I don't understand how parents are allowed to make major, irreversible, cosmetic medical decisions for children on their behalf. I'm not against circumcision, but it should be the choice of someone who is able to consent.
Absolutely. That we tolerate genital mutilation of infants and that many people think it's OK/normal just illustrates how powerful the forces of convention are in swaying our views/beliefs.
Genital mutilation is part of the general trend of subjugating children and depriving them of rights. Just because we've banned child labor in the US does not mean we've gone far enough.
Very personal question, but if you don't mind sharing:
Why do you want to be circumcised? As it is a minor surgery and very low risk, and as I understand it, the pain is easily managed with medication so why won't you consider it? I am not encouraging anyone to do anything, just interested in your perspective.
Well, parents are allowed to mark their children with musical taste, their political views, their habits, their values. These are also irreversible.
Parents are allowed to feed their children the way they want, to take their children to spots where they might get a disease, to pass on their own diseases to their children.
Parents are allowed even to pass on their genes, which may contain horrible psychological tendencies, to their children.
I think the parent is just pointing out that the outrage seems a bit disproportionate. There are far more damaging things a parent can do that most people accept, whereas the actual effect circumcision has on your life is basically zero.
If that's the argument, I'm not convinced. We as a society try to influence the saner parts of what parent mentioned, such as values and pox parties.
Passing on genes, well we generally don't want to prevent that, because, contrary to forbidding circumcision, the cure would be worse than the disease.
I know someone who had to have a circumcision as an adult. If he decides to have the procedure performed on his son to avoid the same problems he had, then I will respect his choice.
By the age you would be able to consent (between 13 and 18 years depending on country) it would be a major surgical procedure involving days or weeks of pain, not the few minutes a baby experiences.
Babies are remarkable in their ability to heal and adapt.
I too do not understand how parents can be allowed to force someone into existence without prior approval from said someone.
Their parentland (motherland or fatherland, though I suppose there may be other categories nowadays) should surely not allow them to do so.
Speaking of parentlands, why are they allowed to make major decisions for their childizens on their behalf? Even if some of the childizens approve, surely the others should be free to decide for themselves.
Unfortunately we cannot bring this issue to that parentless entity in charge, who has never had anyone else decide something on its behalf. It may in time decide to look into the matter and inform us of its decision.
It's genital mutilation. There's no medical reason [1]. Yes, having a foreskin means you need to clean it regularly (or your caregiver if you're a baby).
And then there are disgusting things like this [2]:
> In a practice that takes place during a ceremony known as the bris, a circumcision practitioner, or mohel, removes the foreskin from the baby's penis, and with his mouth sucks the blood from the incision to cleanse the wound.
[1] Just like anything, there are exceptions. Some people have their foreskin removed because it has an infection or something similar. That shouldn't be applied to all foreskins, and even so, most of that is preventable with good hygiene.
Of course, some reasonable people think that genital mutilation is OK, because being reasonable does not guarantee moral clarity. This is why many reasonable people supported slavery and other abhorrent things.
I can't believe anyone would allow someone to knife off part of their child's genitals (even with anesthesia).
Maybe if the procedure involved branding the Playboy logo into the genitalia (with anesthesia) it would be easier for people to see how barbarous it is.
Nearly every Jewish male has underwent circumcision at 8 days old, and they have gone on to lead productive and very fulfilling sexual lives.
Many Muslims do it as well. That is probably hundreds of millions of people right there.
Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates.
I agree with you that if these people were all atheists then they should probably refrain from physically altering their children. But since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why, telling them that they must stop this practice is equivalent to an attack on their whole religion. And specifically the Jewish religion, given that it's not obligatory for Cheistians and many Muslims do not regard it as obligatory.
I should also point out that Jewish men on average seem to have successful upbringings and lower incidence of drug abuse, failed marriage etc. than tons of other groups. And Jews have been around for millennia. So arguments that something is more moral or less moral are subjective. There are families of different types and traditions and beliefs. The health outcomes of this particular practice have been empirically shown not to be worse on average than the opposite.
In today's world, we are constantly figuring out what leads to more or less moral outcomes long term for society. 100 years ago, women couldn't wear bikinis to the beach, now we have lots of freedoms. We now have no-fauly divorce. Today, sexuality is everywhere, the family structure has deteriorated compared to before, divorces are up, many people have sex and don't stick around to raise the child, McDonalds is on every corner, obesity and depression is up etc. Is this better? Well, who knows, but we know that some systems have been stable and successful for millennia. Calling them immoral (from an atheist point or view) also carries the burden of showing our system to be more successful and to have better outcomes.
Finally, in our system, liberal progressives are totally fine with far greater mutilation as long as a child feels that they are of the opposite gender. Why doesn't the same argument apply to make them wait until they are 18 or 21? Studies show that most children who feel like the opposite gender change their mind after several years regarding transitioning physically. So why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Nearly every person who works a manual job and loses a finger went on to have a productive and fulfilling career.
Doesn't mean they wouldn't have preferred to keep it.
> Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
The real question here is how many men born to Orthodox Jewish parents, when asked in adulthood whether they would have preferred to have been curcumcized at 8 days old or not, would have regretted it.
And the answer is?
Obviously the same is not true of people losing a finger.
You're moving the goal posts. Your claim was about productive and fulfilling lives and the implication that circumcision does not impair that.
Regret doesn't factor into that and is a separate issue. Clearly you can have productive and fulfilling lives with or without regrets. Whether the lack of regrets is rational or merely a self-defense mechanism of the person's mind is another question.
The goal posts have been set by the original issue: whether circumcision harms the person or benefits them.
The main people who can answer that are adult males who were circumcized.
I am confident that if you asked 1000 religious Orthodox Jewish men whether they would have preferred to NOT have been circumcized at 8 days old and instead had to choose it later, an overwhelming majority would say they were glad they were circumcized that early. And they prefer that over never having been circumcized.
I would be hesitant to say the same about non-Jewish men. The reason Jewish men are happy about having been circumcized early is because (perhaps this sounds ironic) it gives them FAR GREATER CHOICE when it comes to their own community and membership in three thousand year old people, marriage and - above all for most religious people - serving God in the way spelled out in the Torah.
They can choose to leave the lifestyle or increase their observance etc. much more easily since one of the biggest challenges is already out of the way.
You can of course tell them they don't understand what real choice is, that this is stockholm syndrome and that religion is mass delusion.
But they may not agree and they collectively are ultimately the judges of what was better for them.
It is a different conception of morality and rights than the individualism that comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment
These ideas that a parent "knows better" because they - and millions of others - were in the same situation and are glad this was done, are valid.
It is a collective morality of a people. And again I would say that unless they believed that God commanded it, it could be possibly changed but as it is, when the vast majority of complaints are from the OUTSIDE of the community, perhaps the downsides far outweigh the upsides.
You know what, i could say a lot of words, but really, i tire of it. You sound like the former marines i know who defend newbie hazing as noble and necessary. Much the same back and forth applies in both cases, and i really do not want to repeat discussions i've had multiple times already.
I'd be happy to read that study i asked for at the start though.
This is important, because circ'd individuals are often targeted online as having inferior sexual organs (count how many times the word "mutilated" is used in this thread). I'm willing to bet the mental health impact of this rhetoric is greater than the impact of circumcision itself. If circumcision should be banned, it shouldn't be banned on exaggerated pretenses that intact men have superior penises and circ'd men are inferior or incomplete (which seems to be underlying a lot of the arguments).
They threw together a bunch of contradicting studies, assigned weights without discussion of the assigning methods and parameters, then decided on an average and declared it a fact, instead of being honest and saying "we don't know either way". Based on this overall pattern i don't think i have much trust that their decision making process wasn't biased.
As for incomplete. I'm sorry, but there are no two ways about it. Incomplete means to be missing a part. It is. How important this is in the big picture is a different question.
For something that's so obviously damaging and mutilation and horrible and obscene, you'd think the science wouldn't at least be equivocating. The science should make you happy. You can still oppose circumcision, and you don't have to feel so much sympathy for circumcised people like me. Win/win.
Liberal progressives are totally fine with the child having a choice? That's the point you are making. Also outside of medical reasons, gender reassignment surgery standard of care is to wait until the age of majority. So 18 sounds about right.
I'm against circumcision but I can't deny you've made some of the most compelling points I've ever heard regarding the issue. If circumcision is so bad we'd expect poorer life outcomes for the victims of it. Instead we see the opposite.
Assuming the better life outcomes aren't just because of culutural values, I wonder if there are benefits to circumcision we simply don't have the scientific tools to measure.
Yes they do. It's far harder to agree to do it later. And it is necessary for membership in the Israelite Nation, according to the Bible. Which means it will have huge ramifications for the person in terms of marriage, children and their whole life.
Ask 1000 men born to Orthodox Jewish parents whether they regret being circumcized.
And ask 1000 Orthodox Jewish men who were not circumcized whether they wish they had been.
In the West, we have values of individualism. So being part of a millennia old people or a tradition or serving God are not seen as primary values by many atheists. I bet the people downvoting and commenting here negatively about circumcision are not of an Abrahamic faith - Judaism Christianity or Islam.
Fine but the individualism has also led to more depression, tiny families, often broken homes (also permanent effects on the child). So when you talk about tradeoffs tou have to consider the complex set of interconnected benefits. And different people perceive different benefits depending on their cultural upbringing. I can tell you that the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish men are glad they were circumcized at 8 days old and not had to choose it later.
Those are good points. I respect that some people have religious beliefs and affiliations.
Rights generally begin as a very individual thing... the right to vote, the right to free speech, etc. So the right not to have one's body mutilated without consent is pretty individual the way I look at it. It's hard (for me) to separate granting the right to mutilate a body that is not yours from the notion of the person being mutilated somehow being "chattle" of the person doing the mutilation.
But I'm not arguing that the same set of laws should apply to all groups and all cultures, but for an area where rights and protections are very minimal (such as infants) there is a lot of room for improvement.
My guess is that if circumcision were banned religious communities would not be harmed because the symbolism of circumcision would adapt to be more figurative in the same way that many other traditions are now done in a "lite" way that lacks strict historical accuracy but still holds great ceremonial significance.
But don't take my remarks as disrespectful of religion or of Judaism. I think that trying to figure out how to accomplish (broadly speaking) moral progress is very difficult, and I'd much rather improve the rights of prisoners than see circumcision ended, even though in principle I hold the view that circumcision should only occur when the person whose penis is being circumcised can consent. In the US there are much lower hanging fruit for humanitarian improvement. Not sure about Norway.
Does the same logic apply to female genital mutilation is societies where that has been acceptable for eons?
Is your standard for acceptable mutilation really "it isn't noticeably harmful"?
What if my religion calls for the removal of a single testicle instead of the foreskin - is that ok? Afterall, men with one testicle can still father children and lead productive lives.
If there was a culture going back thousands of years where men with a single testicle went on to live lives with hugely outsized outcomes, then yeah, I might say, "hey, maybe they know something we don't."
> And it is necessary for membership in the Israelite Nation, according to the Bible. Which means it will have huge ramifications for the person in terms of marriage, children and their whole life.
According to the Torah you should be stoned to death for merely breaking the Sabbath, and a murder victim's family members should be permitted to kill the murderer - and yet Judaism has modernised, recognising these acts as barbaric. Maybe Judaism needs to modernise a bit more, and allow children to grow up and make their own choices regarding the mutilation of their bodies.
Should people with religious beliefs really be able to mutilate their children in the name of their beliefs, however 'benign' that mutiliation is seen to be?
I don't see the problem with allowing children to grow into adulthood, decide for themselves what, if any, religion they want to follow - and make their own choice about how, if at all, to mutilate their bodies?
I understand that there are hundreds of years of tradition involved, but you could say the same about plenty of practices that are frowned upon or outlawed, so I don't think that argument stands up on its own.
I think Jews having outsized outcomes in life is pretty well settled. If you're asking for a double blind study I don't have one, but I'm hesitant to throw away thousands of years of tradition. There's a lot of things in life we think we understand well but it just ain't so. Maybe circumcision reduces sex drive in men allowing them to pursue higher goals. Maybe it frees up an important part of the brain for other general computation. I'm only speculating but I think that's fair when most of the alleged harms of circumcision are also speculation. For what it's worth, the biggest harm for myself has been the unending insistence that circumcised people are somehow "incomplete" and inferior. It took me a while and lots of research to realize that the story is far more complex.
This thing can operate in various fashions. Unmodified it works like this, modified it works in another way. Leave it as is and there's the option for both at any point. Make the decision now and one of the options is forever gone.
> we'd expect poorer life outcomes for the victims of it
Now, this may be anecdotal, but Eastern European men are (almost) all uncircumcised and on average Eastern Europeans seem to be regarded as better coders than Americans and Indians, who are all routinely circumcised.
> since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why
Is the argument here that if someone happens to believe in a particular practice (that impacts on somebody else's life), it should be completely off-limits and tolerated without question just because it appears in a religious text?
> why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Which "progressives" are arguing for babies to have gender reassignment surgery?
We don't have many examples of adult men undergoing the procedure to say which way feels better, since any medical problems would show themselves before they reach adulthood, and nobody really wants to get cut needlessly. The above link follows 4 men who did have it done as adults after they started their sex lives and the results range from "fine" to "horrible". It should be noted that circumcision was pushed in America with the purpose of stopping masturbation, i.e. a purely religious reason [1] (AFAIK none of my circumcised friends have refrained from masturbating), by John Kellogg (he invented cornflakes for the same purpose), and [2] has some excerpts from his book, including "burning the clitoris with acid is an effective means of curtailing female masturbation". I find the idea of mutilating the genitals a bit horrific, even if you're basically cutting off an organ that isn't strictly speaking keeping you alive. Humans are pretty resilient and you can cut off a lot of small parts before you actually start seeing real functional impediment.
I will note that [2] also notes that people living in hotter, wet climates (Jews, Muslims, some tropical island tribes, etc.) practice it for purely health reasons, since in the time when you couldn't take a shower whenever you wanted, the secretions that collect under the foreskin can lead to inflammation. Today if you live in an apartment and can take daily showers, I think spending 5 seconds to clean your willy is a better alternative to risking circumcision. Some boys unfortunately need it done, but that's no reason to cut off everyone's en-masse. Similarly, there was a time when children had their tonsils removed routinely to prevent diseases [3], but with today's improved standard of living that's not needed.
Your argument seems to me to be that a society should permit religious groups within it to live by the rules of their religious texts. You don't support the argument with reasoning, however. As far as I can tell you're relying on some implicit notion that religious beliefs merit respect (in multiple facets) simply by virtue of their existence which is, at best, a controversial assertion.
The question of whether Jewish men proceed to success after the alteration may indicate something about the severity of the alteration, but it certainly isn't a reason supporting routine circumcision.
Your point regarding gender reassignment surgery is irrelevant and, as far as I can tell, a way to imply hypocrisy and substitute that as a counter argument for pro-abolotion positions.
I found a big exception to your blanket statements:
There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.
I'm sure there are a lot of physical mutilations we could make to people that would reduce the chances of various diseases. Nonetheless, I think there's a moral issue in slicing up children (or adults) for this reason. Do our bodies belong to ourselves, to the government, to someone's god, or to the people around us?
Not that I'm saying you're advocating it; just continuing the train of thought.
Nonetheless, I think there's a moral issue in slicing up children (or adults) for this reason. Do our bodies belong to ourselves, to the government, to someone's god, or to the people around us?
This feels like a platitude that overlooks the complexity of the issue. What rights do parents have over their children? Are they allowed to prescribe a religion? Are they allowed to prescribe a culture? Are they allowed to take their children to the hospital if they're sick?
Personally, I don't think male circumcision is that big of a deal, because it has little to no negative impact on a male child. Female circumcision, on the other hand, is different.
> it has little to no negative impact on a male child.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
And to follow the train of thought all the way - do children's bodies belong to themselves or to their parents? Parents (or Guardians) do have to make some decisions for their children, but perhaps should defer irreversible decisions on elective surgery until the child is old enough to have an opinion - boys and girls both. And if the thought of asking a 13 year-old girl if she wants to have her genitals modified gives you pause, perhaps consider how circumcision is any different?
> There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%.
Saying there is evidence is not the same as evidence. AFAIK, this study was debunked because the result was not causal - it was that different class/cultural patterns among the sub-populations of the country were responsible, not the circumcision. But, there was already a massive stream of funding (Bill Gates included) for adult circumcision based on that faulty reasoning, and now it's too late to turn the ship around.
Categorically false. I have a newborn boy and talked to a number of doctors about it - there is actually a slight benefit to the circumcised child [1], it just isn't enough for the American Association of Pediatrics to recommend it outright.
Did you actually read the complaints? There are two that seem reasonable (copied data and number to treat) and one that goes off on a tangent citing supreme court cases on patient harm and sexual abuse. As far as harm let me be clear - the circumcision procedure causes less pain and consternation than my child's normal bowel movements.
The former two seem like legit cases to look into, but doesn't necessarily mean the entire study needs to be thrown out. Until then I see no reason not to let parents decide.
Perhaps. But like with most medical procedures there is risk vs reward. In this case the risk is a 100% chance of altering how your child's sex organs look and function without their knowledge or consent vs a small and dubious reward.
In other words don't fucking do it because it is barbaric and evil. If you think it's not, ask an uncircumcised adult to have the procedure done for all the benefits it provides and see how many agree.
You're not even making rational arguments, you're vilifying a procedure you happen to dislike. The fact is that the entire medical community agrees there are benefits to either approach, so letting parents decide is the more reasonable stance here.
No. The entire medical community does not agree. The argument that risk vs reward should be considered and the reward does not actually outweigh the risk is, to me, a pretty reasonable argument. No I don't like the procedure, any more than I like female circumcision or any other form of genital mutilation.
Especially in the US, circumcision is popular not because of any supposed health benefits, and not because of any religious reasons, but simply because it was initially popularized as a part of an anti-masturbation campaign hard fought by John Kellogg and his comrades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg). In the modern world it has nothing to do with cleanliness or health. It is a savage and barbaric tradition passed down from generation to generation. Thankfully, the numbers are now starting to come down as people realize that taking a knife to their newborn sons' genitals is probably not a nice thing to do.
Phimosis doesn't manifest until around puberty and can almost always be treated non-surgically. It's not a justification for permanent invasive surgery on babies.
He made it pretty clear that he isn't talking about people with clear medical diagnosis indicating a need for it, also phimosis is usually not treated by removing the ENTIRE foreskin.
The parent post, makes allowances for medical exceptions in their footnote. The point is there's no medical reason to circumcise en-mass or by default. Norway's ban is for ritual circumcision, which is not by a doctor.
> And calling it mutilation implies those who have and want to have this engage in mutilation akin to FGM. It's irresponsible.
It is akin to FGM when it's done nonconsensually (which it is, in the vast majority of cases for both sexes). Disclaimer: I understand that FGM is much more sexually debilitating and AFAIK never has a medical need behind it, but victims of circumcision are also being (usually needlessly) deprived of a functional part of their sexual organ.
MGM (circumcision) = FGM. You can lie to yourself and others but the person being mutilated is being denied a choice when their lives are not in danger.
I'm not aware of any adult women in a free society choosing to be mutilated, whereas it isn't uncommon for adult men to choose to be circumcised. That would seem to indicate that there is indeed a difference.
FGM is evil, plain and simple. MGM/circumcision has interesting points on both sides, and while there might be a stronger argument against it than for, it's not strong enough to be a hill I'd choose to die on. But to each their own, I suppose.
Those are very clearly wrong, with no redeeming value and cause a great deal of harm to the woman, beyond any subjectivity. Nobody is signing up to have this done to them for aesthetic reasons. Compared to this, circumcision is only low-moderately invasive and damaging. If you are going to argue against circumcision, do so on its own merits, not by comparing it to something far worse.
This is actually not true. It's normal for the foreskin to remain attached in young children. This is entirely normal and acts as a powerful disease protection mechanism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0079408/
Calling this mutilation is absurd, I am circumcised and so is my son - it was way more traumatic for me seeing, then it was for him feeling t - many babies do not even cry.
I suggest you do a little more research on what genital mutilation really means in the 3rd world, circumcision is no worse than some injections by comparison.
There is a very valid medical reason for this - it prevents sexually transmitted diseases [1] - So much so that it is promoted for adult males by health organizations. n the other hand, the foreskin serves absolutely no medical purpose.
Most reputable mohels (specially trained people who conduct the circumcision) will use a tube to suck the blood to prevent any chance of infection.
Also, whether something is mutilation or not is about more than how much it hurts when it's done. In this case a child is deprived of a part of their body that performs a clear biological function.
I said clear, not essential. Your pinky finger also does not perform an essential biological function, i.e. you can keep on living without it. But it performs a clear one, providing more grip strength and options.
Please link to the dictionary definition you're using.
So if a girl gets FGM and doesnt cry its ok? Are you insane? So if one is induced with anesthesia and they cut your arm off its ok then? MGM = FGM, and you denied a child a choice when there was no immediate danger. I wish I had the choice. I had the cahones to let me son remain un-mutilated and if he dislikes it so much he can lop it off. Think for yourself. Question authority.
According to the Mayo Clinic there are multiple medical benefits to circumcision [1]
To address some of the other points here, I can only give a anecdotal example from my own experience. My wife and I decided to have our son circumcised and not because of religious reasons, but rather because of those listed in the referenced article, among others--and after much condsideration. At the end of the day we decided that the benefits outweighed the risks.
As far as who should have the choice of this procedure, ideally it would be the individual on whom the procedure is being performed. However, the procedure and pain as an adult would certainly be more memorable. My parents made the choice to circumcise me when I was an infant--I'm glad they did because I don't remember any associated pain or discomfort.
I think that there should be more discourse over this parental choice. If parents are making these decisions for mere aesthetic or ritualistic reasons then that is a problem. However, labeling circumcision as 'genital mutilation' across the board is not accurate. There are advantages and disadvantages that should be weighed carefully.
I'm glad you at least thought about it, but I think you (and most American parents) made the wrong choice. You're violating your sons bodily autonomy, and depriving him of a functional part of his sexual organ, for what is mostly a matter of convenience.
Confirmation bias. You will never know if the benefits outweigh the risks and you denied the kid the choice. I wish I had the choice. Mutilations cannot be reversed. You probably did it because - 1 it was done to you, 2 some custom from a desert 2000 years ago and 3 you wanted Jr. to "be like everyone else". I've heard all the reasons. Cut his middle finger off too so he can't flip the bird - that could save him from a potential fight. Also sewing his mouth shut might prevent sass talk
"You will never know if the benefits outweigh the risks... "
You're probably right. That's why it was a weighted decision based on the information available.
Your other points do not match the same model we used to make our decision. Flipping someone off or giving the middle finger is a choice that one can make, and later apologize for and move on. Penile cancer or many STDs do not fall into that category.
I'm surprised that this topic is even on HN, and even more so by the presumptive and emotional responses that clearly didn't read the post in its entirety. So, I don't think this is a conversation I will engage in any further.
How do you rationalize changing your son's sexual function without his consent and despite the fact that it is possible to do the same procedure later in life, with zero mental and very little physical immediate trauma?
To what extent did you go to educate yourself on that matter, given you have no personal experience?
For one, it has erogenous nerves in it. Or more clearly put: Friction and pressure on certain parts of my foreskin feels really good, even if the entirety of it is held fixed and none of the friction is applied to the glans. The parts that feel good are fairly forwards, so it is unlikely that any of that would survive a circumcision.
For the other, in penetration it both acts as liquid-less lubrication by allowing the penis to move freely inside it even if the vagina isn't very wet; and it also increases the range of sensations by feeling different when the movement is with the glans still inside the foreskin, and when it's deeper in and outside the foreskin. The "pseudo lube" aspect is also appreciated by women in my experience.
E: I see some people down-voted this and i am earnestly puzzled. I believe i have described only physical facts. Is this post too "frank" for a public forum, or did i get something wrong?
Sounds great, but you might be overselling it considering adults who have undergone circumcision for non-health reasons largely don't report loss of sexual pleasure (some do, some report greater pleasure). And there's also the fact if you're circ'd as a baby the brain has decades to adapt, and that's where the pleasure actually is in the first place.
I'm not overselling it since i did not attach a price tag. I said a change, not how much of a change.
And yeah, i can entirely see how different people might not give a damn about any of this. Some might even benefit. Men who're not very sensitive would have more fun without the foreskin and the direct stimulation and might not even notice the loss of the nerves in the foreskin, men with very active glands might not care about the difference in lubrication, women whose glands are naturally more productive might not care which type of penis their partner has.
Nevertheless, the sexual function is changed. There are things a circumcised penis can do better. There's also things an uncircumcised one can do better. I'm not saying either of them is better than someone else's, just different. Changed.
Fair enough. I conflated your post with the ones comparing it to FGM Type II, talking as if circ'd penises are horrifically mutilated and barely functional.
Pondered it a little, and i think you might be misreading some people unintentionally. Maybe you mentally match FGM to mutilation as a whole, which most people don't, and react to them as if they did? Note how something can be in the same class as something else, but have a much lower degree of impact. When someone says mutilated they may not necessarily be thinking "horrifically" or "barely functional". Heck, many people consider ear rings or tattoos mutilation.
Mutilation is a word with strong and harsh connotations. How would someone with a facial birthmark react if people said their face was mutilated? It's hurtful rhetoric largely unbacked by adult comparative sexual studies.
Edit: can't reply, but I think you're being uncharitable by saying I'm overreacting to the word "mutilation" because it's technically correct by the dictionary definition. We don't describe people with earrings or tattoos as mutilated unless we intend to insult them or the practice.
> facial birthmark react if people said their face was mutilated
That is not what mutilation means though. Like, literally not. Check the dictionary. You saying that just drives the point home that you're mapping a meaning onto it that is not intended by the other side.
Have you ever facilitated masturbation with another male? The interface changes in an interesting way when you remove the foreskin. Also, have you ever tried putting your tongue or finger into a man's foreskin? Or have you tried docking?
These are all interesting changes!
Before people say that these activities are boring, and why would anyone ever want to try, I suggest watching a few videos on foreskin play in both gay and heterosexual contexts.
The problem with these rituals is that they're sometimes performed by non professionals, and in this specific case not under medical supervision, and this may put the infant's health at risk by either late health complications or worse death.
Here's a case for two babies getting Herpes in NYC because of this practise.
Let's see if we can make a sort of equivalence between your statements:
Him: wants to ban an act which is basically minor surgery performed (for no obvious medical benefit) on someone who is underage and can't refuse the operation.
You: want to hold a popular vote which would decide if he should be killed because of his opinion.
We tried this in San Francisco and it gets dragged into some crazy anti-religious fight. It's about the rights of the baby, not about some religion's outdated beliefs.
Children should be free of mutilation, regardless of their religion.
'Regarding the Norwegian bill, Margolin said: “We will act in every way we can to fight this disgraceful bill... There is no doubt that this is an anti-Jewish decision that is blatantly antisemitic, because the bill does not harm Muslims who are not obligated to circumcise their children as infants and can perform the procedure even at an older ages as the bill allows.”'
Please don't make this about any specific religion's practices. That wasn't exactly my point. Only that the welfare of the child should trump religion.
In the US there is also a practice that all? hospitals offer this practice as just an additional procedure after birth. This should be stopped, and that is non-religious, it's almost worse because it's nearly thoughtless.
Yes. I know the article is about that. I'm saying my comment, and I think the discussion should focus on the welfare of the child over the discussions of particular religions.
Ok I see. Well indeed, I don't understand why minority groups can use religion as a trump card over the right of a child to not suffer genital mutilation, and claim they should be able to continue to mutilate and that otherwise it's a form of discrimination :| Going back to my previous point, I'm saying that if it's so important to someone to be able to genitally mutilate their child, why choose to stay in a country that is apparently so hostile to your beliefs, when there is an alternative that is specifically designed to put your needs first?
While I probably agree with your views on religious beliefs, if the goal is to get rid of these kinds of practices, off-handedly insulting people's beliefs probably won't convince them. It will just put them on the defensive.
The best rhetorical approach here is probably to hammer home the fact that, by performing extensive and life-changing cosmetic surgery on a baby, you are violating their rights. This avoids impugning the parents' motives, which they are (for lack of a less abrasive word) aggressively programmed to defend.
It's worth noting that male circumcision in the West is a relatively recent phenomenon, established in the 19th century by quack science and promoted by British and American doctors and industrialists as a way to discourage masturbation in boys.
Good, as long as you are morally consistent. I can't stand the hypocrisy of people that claim it's evil to circumcise your son but not evil to have your daughter's ears pierced.
I agree with you that infants shouldn't have their ears pierced, but let's all acknowledge that moral consistency can be allowed to draw a line somewhere below "permanent, irreparable damage that reduces function."
This is very common in Latin American cultures. In Mexico, they literally do it at the hospital before you leave. (They don't do this in the U.S., but a good portion of Latin Americans - I'd wager majority - will get it done at six months.)
While I would not do it to an infant, it's not a sex organ and will restore to fully healed/closed status if left alone for a few weeks, so it's hard to compare this to removing part of a sex organ that will not re-grow.
The principle is the same. The hospital should not be doing so much as trimming a fingernail of any patient incapable of giving informed consent, in the absence of a true medical necessity.
In the case of the ear-piercings, it is likely that the local cultural landscape is such that if the procedure is not performed in a sterile and controlled environment, by professional medical personnel, at the hospital, it would be done by amateurs at home. The medical necessity there may be the significant probability of botched, infected piercings. As a public health strategy, it isn't bad. Do the piercings at the hospital for two generations, and then ramp up the out-of-pocket cost for it, while vilifying it with a PR campaign.
Babies should still not be having their ears pierced, though. That is certainly of lesser severity than cutting off and throwing away more significant bits of the baby, leaving a permanent, visible scar there, but it is on the same spectrum. You are performing unnecessary procedures on a patient that cannot give consent.
> The principle is the same. The hospital should not be doing so much as trimming a fingernail of any patient incapable of giving informed consent, in the absence of a true medical necessity.
Do you have a child? Would you not trim their fingernails?
Obviously you would, because you consent on their behalf. Same deal with the piercing; the Hospital obviously doesn't do it without the parents' consent.
There is no reason to pierce infant's ears. It can be easily done when one gets older.
But your comparison is flawed, because pierced ear holes, if not filled, will easily heal over time, while the circumcision is non-reversible (foreskin will never grow back).
Except piercing ears is not a sex organ.
This seems like an attempt to deflect from what circumcision actually is : genital mutilation.
Genital mutilation is not okay for girls or boys.
Absolutely, yes. I've honestly never understood why on earth parents would do this to their children, rather than letting them make the choice for themselves when they reach adulthood.
This is one of those topics where people have extremely strong opinions, yet the vast majority of people affected by this practice (circumcised males) have no opinion or even a favorable opinion of their circumcision.
I guess you have to just accept it if you have been circumcised, because you can't undo that. By you i mean anyone who has been circumcised. So this is like cognitive dissonance, you don't want to eat that cheese if you know that it can't be reached...
Considering the studies show that the cheese they can't reach is either slightly worse, slightly better, or the same, it's pretty understandable they'd get offended when told their cheese is mutilated.
Here's one data point to back up ythn. I was circumcised as an infant. I'm glad my father chose to have the procedure done so that I didn't have to go through the uncomfortable recovery period as an adult. I would have done it regardless for religious reasons with the medical reason as a bonus. If I have any sons, they will be circumcised as infants. That being said, I don't care whether you are or if your sons are circumcised or not. However, I do care if you infringe on the rights of parents to do what they think is best for their children whether it's for medical, cultural, or religious reasons.
> I do care if you infringe on the rights of parents to do what they think is best for their children whether it's for medical, cultural, or religious reasons
Serious question: how far should that be allowed to go? What if someone believes cutting off their child's earlobe is best for their child (for the sake of an example)?
As I see it, religious freedom does not mean you get to do whatever you want with no comeback.
No. I am not trolling. I am merely expressing my point of view which happens to run contrary to a majority of HN users. One could easily say you are trolling in this particular thread based upon your comments today. Your "Stockholm syndrome" comment is golden.
I think the line should be drawn where a practice causes real harm to children.
While I find the idea of cutting off the earlobe repulsive, I don't think it sufficiently crosses the line of harm. For all I know this could be a legitimate practice by some obscure tribe.
Finally, no one says religious freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want without any repercussions. That's a gross mischaracterization of it.
And what are they comparing it to? They quite literally do not know what they are missing. It's not like they can have it replaced, so they have to make the best of it.
Any non-circumcised male could choose to undergo the process as adults, I don't hear of many takers.
It's not unheard of, but unless there is a medical condition, circumcision should be considered cosmetic surgery and the decision made by the person being circumcised. Involuntary cosmetic surgery/ genital mutilation, whatever you want to call it, is a waste of taxpayer money in countries that have publicly funded healthcare.
The only people whose opinions would hold any weight in this matter would be males who were circumcised by medical necessity as adults. In other words, people who have actual memories with which to form a basis for comparison, without psychological pressure to form an irrationally favorable or unfavorable opinion.
No, not really, because they would have lived most of their lives with foreskin and may have formed an irrationally favorable opinion about it in the exact same way you presume circumcised men do about their situation.
It's dick measuring. Getting circumcision banned is a way for intact males to have the superiority of their penises enshrined into law. I'm a circ "victim" and the constant cries that I'm mutilated are barely veiled insults.
Right? Like, I'll see these old boomer wackos with a stall at county fairs next to XYZ County Repubs/Dems or something, and they all just yell and scream like olde timey street preachers. Usually, the ones around here have some placards with badly doctored images of babies and a bunch of red on it, like the anti-abortion protestors outside of PP. Like old man, there are kids walking around, take a chill pill. You get to 'talking' to them and most are just anti-semites or really just looney-toons (at least in my neck of the woods, ymmv). I just can't understand what went wrong with them that they want to pay the fair org. to go out and scream all weekend in the sun about a little boy's junk. Dude, it's been going on for like 3k years or something without like any hiccups really, it's cool, no one even thinks about it, go get worked up about climate change, or the local PTA, or something that actually matters.
south korea has high rates of circumcision in adulthood, so relevant data (people who would know the difference between how it feels to be circumcised vs uncircumcised) exists
Cutting of dogs ears or tail is not ok, even illegal somewhere , but somehow it's ok to do similar things with your baby, because of ... because of religion? Might be my dog is Pastafarian. Is it ok then to cut of his ears?
I love this particular controversy. It really highlights how most political opinions don't come from specific applications of universal principles, but from ingroup-outgroup signaling and status quo bias. A little part of my smiles whenever I see hypocrisy exposed.
Circumcision, for (orthodox) Jews, is one of the most fundamental conditions for identification and belonging to that group. Leaving a Jewish male baby uncircumcised would most likely lead to feelings of alienation and isolation later on in life – feelings which could have significant psychological impact and could largely negate the benefits one gains from strong communal structures.
Regardless of the process's inherent morality, a blanket ban may cause more harm than good. Cultures have dependency trees, like a Jenga tower: remove one block, even one that, in isolation, is a negative, and you risk destabilizing the entire structure and causing significantly more net harm than that single negative you erased.
More generally, I'd propose a corollary to Chesterson's fence [1]: Before you (in righteous external-observer outrage) destroy an element of a culture, make sure you understand what role that element plays, and what harm you may cause with such heavy handed destruction.
The same is true for female genital mutilation in certain Islamic cultures. I still don't think "it's culturally important" is a reasonable defense, and I doubt you do either.
And just to cut off this objection, the vast majority of female circumcision involves removal of the clitoral hood, which is (mutatis mutandis) anatomically equivalent to removal of the foreskin and has similar effects and risks.
By the way, FGM is not an exclusively Islamic tradition in some Muslim-majority countries. There are certain non-Muslim African communities that engage in these awful practices.
Saying it has similar effects and risks is just handwaving.
And it is largely practiced in Africa, where tribal ritualistic bodily modification has remained a much bigger thing (compared to the rest of the world). Consider women who stretch their lips with disks to attract men etc.
That nick is the equivalent of male circumcision and is practiced by the Bohras, an Islamic sect. It makes a tiny incision for girls in the foreskin covering the clitoris and it is not clear that this reduces sexual pleasure in the future.
It is very far from FGM which removes the clitoris etc.
We have hundreds of years of data on Jewish males and how they fare after this operation at 8 days old, and it is not at all clear that they are medically or psychologically worse off than without it.
The fact that it is considered a requirement in the Jewish religion for membership in the Jewish people plays a major role in the phychological well being of the child and adult, and as the parent comment has said this needs to be considered!
Thank you for pointing out that the FGM nick actually has lasting effects. I was not aware of that, and it's not something that I support.
> The fact that it is considered a requirement in the Jewish religion for membership in the Jewish people plays a major role in the phychological well being of the child and adult, and as the parent comment has said this needs to be considered!
And it should be. It should be considered just like stoning is considered, and thrown out as against modern principles (in most places, sadly not all). It should be considered, just like homosexuality should not have you burned at the stake. This is no different.
I recognize that this is not a light decision, but it is a brutal act (with non 0% chances of horrible things going wrong) that has no physiological need.
Exaggerate much? This is why the anti-circ crowd isn't taken seriously. Can you point to comparative sexual studies where men circumcised as adults for non-health reasons suffer from great psychological and physical harm, as would be expected from a brutal act similar to being burned at the stake or being stoned? Most studies of circumcision show no harm, some slight benefits, or some slight harm.
Yes, I make the assertion that all people, including defenseless babies, should be free from harm.
Now, the nick I leave as a compromise, b/c I do understand that this is a fundamental requirement of the religion as it is followed. This allows for religious practice to be followed with out mutilating the child.
A nick is harm. Either you compromise your morals or you don't. If you do make allowances for other concerns (ie. religious practice), then you're debating degree, not kind.
Also, while a nick _may_ work for certain religions, it serves zero purpose for Judaic circumcision, and would actually be forbidden as unnecessary harm.
I have a circumcised penis and I am not Jewish. Reducing the Jewish identity to having your penis circumcised is just flawed as it naturally excludes Jewish women.
Jewish males can still have their private parts circumcised when they become adult as it was supposed to be the case, a rite of passage for getting into the adult world.
Most of your rebuttal is centered around a "slippery-slope" argument and it is not convincing enough.
As an orthodox Jew, I can tell you that failure to circumcize your son at 8 days old (outside of extenuating circumstances, e.g. medical issues) is one of the worst sins you could commit.
Furthermore, you would be ostracized from the community, and your child will suffer socially, and emotionally.
Once the child turns 13 he is responsible to ensure that he it's circumcised, and considering that he most likely will not have abandoned his religion by 13 he will go through with it. So now there's physical pain as well.
That's a theological critique, mine was sociological one from an outside observer. Still, the theological arguments don't work under a secular government which takes pride in separating the state from religion.
And if a government would ban circumcision, I'd be willing to bet that all Orthodox Jews would leave. And if the government prevented that (which has certainly happened before), then it is well documented that many Jews are ready to give up their lives in order to circumcise their sons.
Update: only my first comment was theological; the rest were socio-physical
Jewish _male_ identity, obviously. "Supposed" is irrelevant (and highly debatable). What _is_ is that Jewish male identity views circumcision as one of its lynchpins. Kick away that support, and you create a powerful identity crisis.
Slippery slope argument says that "we shouldn't do X (even though X is inherently okay) because it might lead yet another set of actions – Y – which is a negative". I'm not saying that at all. Banning circumcision will lead to significant identity issues as a direct consequence, not as a result of some other intermediate effect that obtains as a result of the ban.
My supposed remark was a reference to how this ritual was practiced in other human cultures as Jews didn't invent male circumcision.
It was like "Hey boy, you've hit puberty and become a man now. Let's do this small rite of passage and cut that foreskin off your dick so you could join the rest of the tribe of grown up men"
1. Internal identity: Being told that a Jewish male must be circumcised, realizing you're not, and experiencing alienation. This can hit adolescents quite hard.
2. Marriage: Barring a specific medical reason to not be circumcised, many Jewish women would take issue with an uncircumcised husband.
Genesis 17:9-14 and Leviticus 12:1-3 do not give Jews any leeway in this practice.
I may not be Jewish (though I am Christian and circumcised), and I realize my American values do not directly apply in Norway, but freedom of religion is a basic human right.
Devout religious followers would have no choice but to "obey God rather than men", so laws like this proposed ban are simply a veiled authorization of persecution.
Freedom of religion means the state can't tell you what to believe. It emphatically does not mean that you have carte-blanche authority to do whatever crazy stuff your religion asks you to do, including murdering infidels or performing cosmetic surgery on babies.
> does not mean that you have carte-blanche authority to do whatever crazy stuff your religion asks you to do
And how shall we decide what constitutes "crazy stuff"? In Daniel 6:4-9, it was decided that it was unlawful to make a petition to any god or man except the king. In fact, this was done explicitly to provide an excuse to persecute Daniel.
To help illuminate the issue, what if Hinduism required nose piercing at 8 days, instead of Jews with circumcision? Some in this thread find piercing babies to be wrong, while others find it acceptable. Who gets to decide? And what about the poor Hindu who is now jailed for the practice?
It's ironic to me how easy people find it to run merrily down this slippery slope, and yet complain so readily when their own freedoms are infringed.
If a religion required nose piercing at 8 days that would be a mutilation, with some risks of additional harm, and no medical benefit (at the time it's done), and so it would be banned.
And circumcision is not incompatible with "freedom from harm" because it is not harmful. Therefore, this is a law that needlessly restricts freedom of religion.
> Genesis 17:9-14 and Leviticus 12:1-3 do not give Jews any leeway in this practice.
> ...
> laws like this proposed ban are simply a veiled authorization of persecution.
Leviticus 20:27 says it's OK to stone mediums to death - should this be lawful too, or would it also be persecution?
You can take freedom of religion too far - the books of the bible were written rather a long time ago. Judaism has been able to modernise regarding such things as being stoned to death for merely breaking Sabbath, so maybe it needs to modernise a bit more regarding mutilating children?
Only until it infringes on someone else's rights and freedoms. At that point, it's violence. That's what circumcision is. If you wish to argue that anything should be allowed for any religion, then we have to accept a world that tolerates rape, human sacrifice and mass suicides, just to name a few religious practices that your argument would allow. But if we had that kind of religious freedom, at least we'd be able to take whatever drugs we all wanted to forget about all the stupidity going on around us in the name of religious freedom. Let's face it, religious freedom is a thinly veiled argument for allowing people to do fucked up shit that would otherwise be unacceptable justifying those actions. Since religion can justify any and all horrible human actions, it's basically an argument for allowing one to do whatever one wants without fear of retribution by appealing to unverifiable nonsense.
The debate here seems to boil down to(from my Orthodox Jewish perspective at least):
1. There is a subjective morality that says a parent must not make decisions for a child that will affect it in a manner that could possibly be perceived as negative
2. There is a subjective morality that says to follow your religion, and one aspect of the religion is circumcising your son at 8 days old
The people ascribing to the first believe it to be an objective morality. The people ascribing to the second believe it to be an objective morality.
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206 comments
[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadGenital mutilation is part of the general trend of subjugating children and depriving them of rights. Just because we've banned child labor in the US does not mean we've gone far enough.
No but the parents who did it may have been.
> subjugated and deprived of rights as children
Those who were mutilated without giving consent were harmed in a way that could be significant. I certainly would not consent to it as an adult.
Nor would I. However, if I could go back in time and retroactively give my parents consent to do it when I wouldn't remember it, then I would.
Parents are allowed to feed their children the way they want, to take their children to spots where they might get a disease, to pass on their own diseases to their children.
Parents are allowed even to pass on their genes, which may contain horrible psychological tendencies, to their children.
Passing on genes, well we generally don't want to prevent that, because, contrary to forbidding circumcision, the cure would be worse than the disease.
That's the part when you introduce your values and your judgement and try to make it sound as if everybody agrees.
Musical tast, political views, habits and values are irreversible? Really?
Babies are remarkable in their ability to heal and adapt.
Their parentland (motherland or fatherland, though I suppose there may be other categories nowadays) should surely not allow them to do so.
Speaking of parentlands, why are they allowed to make major decisions for their childizens on their behalf? Even if some of the childizens approve, surely the others should be free to decide for themselves.
Unfortunately we cannot bring this issue to that parentless entity in charge, who has never had anyone else decide something on its behalf. It may in time decide to look into the matter and inform us of its decision.
And then there are disgusting things like this [2]:
> In a practice that takes place during a ceremony known as the bris, a circumcision practitioner, or mohel, removes the foreskin from the baby's penis, and with his mouth sucks the blood from the incision to cleanse the wound.
[1] Just like anything, there are exceptions. Some people have their foreskin removed because it has an infection or something similar. That shouldn't be applied to all foreskins, and even so, most of that is preventable with good hygiene.
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-dies-herpes-virus-ritual-c...
I can't believe anyone would allow someone to knife off part of their child's genitals (even with anesthesia).
Maybe if the procedure involved branding the Playboy logo into the genitalia (with anesthesia) it would be easier for people to see how barbarous it is.
Many Muslims do it as well. That is probably hundreds of millions of people right there.
Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates.
I agree with you that if these people were all atheists then they should probably refrain from physically altering their children. But since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why, telling them that they must stop this practice is equivalent to an attack on their whole religion. And specifically the Jewish religion, given that it's not obligatory for Cheistians and many Muslims do not regard it as obligatory.
I should also point out that Jewish men on average seem to have successful upbringings and lower incidence of drug abuse, failed marriage etc. than tons of other groups. And Jews have been around for millennia. So arguments that something is more moral or less moral are subjective. There are families of different types and traditions and beliefs. The health outcomes of this particular practice have been empirically shown not to be worse on average than the opposite.
In today's world, we are constantly figuring out what leads to more or less moral outcomes long term for society. 100 years ago, women couldn't wear bikinis to the beach, now we have lots of freedoms. We now have no-fauly divorce. Today, sexuality is everywhere, the family structure has deteriorated compared to before, divorces are up, many people have sex and don't stick around to raise the child, McDonalds is on every corner, obesity and depression is up etc. Is this better? Well, who knows, but we know that some systems have been stable and successful for millennia. Calling them immoral (from an atheist point or view) also carries the burden of showing our system to be more successful and to have better outcomes.
Finally, in our system, liberal progressives are totally fine with far greater mutilation as long as a child feels that they are of the opposite gender. Why doesn't the same argument apply to make them wait until they are 18 or 21? Studies show that most children who feel like the opposite gender change their mind after several years regarding transitioning physically. So why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Doesn't mean they wouldn't have preferred to keep it.
> Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
And the answer is?
Obviously the same is not true of people losing a finger.
Regret doesn't factor into that and is a separate issue. Clearly you can have productive and fulfilling lives with or without regrets. Whether the lack of regrets is rational or merely a self-defense mechanism of the person's mind is another question.
The main people who can answer that are adult males who were circumcized.
I am confident that if you asked 1000 religious Orthodox Jewish men whether they would have preferred to NOT have been circumcized at 8 days old and instead had to choose it later, an overwhelming majority would say they were glad they were circumcized that early. And they prefer that over never having been circumcized.
I would be hesitant to say the same about non-Jewish men. The reason Jewish men are happy about having been circumcized early is because (perhaps this sounds ironic) it gives them FAR GREATER CHOICE when it comes to their own community and membership in three thousand year old people, marriage and - above all for most religious people - serving God in the way spelled out in the Torah.
They can choose to leave the lifestyle or increase their observance etc. much more easily since one of the biggest challenges is already out of the way.
You can of course tell them they don't understand what real choice is, that this is stockholm syndrome and that religion is mass delusion.
But they may not agree and they collectively are ultimately the judges of what was better for them.
It is a different conception of morality and rights than the individualism that comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment
These ideas that a parent "knows better" because they - and millions of others - were in the same situation and are glad this was done, are valid.
It is a collective morality of a people. And again I would say that unless they believed that God commanded it, it could be possibly changed but as it is, when the vast majority of complaints are from the OUTSIDE of the community, perhaps the downsides far outweigh the upsides.
I'd be happy to read that study i asked for at the start though.
No statistically significant difference in:
* Ejaculation time
* Erectile dysfunction
* Sexual desire
* Orgasm difficulties
* Pain during or after sex
This is important, because circ'd individuals are often targeted online as having inferior sexual organs (count how many times the word "mutilated" is used in this thread). I'm willing to bet the mental health impact of this rhetoric is greater than the impact of circumcision itself. If circumcision should be banned, it shouldn't be banned on exaggerated pretenses that intact men have superior penises and circ'd men are inferior or incomplete (which seems to be underlying a lot of the arguments).
As for incomplete. I'm sorry, but there are no two ways about it. Incomplete means to be missing a part. It is. How important this is in the big picture is a different question.
Assuming the better life outcomes aren't just because of culutural values, I wonder if there are benefits to circumcision we simply don't have the scientific tools to measure.
People keep saying this, but fail to link to sources substantiating their non-obvious claims. Link to a study please?
Ask 1000 men born to Orthodox Jewish parents whether they regret being circumcized.
And ask 1000 Orthodox Jewish men who were not circumcized whether they wish they had been.
In the West, we have values of individualism. So being part of a millennia old people or a tradition or serving God are not seen as primary values by many atheists. I bet the people downvoting and commenting here negatively about circumcision are not of an Abrahamic faith - Judaism Christianity or Islam.
Fine but the individualism has also led to more depression, tiny families, often broken homes (also permanent effects on the child). So when you talk about tradeoffs tou have to consider the complex set of interconnected benefits. And different people perceive different benefits depending on their cultural upbringing. I can tell you that the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish men are glad they were circumcized at 8 days old and not had to choose it later.
Rights generally begin as a very individual thing... the right to vote, the right to free speech, etc. So the right not to have one's body mutilated without consent is pretty individual the way I look at it. It's hard (for me) to separate granting the right to mutilate a body that is not yours from the notion of the person being mutilated somehow being "chattle" of the person doing the mutilation.
But I'm not arguing that the same set of laws should apply to all groups and all cultures, but for an area where rights and protections are very minimal (such as infants) there is a lot of room for improvement.
My guess is that if circumcision were banned religious communities would not be harmed because the symbolism of circumcision would adapt to be more figurative in the same way that many other traditions are now done in a "lite" way that lacks strict historical accuracy but still holds great ceremonial significance.
But don't take my remarks as disrespectful of religion or of Judaism. I think that trying to figure out how to accomplish (broadly speaking) moral progress is very difficult, and I'd much rather improve the rights of prisoners than see circumcision ended, even though in principle I hold the view that circumcision should only occur when the person whose penis is being circumcised can consent. In the US there are much lower hanging fruit for humanitarian improvement. Not sure about Norway.
Is your standard for acceptable mutilation really "it isn't noticeably harmful"?
What if my religion calls for the removal of a single testicle instead of the foreskin - is that ok? Afterall, men with one testicle can still father children and lead productive lives.
According to the Torah you should be stoned to death for merely breaking the Sabbath, and a murder victim's family members should be permitted to kill the murderer - and yet Judaism has modernised, recognising these acts as barbaric. Maybe Judaism needs to modernise a bit more, and allow children to grow up and make their own choices regarding the mutilation of their bodies.
Should people with religious beliefs really be able to mutilate their children in the name of their beliefs, however 'benign' that mutiliation is seen to be?
I don't see the problem with allowing children to grow into adulthood, decide for themselves what, if any, religion they want to follow - and make their own choice about how, if at all, to mutilate their bodies?
I understand that there are hundreds of years of tradition involved, but you could say the same about plenty of practices that are frowned upon or outlawed, so I don't think that argument stands up on its own.
This is not meaningful unless you control for social circumstances.
Also, for now, all i'm asking you to do is only state things you can substantiate, and state them exactly and clearly.
This thing can operate in various fashions. Unmodified it works like this, modified it works in another way. Leave it as is and there's the option for both at any point. Make the decision now and one of the options is forever gone.
Now, this may be anecdotal, but Eastern European men are (almost) all uncircumcised and on average Eastern Europeans seem to be regarded as better coders than Americans and Indians, who are all routinely circumcised.
Is the argument here that if someone happens to believe in a particular practice (that impacts on somebody else's life), it should be completely off-limits and tolerated without question just because it appears in a religious text?
> why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Which "progressives" are arguing for babies to have gender reassignment surgery?
We don't have many examples of adult men undergoing the procedure to say which way feels better, since any medical problems would show themselves before they reach adulthood, and nobody really wants to get cut needlessly. The above link follows 4 men who did have it done as adults after they started their sex lives and the results range from "fine" to "horrible". It should be noted that circumcision was pushed in America with the purpose of stopping masturbation, i.e. a purely religious reason [1] (AFAIK none of my circumcised friends have refrained from masturbating), by John Kellogg (he invented cornflakes for the same purpose), and [2] has some excerpts from his book, including "burning the clitoris with acid is an effective means of curtailing female masturbation". I find the idea of mutilating the genitals a bit horrific, even if you're basically cutting off an organ that isn't strictly speaking keeping you alive. Humans are pretty resilient and you can cut off a lot of small parts before you actually start seeing real functional impediment.
I will note that [2] also notes that people living in hotter, wet climates (Jews, Muslims, some tropical island tribes, etc.) practice it for purely health reasons, since in the time when you couldn't take a shower whenever you wanted, the secretions that collect under the foreskin can lead to inflammation. Today if you live in an apartment and can take daily showers, I think spending 5 seconds to clean your willy is a better alternative to risking circumcision. Some boys unfortunately need it done, but that's no reason to cut off everyone's en-masse. Similarly, there was a time when children had their tonsils removed routinely to prevent diseases [3], but with today's improved standard of living that's not needed.
[1] http://www.cirp.org/pages/whycirc.html
[2] http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_co...
The question of whether Jewish men proceed to success after the alteration may indicate something about the severity of the alteration, but it certainly isn't a reason supporting routine circumcision.
Your point regarding gender reassignment surgery is irrelevant and, as far as I can tell, a way to imply hypocrisy and substitute that as a counter argument for pro-abolotion positions.
There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.
http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/
Not that I'm saying you're advocating it; just continuing the train of thought.
This feels like a platitude that overlooks the complexity of the issue. What rights do parents have over their children? Are they allowed to prescribe a religion? Are they allowed to prescribe a culture? Are they allowed to take their children to the hospital if they're sick?
Personally, I don't think male circumcision is that big of a deal, because it has little to no negative impact on a male child. Female circumcision, on the other hand, is different.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
Mastectomy or oophorectomy to avoid cancers in infants with BRCA1/2 mutations comes to mind.
Perhaps the procedure could be offered to adults as a way to have safer sex without actually having safe sex.
Saying there is evidence is not the same as evidence. AFAIK, this study was debunked because the result was not causal - it was that different class/cultural patterns among the sub-populations of the country were responsible, not the circumcision. But, there was already a massive stream of funding (Bill Gates included) for adult circumcision based on that faulty reasoning, and now it's too late to turn the ship around.
So you'd be cutting the rate from 8 in 10000 acts to 3 in 10000. its something but theres probably more efficient ways.
[1] https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages...
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/3/e756
Which has all the hallmarks of misleading data.
See the comments for more http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/3/e756.com...
The former two seem like legit cases to look into, but doesn't necessarily mean the entire study needs to be thrown out. Until then I see no reason not to let parents decide.
In other words don't fucking do it because it is barbaric and evil. If you think it's not, ask an uncircumcised adult to have the procedure done for all the benefits it provides and see how many agree.
Especially in the US, circumcision is popular not because of any supposed health benefits, and not because of any religious reasons, but simply because it was initially popularized as a part of an anti-masturbation campaign hard fought by John Kellogg and his comrades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg). In the modern world it has nothing to do with cleanliness or health. It is a savage and barbaric tradition passed down from generation to generation. Thankfully, the numbers are now starting to come down as people realize that taking a knife to their newborn sons' genitals is probably not a nice thing to do.
It's a valid medical reason for the operation. Not to mention the above mentioned.
Not only do your facts not hold up to a brief Google, but the reputation of the people suggesting this could have made you think twice.
Twice about the possible motivations. And that could have given you again doubts.
And calling it mutilation implies those who have and want to have this engage in mutilation akin to FGM. It's irresponsible.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0079408/
It is akin to FGM when it's done nonconsensually (which it is, in the vast majority of cases for both sexes). Disclaimer: I understand that FGM is much more sexually debilitating and AFAIK never has a medical need behind it, but victims of circumcision are also being (usually needlessly) deprived of a functional part of their sexual organ.
FGM is evil, plain and simple. MGM/circumcision has interesting points on both sides, and while there might be a stronger argument against it than for, it's not strong enough to be a hill I'd choose to die on. But to each their own, I suppose.
I was referring to Types I-III as described here:
http://www.endfgm.eu/female-genital-mutilation/what-is-fgm/
Those are very clearly wrong, with no redeeming value and cause a great deal of harm to the woman, beyond any subjectivity. Nobody is signing up to have this done to them for aesthetic reasons. Compared to this, circumcision is only low-moderately invasive and damaging. If you are going to argue against circumcision, do so on its own merits, not by comparing it to something far worse.
This is actually not true. It's normal for the foreskin to remain attached in young children. This is entirely normal and acts as a powerful disease protection mechanism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0079408/
I suggest you do a little more research on what genital mutilation really means in the 3rd world, circumcision is no worse than some injections by comparison.
There is a very valid medical reason for this - it prevents sexually transmitted diseases [1] - So much so that it is promoted for adult males by health organizations. n the other hand, the foreskin serves absolutely no medical purpose.
Most reputable mohels (specially trained people who conduct the circumcision) will use a tube to suck the blood to prevent any chance of infection.
[1] http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/
Also, whether something is mutilation or not is about more than how much it hurts when it's done. In this case a child is deprived of a part of their body that performs a clear biological function.
Please link to the dictionary definition you're using.
From the definition: "make imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts" Cutting off the foreskin entirely fulfills that description.
Using the term mutilation when it is most often used in that context is absurd.
To address some of the other points here, I can only give a anecdotal example from my own experience. My wife and I decided to have our son circumcised and not because of religious reasons, but rather because of those listed in the referenced article, among others--and after much condsideration. At the end of the day we decided that the benefits outweighed the risks.
As far as who should have the choice of this procedure, ideally it would be the individual on whom the procedure is being performed. However, the procedure and pain as an adult would certainly be more memorable. My parents made the choice to circumcise me when I was an infant--I'm glad they did because I don't remember any associated pain or discomfort.
I think that there should be more discourse over this parental choice. If parents are making these decisions for mere aesthetic or ritualistic reasons then that is a problem. However, labeling circumcision as 'genital mutilation' across the board is not accurate. There are advantages and disadvantages that should be weighed carefully.
[1] http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/circumcision/basi...
You're probably right. That's why it was a weighted decision based on the information available.
Your other points do not match the same model we used to make our decision. Flipping someone off or giving the middle finger is a choice that one can make, and later apologize for and move on. Penile cancer or many STDs do not fall into that category.
I'm surprised that this topic is even on HN, and even more so by the presumptive and emotional responses that clearly didn't read the post in its entirety. So, I don't think this is a conversation I will engage in any further.
How do you rationalize changing your son's sexual function without his consent and despite the fact that it is possible to do the same procedure later in life, with zero mental and very little physical immediate trauma?
To what extent did you go to educate yourself on that matter, given you have no personal experience?
For the other, in penetration it both acts as liquid-less lubrication by allowing the penis to move freely inside it even if the vagina isn't very wet; and it also increases the range of sensations by feeling different when the movement is with the glans still inside the foreskin, and when it's deeper in and outside the foreskin. The "pseudo lube" aspect is also appreciated by women in my experience.
E: I see some people down-voted this and i am earnestly puzzled. I believe i have described only physical facts. Is this post too "frank" for a public forum, or did i get something wrong?
And yeah, i can entirely see how different people might not give a damn about any of this. Some might even benefit. Men who're not very sensitive would have more fun without the foreskin and the direct stimulation and might not even notice the loss of the nerves in the foreskin, men with very active glands might not care about the difference in lubrication, women whose glands are naturally more productive might not care which type of penis their partner has.
Nevertheless, the sexual function is changed. There are things a circumcised penis can do better. There's also things an uncircumcised one can do better. I'm not saying either of them is better than someone else's, just different. Changed.
Edit: can't reply, but I think you're being uncharitable by saying I'm overreacting to the word "mutilation" because it's technically correct by the dictionary definition. We don't describe people with earrings or tattoos as mutilated unless we intend to insult them or the practice.
That is not what mutilation means though. Like, literally not. Check the dictionary. You saying that just drives the point home that you're mapping a meaning onto it that is not intended by the other side.
These are all interesting changes!
Before people say that these activities are boring, and why would anyone ever want to try, I suggest watching a few videos on foreskin play in both gay and heterosexual contexts.
Here's a case for two babies getting Herpes in NYC because of this practise.
Are you OK with this?
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/herpes-strikes-nyc-babies-ritua...
I'm circumcised, as are my boys. I assumed it was for sound medical reasons. When I found out it wasn't, I was, and I am, furious.
Him: wants to ban an act which is basically minor surgery performed (for no obvious medical benefit) on someone who is underage and can't refuse the operation.
You: want to hold a popular vote which would decide if he should be killed because of his opinion.
Children should be free of mutilation, regardless of their religion.
'Regarding the Norwegian bill, Margolin said: “We will act in every way we can to fight this disgraceful bill... There is no doubt that this is an anti-Jewish decision that is blatantly antisemitic, because the bill does not harm Muslims who are not obligated to circumcise their children as infants and can perform the procedure even at an older ages as the bill allows.”'
In the US there is also a practice that all? hospitals offer this practice as just an additional procedure after birth. This should be stopped, and that is non-religious, it's almost worse because it's nearly thoughtless.
'Jewish leader urges Israel to exert political influence in fight for religious freedom in Europe.'
The best rhetorical approach here is probably to hammer home the fact that, by performing extensive and life-changing cosmetic surgery on a baby, you are violating their rights. This avoids impugning the parents' motives, which they are (for lack of a less abrasive word) aggressively programmed to defend.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision
The principle is the same. The hospital should not be doing so much as trimming a fingernail of any patient incapable of giving informed consent, in the absence of a true medical necessity.
In the case of the ear-piercings, it is likely that the local cultural landscape is such that if the procedure is not performed in a sterile and controlled environment, by professional medical personnel, at the hospital, it would be done by amateurs at home. The medical necessity there may be the significant probability of botched, infected piercings. As a public health strategy, it isn't bad. Do the piercings at the hospital for two generations, and then ramp up the out-of-pocket cost for it, while vilifying it with a PR campaign.
Babies should still not be having their ears pierced, though. That is certainly of lesser severity than cutting off and throwing away more significant bits of the baby, leaving a permanent, visible scar there, but it is on the same spectrum. You are performing unnecessary procedures on a patient that cannot give consent.
Do you have a child? Would you not trim their fingernails?
Obviously you would, because you consent on their behalf. Same deal with the piercing; the Hospital obviously doesn't do it without the parents' consent.
But your comparison is flawed, because pierced ear holes, if not filled, will easily heal over time, while the circumcision is non-reversible (foreskin will never grow back).
Serious question: how far should that be allowed to go? What if someone believes cutting off their child's earlobe is best for their child (for the sake of an example)?
As I see it, religious freedom does not mean you get to do whatever you want with no comeback.
While I find the idea of cutting off the earlobe repulsive, I don't think it sufficiently crosses the line of harm. For all I know this could be a legitimate practice by some obscure tribe.
Finally, no one says religious freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want without any repercussions. That's a gross mischaracterization of it.
Any non-circumcised male could choose to undergo the process as adults, I don't hear of many takers.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/MG_Pang/publication/664...
Stockholm syndrome is very likely in those cases.
http://madsciencewriter.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-foreskin-wh...
Circumcision, for (orthodox) Jews, is one of the most fundamental conditions for identification and belonging to that group. Leaving a Jewish male baby uncircumcised would most likely lead to feelings of alienation and isolation later on in life – feelings which could have significant psychological impact and could largely negate the benefits one gains from strong communal structures.
Regardless of the process's inherent morality, a blanket ban may cause more harm than good. Cultures have dependency trees, like a Jenga tower: remove one block, even one that, in isolation, is a negative, and you risk destabilizing the entire structure and causing significantly more net harm than that single negative you erased.
More generally, I'd propose a corollary to Chesterson's fence [1]: Before you (in righteous external-observer outrage) destroy an element of a culture, make sure you understand what role that element plays, and what harm you may cause with such heavy handed destruction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...
And just to cut off this objection, the vast majority of female circumcision involves removal of the clitoral hood, which is (mutatis mutandis) anatomically equivalent to removal of the foreskin and has similar effects and risks.
Most FGM is type II
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation
Saying it has similar effects and risks is just handwaving.
And it is largely practiced in Africa, where tribal ritualistic bodily modification has remained a much bigger thing (compared to the rest of the world). Consider women who stretch their lips with disks to attract men etc.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.newsweek.com/fgm-compromise-n...
That is a nick, not full mutilation.
It is very far from FGM which removes the clitoris etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawoodi_Bohra
We have hundreds of years of data on Jewish males and how they fare after this operation at 8 days old, and it is not at all clear that they are medically or psychologically worse off than without it.
The fact that it is considered a requirement in the Jewish religion for membership in the Jewish people plays a major role in the phychological well being of the child and adult, and as the parent comment has said this needs to be considered!
> The fact that it is considered a requirement in the Jewish religion for membership in the Jewish people plays a major role in the phychological well being of the child and adult, and as the parent comment has said this needs to be considered!
And it should be. It should be considered just like stoning is considered, and thrown out as against modern principles (in most places, sadly not all). It should be considered, just like homosexuality should not have you burned at the stake. This is no different.
I recognize that this is not a light decision, but it is a brutal act (with non 0% chances of horrible things going wrong) that has no physiological need.
Now, the nick I leave as a compromise, b/c I do understand that this is a fundamental requirement of the religion as it is followed. This allows for religious practice to be followed with out mutilating the child.
Also, while a nick _may_ work for certain religions, it serves zero purpose for Judaic circumcision, and would actually be forbidden as unnecessary harm.
Jewish males can still have their private parts circumcised when they become adult as it was supposed to be the case, a rite of passage for getting into the adult world.
Most of your rebuttal is centered around a "slippery-slope" argument and it is not convincing enough.
As an orthodox Jew, I can tell you that failure to circumcize your son at 8 days old (outside of extenuating circumstances, e.g. medical issues) is one of the worst sins you could commit.
Furthermore, you would be ostracized from the community, and your child will suffer socially, and emotionally.
Once the child turns 13 he is responsible to ensure that he it's circumcised, and considering that he most likely will not have abandoned his religion by 13 he will go through with it. So now there's physical pain as well.
And if a government would ban circumcision, I'd be willing to bet that all Orthodox Jews would leave. And if the government prevented that (which has certainly happened before), then it is well documented that many Jews are ready to give up their lives in order to circumcise their sons.
Update: only my first comment was theological; the rest were socio-physical
> by 13 he will go through with it. So now there's physical pain as well.
1. One example is Ch 4 and 5 of http://www.circumcision.org/cht.htm
Slippery slope argument says that "we shouldn't do X (even though X is inherently okay) because it might lead yet another set of actions – Y – which is a negative". I'm not saying that at all. Banning circumcision will lead to significant identity issues as a direct consequence, not as a result of some other intermediate effect that obtains as a result of the ban.
It was like "Hey boy, you've hit puberty and become a man now. Let's do this small rite of passage and cut that foreskin off your dick so you could join the rest of the tribe of grown up men"
Do Jews really go around checking each other's penises all the time?
2. Marriage: Barring a specific medical reason to not be circumcised, many Jewish women would take issue with an uncircumcised husband.
3. Locker rooms.
But really #1 is the most immediately pressing.
I may not be Jewish (though I am Christian and circumcised), and I realize my American values do not directly apply in Norway, but freedom of religion is a basic human right.
Devout religious followers would have no choice but to "obey God rather than men", so laws like this proposed ban are simply a veiled authorization of persecution.
Freedom of religion means the state can't tell you what to believe. It emphatically does not mean that you have carte-blanche authority to do whatever crazy stuff your religion asks you to do, including murdering infidels or performing cosmetic surgery on babies.
And how shall we decide what constitutes "crazy stuff"? In Daniel 6:4-9, it was decided that it was unlawful to make a petition to any god or man except the king. In fact, this was done explicitly to provide an excuse to persecute Daniel.
To help illuminate the issue, what if Hinduism required nose piercing at 8 days, instead of Jews with circumcision? Some in this thread find piercing babies to be wrong, while others find it acceptable. Who gets to decide? And what about the poor Hindu who is now jailed for the practice?
It's ironic to me how easy people find it to run merrily down this slippery slope, and yet complain so readily when their own freedoms are infringed.
This law is not incompatible with freedom of religion.
You can talk about how harmful it is, but it definitely causes harm.
Leviticus 20:27 says it's OK to stone mediums to death - should this be lawful too, or would it also be persecution?
You can take freedom of religion too far - the books of the bible were written rather a long time ago. Judaism has been able to modernise regarding such things as being stoned to death for merely breaking Sabbath, so maybe it needs to modernise a bit more regarding mutilating children?
Only until it infringes on someone else's rights and freedoms. At that point, it's violence. That's what circumcision is. If you wish to argue that anything should be allowed for any religion, then we have to accept a world that tolerates rape, human sacrifice and mass suicides, just to name a few religious practices that your argument would allow. But if we had that kind of religious freedom, at least we'd be able to take whatever drugs we all wanted to forget about all the stupidity going on around us in the name of religious freedom. Let's face it, religious freedom is a thinly veiled argument for allowing people to do fucked up shit that would otherwise be unacceptable justifying those actions. Since religion can justify any and all horrible human actions, it's basically an argument for allowing one to do whatever one wants without fear of retribution by appealing to unverifiable nonsense.
1. There is a subjective morality that says a parent must not make decisions for a child that will affect it in a manner that could possibly be perceived as negative
2. There is a subjective morality that says to follow your religion, and one aspect of the religion is circumcising your son at 8 days old
The people ascribing to the first believe it to be an objective morality. The people ascribing to the second believe it to be an objective morality.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1. Not giving your child tattoos, piercings or a circumcision.
2. Female genital mutilation.