It's genital mutilation. There's no medical reason [1]. Yes, having a foreskin means you need to clean it regularly (or your caregiver if you're a baby).
And then there are disgusting things like this [2]:
> In a practice that takes place during a ceremony known as the bris, a circumcision practitioner, or mohel, removes the foreskin from the baby's penis, and with his mouth sucks the blood from the incision to cleanse the wound.
[1] Just like anything, there are exceptions. Some people have their foreskin removed because it has an infection or something similar. That shouldn't be applied to all foreskins, and even so, most of that is preventable with good hygiene.
Of course, some reasonable people think that genital mutilation is OK, because being reasonable does not guarantee moral clarity. This is why many reasonable people supported slavery and other abhorrent things.
I can't believe anyone would allow someone to knife off part of their child's genitals (even with anesthesia).
Maybe if the procedure involved branding the Playboy logo into the genitalia (with anesthesia) it would be easier for people to see how barbarous it is.
Nearly every person who works a manual job and loses a finger went on to have a productive and fulfilling career.
Doesn't mean they wouldn't have preferred to keep it.
> Plus we have hundreds of years over which to know if such a procedure had adverse effects and the incidence rates.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
The real question here is how many men born to Orthodox Jewish parents, when asked in adulthood whether they would have preferred to have been curcumcized at 8 days old or not, would have regretted it.
And the answer is?
Obviously the same is not true of people losing a finger.
You're moving the goal posts. Your claim was about productive and fulfilling lives and the implication that circumcision does not impair that.
Regret doesn't factor into that and is a separate issue. Clearly you can have productive and fulfilling lives with or without regrets. Whether the lack of regrets is rational or merely a self-defense mechanism of the person's mind is another question.
The goal posts have been set by the original issue: whether circumcision harms the person or benefits them.
The main people who can answer that are adult males who were circumcized.
I am confident that if you asked 1000 religious Orthodox Jewish men whether they would have preferred to NOT have been circumcized at 8 days old and instead had to choose it later, an overwhelming majority would say they were glad they were circumcized that early. And they prefer that over never having been circumcized.
I would be hesitant to say the same about non-Jewish men. The reason Jewish men are happy about having been circumcized early is because (perhaps this sounds ironic) it gives them FAR GREATER CHOICE when it comes to their own community and membership in three thousand year old people, marriage and - above all for most religious people - serving God in the way spelled out in the Torah.
They can choose to leave the lifestyle or increase their observance etc. much more easily since one of the biggest challenges is already out of the way.
You can of course tell them they don't understand what real choice is, that this is stockholm syndrome and that religion is mass delusion.
But they may not agree and they collectively are ultimately the judges of what was better for them.
It is a different conception of morality and rights than the individualism that comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment
These ideas that a parent "knows better" because they - and millions of others - were in the same situation and are glad this was done, are valid.
It is a collective morality of a people. And again I would say that unless they believed that God commanded it, it could be possibly changed but as it is, when the vast majority of complaints are from the OUTSIDE of the community, perhaps the downsides far outweigh the upsides.
You know what, i could say a lot of words, but really, i tire of it. You sound like the former marines i know who defend newbie hazing as noble and necessary. Much the same back and forth applies in both cases, and i really do not want to repeat discussions i've had multiple times already.
I'd be happy to read that study i asked for at the start though.
This is important, because circ'd individuals are often targeted online as having inferior sexual organs (count how many times the word "mutilated" is used in this thread). I'm willing to bet the mental health impact of this rhetoric is greater than the impact of circumcision itself. If circumcision should be banned, it shouldn't be banned on exaggerated pretenses that intact men have superior penises and circ'd men are inferior or incomplete (which seems to be underlying a lot of the arguments).
They threw together a bunch of contradicting studies, assigned weights without discussion of the assigning methods and parameters, then decided on an average and declared it a fact, instead of being honest and saying "we don't know either way". Based on this overall pattern i don't think i have much trust that their decision making process wasn't biased.
As for incomplete. I'm sorry, but there are no two ways about it. Incomplete means to be missing a part. It is. How important this is in the big picture is a different question.
For something that's so obviously damaging and mutilation and horrible and obscene, you'd think the science wouldn't at least be equivocating. The science should make you happy. You can still oppose circumcision, and you don't have to feel so much sympathy for circumcised people like me. Win/win.
Your argument seems to me to be that a society should permit religious groups within it to live by the rules of their religious texts. You don't support the argument with reasoning, however. As far as I can tell you're relying on some implicit notion that religious beliefs merit respect (in multiple facets) simply by virtue of their existence which is, at best, a controversial assertion.
The question of whether Jewish men proceed to success after the alteration may indicate something about the severity of the alteration, but it certainly isn't a reason supporting routine circumcision.
Your point regarding gender reassignment surgery is irrelevant and, as far as I can tell, a way to imply hypocrisy and substitute that as a counter argument for pro-abolotion positions.
Liberal progressives are totally fine with the child having a choice? That's the point you are making. Also outside of medical reasons, gender reassignment surgery standard of care is to wait until the age of majority. So 18 sounds about right.
I'm against circumcision but I can't deny you've made some of the most compelling points I've ever heard regarding the issue. If circumcision is so bad we'd expect poorer life outcomes for the victims of it. Instead we see the opposite.
Assuming the better life outcomes aren't just because of culutural values, I wonder if there are benefits to circumcision we simply don't have the scientific tools to measure.
Yes they do. It's far harder to agree to do it later. And it is necessary for membership in the Israelite Nation, according to the Bible. Which means it will have huge ramifications for the person in terms of marriage, children and their whole life.
Ask 1000 men born to Orthodox Jewish parents whether they regret being circumcized.
And ask 1000 Orthodox Jewish men who were not circumcized whether they wish they had been.
In the West, we have values of individualism. So being part of a millennia old people or a tradition or serving God are not seen as primary values by many atheists. I bet the people downvoting and commenting here negatively about circumcision are not of an Abrahamic faith - Judaism Christianity or Islam.
Fine but the individualism has also led to more depression, tiny families, often broken homes (also permanent effects on the child). So when you talk about tradeoffs tou have to consider the complex set of interconnected benefits. And different people perceive different benefits depending on their cultural upbringing. I can tell you that the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish men are glad they were circumcized at 8 days old and not had to choose it later.
> And it is necessary for membership in the Israelite Nation, according to the Bible. Which means it will have huge ramifications for the person in terms of marriage, children and their whole life.
According to the Torah you should be stoned to death for merely breaking the Sabbath, and a murder victim's family members should be permitted to kill the murderer - and yet Judaism has modernised, recognising these acts as barbaric. Maybe Judaism needs to modernise a bit more, and allow children to grow up and make their own choices regarding the mutilation of their bodies.
Should people with religious beliefs really be able to mutilate their children in the name of their beliefs, however 'benign' that mutiliation is seen to be?
I don't see the problem with allowing children to grow into adulthood, decide for themselves what, if any, religion they want to follow - and make their own choice about how, if at all, to mutilate their bodies?
I understand that there are hundreds of years of tradition involved, but you could say the same about plenty of practices that are frowned upon or outlawed, so I don't think that argument stands up on its own.
Does the same logic apply to female genital mutilation is societies where that has been acceptable for eons?
Is your standard for acceptable mutilation really "it isn't noticeably harmful"?
What if my religion calls for the removal of a single testicle instead of the foreskin - is that ok? Afterall, men with one testicle can still father children and lead productive lives.
If there was a culture going back thousands of years where men with a single testicle went on to live lives with hugely outsized outcomes, then yeah, I might say, "hey, maybe they know something we don't."
Those are good points. I respect that some people have religious beliefs and affiliations.
Rights generally begin as a very individual thing... the right to vote, the right to free speech, etc. So the right not to have one's body mutilated without consent is pretty individual the way I look at it. It's hard (for me) to separate granting the right to mutilate a body that is not yours from the notion of the person being mutilated somehow being "chattle" of the person doing the mutilation.
But I'm not arguing that the same set of laws should apply to all groups and all cultures, but for an area where rights and protections are very minimal (such as infants) there is a lot of room for improvement.
My guess is that if circumcision were banned religious communities would not be harmed because the symbolism of circumcision would adapt to be more figurative in the same way that many other traditions are now done in a "lite" way that lacks strict historical accuracy but still holds great ceremonial significance.
But don't take my remarks as disrespectful of religion or of Judaism. I think that trying to figure out how to accomplish (broadly speaking) moral progress is very difficult, and I'd much rather improve the rights of prisoners than see circumcision ended, even though in principle I hold the view that circumcision should only occur when the person whose penis is being circumcised can consent. In the US there are much lower hanging fruit for humanitarian improvement. Not sure about Norway.
I think Jews having outsized outcomes in life is pretty well settled. If you're asking for a double blind study I don't have one, but I'm hesitant to throw away thousands of years of tradition. There's a lot of things in life we think we understand well but it just ain't so. Maybe circumcision reduces sex drive in men allowing them to pursue higher goals. Maybe it frees up an important part of the brain for other general computation. I'm only speculating but I think that's fair when most of the alleged harms of circumcision are also speculation. For what it's worth, the biggest harm for myself has been the unending insistence that circumcised people are somehow "incomplete" and inferior. It took me a while and lots of research to realize that the story is far more complex.
This thing can operate in various fashions. Unmodified it works like this, modified it works in another way. Leave it as is and there's the option for both at any point. Make the decision now and one of the options is forever gone.
> we'd expect poorer life outcomes for the victims of it
Now, this may be anecdotal, but Eastern European men are (almost) all uncircumcised and on average Eastern Europeans seem to be regarded as better coders than Americans and Indians, who are all routinely circumcised.
> since they believe that this has huge ramifications for their child's life as a Jew, and if you read the Bible you can definitely see why
Is the argument here that if someone happens to believe in a particular practice (that impacts on somebody else's life), it should be completely off-limits and tolerated without question just because it appears in a religious text?
> why right away submit them to permanently changing into a transsexual? Yet the same progressives who argue against circumcision would argue for gender reassignment surgery.
Which "progressives" are arguing for babies to have gender reassignment surgery?
This is actually not true. It's normal for the foreskin to remain attached in young children. This is entirely normal and acts as a powerful disease protection mechanism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0079408/
According to the Mayo Clinic there are multiple medical benefits to circumcision [1]
To address some of the other points here, I can only give a anecdotal example from my own experience. My wife and I decided to have our son circumcised and not because of religious reasons, but rather because of those listed in the referenced article, among others--and after much condsideration. At the end of the day we decided that the benefits outweighed the risks.
As far as who should have the choice of this procedure, ideally it would be the individual on whom the procedure is being performed. However, the procedure and pain as an adult would certainly be more memorable. My parents made the choice to circumcise me when I was an infant--I'm glad they did because I don't remember any associated pain or discomfort.
I think that there should be more discourse over this parental choice. If parents are making these decisions for mere aesthetic or ritualistic reasons then that is a problem. However, labeling circumcision as 'genital mutilation' across the board is not accurate. There are advantages and disadvantages that should be weighed carefully.
Confirmation bias. You will never know if the benefits outweigh the risks and you denied the kid the choice. I wish I had the choice. Mutilations cannot be reversed. You probably did it because - 1 it was done to you, 2 some custom from a desert 2000 years ago and 3 you wanted Jr. to "be like everyone else". I've heard all the reasons. Cut his middle finger off too so he can't flip the bird - that could save him from a potential fight. Also sewing his mouth shut might prevent sass talk
"You will never know if the benefits outweigh the risks... "
You're probably right. That's why it was a weighted decision based on the information available.
Your other points do not match the same model we used to make our decision. Flipping someone off or giving the middle finger is a choice that one can make, and later apologize for and move on. Penile cancer or many STDs do not fall into that category.
I'm surprised that this topic is even on HN, and even more so by the presumptive and emotional responses that clearly didn't read the post in its entirety. So, I don't think this is a conversation I will engage in any further.
How do you rationalize changing your son's sexual function without his consent and despite the fact that it is possible to do the same procedure later in life, with zero mental and very little physical immediate trauma?
To what extent did you go to educate yourself on that matter, given you have no personal experience?
For one, it has erogenous nerves in it. Or more clearly put: Friction and pressure on certain parts of my foreskin feels really good, even if the entirety of it is held fixed and none of the friction is applied to the glans. The parts that feel good are fairly forwards, so it is unlikely that any of that would survive a circumcision.
For the other, in penetration it both acts as liquid-less lubrication by allowing the penis to move freely inside it even if the vagina isn't very wet; and it also increases the range of sensations by feeling different when the movement is with the glans still inside the foreskin, and when it's deeper in and outside the foreskin. The "pseudo lube" aspect is also appreciated by women in my experience.
E: I see some people down-voted this and i am earnestly puzzled. I believe i have described only physical facts. Is this post too "frank" for a public forum, or did i get something wrong?
Sounds great, but you might be overselling it considering adults who have undergone circumcision for non-health reasons largely don't report loss of sexual pleasure (some do, some report greater pleasure). And there's also the fact if you're circ'd as a baby the brain has decades to adapt, and that's where the pleasure actually is in the first place.
I'm not overselling it since i did not attach a price tag. I said a change, not how much of a change.
And yeah, i can entirely see how different people might not give a damn about any of this. Some might even benefit. Men who're not very sensitive would have more fun without the foreskin and the direct stimulation and might not even notice the loss of the nerves in the foreskin, men with very active glands might not care about the difference in lubrication, women whose glands are naturally more productive might not care which type of penis their partner has.
Nevertheless, the sexual function is changed. There are things a circumcised penis can do better. There's also things an uncircumcised one can do better. I'm not saying either of them is better than someone else's, just different. Changed.
Fair enough. I conflated your post with the ones comparing it to FGM Type II, talking as if circ'd penises are horrifically mutilated and barely functional.
Pondered it a little, and i think you might be misreading some people unintentionally. Maybe you mentally match FGM to mutilation as a whole, which most people don't, and react to them as if they did? Note how something can be in the same class as something else, but have a much lower degree of impact. When someone says mutilated they may not necessarily be thinking "horrifically" or "barely functional". Heck, many people consider ear rings or tattoos mutilation.
Mutilation is a word with strong and harsh connotations. How would someone with a facial birthmark react if people said their face was mutilated? It's hurtful rhetoric largely unbacked by adult comparative sexual studies.
Edit: can't reply, but I think you're being uncharitable by saying I'm overreacting to the word "mutilation" because it's technically correct by the dictionary definition. We don't describe people with earrings or tattoos as mutilated unless we intend to insult them or the practice.
> facial birthmark react if people said their face was mutilated
That is not what mutilation means though. Like, literally not. Check the dictionary. You saying that just drives the point home that you're mapping a meaning onto it that is not intended by the other side.
The problem with these rituals is that they're sometimes performed by non professionals, and in this specific case not under medical supervision, and this may put the infant's health at risk by either late health complications or worse death.
Here's a case for two babies getting Herpes in NYC because of this practise.
I'm glad you at least thought about it, but I think you (and most American parents) made the wrong choice. You're violating your sons bodily autonomy, and depriving him of a functional part of his sexual organ, for what is mostly a matter of convenience.
I found a big exception to your blanket statements:
There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.
> There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%.
Saying there is evidence is not the same as evidence. AFAIK, this study was debunked because the result was not causal - it was that different class/cultural patterns among the sub-populations of the country were responsible, not the circumcision. But, there was already a massive stream of funding (Bill Gates included) for adult circumcision based on that faulty reasoning, and now it's too late to turn the ship around.
I'm sure there are a lot of physical mutilations we could make to people that would reduce the chances of various diseases. Nonetheless, I think there's a moral issue in slicing up children (or adults) for this reason. Do our bodies belong to ourselves, to the government, to someone's god, or to the people around us?
Not that I'm saying you're advocating it; just continuing the train of thought.
And to follow the train of thought all the way - do children's bodies belong to themselves or to their parents? Parents (or Guardians) do have to make some decisions for their children, but perhaps should defer irreversible decisions on elective surgery until the child is old enough to have an opinion - boys and girls both. And if the thought of asking a 13 year-old girl if she wants to have her genitals modified gives you pause, perhaps consider how circumcision is any different?
Nonetheless, I think there's a moral issue in slicing up children (or adults) for this reason. Do our bodies belong to ourselves, to the government, to someone's god, or to the people around us?
This feels like a platitude that overlooks the complexity of the issue. What rights do parents have over their children? Are they allowed to prescribe a religion? Are they allowed to prescribe a culture? Are they allowed to take their children to the hospital if they're sick?
Personally, I don't think male circumcision is that big of a deal, because it has little to no negative impact on a male child. Female circumcision, on the other hand, is different.
> it has little to no negative impact on a male child.
Really? Please link a study, published in a respectable publication, that compares physical and subjective sex performance parameters of the two type of men.
Categorically false. I have a newborn boy and talked to a number of doctors about it - there is actually a slight benefit to the circumcised child [1], it just isn't enough for the American Association of Pediatrics to recommend it outright.
Perhaps. But like with most medical procedures there is risk vs reward. In this case the risk is a 100% chance of altering how your child's sex organs look and function without their knowledge or consent vs a small and dubious reward.
In other words don't fucking do it because it is barbaric and evil. If you think it's not, ask an uncircumcised adult to have the procedure done for all the benefits it provides and see how many agree.
You're not even making rational arguments, you're vilifying a procedure you happen to dislike. The fact is that the entire medical community agrees there are benefits to either approach, so letting parents decide is the more reasonable stance here.
Did you actually read the complaints? There are two that seem reasonable (copied data and number to treat) and one that goes off on a tangent citing supreme court cases on patient harm and sexual abuse. As far as harm let me be clear - the circumcision procedure causes less pain and consternation than my child's normal bowel movements.
The former two seem like legit cases to look into, but doesn't necessarily mean the entire study needs to be thrown out. Until then I see no reason not to let parents decide.
The parent post, makes allowances for medical exceptions in their footnote. The point is there's no medical reason to circumcise en-mass or by default. Norway's ban is for ritual circumcision, which is not by a doctor.
> And calling it mutilation implies those who have and want to have this engage in mutilation akin to FGM. It's irresponsible.
It is akin to FGM when it's done nonconsensually (which it is, in the vast majority of cases for both sexes). Disclaimer: I understand that FGM is much more sexually debilitating and AFAIK never has a medical need behind it, but victims of circumcision are also being (usually needlessly) deprived of a functional part of their sexual organ.
He made it pretty clear that he isn't talking about people with clear medical diagnosis indicating a need for it, also phimosis is usually not treated by removing the ENTIRE foreskin.
MGM (circumcision) = FGM. You can lie to yourself and others but the person being mutilated is being denied a choice when their lives are not in danger.
I'm not aware of any adult women in a free society choosing to be mutilated, whereas it isn't uncommon for adult men to choose to be circumcised. That would seem to indicate that there is indeed a difference.
FGM is evil, plain and simple. MGM/circumcision has interesting points on both sides, and while there might be a stronger argument against it than for, it's not strong enough to be a hill I'd choose to die on. But to each their own, I suppose.
Those are very clearly wrong, with no redeeming value and cause a great deal of harm to the woman, beyond any subjectivity. Nobody is signing up to have this done to them for aesthetic reasons. Compared to this, circumcision is only low-moderately invasive and damaging. If you are going to argue against circumcision, do so on its own merits, not by comparing it to something far worse.
Phimosis doesn't manifest until around puberty and can almost always be treated non-surgically. It's not a justification for permanent invasive surgery on babies.
Calling this mutilation is absurd, I am circumcised and so is my son - it was way more traumatic for me seeing, then it was for him feeling t - many babies do not even cry.
I suggest you do a little more research on what genital mutilation really means in the 3rd world, circumcision is no worse than some injections by comparison.
There is a very valid medical reason for this - it prevents sexually transmitted diseases [1] - So much so that it is promoted for adult males by health organizations. n the other hand, the foreskin serves absolutely no medical purpose.
Most reputable mohels (specially trained people who conduct the circumcision) will use a tube to suck the blood to prevent any chance of infection.
Also, whether something is mutilation or not is about more than how much it hurts when it's done. In this case a child is deprived of a part of their body that performs a clear biological function.
I said clear, not essential. Your pinky finger also does not perform an essential biological function, i.e. you can keep on living without it. But it performs a clear one, providing more grip strength and options.
Please link to the dictionary definition you're using.
So if a girl gets FGM and doesnt cry its ok? Are you insane? So if one is induced with anesthesia and they cut your arm off its ok then? MGM = FGM, and you denied a child a choice when there was no immediate danger. I wish I had the choice. I had the cahones to let me son remain un-mutilated and if he dislikes it so much he can lop it off. Think for yourself. Question authority.
And then there are disgusting things like this [2]:
> In a practice that takes place during a ceremony known as the bris, a circumcision practitioner, or mohel, removes the foreskin from the baby's penis, and with his mouth sucks the blood from the incision to cleanse the wound.
[1] Just like anything, there are exceptions. Some people have their foreskin removed because it has an infection or something similar. That shouldn't be applied to all foreskins, and even so, most of that is preventable with good hygiene.
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-dies-herpes-virus-ritual-c...