When it was done to me i was 7 and it was in my grandmother's living room surrounded by family and it was performed by the neighborhood Barber(it was the 90's)...he cauterized it with electricity. It destroyed my sense of family, i no longer felt loved by those around me.
25 years later I had my own son and was offered neonatal circumcision for him, my wife was for it, my inlaws who are american were pushing hard and of course my parents too.
I had a near nervous breakdown over it, but i stood my ground. We need to Break this culty traumatic cycle.
My username is tied pretty closely my IRL identity and yes i am not in Toroko, speaking out against systemic beliefs in plain text especially your own can lead to consequences. Also scrappers can't allegory.
I'll just cut this functional part off a baby because I don't like the look of it. Now if we were talking about earlobes, suddenly we would be barbarians, but part of the penis is just fine.
More genital mutilation of babies happens in America than any other country on earth. Think about that for a moment.
It is about marking you as subservient. If you read anything about Evangelical Christian culture the single worst sin you can ever commit is demanding your autonomy. This grievous violation of our bodies is used to induce us into servitude. I reject the marks this wicked culture has given me.
> If you read anything about Evangelical Christian culture the single worst sin you can ever commit is demanding your autonomy. This grievous violation of our bodies is used to induce us into servitude
Circumcision is explicitly not a Christian practice, though. It's done by many Americans (who happen to be evangelical) for cultural reasons, but the Christian Bible literally is explicitly against circumcision being done by Christians for spiritual or religious reasons.
Bingo -- the whole thing about being "cleaner for living in the desert" or something is hooey -- every desert mammal has a foreskin; if it were a disadvantage evolution would've adapted that along with all the other adaptations that desert mammals have.
That entire line is garbage and meant to support the subservience, exactly as you've said. A mother's strongest instinct is to protect her children, so the tribe taking a child and cutting his body marks him as belonging to the tribe rather than to the family. It proves, in plain view, that the familial bond is secondary, and individual autonomy serves at the pleasure of the group, not the other way around.
I know this quite well -- the last thing the Evangelical Church ever did to me was chemically bald me at Billings West High School in 1998-99. I have horns, they mark me as outside their wicked culture. I'm proud to be outside of it.
You don't get it...Abraham did it so it must be good. It's right there in the book. In a real life Utopia we would live in tribes like that old guy...eat what he eat and do the things he did...
Circumcision still being a thing blows my mind. I'm lucky that my parents never had me mutilated before I could consent.
What really shocks me is the amount of justification that circumcised men give for the practice. Instead of accepting that a terrible thing was done to them, they convince themselves it's a good thing, and further the practice by in turn mutilating their children. This just perpetuates the problem ad infinitum.
That said, I'm not that surprised that men feel that way, considering that having been with many women, an absurdly large percentage of them were shocked to be with an uncircumcised man, and some even said they thought it was less hygienic. The entire society is conditioned to think this way, perpetuating the practice. It's entirely absurd.
The facts are clear cut: circumcision has zero benefits (health, hygiene, or otherwise), it can be dangerous, and it is proven to lessen sexual feeling. It's an absurd practice that is damaging and serves no purpose, beyond religious practices aimed at decreasing sexual enjoyment (with the mistaken idea that it'll make sins like adultery less likely…).
> Instead of accepting that a terrible thing was done to them, they convince themselves it's a good thing, and further the practice by in turn mutilating their children. This just perpetuates the problem ad infinitum.
Threads like these always make mountains out of molehills when it comes to male circumcision. You'll always find the words "mutilate", "brutal", "savage", "barbarian" in people's comments. And yet 99%+ of the billions of circumcised males in the world just don't really care that much. If they did, they would feel more strongly about not doing it to their own kids.
I'm circumcised. Do I believe I was terribly wronged? Not at all. Do I believe circumcised men are so much luckier than me? Nope. If I could travel back in time to restore my foreskin, would I? Sure, why not? But if time travel is a thing, preventing myself from being circumcised is a pretty low priority compared to other things I could do in the past.
I personally won't circumcise my future sons (if I have any) but I also won't condemn parents who choose to do so because IMO it's about as big a deal as piercing your baby's ears at birth. There are far worse things parents can do to mess up their kids without ever laying a finger on them.
So, I'm assuming like most of those circumcised males, you were probably circumcised at birth. Therefore you and others circumcised at birth really have no way to compare the experience of before and after.
Agreed that condemnation is not the right approach. Also, there are plenty of reason to discourage optional, unnecessary surgical procedures.
> So, I'm assuming like most of those circumcised males, you were probably circumcised at birth. Therefore you and others circumcised at birth really have no way to compare the experience of before and after.
As a male circumcised from birth, am I not allowed to hold an opinion on whether what I thought was done to me was a "terrible thing" or not? I dislike people telling me "you were wronged and what happened to you was terrible and you aren't allowed to disagree because you don't know what it's like to not have been wronged. Only me and my enlightened colleagues, who are either uncircumcised or were circumcised much later in life are allowed to hold an opinion on this."
> Also, there are plenty of reason to discourage optional, unnecessary surgical procedures.
Most parents, I suspect, are not strongly in favor of circumcision. What happens in American hospitals is this:
- baby is born
- doctor: "would you like me to circumcise this boy? Now is the time"
- parents: "do most parents circumcise their boys?"
> am I not allowed to hold an opinion on whether what I thought was done to me was a "terrible thing" or not?
You are, but you have done more than that, namely to minimize the experiences of others. When someone says, "I, for one don't mind", they typically want to use that to determine what the actions of others or accepted social mores ought to be. There's no problem with saying you don't mind (and merely that), but that doesn't mean you weren't grievously harmed, whether you realize it or not. Moreover, such an observation carries such exceedingly little weight wrt the broader issue, that it hardly seems worth mentioning.
> As a male circumcised from birth, am I not allowed to hold an opinion on whether what I thought was done to me was a "terrible thing" or not?
You're absolutely allowed an opinion, and everyone else is allowed to view it in context. Women in cultures that practice FGM (both the milder and the extreme forms) are often its most ardent advocates, that doesn't make the practice okay. And while it may have worked out fine for you, it doesn't for everyone, as this story shows.
If you read my comment, you'll note nothing about opinions being invalid. Rather, the correct reading is purely positive, not normative, and solely observational: males circumcised at birth have no basis of comparison since the event is outside their memory.
To be fair there is a difference between female and male circumcision.
The female one is clearly to assert dominance over women, ideally in a painful and traumatical way. Also preventing them from getting pleasure from intercourse, because this is a men's thing.
For boys it is a barbaric ritual attached to some religions. The difference is that it is usually done on babies and is not particularly impacting later on.
Both are in my opionions felonies, done in the name of retarded ideas. The consequences are however very different.
> The facts are clear cut: circumcision has zero benefits (health, hygiene, or otherwise), it can be dangerous, and it is proven to lessen sexual feeling.
About 1 percent of uncircumcised boys will get a UTI during childhood. For circumcised boys, the estimate is just 0.13 percent. Uncircumcised men have a small risk of phimosis. There's also evidence that there's lower risk of HIV/STI transmission in circumcized men. There don't seem to be any very good studies that show difference in sensitivity. The AAP says that the benefits probably outweigh the costs, but they admit that both the benefits and costs are very small.
Note: I personally think it's cruel to do that to a newborn and am against it. But you mentioned having clear facts.
UTIs are treatable without a sugical intervention. Same goes with phimosis.
The evidence for HIV is at best questionable. Comparing men that can't have sex because part of their penis got cut off and is healing with men that have sex normaly will massively skew the results.
Also the studies where highly unethical. I can't understand how encouraging HIV positive people to have unprotected sex got past an ethics board.
> That said, I'm not that surprised that men feel that way, considering that having been with many women, an absurdly large percentage of them were shocked to be with an uncircumcised man,
I remember an episode of Sex and the City where one of the character was put off by an uncircumcised penis.
That being said, as a European uncircumcised man living in NYC, I haven't received any bad comment about my penis (but new york is a diverse place, so that may be why). In any case, I can't imagine it can't be a deal breaker. But at the same time, I can see why some would find an uncircumcised penis prettier .
The same thing applies to the genital mutilation endured by girls in some parts of the world. But in that case it's generally agreed throughout the Western world that we're talking about "mutilation" and "abuse". Somehow circumcision managed to escape these labels despite being essentially the same.
Anecdotally, every person I know to have a circumcision performed on them had it because "it was normal" in the society, not for any religious belief. Not wanting to stand out is a good enough reason for many. In some places an uncircumcised penis is (was?) considered "gross" or "abnormal" and many parents just want to avoid that for their child.
It's not remotely the same — if you are circumcised, your dick still basically works fine. I mean, yeah, wtf, but it's a minor change. Like getting a tooth pulled, or an appendectomy, for no reason.
You get (most values of) the "girls version" around the world, and it's basically equivalent to chopping off the entire top half of your dick. The _important_ part.
Totally not in favor of either. But there is no equivalence here.
There are cases where circumcision is a valid medical need (I have a friend who needed it due to hygiene issues as a teenager). That said, we agree there is no global need for it.
Please don't post name-calling posts on provocative topics. That's flamebait, regardless of how right you are or feel you are, and I'm sure you can make your substantive points without it.
Can't agree that it's "name-calling", just stating the obvious fact that men lose over 60% of sensetivity down there at birth for no reason, without being given a choice. But I do understand your intention is to keep this board clean and friendly. This topic is no more provocative than e.g. abortion, and doesn't really belong on HN in the first place.
I also don't agree that it's flame bait. Political correctness is the language of cowards. And cowards get their and their kids' genitals mutilated. There's a real issue, and not calling it what it is is just letting it keep rolling forever without anyone having courage to do anything about it.
"Cripple" certainly counts as name-calling in this context.
Of course it's a real issue, and a provocative one. You (i.e. all of us) are responsible not for setting threads on fire when that is the case. This applies regardless of how right you are, or feel you are. Indeed, the more right you are, the more important this becomes—otherwise you end up discrediting the truth, which hurts everybody (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
We don't care about political correctness—we care about discussion quality. When you post the way you did upthread, and also in this reply, it leads to predictably poorer-quality discussion. Your comment is responsible for that (if you or anyone want more explanation of why I say that, there's lots at these links.)
There's a lot of truth in what you're saying, you're making a good point, and I will try to be more respectable next time. Thank you for the explanation and providing the references.
Don't know what you don't know. Vision also decreases with age slowly so nobody calls people wihout 20/20 vision disabled. Matter of perception. To uncut people this is a disability, to those who were circumcised it's just a gradation of not being able to feel pleasure from intercourse.
At least half a dozen randomized clinical trials suggest he is correct. Several are cited here [1]. See also [2] [3].
That doesn't mean circumcision is a good way to reduce HPV transmission, but the evidence that it does reduce it is overwhelming. Of course it is possible all those researchers were paid off by Big Mohel...
not disagreeing with your overall point of mutilation without consent but there is some evidence that circumcision lowers risk of HIV transmission[1] - so there might have been some health benefits at some point in history due to it. of course it should be criminal to practice it on children who can't decide on their own.
The study is in Africa and involves poor populations with limited access to sanitation. In developed countries with proper sanitation and a low risk of HIV contamination to begin with, the risk/benefit is extremely unlikely to be comparable.
Another mindblowing fact about USA - some tribal genital mutilation is a norm. You wouldn't believe this would be happening in a first world country at all and here you have it.
the proportion of infant boys circumcised in the United States between 1979 and 2010 dropped from sixty-five per cent to fifty-eight, according to the C.D.C.
I don't have a ready source, but I thought somewhere there were numbers for 2010-2020 and it was a more significant change. Like there has been a significant change in attitudes over the last 10 years.
And there's HUGE regional variation, the practice being very rare in the southwest and very common in the northeast.
I can say from personal experience, I'm in the midwest and in my entire dating career, I've only encountered two women with prior knowledge of natural men, and both of them had spent time in Europe.
So if the rate is indeed dropping here, it's happening in a younger segment of the population. (Good for them!)
I'm in Israel and didn't do it to my son. I was a bit nervous about that because well... Israel. He'll be ostracized for it...
Then I talked with his kindergarten teacher and "warned" her about his penis so she'll be "ready". She looked at me dead in the eye and said: "This is Tel Aviv, half the boys here aren't circumcised". Lol. I guess I'm not too special.
There's a scene in Game of Thrones where the slavemaster makes a circular cut to rip off a slave's nipple. I hope people were smart enough to understand what this was a sanitized version of.
Making a person a "slave to Jesus" is a total perversion though. The New Testament is very clear about that sort of thing. On this, you can challenge Evangelicals in their own language on their own ground.
Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's a particularly hellish direction for internet discussion to go, and also particularly avoidable, and we're certainly trying to avoid it here.
That's fine, as long as you do it within the site guidelines, which means eschewing flamebait, having curious conversation, and everything else described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Some topics are not easy to talk about in the key of curiosity, but it's still doable, if you set that intention.
I keep thinking this might keep stoking the fire of some of the antisemitism in America.
I think it was Norway planned to outlaw all mutilations of minors and ended up with all middle eastern religions crying foul in unison which was scary. (All they seemed to disagree on was which child to harm) needles to say the law that was eventually passed was so watered down as to be (again imo) ineffective...
The view that this practice is the norm and that it's somehow so untouchable is imo scary.
However, the precedent that FGM is outlawed _despite_ religious protest, means that MGM might eventually fall too. This means that anyone wishing to preserve MGM is trying to find support for it on other grounds.
Hence the litany of "health studies" supporting the practice, so it's not just a religious issue, it's a health issue! Muddy the waters with just enough doubt to keep the debate alive instead of letting it be an obviously-settled issue like FGM.
The result is that, if you look at all the papers published on the topic, and sort them into two piles depending on who funded the research, and then look again and sort them into two piles depending on their conclusion, you'll find that you've performed the same sort twice.
The health arguments simply don't fly here in Europe though. There was a practitioner of circumcision in the Netherlands who went to court this year to argue that their income was tax deductible because it served a therapeutic purpose. The judge did not agree and wiped away the argument that it prevented future complications as well. It's still legal, but it's not health care (except presumably in rare special cases like phimosis where it may be warranted if other solutions are not effective).
It's only by making this a matter of religious autonomy that MGM isn't banned outright yet, because politicians are always really careful around matters that might anger religious groups. Especially right-leaning politicians or those who belong to a Christianity-based political party.
The WHO prevalence map of circumcision[1] is quite interesting. It's uncommon in most Europe, Middle- and South America, and Asia (except in muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and South Korea where it was apparently introduced by the Americans after WW2).
My circumcision was just the first violation of my body the Evangelical church put me through as a child -- finally culminating in my chemical balding at Billings West High School in 1998-99 after coming forward about my childhood sexual abuse in the Lutheran Church.
If you read anything about modern evangelical thought the single worst thing a child could demand is their autonomy, and well, anyway, every time I look in the mirror right-wing America gets to kick me in the face again.
They're not even Christian, really, if they're still doing this horrible Abraham-and-Isaac stuff. Jesus was the blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifice. Paul makes this abundantly clear.
As an adult, I had to have a frenulectomy performed, as it would tear and bleed during sex semi-commonly.
The most annoying thing was both the doctor I saw for the referral, and the clinic itself tried to insist I get a circumcision instead. I still don’t know why.
It healed perfectly and aside from having to adjust some habits (the foreskin no longer rolls up on its own), it’s identical in function to before with no loss of feeling.
I felt weird at the surgery, surrounded by parents taking their babies and toddlers to be circumcised. Weird day.
I had a frenuloplasty for the same reason, but it wasn't as successful as yours, and I was circumcised a couple of years later.
If a doctor is unsure how successful a frenuloplasty or frenulectomy will be, and knows that you might need a circumcision anyway, then they might suggest the latter option. One procedure is better than two.
Getting circumcised allowed me to have sex again, but there's no way in hell I'd agree to it otherwise, knowing what the consequences for me have been.
Indeed I was, which is why I found the surgery full of babies and children decidedly sad. I don’t think I implied otherwise?
Even then, it was still confusing why I was being pushed toward circumcision when a frenulectomy is a far less invasive, easily tolerated procedure with decades of practice, but is apparently not that common as a solution for similar medical problems as mine.
Male genital mutilation survives in America through laundry-list persuasion. If you look at the history of the practice in America you will find that medical claims of benefit last about ten years before being debunked.
The cultural claims seem to last longer. You also have young girls growing up in a culture where an intact penis is asserted to be weird, while a mutilated penis is seen as normal.
Circumcised men are often defensive when they learn what was done to them as infants.
Mothers are also tricked into having this done to their children. Imagine trying to break the news to a mother (or father) that when they did what they thought was best for their son they were actually complicit in harming him.
Another insane fact: in the US, circumcisions are usually done by obstetricians. Doctors who are trained on and work on exclusively women, except for a single surgical procedure on newborn male babies.
It is also the case that public health boards are given such latitude that doctors who force these damaging and unnecessary surgeries on infants cannot be sued for medical battery. It is an insane practice.
Is there some general familiarity which they would gain from a more general practice which would be relevant to or affect the execution of this specialized procedure?
This really should be as simple as «don’t fucking cut your children’s genitals».
If it has religious significance to you, that’s fine, just let the child decide when they are old enough to consent.
If your religion stipulates infant circumcision, then your religion denies the religious freedom of others (in this case the child), and thus religious freedom is an inherently moot argument, and not a justification.
Just to reiterate: people have a problem with making a permanent major modification to a functional part of an unconsenting baby's body.
That means that your arguments regarding whether you think your circumcision is cool irrelevant, or whether you think it's hygienic, or whether you think people prefer how it looks. Nobody has a problem with individuals choosing to get circumcised.
Babies by definition can't consent. They can't consent what language they are taught, what religion they are taught (or not), what food they are given to eat, what air they breathe (whether it has tobacco or cannabis smoke in it or not). Parents consent for the baby. And parents do circumcisions and ear piercings at birth so that the kid won't experience any pain having the same procedure when older.
Sure, in a perfect world, parents wouldn't circumcise their boys or pierce the ears of their girls as infants and let them choose for themselves. But those are pretty minor compared to all the other major ways parents can really mess up a kid.
Circumcision is kind of ingenious - physically mutilate the essence of a man's fundamental sexual identity before they have a say in things and BOOMPH! tribal lock-in for the rest of their life, and that of their progeny and ever thereafter.
Edit: you've been posting flamebait comments repeatedly and we've already asked you once to stop. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this? We're trying for something different from internet default here, and as you know, going against entropy takes a lot of energy.
Europeans I knew were horrified to watch, after their son was born in the US, nurses scoop him up to do this. "Wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? ... Nonononono (are you crazy?)" Luckily they prevented it.
There are forms of FGM that consist of removal of the clitoral hood. Those are pretty much exactly the same thing.
Yes, clitoridectomy would correspond to removal of the glans.
In practice, most FGM in the West happens under Islam and is symbolic: A small cut to draw blood, but no amputation. Still unacceptable, but actually less damaging than MGM.
Finally, do not be fooled by "just skin". First of all, it's a lot of skin. There are videos on the internet of African tribes performing circumcisions of adolescents. Watch one.
Second, it's full of nerve endings. The skin is a sense organ. You are removing as much as possible of that which makes sex feel good. To emphasize, this is not like the relatively insensitive skin of the shaft. That's the whole point.
If you're a man, if you pay attention you can get a hint of what you're missing. What's left of the inner foreskin after a circumcision is called a "corona" (as though it's a natural body part). Touch that. You will find that it is one of the most sensitive parts of your penis, arguably even more so than the glans. And if you are a (straight) woman, then I have just given you some important information about how you can still give your partner some (limited) sexual pleasure.
How much skin would you be happy having removed from your daughter's clitoris before you'd consider it mutilation? Answer in cm².
The reality is that so much as a pin-prick or tiny cut (to draw a drop of blood or leave a small mark) is counted[1] and prosecuted[2] as FGM. If the word mutilation fits there, it certainly fits male circumcision.
Indian Hindus do not circumcise their sons. Neither do Chinese people. Or Europeans. Their penises are all fine.
You probably know many people with pet dogs. How many of them have circumcised their dogs? How often do the dogs shower? Do they get horrible penis diseases? No. Of course not.
(Seriously, have you ever wondered why dogs don't have a glans sticking out? Or horses? Or any other mammal that doesn't wear pants? This is staring you in the face.)
Nothing is going to accumulate under your foreskin, because it unrolls every time you have an erection. That's the point, actually: The sensitive inner skin unrolls to cover the shaft of your erect penis; that's what makes it sensitive. If you are circumcised, what happens instead is that the hairy and insensitive skin from your scrotum and abdomen is pulled forward over the shaft instead. If you have a really strong erection this will actually hurt, as the skin is stretched too much; there is nothing to unroll.
This is staring you in the face. If you have any experience of penises -- perhaps your own -- then you have actual evidence you can see with your own eyes.
Have you ever had a sex partner who wasn't an American? I think these beliefs persist in the US largely because of insularity.
He dedicated most of his comment to your arguments, which is why you're focusing only on the last two sentences. You've let yourself be humiliated again, and for what? Bizarre.
People putting their genitals's faith in the "hands" of Abraham. You wouldn't believe it's possible in the Information Age...but as we've seen with COVID the humanity is still hopeless in getting facts over fiction
We ban accounts that take HN threads into religious flamewar, regardless of how right they are or feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
When it was done to me i was 7 and it was in my grandmother's living room surrounded by family and it was performed by the neighborhood Barber(it was the 90's)...he cauterized it with electricity. It destroyed my sense of family, i no longer felt loved by those around me.
25 years later I had my own son and was offered neonatal circumcision for him, my wife was for it, my inlaws who are american were pushing hard and of course my parents too.
I had a near nervous breakdown over it, but i stood my ground. We need to Break this culty traumatic cycle.