Circumcision?

[Artoo]

What are your thoughts on both male and female circumcision?
Personally, I see no need for either apart from religious tradition (and even that's not a "need", more of a cultural norm) but are there actually any benefits at all?

 

[MasterPaladin]

What are your thoughts on both male and female circumcision?
Personally, I see no need for either apart from religious tradition (and even that's not a "need", more of a cultural norm) but are there actually any benefits at all?

this is one hell of a topic but it's supposed to be cleaner and less chance of infections with men I never heard of it for women lmao

 

[Tortuga]

chicks are suppose to be circumsized? what the hell do they do? cut of the hood above the clit?

 

[Goodieluver]

chicks are suppose to be circumsized? what the hell do they do? cut of the hood above the clit?

Female circumcision is a barbaric tradition in alot of the arab and african world

They pretty much cut the clit off i believe.

Pretty much a lot of Prostitution rings in Africa do this so they can't enjoy sex, same for other tribal areas as well.

Its pretty much to remove the enjoyment of sex from women

Female genital cutting (FGC), also known as female genital mutilation (FGM), female circumcision or female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), refers to "all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons."[1] The term is almost exclusively used to describe tradition, cultural, and religious procedures where parents must give consent, because of the minor age of the subject, rather than to procedures generally done with self-consent (such as labiaplasty and vaginoplasty).[2][3][4] It also generally does not refer to procedures used in gender reassignment surgery, and the genital modification of intersexuals.[5][6][7]

FGC is practised throughout the world, with the practice concentrated most heavily in Africa. Its practice is extremely controversial. Opposition is motivated by concerns regarding the consent (or lack thereof, in most cases) of the patient, and subsequently the safety and long-term consequences of the procedures. In the past several decades, there have been many concentrated efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to end the practice of FGC. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has also declared February 6 an "International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation.

 

[Tortuga]

Fuck that shit!

 

[Icycle]

chicks are suppose to be circumsized? what the hell do they do? cut of the hood above the clit?

Most often when people refer to female circumcision, they are refering to the barbaric practice of cutting off a woman's glans clitoris, also called female genital mutilation (FGM). This procedure is often done in unsanitary conditions, against the woman's will, and in all likelihood leaves her unable to experience orgasm.

But the same term can also refer to a procedure that is a closer analog to male circumcision: removing some or all of the citoral hood, leaving the glans clitoris constantly exposed. This form of female circumcision is an entirely elective procedure, usually done for aesthetics or sexual sensation. Given the extreme sensitivity of the clitoris, this is obviously not for everyone.

 

[Tortuga]

Seriously, you guys are making me want to wrap my nu nu in duct tape and then possibly make a diaper out of iron welded on.

 

[♡AimLEE♡]

chicks are suppose to be circumsized? what the hell do they do? cut of the hood above the clit?

HAHHAHAHAH
that was great!

 

[Icycle]

What are your thoughts on both male and female circumcision?
Personally, I see no need for either apart from religious tradition (and even that's not a "need", more of a cultural norm) but are there actually any benefits at all?

I really don't buy the hygiene argument for circumcision, since cleaning one's penis really isn't any harder than cleaning between one's toes or behind one's ears.

There are medical studies that suggest that circumcision in men may provide a small amount of protection against infection with HIV and some other STIs, and circumcised men may have a lower incidence of penile cancer probably related to lower rates of HPV infection.

However, given the nature of circumcision, I think it is more appropriate to allow boys or men to give informed concent for the procedure, rather than to routinely circumcize all male infants.

I'm not aware of any benefits for female hood removal, beyond an individual's desire for the procedure. There is some anecdotal evidence that it may enhance sexual sensitivity for some women who have a deeply buried glans clitoris.

It goes without saying that FGM is a reprehensible practice with no benefits and lots of risks and terrible consequences.

 

[Tortuga]

P.S. Nice to see you posting Icycle! Hope to see you at NEST!

 

[chicago]

I think male circumcision is ok. It looks better aesthetically, in comparison I think, but of course it's not necessary. As for female circumcision, that seems more like mutilation in my opinion.

 

[Musicroxmysox]

Well I think male is fine and also not fine. Doesn't matter to me. As a Jewish person though I would have a bris if I had a son, but that is a whole other matter.

For women it is wrong and should be stopped. Totally barbaric.

 

[MasterPaladin]

I checked this out today and was shocked to find out they cut the labia off I may not have spelled it right but I know what it is and it's done in arab culture and yes it is mutilation

 

[Dussicar]

I'm circumsised.

I don't know why, but I am.

I think it was the thing to do back in the seventies. That and van mural art.

 

[xionking]

I'm circumsised.

I don't know why, but I am.

I think it was the thing to do back in the seventies. That and van mural art.

Lol van mural art...


Two close friends of mine went and go themselves circumsised when they were 16 years old.

-Xionking

 

[sasaxrah]

FGM ... um major ouch. Mutilation is a very appropriate word.

As for the boys: I've actually never seen an uncircumcised penis in real life, so it does look a little different to me. I agree with Artoo, I don't see a medical/biological need. I have no idea what I'd do if I had a son.

 

[locker669]

I had it done before I can even remember and don't hate my parents because of it. Thank God they had it done.

Did you know they are reversable?
http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-07-12/news/the-fantastic-foreskin/

 

[Capnmad]

I'm circumsised.

I don't know why, but I am.

I think it was the thing to do back in the seventies. That and van mural art.

Ah the seventies... With van mural art as the standard, you just know all sorts of decisions were genius back then!

Female circumcision's just wrong. Male circumcision is arbitrary and needless. I'm familiar with the studies Icycle cited, but that's all the benefit I'm aware of. But same thing here -- circumcised, but only 'cause it was the seventies thing to do.

Thank God other 70's decisions weren't so permanent...

(at the hospital)

Doctor: Your son's perfectly healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes. But we do have that additional option we discussed...

Newborn's Father: The permanent polyester leisure suit? Perfect! My son'll always be groovy!

 

[Goodieluver]

FGM ... um major ouch. Mutilation is a very appropriate word.

As for the boys: I've actually never seen an uncircumcised penis in real life, so it does look a little different to me. I agree with Artoo, I don't see a medical/biological need. I have no idea what I'd do if I had a son.

Ive only seen in various European porn vids that dont have them circumcised, its weird

 

[Artoo]

Thanks for the responses, everyone 🙂

Just wondering, isn't there a bit of a double standard when it comes to comparing female and male circumcision? Female circumcision is almost always considered barbaric, whereas male circumcision is somewhat accepted as part of a cultural norm.

 

[Goodieluver]

Thanks for the responses, everyone 🙂

Just wondering, isn't there a bit of a double standard when it comes to comparing female and male circumcision? Female circumcision is almost always considered barbaric, whereas male circumcision is somewhat accepted as part of a cultural norm.

Thats cuz male circumcision doesn't do the damage for females it does

In most countries its done delib as a way of subjugating women

 

[ManOMann100]

Most men outside the U.S. who are not Jewish or Muslim are not circumcised. Some African tribes circumcise as do places like the Philippines and South Korea where there has been a lot of U.S. influence. I am an American, but I was not circumcised at birth and don't really plan on ever being circumcised. I've never had a problem, either with health/cleanliness or girls not liking it, although they do often seem surprised and ask questions. My brother is the same way, and he is quite the ladies man, as is one of my good friends who was born in Germany to German parents but raised most of his life in the U.S. and considers himself American.

They say circumcising reduces the risk of HIV and STD but European men don't seem to have an extremely high rate of either based on most studies. A lot of the studies that claim HIV is more common in uncircumcised men are done in places with high infection rates that already exists regardless, and event then the rate is less than 10% more likely.

 

[Icycle]

Just wondering, isn't there a bit of a double standard when it comes to comparing female and male circumcision? Female circumcision is almost always considered barbaric, whereas male circumcision is somewhat accepted as part of a cultural norm.

FGM, the procedure that is mostly commonly referred to female circumcision is roughly comparable to chopping off the head of the penis, and leaves women without the ability to experience sexual pleasure. Male circumcision does remove some sensitive tissue, but most men are still able to experience sexual pleasure and orgasm whether or not they are circumcised. The female equivalent of male circumcision would be the removal of the clitoral hood, but that isn't what most people mean when they talk about female circumcision.

There certainly are people who feel that male circumcision is barbaric, but the more drastic nature of FGM is why there is a difference in attitudes.

 

[Mister Scruff]

Seriously, you guys are making me want to wrap my nu nu in duct tape and then possibly make a diaper out of iron welded on.

Moff; stay away from tribal areas in Africa, don't convert to Islam, and you'll be fine.

If grown adults choose to be circumcised that's up to them. If parents have it done to their children it's barbaric; just because it was alright 2,000 years ago doesn't mean we should accept it nowadays. By that logic we might as well bring back the weregild and duelling. For men it's supposed to be hygenic or something but that's got no basis in scientific fact. For women it's pointless.

EDIT: The disparity in views towards male and female circumcision is because male circumcision involves removing the foreskin with a scalpel, whereas female circumcision involves burning or cutting off most, if not all, of the clitoris. If they're not actions undertaken by adults of their own volition they're both barbaric, however you can probably imagine why female circumcision is a little bit more barbaric than male. It's nothing to do with gender, it's about the process involved and what you lose as a result.

 

[Amnesiac]

Circumcision is a topic I feel extremely--you might even say violently--about, but mostly because of the double standards and sense of cultural denial that pervades it, so rather than bombard everybody with a lot of stats and figures--most of which do nothing but inflame counter-figures--I figure I'll bombard you instead with some food for thought:

"Can you cut yourself more attractively please?"
Ladies, if your boyfriend sat you down and told you that your breasts weren't sufficiently shaped/sized for him to achieve a satisfactory erection and actually turned him OFF from having sex with you...and then asked in a pathetic, pleading, exasperated tone of voice if you'd consider his feelings and have your breasts surgically altered, augmented, and possibly damaged by an invasive and irreversible cosmetic procedure so that he can more easily stifle his vomit when faced with the arduous task of having to actively contemplate having sex with you, would you say "Oh baby, how insensitive of me, of course I will sacrifice for your love!" or would you say "FUCK YOU!" and walk out on him after slapping him in the face, kicking him in the balls and texting the minute dimensions of his penis to all your girlfriends as you kick him out of his own apartment?

Well, guess what suggesting circumcision to men is like for us? True, most of us born before 1990 already ARE, but for those who aren't, this is kind of the same slap in the face. The REASON CIRCUMCISED PENISES "LOOK BETTER" is because they've been the standard for 100 years, and by standard I mean no-one-born-in-a-hospital-had-a-choice standard. Keep in mind that optional circumcision is still new, but 50 years from now, circumcised penises might be as uncommon and unattractive as uncircumcised ones are now.

Also keep in mind that in a global community that the world is becoming, standard is subjective. In America, Africa, Arabia and Israel it might "look better" but in Europe, Asia, Japan and South America is might look more like a horribly unappealingly scarred organ.

Insensitivity
Women often complain about men's general insensitivity to the various kinds of prejudicial sexual violence, abuse and trauma that women have suffered daily for thousands of years; the entire programming of Lifetime channel is dedicated to this disparity. And yet, interestingly, the ONE TOPIC in which there is virtually unanimous overlap in sympathetic resonance (FGM/female circumcision), WOMEN TEND TO BE THE INSENSITIVE ONES. If you were to ask the crassest man you could find in America--maybe a guy 50lbs lighter than Jabba the Hutt named Vinnie who sports a meatball-stained "No Fat Chicks" shirt and a fragrance of "l'eau de bowel movement"--and he'd agree with you that FGM is a horrible thing that should be criminalized, but ask even some of the most liberal fight-for-your-right women about male circumcision and they'll say "Oh just cut it off." WHERE'S THE FUCKING SYMPATHY THEN? The one subject in which men might be in total agreement with you over and there's almost no reciprocation.

Which brings me to the next point...

It's different for women than with men
If by that you mean whose pleasure matters, then yes. Usually FGM is practiced in parts of the world where a sharp blade of glass is considered a sophisticated surgical implement, which says even less about the sophistication of their anesthesiology departments. So when FGM started coming under attack in the last few decades, pro-FGM practitioners decided to "modernize" and suggest practicing the procedure in hospitals with trained staff, sterile equipment, and anesthetic. Needless to say that didn't satisfy many people on the basis that FGM destroyed about 90% of pleasurable sexual sensation in the women (the remaining 10% is vaginal): apparently, considering the loss of potential sexual pleasure was an important factor in denouncing FGM. Well, it should probably be noted that circumcision in males reduces about 70% of potential sexual pleasure in men (the remaining 10% being in the glans, which is kind of impossible to circumcise without CUTTING OFF), and yet this 20% difference is enough to make women by and large NOT CARE. So apparently, women's pleasure really IS more important than men's, eliminating that whole gender equality thing and validating every sex comedy's assertion that women are so hard to get off that every nerve sensation is necessary to climax.

They won't remember it/Know what they're missing
Another oft-cited argument (even used here) is that neonatal circumcision is more convenient because the child will heal and they won't remember the incident. By that rationale, it should be okay for people to go around sodomizing 6-month old infants for the same reason: they'll heal AND they won't remember! WHOO-HOO! So why is the latter not becoming legal anytime soon?

Because when it comes to sexual violence, it's not the PHYSICAL damage that is the most lasting or shameful, it's the EMOTIONAL violence; just because a rape victim can't recall the events doesn't mean it didn't effect them, especially when you consider the deleterious effects of severe pain on a developing (read: 8 days old) brain. Added to which, we happen to find it morally outrageous to damage another person's body sexually or not against their will. It's not just the psychological damage, but the act of NONCONSENSUALLY VIOLATING SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY that we find abhorrent. Interesting duality for a culture that fights for right to be born but not a lot of right to bodily integrity afterwards.

Besides, if men in FGM-friendly countries were using "they won't know what they're missing" as an argument supporting FGM, women would be madder than a motherfucker about that attitude.

Just A Little Flap of Skin
Skin is full of interesting qualities, and varieties. Not all skin is the same but it all behaves a similar way. Foreskin isn't skin, its mostly mucosal membrane tissue that is softer and thinner than the skin on your arm; that's because unless you walk around with a tanning bulb in your underwear, your genitals don't require the same UV insulation as, say, your arm. Here's another interesting little tidbit about skin: IT'S ELASTIC...IT STRETCHES. Your skin is basically a giant organ that expands as you grow, which is why babies are so plump: they don't grow more skin as they get older, their skin stretches to cover their growing bones. The same goes for genital integument. The guy with the 12" penis didn't have all 12" when he was born...it got bigger as he got older, and when he did, his foreskin stretched with it, like an accordian. So yes, when a baby is 3 days old, the foreskin is a tiny little scrunchie of skin less than 1/4" big...because his penis is about 1/4" long. But should his penis be 9" when he's full grown, that foreskin's gonna 9"+.

Not so "little" a piece of skin anymore, is it?

Lie of Averages I - Selective Percentages
Part of the problem with statistics is finding a viable percentage, or "my percentage's better than yours no NYAH! " One of the health stats usually bandied about is the terrible horrible risk of a little something called "penile cancer" which translates into layman's terms as "CANCER THAT GROWS ON YOUR DICK", a condition that affects a ballpark estimate of about 0.2% of cancers and 0.1% of deaths from cancer in the U.S. which is substantially less probable than being struck by a lightning bolt thrown by a drunken leprechaun while flying the Wright Brothers plane. At the same time, the chances of accidentally damaging/mutilating a newborn penis during the procedure, incurring injuries from necrotising infection to artery gouging to accidental penectomy (otherwise knows as emasculation) and basically crippling the reproductive functionality of the organ are about the same, if not lower or slightly higher.

So the chances of having your penis damaged irreperrably during a circumcision are about as the same as developing penile cancer. Yet the percentage of the latter is enough to justify broad-spectrum routine preventative circumcision but the almost equal percentage of the former isn't enough to put the kibosh on said routine practice. If you're worried about how your son might be mocked for being uncircumcised, think of what he'll have to subjected to for undergoing half-assed sexual reassignment surgery.

Plus, if we ever cure cancer, this reason is the first to go.

Lie of Averages II - Disease
Another bandied percentage is the rate of STD contraction. Pro-circ studies like to throw about the stats indicating that circumcised men have lower STD contraction rates (especially HIV it seems) than uncircumcised men. Anti-circ studies reveal statistics that diminish those statistics. But something gets lost in the disease statistic arguments that neither side seems to mention:

CIRCUMCISED & UNCIRCUMCISED MEN GET STDS ALL THE TIME. And mostly the same way: reckless, unprotected sex with infected people.

The circumcision-disease percentage argument is eerily similar to the long-forgotten once popular "Niggers get more polio than Whites"* studies. Undeterred, Jonas Salk bravely decided to work on treating the disease instead of turning black people into whites, and we have the polio vaccine as a result. The porous structure of the foreskin and its tendency to bunch up on itself, trapping bacteria if not cleaned beforehand, is what lends the "credibility" to the argument of uncircumcised men possessing viral Casablancas in their pants but it DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT GERMS ARE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY INVADERS. They get in, they do what they do. Maybe circumcised men get fewer UTI, but they can STILL GET THEM, and when they do, the same drugs work on both types of penises.

Religulous
Comedian Ahmed Ahmed said "You know you're Muslim when you drink, smoke, have sex, but you won't eat pork." The same could be said about being a [secular] Jew (and to an extent Muslim): when you don't go to temple, don't keep kosher, but you don't have a foreskin either.

No one's quite sure where the religious practices of circumcision come from...mostly because objective record-keeping in Antiquity was as commonly practiced as croquet-mallet frisbee is today. If you knew circumcision was invented by an Egyptian surgeon named Farbitzquiddle, it kinda ruins the grandeur of the "Abraham With A Stone Knife Before God" story. The practice pops up in various places in the world, including Aboriginal Australia, but in Western influence it seems to have its oldest roots in Canaanite fertility rituals where the carving of the penis was seen as similar to the pruning of a plant to enhance potential pollination or in Egypt as an aesthetic...the point being, Biblical history aside, the Hebrews probably learned it from the Egyptians and then passed it along their own traditions.

Without trying to dump on anyone's religious views (for once), there is a hypocritical aspect to it: most religious people dislike the use of the scriptural instruction as a tool for inflicting death, harm, and cruelty on other people. And many religions have abandoned most of the old-school hardcore stuff that used to be acceptable in light of the changing times (child brides, slaves, anyone?) So how can we adopt a humanitarian stance against scripture-endorsed brutality and violence in some ways (chopping off people's hands, marital rape) but tolerate something like nonconsensual genital scarification at the same time?

(and if you say "Because God commands it so", keep in mind he also commanded the Hebrews to take Canaan by force because he gave it to them so take the beneficence of God's command with a grain or 7 of salt.)

And besides, if having a foreskin is enough to invalidate all the efforts made in prayer and other devotionals...then it doesn't say much about the strength of the Divine relationship does it?

If Judaism practiced male AND female circumcision for initiation rites, how much would it be tolerated then in this day & age?


* not an actual study, as the use of the "N" word should denote.