finally!!!

Parents are just going to start performing back alley circumcisions.

having spent most of my adult life trying to find different ways to feel my penis, i am disappointed that there is a part of it that i can never feel

What the fuck? Is there even any health benefit for snipped vs. unsnipped? I really don't get why they want to do this

Seems like overreaching to include people for whom it's a religious rite. I mean, yeah supposedly you lose some feeling, but uh... mine still works. I guess after I got snipped I cried continuously for like 6 months so I wouldn't do it to my hypothetical son, but some people really like to hurt infants.
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Why does the USA have the highest rate of erectile dysfunction?

Because the foreskin has more nerves than any other part of the penis.

Pharmaceutical companies like this.

I started this discussion with Soapy over breakfast this morning... So I take responsibility. I really don't know how I feel about this law.

I don't have a penis so I have no idea what the difference is really like. I followed Soapy's lead in the decision for our son since matters of the ding-dong are out of my league.

However, it's a deeply rooted cultural practice. And Soapy believes that it was originated to decrease sexual pleasure for dudes and I always thought it was related to health outcomes. The fact that when discussing it we actually have no idea why it's a norm in our society says something about it most definitely. Add Jewish identity to the mix and it gets really fun! We asked our parents and their reaction was sorta "that's just how it's done" and Soapy's dad was all "the other boys would laugh at him in the locker room..." That one still strikes me as odd but, uh, I guess I don't hang out in boys' locker rooms very often.

I know a couple men who were not circumcised at birth and had problems requiring that they do it as grown-ups... I also know a person who converted to Judaism as an adult and did it then. As I understand it, that is not a fun procedure.

I will say that comparing infant male circumcision directly to female genital mutilation is, in my opinion, not a proper argument. They're analogous in that both practices involve removing a part of the sex organs... But the female version is a form of abuse that takes place often at an older age, involves cruelty, and directly leads to sexual pain, possible infections, and complete lack of sexual pleasure. Circumcised dudes can still enjoy sex.

I also looked this up while we were making the decision before bbay kittens was born and there is absolutely nothing on the internets (that I could find) regarding the debate on circumcision in the Jewish community. Most Reform people don't keep kosher and don't observe Sabbath rules BUT they would never consider not circumcising a baby. Interesting.

All jews, christians, and muslims are required to be circumcised.

WHY DID GOD CREATE ME WITH THIS EXTRA SKIN?

goat - you saying the US has the highest rate of circumcision? Cause I'm skeptical of that.

I am too lazy to check the facts on that right now, but as the 3rd most populated country in the world and one of the most religous I can say that could be a fair guess.

Ah, the old circumcised-dongs-are-less-sensitive argument.

The locker room argument is outdated. In my experience at least. Even when we went swimming in gym class in junior high, most of the guys were changing under a towel.

I know a few uncircumciseds and they did get teased for it, though.

As far as Jews, it's more than reform people who don't observe kosher, sabbath, etc. I belonged to a conservative synagogue (the one across the street from Hopkins High School) and most of the people I knew didn't keep kosher and the services on Saturday were never too full. Even in a lot of places in Israel, there are a good number of secular Jews. But yeah, you are definitely right. They would never consider not circumcising a male child. I guess that's central to being Jewish but the other stuff isn't? I don't know. Someone decided that along the way, and that's just the way it is.

My cousin really didn't want to have her son circumcised, but she did anyway.

My old roommates dad is a moil. I believe he was the one who snipped my tip.

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I thought we were #1 as well, but it looks like we're beaten by Israel, many Muslim countries and South Korea. According to wikipedia, The rate of newborn cicumcision in the US was 90% in the 1970's but has declined to 56%. Overall rate is about 80%.

Rabbi probed for circumcised infants' herpes

I am too lazy to check the facts on that right now, but as the 3rd most populated country in the world and one of the most religous I can say that could be a fair guess.

Amount of population has nothing to do with rates, of course. And, of course, while plenty of Americans say they are religious, they don't really mean it the way people in actual religious countries do.

"I think the onus is on people who want to permanently alter someone's most important (yup?) body part without their consent to justify it."

Well said.

You know until today I had just always assumed that if I had a male child, I would have him circumcised. I am not certain that I wouldn't now, but I'm at least thinking about it. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm sure my whole family would be very disappointed with me. I still consider myself culturally Jewish, but the religion stuff is not for me.

I wonder if an uncut jewish boy would be allowed to have a bar mitzvah? Probably not.

I hear you on that J Low.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have an uncircumcised penis.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have smegma.

An article from 2005 about the investigation of one negligent mohel is not going to convince a whole lot of people of the evils of circumcision at large.


To piggyback on Ms. Kittens' very thoughtful post, I would say female circumcision seems to be primarily about control (though maybe I'm looking at with a bit of Western chauvinism?); I don't see how the case could be made that male circumcision is anything like that. To compare the two seems at best hyperbolic, and at worst at tremendous insult to all of the young women who have been forced to endure the process.

smeg·ma
[smeg-muh]
–noun
a thick, cheeselike, sebaceous secretion that collects beneath the foreskin or around the clitoris.

(er, and by "forced to endure the process", what I mean is that I'm a bit dubious about all the horror stories of the trauma faced by males in their infancy. I sure don't have any recollection of mine).

It's my understanding that for a long time in the second half of the 20th Century the United States had a very high rate of circumcision, mainly for questional medical/hygiene reasons. Circumcision is not required by the mainstream Christian denominations.

I snuck many a discreet peek back when I was in environments that had public showers, etc., and I don't think I saw an uncut one in real life until I was in college in the late '80s.

Finally, a joke:

A man is walking down a street in New York, and sees a shop window full of watches. He goes into the shop and is greeted by a man with a long beard, side curls, and a skullcap. He tells the proprietor he'd like to buy a watch, and the bearded man replies, "I'm sorry, but we don't sell watches here." Confused, the man says "So what do you do here?" The shop owner says "I'm a Mohel, a Rabbi that performs circumcisions." The prospective watch shopper asks "Then why all the watches in the window?" The Rabbi replies "So, what would you put in the window?"

ewww gross i didn't know there was female smegma ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww i'm never touching a vagina again

that Smegma set at the End Times festival was a real highlight.

I'm not a parent, so I can't say what I would do if I had a son, but making it mandatory one way or the other is extreme.

An article from 2005 about the investigation of one negligent mohel is not going to convince a whole lot of people of the evils of circumcision at large.

I agree, but I found it humorous.

Keep your laws off my smegma.

"I'm not a parent, so I can't say what I would do if I had a son, but making it mandatory one way or the other is extreme."

Seriously. So is San Fran anti-abortion too?

hey chambermaids give me back my foreskin

Many insurance plans have stopped covering infant circumcision because it is not medically necessary. My friend didn't have any of her three boys circumcised and says about 75% of her friends and acquaintances with boys under six also did not choose it. I believe she said "our neighborhood is full of foreskins".

i wonder what the ratio of gun toters and uncircumcised children is.

I honestly don't know what I would do if I had a son. Ms. stu says it would be up to me if we snipped or not. I cannot remember what happened with my nephew, but I know that there was some hand-wringing and disagreement about it.

I admit to thinking that it is kind of strange that my circumcised penis is a generational kind of thing.

Maybe in a few decades the norm will be to be uncircumcised and the uncut boys will make fun of the cut ones.

Racists.

Why do wives say it's up to the husband? That seems mildly ridiculous.

My wife had a very strong opinion about not snipping. So we didn't. I don't care so much. I'm all like: could it be any more sensitive?

This shouldn't be a legislated issue. What, are you gonna sue your parents for mutilation?

I'm fairly certain erectile dysfunction has little to do with circumcision, and everything to do with high national rates of hypertension and other circulatory problems.

If you are born with it, why get rid of it?

No government or religion should be telling anyone what to do, so I am against this ban. But I think that everything that is on/apart of a organism when born, most likely has a reason for being born with it.

...on the other hand, cultural practices of modifying the body is olllllld as the hills.

It seems like a bizarre practice. I don't understand the religious symbolism of it, and if you wash yer cock once in a while, as most men presumably do and have done for all history, the hygiene justification is pretty slender, too.

Ha! Yeah.

But really, we all should be wasting our time on way more important things.

Like why are people living so long now?

There should be a law that requires everyone to live till 40.

dude we live like way less. methuselah was like 900

so true.

But I think that everything that is on/apart of a organism when born, most likely has a reason for being born with it.

You mean like my man-nipples and my appendix?

oh god delayed the flood seven days to honor methuselah's death. maybe the rapture was delayed because of macho mans death.

I just looked through my bible and I can't find anything about human vestigiality. NOT REAL.

Emily
5/20/11 10:05 AM

Many insurance plans have stopped covering infant circumcision because it is not medically necessary. My friend didn't have any of her three boys circumcised and says about 75% of her friends and acquaintances with boys under six also did not choose it. I believe she said "our neighborhood is full of foreskins".

we couldn't decide, but this pretty much did it for us. (it's expensive!) That and the fact that they no longer do it at the hospital, so you have to go back into the clinic to have a medical procedure done, an extra time. And, I figured I better just let him decide when he gets older.

Do many dudes decide to get circumcised later in life for non-religious reasons?

I bet a larger percentage consensually get punched in the balls for sexual gratification.

rates

So, if I'm reading that right, 90 percent of the adult white male population was circumcised as of 1995, 90 percent of them when babies. That still leaves an awful lot of people who elected to have someone take a scalpel to their cock.

I don't really have much of a stake in this - I'm content with my own circumcision status, and have no strong preference in potential partners, but still. It really seems like a strange thing to do, especially as an adult.

Damn that's a lot more than I would have figured.

Basically you are making the choice for your kid, unless they happen to be part of the 1% described above. I have heard good arguments to both sides. Ain't no shame in picking either option.

Plenty of women see fit to get breast augmentation, botox, rhinoplasty, lipo...is any of that any weirder?

Excellent point, Swagatha. I'm at a loss to respond to this in a way that makes it look like this obvious and significant fact had already occurred to me.

So, I'll just state the plain ugly truth. Many women are pressured into conforming to what heterosexual men expect them to be, even if that involves surgery. It's even more weird, and far more widespread, and a much bigger problem.

warsawpactarmor
5/21/11 11:08 PM Do many dudes decide to get circumcised later in life for non-religious reasons?

My grandfather had to be circumcised in his 40s because of an infection.

So, defensible or semi-defensible reasons: Religion, hygiene, legitimate medical concern, aesthetics. Leaving...?

as much as i agree with not choosing circumcision for boys i really don't think you should put up that big of a divide between circumcision and male circumcision. i can't necessarily post about it after drinking but it is really a deep cultural difference. there are many different forms of female circumcision, some more invasive than others, but none are very new practices. clearly they are new for a lot of us, and i would never advocate for someone circumcising their baby girl in the states/cultures when they have the choice not to. but both male and female circumcision and the result of thousands of years of cultural practice and served separate but important purposes before birth control, antibiotics, doctors, and an assortment of other things that make them unnecessary and harmful today.

The thing for me is, as a cut male and thus a person who is supposedly the victim here, I can't muster up the energy to give a fuck about this. Or be upset in the slightest. My opinion basically begins and ends with thinking uncut dicks look funny and I'm glad I don't have one.

It just seems odd at being preached about how I was the violated victim, and yet I don't give a fuck in any way whatsoever.

When the neighbors adopted a 12-13 year-old boy from Korea they had him circumcised. Poor Jin was in agony acutely and continuously for weeks and for another year at the slightest brush.

Yeah. So, I'm walking around on the Earth not as I was born into it. So what? I don't really care about things like that. Also, being gay but not partisan on the cut/uncut issue, there's the delightful "what's behind that zipper?" surprise angle.

But, I suppose it's possible that neonatal circumcision pain is responsible for adult psychiatric trauma, in which case this issue becomes more real. However, I'm not sure if that's really a thing or not.

If it is, I apologize for my insensitivity on the topic. Truly curious and open-minded here.

I have a feeling being circumcised at a time when you can remember it would be far more traumatizing then if done when you were an infant.

I LOVE MY CUT DICK.
just sayin'.

My circumcision was actually a medical necessity as my dick was just too big to fit in a diaper.

i bet you were a hot baby.

I'm surprised the ultra-religious support this kind of foreskin murder. A foreskin is born at conception.

i bet you were a loud baby

I was not a baby for very long. I am affected by the same disease that affected Robin Williams in the major motion picture Jack™. I had to learn to shave at the age of 3. I am actually 7 years old right now.

boris parsley
5/22/11 1:12 AM
When the neighbors adopted a 12-13 year-old boy from Korea they had him circumcised. Poor Jin was in agony acutely and continuously for weeks and for another year at the slightest brush.

I'm just going to take a moment and admire the wrongness of this situation.

I have a friend from Puerto Rico who willingly had himself circumcised at the age of 25. YIKES.

I remember him telling me the the recovery process was pretty hellish, but what was worse was, like poor Jin's experience, the X-TREME sensitivity he was constantly feeling.

Jin dropped dead at 30 with like a heart enlarged like 2x normal. Connect the dots.

from sadness

Man, that's tough.

RIP Jin.

baboon heart

i cant believe no one has mentioned that circumcision is said to decrease natural lubrication during sex.

that makes me very sad.

I'm circumcised and if I had any more feeling down there it would be a very short and miserable experience for my gf.

The other day I was going to mention that if I were any more 'sensitive', I would have to work from home. But I always cringe at TMI posts around here. Eh, now I'm guilty too.

spaniel
5/22/11 5:24 PM

i cant believe no one has mentioned that circumcision is said to decrease natural lubrication during sex.

I have never heard this before. You mean because there is less cheese?

fact: circumcised sex is dryer than a mouthful of crackers and sand.

I think we can assume that uncut hunx make ladies hornier, thus WETTER.

Science.

only uncut 100% native american hunx. whitey foreskin is teh grodz.


jk i love all penises, big and....slightly less big.

bw and i will post noodz of our cuts

Judging by that global circumcision map, it looks the Middle East peace process could restart over the mutual interest in dick trimming.

Most of the people I've heard who have strong opinions on this issue are women.

I don't know what that means.

it means they are smarter about penises than dudes

While they are going after minority groups' traditions like this, are they going to ban bbays getting their ears pierced?

cirp.org has lots of info. i did a huge paper on this topic once.

girls all being into droopy dog dicks

MRMB= boys' gym locker room of 2011

Circumcisions for some, small American flags for others.

ReggieQueequeg
5/23/11 3:57 PM While they are going after minority groups' traditions like this, are they going to ban bbays getting their ears pierced?

Soapy Kittens
5/23/11 4:00 PM It is the exact same thing as ear piercing, yes.

----I really do think Reggie's is a valid question.

Turds. Perpetually stirring.

Penises are more intrinsically sacred than earlobes.

ok, but that's ...... your penis.... right?

I will agree that you prob hava a pretty deece johnson.

You can pierce either one.

slice em, dice em. fuck it.

i haven't had earings in my ears since i was 18.
i am currently 33 and still have the holes in me lobes.
PERMANENT.

Sayin

oh, also?

i fuck with my earlobes.

i had a layer of foreskin covering my face. why did i ever get that removed?

Because you look so much better without it.

And you don't get called "penis-breath" as much now.

but when i do. i make sure it's real bad

Whose layer of foreskin was covering your face, howie?

well my own. it's a thing us G3r@rds have been dealing with for decades. it's that french canadian blood i have

French-Canadian? Does the "ZZ" stand for "Zom Zom"?

"For all the anti-religious sentiment on here you'd think this purely religious custom that janks your dong all up would be universally panned."

That's because circumcision isn't purely religious, otherwise there wouldn't be any cut christians.

Nah, they're always trying to co-opt the Jewish stuff. My ubercatholic mother-in-law be all going to seders and shit these days.

my catholic church always had a seder meal. i had no idea it was a jewish thing til i was like 20.

although we did not have bris. or brises. or whatever. bloody baby penis parties.

Well certainly there are some christians who are not uber-catholic.

Soapy Kittens
5/24/11 11:56 AM

If female circumcision is a terrible analogy surely we can toss out earlobes, too, right?
5/24/11 11:58 AM

Honestly, I'm surprised at the opinions in this thread. For all the anti-religious sentiment on here you'd think this purely religious custom that janks your dong all up would be universally panned.

---man, this is a litany of errors, imo. One, I never agreed that the female analogy was terrible. I don't think it is, it seems like you jumped the gun on the assumption here a bit.

Also, YES, i think it's a totally whack religious custom, utterly, but we have this lil ol' thing in 'Merica called religious freedom in a lil Bill named William of Rights.

if i had a son, it would be best if i had him circumcised.
otherwise, i'm just gonna make fun of him 24-7, and that is no way for a child to grow up.

getting the cut is a crime in germany.

Because of the Jew thing, right?

They're just going to do coat hanger circumcisions now.

Would it be okay to strap board to babies' heads to make them oblong like our alien creators? Circumcision is a form of mutilation without consent. Just sayin. I wish I had a little turtle head.

This again?

I was born Caesarian. They cut me out of there. I wanted to stay in.
I did not consent to this.

The dream of Mellow's is really just to recreate the womb.

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Hopefully your mother's Caesarian did not mutilate you ;)

I think it definitely made him less sensitive.

Life is a form of mutilation.

REAL TALK

Oh, and L'il Seamus isn't cut and he's hung like a fucking horse.

KEEP YR LAWS OFF/HANDS ON MY DICK