYSELF. I AHVE SEEN UN CUT PENISES BEFORE AND OFTEN WONDER TO MYSELF IT ITS A PAIN IN THE ASS TO KEEP IT CLEAN SO TO SPEAK. IF I HAD A SON I WOULD/WILL HAVE HIM DONE, THATS JUST MY PERSONAL PREFERANCE. I HAVE A FRIEND WHO HAS A 4 YEAR OLD WHO WAS NOT AND AS HE GOT OLDER HE STARTED TO AHVE ISSUES WITH HIS PENIS. THEY RECENTLY HAD HIM CIRCIMSIZED AND ALL IS OK NOW, BUT IF I HAD A CHOICE ID MUCH RATHER HAVE IT DONW WHEN THEY ARE BORN THAN IN THE LATTER YEARS