Was just talking at dinner with family, and it seems a logical action to ban circumcision, as in most cases, doesn’t have consent, and is a major (genitals are important) body modification. Can we ban it at the state level? Just a thought.
we *should *ban circumcision, it’s genital mutilation and children cannot consent
Because transgender (anti)rights have nothing to do with religion; it’s simply the transgender people’s turn to be thrown under the bus so the conservatives can continue virtue signalling.
they always have been thrown under the bus not just this time around.
Because there are cases when you need it for health reasons. Sure this are not the majority of the circumcisions realized if we account for all the babies who receive it, but is still is a legit medical procedure. You can’t completely ban something useful just because is misused.
Why are you allowed Viagra, minoxidil, testosterone supplements, lifts in your shoes, girdles, hair plugs, tanning booths, calf implants, guns, camo/armor, ozempic and all the other gender affirming care that many conservatives and theocratic nutjobs enjoy to help pretend they’re big, strong men and not the withering impotent cowards that they actually are?
Cutting foreskin versus turning a dick inside out are two very different things.
Yeah, one’s done without anesthetic to babies to make sure their dicks look like their dads’, and one’s done to adults with their fully informed consent
Huh? One completely changes a person’s anatomy, while the other slightly changes the look. These things are not comparable, and to do so is idiotic.
It does not just change the look.
It would require that a significant portion of the population admit their parents mutilated them as infants.
For some reason, they refuse to admit they were mutilated without their consent.
Some of them have subsequently mutilated their own sons, and admitting that was mutilation is beyond their capacity.
I was circumcised, I don’t have a problem with that fact. I understand why people do have a problem with circumcision and I don’t have an issue with it being banned.
Don’t try to induce mental trauma in me for my past that I’m not bothered by.
Good for you not being bothered by it. But I think it’s rather easy to imagine that it can be a traumatizing experience and lead to psychological or physiological injuries. So it’s a medical procedure that should only be prescribed by doctors or if you are an adult.
Sure, I’m not arguing against that. I’m arguing against this mentality that everyone who has been circumcised should be carrying trauma over it, or must be carrying trauma but are lying to themselves. Don’t say you’re fighting on my behalf for something that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Fair point, not sure somebody is doing it and if so why, but that would be indeed contra productive. If someone does not feel traumatized why would anyone would want to convince them otherwise?
Fair point, not sure somebody is doing it and if so why, but that would be indeed contra productive
The post I was replying to:
For some reason, they refuse to admit they were mutilated without their consent.
For some reason, they refuse to admit they were mutilated without their consent.
I’m not sure that is exactly how they meant it, but I can see you interpret it that way. An unnecessary, irreversible medical operation was performed on you without your consent, but since you are not bothered by it - good for you.
AFAIK, circumcision reduces risk of HIV.
Babies and children don’t have sex. If you want to take this extreme HIV reduction procedure as an adult you’re free to do so. Or you can use a condom.
I have been physically punished when I did something bad as a kid. I’m not traumatized by that either but I still think it’s good that it’s illegal nowdays.
I agree. And if people went around claiming you must be traumatized over it and lying to yourself you’d say they’re full of shit. If someone was trying to convince you to be traumatized about it you’d tell them to fuck off.
I don’t think they’re saying people are traumatized. That word has a meaning. They’re saying people have issue reconciling the fact that their parents would do something like that to them and also that their parents are generally good people. Many people would rather not even consider that it wasn’t the right call, because it makes it easier to hold those two beliefs at the same time. However, people make mistakes. Those aren’t contradictory ideas if you can understand that people can be mislead.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a persons who is refusing to admit.
Thanks for demonstrating my point so effectively.
What? They’re not bothered by it how the fuck is that refusing to admit anything? Does that mean if two people get jumped scared in a dark room and one for the rest of their life needs a light on in their room and the other doesn’t that they are secretly traumatized? No it doesn’t.
Also circumcision happens at birth most of the time so many people (myself included) don’t remember it. It should absolutely be illegal but as the other person said don’t tell someone what traumas they faced and how they should be effected.
You’re a clown
Also circumcision happens at birth most of the time so many people (myself included) don’t remember it. It should absolutely be illegal but as the other person said don’t tell someone what traumas they faced and how they should be effected.
Just because you don’t remember it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t effect you. Aside from the obvious physical effects, there are studies that suggest that neonatal stressors and pain (such as say amputating part of the baby’s genitals) can have long reaching psychological effects. For example:
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=55727
so many people (myself included) don’t remember it.
"She doesn’t remember being raped, so it’s ok’.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the problem with the anti-circumcision movement.
There are good arguments to be had for banning circumcision. Refusing to recognize my autonomy, and insisting you know the “secret trauma of strangers” better than they do is not one of them. It makes you sound like an asshole who doesn’t know what they are talking about and will cause people to think the whole movement is the same way.
For those arguing to ban circumcision: you need to purge assholes like this from your numbers. They are only doing harm and not helping your cause.
Refusing to recognize my autonomy
Glad that, as an infant, you exercised your own autonomy, when your parents decided to circumcise you.
If you did exercise your own autonomy as an adult, then fine. That’s not what we’re talking about.
Your autonomy argument doesn’t work when you refuse to recognize my statements that I am not bothered by the fact that it happened to me. It makes you a blatant hypocrite when you say you are concerned about the autonomy of children but ignore my autonomy as an adult.
Children do in fact need someone to speak for them. When you insist on speaking for me when I am fully capable of speaking for myself and telling you not to, then I’m going to tell you to fuck off and won’t be very receptive to anything else you have to say.
Maybe because people actually don’t feel “mutilated” and we don’t appreciate being called mutilated because you are obsessed with and upset about your own dick. I fully support it not occurring any more but to try and suggest everyone who is circumcizedis mutilated and equivocate it to female genital mutilation is ridiculous.
I have a neutral stance on circumcision. Do what you please. I just wish people like you could try to prove a point without using “mutilation” over and over to make it sound worse than it actually is. It puts an agenda on your point and biases it. There’s nothing mutilated about it. It’s just altered.
If you consider this to be mutilation then that would also mean you think any gender affirming surgery is also mutilation. And one could much easier argue that converting a penis to a vagina is far more mutilating than just removing some extra skin from a penis.
So if you’re trying to convince people to stop circumcision, stop using overly dramatic words and just explain why it’s not necessary. Otherwise I’ll just roll my eyes at people like you.
If you consider this to be mutilation then that would also mean you think any gender affirming surgery is also mutilation.
No one gets gender reassignment surgery until they can concentyi it as an adult.
False equivalence.
because we are a stupid, prudish, and vain country. we don’t want people to enjoy jerking off too much, nor do we want to reverse the trend of mutilation, which would make the old guard feel like they’re the broken ones
I would have loved to have the option to keep my hoodie on or not. I have a wicked crooked scar down there too. It doesn’t keep me up at night but if I was given the choice I would have said no.
(at the risk of making a truly stupid joke)
You could wear some pants instead of trying to cover it with just a hoodie.
Its hard trying to get that perfect band of skin to show between the bottom of the hoodie and the top of the thigh highs.
Honestly, thigh highs + hoodie + “is there any clothes under that hoodie?” is peak fashion.
Thanks, you’ve really added value…
But I gotta know, was it a baggy hoodie?
You probably want to carve out medically necessary circumcision (required treatment for some issues). The main answer in the US would be a combination of religion and tradition with some bonus vanity and outdated knowledge (see arguments about cleanliness).
Isn’t Judaism and Islam a minority religion in America?
Christianity
Christianity doesn’t proscribe circumcision. If anything it can be interpreted as doing the opposite.
Ask your local church pastor because the culture of circumcision in US did not just grow out of soil.
In the US cutting off the foreskin for phimosis or other minor issues is unfortunately very common (probably because “it’s no big deal, many had it done”) when using lube and careful stretching or just waiting would have been sufficient.
Cutting off the offending part should always be the last option, e.g. in the case of cancer. We don’t need an exception that cutting off e.g. a finger should be only done if medically necessary. That’s obvious. It should be the same here. Otherwise you’re just creating a loop hole.
I’ve never understood the American obsession with MGM (male genital mutilation). But it seems that a large percentage of your population has had it done. So from an outsider perspective it seems like it must be a cultural thing to your country. So for laws to exist that ban it (or at least make it harder to authorise) you’d first need a cultural shift, then. Enough political will for laws to be passed.
It really isn’t cultural. In the early 1900s, William Kellogg (of Kellogg’s) was a puritanical Christian. He hated the idea of masturbation more than anything, so he created Corn Flakes to be a cereal so bland it would kill your libido and prevent you from masturbating. He also was a proponent of circumcision as a means of preventing masturbation because it would make the penis too tight that stroking it would be painful. Americans bought into his propaganda that circumcised penises are “cleaner” and then it just became “well, I’m circumcised, and my son’s penis should look like mine!”
No one said that the average American was intelligent.
He also was a proponent of circumcision as a means of preventing masturbation because it would make the penis too tight that stroking it would be painful
… well, I for one am very glad he was mistaken in this point.
Sounds pretty cultural to me, something that’s persisted for a hundred and twenty years (What’s that a quarter of your country’s history?) based on an over religious ideal and pushed by a capitalist.
I consider “culture” to have a deeper meaning to a population, at least moreso than “my dick’s cut, so my kid’s gonna have a cut dick because I’m not aware of basic hygiene practices!”
“my dick’s cut, so my kid’s gonna have a cut dick
Change the sex and genitalia in question, and this is basically what drives FGM. It’s mostly women who had it done to them that drive the practice forward. That’s how traditional practices work in general - you repeating what happened to you with your offspring, often long past the point where the original purpose (if any) has any value.
Because the laws are being pushed on a religious basis, not a rational one.
Is circumcision even a religious thing for most Americans?
It’s because originally they thought it would prevent masturbation, which was considered self harm.
Since then it is because of aesthetics and hygiene. Both of which are something that the person should decide as an adult.
I think it’s more inertia than anything.
I got a late stage circumcision (I was 10). Cut is better.
I think we should ban circumcision
Sometimes people have a medical reason for circumcision. My buddy had it done in his late 20’s because it was difficult enough to keep clean that it was causing problems.
Also I might be out of the loop, where are trans medical procedures banned?
where are trans medical procedures banned?
https://www.statista.com/chart/29297/bills-ban-transgender-care-us-states
There is a lot of misinformation in this post. Here’s a snippet of my research about the anatomy of the penis and the damage of circumcision causes.
The foreskin has specialized nerve endings called Meissner’s Corpsucles located at the tip in an area called the ridged band. It is connected to the penis by the extension of the shaft skin in areas called the outer foreskin and the inner foreskin. The inner foreskin is rich with sensory receptors and is a inner mucosa similar to the inside of our cheeks. It keeps the glans moist and protected from the environment. The inner foreskin is attached to the head of the penis by a membrane called the frenulum. The frenulum is an erogenous zone that is mostly removed by a circumcision procedure.
When a child or baby is circumcised, the foreskin is forcibly removed from the glans which scars and damages the glans. The foreskin is adhered to the glans like a fingernail. When a boy hits puberty the foreskin naturally retracts. In rare cases, phimosis happens which is when the foreskin is unable to retract. Non-surgical solutions to phimosis are stretching the foreskin over a span of time and/or applying steroid creme.
Circumcision is extremely painful for babies and children. Cortisol spikes in babies when they are circumcised. Babies will pass out during the procedure as many circumcisions are done with inadequate anesthetic.
The foreskin is self-cleaning like the vagina. Rinsing in the shower is enough usually for hygiene. Caregivers who retract the foreskin of their children will damage the child’s genitals. The only person who should retract the foreskin is the children as it will naturally retract with age. Some boys are unable to retract their foreskin until their late teens or early adulthood.
This information is not foreign to the medical world. Most medical and political professionals have a bias for the circumcision ritual. Circumcision is the same for boys as it is for girls as the objective of circumcision is to harm the sexual function of the child.
Modern circumcision for males is extremely harsh as it removes 60-80% of penile skin. Many men do not have frenulums from the procedure. It is possible to repair some of the damage by using mitosis to restore skin coverage. It is not currently possible to repair tissue that was completely removed. Foregen is a non-profit researching ways to completely repair the damage caused by circumcision.
For men impacted by this and want to do something for themselves
- Look into foreskin restoration
- Donate to foregen
Warning that this topic draws a lot of insane people with genital mutilation fetishes. Any of the comments advocating for circumcision are either men who were circumcised against their will, women who circumcised their children and haven’t accepted the truth, or weirdos who want others to suffer.
Thank you so much for writing this up. I really appreciate the detailed post.
Most medical and political professionals have a bias for the circumcision ritual.
I think it’s important to point out that this bias is mostly cultural. In many countries where ritual infant circumcision is the exception instead of the norm, medical personnel do not have a bias towards RIC.
Foreskin restoration is legit (even if it may sound crazy like regrowing limbs). I know we collectively dislike Reddit on here, but the subreddit /r/foreskin_restoration has a really supportive and welcoming community and a lot of resources about how to get started (check their wiki).
