Jokes aside, it’s fucked up to normalize maiming a baby by cutting skin off their dick when they are unable to consent, all in an attempt to deprive them of their sexuality years later and rip away protection to a sensitive area for no reason other than tradition. Really, there is no medically substantiated reason is the vast majority of the population except in instances of a birth defect.
It’s always upsetting no matter what but the biggest upset is when people do this to their children when they’re not even religious, which is common in the US and South Korea. I don’t think some parents realise how abnormal it is.
Imma point out that you don’t have a point of comparison. It doesn’t cause a complete inability to feel pleasure, but it absolutely has a significant impact on sensitivity.
I feel like in most of the many Reddit threads about this (seriously, they’re obsessed with foreskins) most people who were circumcised after becoming sexually active stated that they didn’t feel that much of a difference. But maybe that’s just what I took out of it to comfort myself since I’m circumcised haha.
That said I do think it’s dumb to routinely perform unnecessary surgery with unknown side effects. All surgery carries risks and there have been many serious complications from circumcisions, which carry no meaningful benefits in modern society.
I have heard similar, but I don’t think that’s directly comparable to having it done before becoming sexually active. Also it’s not just Reddit. I reckon a lot of people have an opinion on this one. I swear though, if one more person tries to tell me it’s “less clean” I’m going to tear their head off. I’ve known how to wash properly (uncircumcised) since I was single-digits old, bugger off!
Very much so, in particular Puritans wanted to stop boys from touching themselves. And in a sense it very much works, you don’t hear “used the wrong stuff for lube” types of stories out of Europe because we don’t need any in the first place (modulo using a masturbator which btw yes you should totally get, Tenga Airtech are cheap, durable, and also otherwise high-performance).
I’m circumcised and have only used lubrication to touch myself maybe 3 times. And I’ve been touching myself every single day (when I’m not having real sex with someone I’m in a relationship with) at least once a day for the past 15+ years. People use lube because it feels more like sex not because they have to. I was jacking off for at least 6 or 7 years before I finally got to experience the real thing so I just felt like lube was too messy. Especially when you jack off multiple times in a day, the thought of cleaning off lotion or whatever around my crotch 10+ times in one day sounds terrible.
Plus I’ve had many conversations with American women that I had relationships with or were just friends with that all expressed that uncircumcised dicks gross them out. So I’ve always been happy to be circumcised strictly for that reason. I doubt it happens in Europe because the women in America just aren’t used to it, but if I showed a woman my dick and she got grossed out I would be devastated.
Phimosis isn’t even a birth defect, it’s not supposed to be pulled back for an infant. There’s basically no medically justifiable reason, ever, to do this to a baby.
While I agree that most cases of phimosis would be better to wait until teenage/young adult years before intervention is considered, if it’s bad enough that their pee balloons under the foreskin, it requires surgery. However, that surgery does not require full circumcision either in babies or adolescents.
Ballooning can be harmless and doesn’t mean that there’s severe phimosis, much less severe enough to require surgery. The process of natural separation takes time.
Okay, I’m incredibly anti-circumcision, but you’re just being obtuse. The whole point of medical science is to prevent suffering. For example, we vaccinate babies to prevent harmful illnesses. They cannot speak for themselves so we have to make those decisions for them, but only in their best interests.
Even if there’s phimosis going straight to circumcision is not medically defensible, first there’s testosterone creme and mechanical stimulation. Don’t have statistics at hand but the number of cases where that’s not enough should be lower than that of intersex folks.
The standard of care should be too take the least invasive approach possible, especially when the more radical option has lifelong consequences. Not sure how that position is obtuse. And if a child is too young to speak, nobody should be recommending this operation because any diagnosis of ‘phimosis’ at that age is plain bullshit.
…because any diagnosis of ‘phimosis’ at that age is plain bullshit.
This is the position I believe is obtuse. Circumcision being abhorrent doesn’t mean that any medically necessary surgery in the area is “bullshit”. I’ll point out, again, that surgery for phimosis does not require circumcision, nor does it cause the same lifelong consequences. I’m not going to debate it with you further though.
Edit: Under your logic, we should just let a baby with a congenital heart defect die instead of operate on them, because they can’t speak for themselves.
Phimosis in infants can lead to infections to the urinary tract, discomfort and/or pain and other related issues.
Phimosis is a medical condition and needs to be addressed as such, with parents/guardians taking well informed decisions backed with medical advice.
Addressing phimosis and other issues regarding the prepuce also does not require circumcision as other procedures can be done to rectify issues.
The removal of the prepuce for non medical reasons is an unnecessary, unjustifiable, unreasonable act, already considered to some degree as genital mutilation, as it has been shown it deprives feeling from the area and thus inhibits the sexual development and enjoyment.
Let’s compare this to tail-docking for dogs. There are plenty of legitimate medical reasons that a vet might dock a tail for, including the fact it can be basically impossible to heal a severe injury on one. But if you get your dogs tail docked just for the looks, that’s a shitty thing to do. That’s why where I live, it’s illegal to do it just for aesthetics.
Now, if you’re suggesting that the vast majority of circumcisions aren’t aesthetic, and are in fact a necessary preventative medical procedure.
Well, firstly, we survived as a species for hundreds of thousands of years before we started doing it just fine.
And secondly, you could just as easily make the argument that removing the testes is needed to prevent future cases of testicular cancer.
Oh wait, doctors do literally say and do this to Intersex babies, with literally no medical evidence to back up their claims. Then try to force a child that was born with external genitalia to grow up as a “girl” after cutting it off.
I don’t think any doctor performs circumcision “just for looks.” Hopefully not. I don’t personally see anything wrong with an uncircumcised penis at all, in fact, it really should be up to the parents.
All I’m saying is that the reasons for doing it aren’t designed to hurt kids or make them feel sexually unhappy. Same with a child that has male and female sexual characteristics - at some point there you as a parent will make a decision, to remove the male genitalia or allow the kid to be hermaphroditic - the choice you make isn’t based on a desire to hurt the child, but on what you think will be a healthy benefit for them.
Exactly and it’s a preventative for other possible disease also. I’m not saying a person MUST be circumcised, but it isn’t abnormal to want your kid to have a healthy start in life, and frankly I don’t think anyone can say for sure that an uncircumsised penis “feels more pleasure” than a circumcised one. All men have sensitive penises, so how could you know that for certain?
Circumcision deprives sexuality?? So I would be even MORE horny if I wasn’t circumcised?! I can’t believe that. I don’t think my kids will be circumcised if I have ever have any because it is pretty archaic but I don’t see any reason to be mad about it.
thats not the reason people do circumcision. most people do it for religious purposes. to argue that it is a human rights violation is to argue that people are not allowed to have a religion. religions such as Judaism circumcise because to show that they made a covenant with god. it is a huge important part of Judaism. you cant take away peoples religious beliefs if they arent being enforced on people who arent in that belief.
Where do you draw the line? Human sacrifices used to be a common religious practice, but surely you wouldn’t argue that we shouldn’t force others to conform to the belief that murder is wrong.
Personally I think religious practices that cause actual harm to others deserve no protection. Beliefs are just beliefs, religious or otherwise. If I believe I should be allowed to mutilate others without consequence, no one would defend my right to “practice” my belief; but if it’s part of a longstanding religious tradition it just gets a pass?
Traditions are only as good as the underlying reasons for them. If those have been forgotten or are otherwise no longer relevant, the tradition needs new justification just as any other new idea does.
Your rights to practice religion ends when it starts infringing on the rights of another person. You are not entitled to harming others for your own religious needs.
You can do whatever you want with your own body in the name of religion. Just do not mutilate your own child.
Imagine if a different religion warrants cutting off the nipples of newborns, or ripping off a nail, or skinning a toe. That is how barbaric you sound when you say ‘it’s fine to cut off the skin of my child’s penis’.
Are you aware the majority of Americans are not jewish but were subjected to genital mutilation after birth? It is not a religious thing here primarily, it’s a practice that was started by a prude named Kellog to explicitly make it more difficult to masturbate and because it is “cleaner,” which is a dubious claim at best.
He did it to sexually stunt America in the name of Christianity and his warped morality. I would say that if a religion mandates you do something barbaric, then that practice should still be outlawed. I believe in a secular state where the rules of society and the greater good take precedence over myopic religious practices.
Similarly how the right to free speech does to let you go around making threats etc., the freedom of religion must not allow for crimes – which I consider infant genital mutilation to be.
To be clear, nobody is saying that circumcision is always a human rights violation. Only when it is done to a child who cannot consent. If an adult were to choose to get circumcised then that would be his right.
you cant take away peoples religious beliefs if they arent being enforced on people who arent in that belief.
This is exactly the problem. Children are typically circumcised shortly after birth. They are not part of any belief and cannot even speak, let alone consent to something as serious and irreversible as a circumcision. It is being forced on them.
People are allowed to have and practice their religion. They should not be allowed to force their beliefs on others, even their own kids.
If course this all ignores the fact that many circumcisions (in the US at least) are not performed for explicitly religious reasons.
But they can take away my foreskin without my consent? No, fuck that and fuck the religions that normalize the mutilation of children’s genitals. Wild that I even have to say that to you.
It’s also uncomfortably similar to the excuse used by alt-right conservatives when it comes to their abuse of trans kids, just with kids instead of babies in their case.
Okay, but why should it be acceptable to induct a child into a religion from the moment of birth, spend their formative years being taught a belief system that they have no ability to think critically about, while isolating them from alternative systems of belief? Why shouldn’t it be the norm to raise your children on the idea of all religious beliefs or lack thereof being equally valid and plausible, that we can’t prove one or another definitively true so it becomes a matter of “what do you chose to have blind faith in?”, and let them decide as an adult?
Actually the reasons for circumcision of a baby are not about wanting to deprive the kid of their future sexuality. Surprisingly, most circumcised males go on to have normal and sastisfying sex lives, without many of the diseases than can come from uncircumcised penises. Left uncircumcised, many male babies get a number of urinary tract infections in their first year of life, which is a major reason why babies are circumcised. Also - just FYI, most circumcision is painless and does not mutilate the penis in any way.
So I have 3 boys and 1 is circumcised…I highly recommend you go in the room while the doctor is cutting off part of the penis and tell me it doesn’t hurt…it very clearly hurts and it is very clearly mutilated afterwards
Well the doctor did a bad job if that’s the case. As a phys assistant in orthopedics I’ve seen a lot worse. But knowing you’re potentially helping someone makes it better. And I don’t believe your son is walking around with a mutilated penis.
Jokes aside, it’s fucked up to normalize maiming a baby by cutting skin off their dick when they are unable to consent, all in an attempt to deprive them of their sexuality years later and rip away protection to a sensitive area for no reason other than tradition. Really, there is no medically substantiated reason is the vast majority of the population except in instances of a birth defect.
It’s always upsetting no matter what but the biggest upset is when people do this to their children when they’re not even religious, which is common in the US and South Korea. I don’t think some parents realise how abnormal it is.
This is a great presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGYq1n6Ipfw
Wow, now I feel bad for posting this. I haven’t thought of this under this angle. Thank you for the eye opening!
Was that the original intent? Because as someone who’s circumcised I can tell you that didn’t slow me down one bit
Imma point out that you don’t have a point of comparison. It doesn’t cause a complete inability to feel pleasure, but it absolutely has a significant impact on sensitivity.
I feel like in most of the many Reddit threads about this (seriously, they’re obsessed with foreskins) most people who were circumcised after becoming sexually active stated that they didn’t feel that much of a difference. But maybe that’s just what I took out of it to comfort myself since I’m circumcised haha.
That said I do think it’s dumb to routinely perform unnecessary surgery with unknown side effects. All surgery carries risks and there have been many serious complications from circumcisions, which carry no meaningful benefits in modern society.
I have heard similar, but I don’t think that’s directly comparable to having it done before becoming sexually active. Also it’s not just Reddit. I reckon a lot of people have an opinion on this one. I swear though, if one more person tries to tell me it’s “less clean” I’m going to tear their head off. I’ve known how to wash properly (uncircumcised) since I was single-digits old, bugger off!
Yeah that’s kinda a dumb argument, we don’t cut any other body parts off to save on washing up time.
Very much so, in particular Puritans wanted to stop boys from touching themselves. And in a sense it very much works, you don’t hear “used the wrong stuff for lube” types of stories out of Europe because we don’t need any in the first place (modulo using a masturbator which btw yes you should totally get, Tenga Airtech are cheap, durable, and also otherwise high-performance).
I’m circumcised and have only used lubrication to touch myself maybe 3 times. And I’ve been touching myself every single day (when I’m not having real sex with someone I’m in a relationship with) at least once a day for the past 15+ years. People use lube because it feels more like sex not because they have to. I was jacking off for at least 6 or 7 years before I finally got to experience the real thing so I just felt like lube was too messy. Especially when you jack off multiple times in a day, the thought of cleaning off lotion or whatever around my crotch 10+ times in one day sounds terrible.
Plus I’ve had many conversations with American women that I had relationships with or were just friends with that all expressed that uncircumcised dicks gross them out. So I’ve always been happy to be circumcised strictly for that reason. I doubt it happens in Europe because the women in America just aren’t used to it, but if I showed a woman my dick and she got grossed out I would be devastated.
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I literally mentioned birth defects as a medically substiated reason, phimosis being one of them. Please read.
Phimosis isn’t even a birth defect, it’s not supposed to be pulled back for an infant. There’s basically no medically justifiable reason, ever, to do this to a baby.
While I agree that most cases of phimosis would be better to wait until teenage/young adult years before intervention is considered, if it’s bad enough that their pee balloons under the foreskin, it requires surgery. However, that surgery does not require full circumcision either in babies or adolescents.
Ballooning can be harmless and doesn’t mean that there’s severe phimosis, much less severe enough to require surgery. The process of natural separation takes time.
Okay, I’m incredibly anti-circumcision, but you’re just being obtuse. The whole point of medical science is to prevent suffering. For example, we vaccinate babies to prevent harmful illnesses. They cannot speak for themselves so we have to make those decisions for them, but only in their best interests.
Even if there’s phimosis going straight to circumcision is not medically defensible, first there’s testosterone creme and mechanical stimulation. Don’t have statistics at hand but the number of cases where that’s not enough should be lower than that of intersex folks.
The standard of care should be too take the least invasive approach possible, especially when the more radical option has lifelong consequences. Not sure how that position is obtuse. And if a child is too young to speak, nobody should be recommending this operation because any diagnosis of ‘phimosis’ at that age is plain bullshit.
This is the position I believe is obtuse. Circumcision being abhorrent doesn’t mean that any medically necessary surgery in the area is “bullshit”. I’ll point out, again, that surgery for phimosis does not require circumcision, nor does it cause the same lifelong consequences. I’m not going to debate it with you further though.
Edit: Under your logic, we should just let a baby with a congenital heart defect die instead of operate on them, because they can’t speak for themselves.
Phimosis in infants can lead to infections to the urinary tract, discomfort and/or pain and other related issues.
Phimosis is a medical condition and needs to be addressed as such, with parents/guardians taking well informed decisions backed with medical advice.
Addressing phimosis and other issues regarding the prepuce also does not require circumcision as other procedures can be done to rectify issues.
The removal of the prepuce for non medical reasons is an unnecessary, unjustifiable, unreasonable act, already considered to some degree as genital mutilation, as it has been shown it deprives feeling from the area and thus inhibits the sexual development and enjoyment.
Nobody takes you seriously either because you don’t even finish reading the post and then act unnecessarily rude and obnoxious afterwards.
Let’s compare this to tail-docking for dogs. There are plenty of legitimate medical reasons that a vet might dock a tail for, including the fact it can be basically impossible to heal a severe injury on one. But if you get your dogs tail docked just for the looks, that’s a shitty thing to do. That’s why where I live, it’s illegal to do it just for aesthetics.
Now, if you’re suggesting that the vast majority of circumcisions aren’t aesthetic, and are in fact a necessary preventative medical procedure. Well, firstly, we survived as a species for hundreds of thousands of years before we started doing it just fine. And secondly, you could just as easily make the argument that removing the testes is needed to prevent future cases of testicular cancer.
Oh wait, doctors do literally say and do this to Intersex babies, with literally no medical evidence to back up their claims. Then try to force a child that was born with external genitalia to grow up as a “girl” after cutting it off.
I don’t think any doctor performs circumcision “just for looks.” Hopefully not. I don’t personally see anything wrong with an uncircumcised penis at all, in fact, it really should be up to the parents.
All I’m saying is that the reasons for doing it aren’t designed to hurt kids or make them feel sexually unhappy. Same with a child that has male and female sexual characteristics - at some point there you as a parent will make a decision, to remove the male genitalia or allow the kid to be hermaphroditic - the choice you make isn’t based on a desire to hurt the child, but on what you think will be a healthy benefit for them.
Sorry mate, wrong community, this isn’t the circus here
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Exactly and it’s a preventative for other possible disease also. I’m not saying a person MUST be circumcised, but it isn’t abnormal to want your kid to have a healthy start in life, and frankly I don’t think anyone can say for sure that an uncircumsised penis “feels more pleasure” than a circumcised one. All men have sensitive penises, so how could you know that for certain?
Circumcision deprives sexuality?? So I would be even MORE horny if I wasn’t circumcised?! I can’t believe that. I don’t think my kids will be circumcised if I have ever have any because it is pretty archaic but I don’t see any reason to be mad about it.
thats not the reason people do circumcision. most people do it for religious purposes. to argue that it is a human rights violation is to argue that people are not allowed to have a religion. religions such as Judaism circumcise because to show that they made a covenant with god. it is a huge important part of Judaism. you cant take away peoples religious beliefs if they arent being enforced on people who arent in that belief.
Forced genital mutilation on people that are unable to consent.
How do you feel about female genital mutilation?
while I think its harmful (it can cause severe inflammation leading to hospital visits) im not going to force others to conform to that belief
Where do you draw the line? Human sacrifices used to be a common religious practice, but surely you wouldn’t argue that we shouldn’t force others to conform to the belief that murder is wrong.
Personally I think religious practices that cause actual harm to others deserve no protection. Beliefs are just beliefs, religious or otherwise. If I believe I should be allowed to mutilate others without consequence, no one would defend my right to “practice” my belief; but if it’s part of a longstanding religious tradition it just gets a pass?
Traditions are only as good as the underlying reasons for them. If those have been forgotten or are otherwise no longer relevant, the tradition needs new justification just as any other new idea does.
Religion doesn’t supercede bodily autonomy. Period.
Your rights to practice religion ends when it starts infringing on the rights of another person. You are not entitled to harming others for your own religious needs.
You can do whatever you want with your own body in the name of religion. Just do not mutilate your own child.
Imagine if a different religion warrants cutting off the nipples of newborns, or ripping off a nail, or skinning a toe. That is how barbaric you sound when you say ‘it’s fine to cut off the skin of my child’s penis’.
Are you aware the majority of Americans are not jewish but were subjected to genital mutilation after birth? It is not a religious thing here primarily, it’s a practice that was started by a prude named Kellog to explicitly make it more difficult to masturbate and because it is “cleaner,” which is a dubious claim at best.
yeah outside religion I don’t know why Kellogg did that. im talking about the type used for religious purposes.
He did it to sexually stunt America in the name of Christianity and his warped morality. I would say that if a religion mandates you do something barbaric, then that practice should still be outlawed. I believe in a secular state where the rules of society and the greater good take precedence over myopic religious practices.
Similarly how the right to free speech does to let you go around making threats etc., the freedom of religion must not allow for crimes – which I consider infant genital mutilation to be.
“outside of the reason he did it i have no idea why he did it”
To be clear, nobody is saying that circumcision is always a human rights violation. Only when it is done to a child who cannot consent. If an adult were to choose to get circumcised then that would be his right.
This is exactly the problem. Children are typically circumcised shortly after birth. They are not part of any belief and cannot even speak, let alone consent to something as serious and irreversible as a circumcision. It is being forced on them.
People are allowed to have and practice their religion. They should not be allowed to force their beliefs on others, even their own kids.
If course this all ignores the fact that many circumcisions (in the US at least) are not performed for explicitly religious reasons.
But they can take away my foreskin without my consent? No, fuck that and fuck the religions that normalize the mutilation of children’s genitals. Wild that I even have to say that to you.
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I dont have the time or the crayons to explain to you how you have entirely missed the point
By that logic they can do literally anything to a baby, including murder, abuse, and I don’t really want to go on.
It’s also uncomfortably similar to the excuse used by alt-right conservatives when it comes to their abuse of trans kids, just with kids instead of babies in their case.
Exactly. Which is why you wait for that baby to become an adult before asking them if they want a slice of their dick cut off.
They’re enforcing their “belief” on people who cannot believe let alone consent.
Okay, but why should it be acceptable to induct a child into a religion from the moment of birth, spend their formative years being taught a belief system that they have no ability to think critically about, while isolating them from alternative systems of belief? Why shouldn’t it be the norm to raise your children on the idea of all religious beliefs or lack thereof being equally valid and plausible, that we can’t prove one or another definitively true so it becomes a matter of “what do you chose to have blind faith in?”, and let them decide as an adult?
TIL genital mutilation is religious purpose
Actually the reasons for circumcision of a baby are not about wanting to deprive the kid of their future sexuality. Surprisingly, most circumcised males go on to have normal and sastisfying sex lives, without many of the diseases than can come from uncircumcised penises. Left uncircumcised, many male babies get a number of urinary tract infections in their first year of life, which is a major reason why babies are circumcised. Also - just FYI, most circumcision is painless and does not mutilate the penis in any way.
So I have 3 boys and 1 is circumcised…I highly recommend you go in the room while the doctor is cutting off part of the penis and tell me it doesn’t hurt…it very clearly hurts and it is very clearly mutilated afterwards
Well the doctor did a bad job if that’s the case. As a phys assistant in orthopedics I’ve seen a lot worse. But knowing you’re potentially helping someone makes it better. And I don’t believe your son is walking around with a mutilated penis.