The Sensitive Issue of Circumcision

JoeEllison said:
No, he's saying stupid and hateful things, and avoiding reality. The reality is that there's a difference between circumcision and mutilation, and conflating the two is insulting to just about everyone involved, including the victims of mutilation.
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Mutilate means to damage, maim or dismember. It comes from the Latin word mutilare, which means to cut off. What is male circumcision? Cutting off the end of a penis. So it is indeed mutilation.

I'm glad I still have my manhood intact, instead of a sawn-off shotgun.
 
rex said:
Mutilate means to damage, maim or dismember. It comes from the Latin word mutilare, which means to cut off. What is male circumcision? Cutting off the end of a penis. So it is indeed mutilation.
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Semantics aside, what JoeEllison objected to was comparing - or rather implicitly equating - the procedures performed on women, sometimes referred to as "female circumcision", to circumcision as performed on males. One can argue about whether the term should be applied to females at all, but if one chooses to do so, it is important not to carelessly mention them as if they were similar.

The possible benefits or harms resulting from male circumcision can and are being discussed. If this was about the procedure Ayaan Hirsi Ali once went through, the pro side would have no medical case to make. At all.
 
Rufo said:
Semantics aside, what JoeEllison objected to was comparing - or rather implicitly equating - the procedures performed on women, sometimes referred to as "female circumcision", to circumcision as performed on males. One can argue about whether the term should be applied to females at all, but if one chooses to do so, it is important not to carelessly mention them as if they were similar.
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That's pretty much it. It is wrong to conflate the two things. According to the evidence, there's no change in sexual function whether you are circumcised or not. I can see people choosing to circumcise, and I can see people choosing to not circumcise. Both positions have valid reasons behind them. I only object to the ridiculous notion that male circumcision and female genital mutilation are even remotely similar.
 
rex said:
Mutilate means to damage, maim or dismember. It comes from the Latin word mutilare, which means to cut off. What is male circumcision? Cutting off the end of a penis. So it is indeed mutilation.
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Word of advice: while defending the use of unnecessarily emotionally-charged language, it is best not to try to slip in some more unnecessarily emotionally-charged language.

No one has cut off the end of my penis, nor my sons'. And I darn sure wouldn't let them. The foreskin is not the end of the penis and you know it.
 
Vic Vega said:
And this is an issue why? Urine is sterile.
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Because it's painful.
Really, really painful.
Like " :covereyes:eek: " painful.

(I know from my experiences with urinating after lacerations from childbirth.)
 
Vic Vega said:
Urine is sterile.
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I'm no microbiologist but... ain't it only sterile in an anaerobic environment?

Either way, I fail to see the relevance - bearing in mind that we are all the descendants of men with foreskins... although I guess wooists that thnk the whirled is only 6,400 years old might argue pretend otherwise


Circumcision: The Uniquely American Medical Enigma

UROLOGIC CLINICS OF NORTH AMERICA, Volume 12 Number 1, Pages 123-132,
February 1985.

Edward Wallerstein - author of Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy

The continuing practice of routine neonatal nonreligious circumcision represents an enigma, particularly in the United States. About 80 percent of the world's population do not practice circumcision, nor have they ever done so. Among the non-circumcising nations are Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, the U.S.S.R., China, and Japan. People employing circumcision do so either for "health" reasons or as a religious ritual practiced by Muslims, Jews, most black Africans, non-white Australians, and others.

The origin of the ritual practice is unknown. There is evidence of its performance in Israel in Neolithic times (with flint knives) at least 6000 years ago.38 Jews accept the Old Testament origin as a covenant between God and Abraham,18 although it is generally agreed that the practice of circumcision in Egypt predated the Abrahamic Covenant by centuries.55 Ritual Circumcision is not germane to this discussion except insofar as the surgical ritual impinges upon accepted medical practice.65

So called "health" circumcision originated in the nineteenth century...
<snip/> <ouch/>...
...myth and ignorance, a theory emerged that masturbation caused many and varied ills...
<snip/>
..it accorded with the mid-Victorian attitude toward sex as sinful and debilitating.64
<snip/>
...Dr. P. C. Remondino.... In 1891 this physician claimed that the surgery prevented or cured about a hundred ailments, including alcoholism, epilepsy, asthma, enuresis, hernia, gout, rectal prolapse, rheumatism, kidney disease, and so forth. Such ludicrous claims are still disseminated and possibly believed. The book was reprinted in 1974, without change...
<snip/>
One physician, writing in Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality (1974), called the book "pertinent and carefully thought out."63
<snip/>
...In 1911, Dr. Joseph Preuss, in a monumental tome, Biblical-Talmudic Medicine, claimed that Jewish ritual circumcision endowed health benefits; his sole source was Remondino
<snip/>
...in 1910 an article in J.A.M.A. described a new circumcision clamp. The author/inventor claimed that with this device, the operation was so simple that men and women could now circumcise themselves.
<snip/>
...from 1870 to the present, no other country adopted newborn circumcision.
<snip/>
...The first serious questioning of the practice did not occur until late 1949 (in England with the publication of Gairdner's "The Fate of the Foreskin."
<snip/>
...In 1963, an editorial in J.A.M.A. called the attitude of the medical profession paradoxical and confused
<snip/>
...Dr. Robert P. Boland, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1969, compared circumcision with tonsillectomy, calling both procedures "ritualistic," and "widely performed on a non-scientific basis." He opposed routine tonsillectomy but concluded vis-a-vis circumcision: "Little serious objection can actually be raised against circumcision since its adverse effects seem miniscule."5
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Speak for yourself, Bob!
 
kellyb said:
You don't think the foreskin is part of the penis? Or do you disagree that some of the foreskin usually hangs out on the "end"?
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It is closer to this:

A fingernail is part of a finger. Cutting off the end of a fingernail is therefore the same as cutting off the end of a finger?
 
Lucky said:
I don't know how it's possible for anyone to be that ignorant.
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If you want me to be more accurate, it is the outside end that is cut off, exposing the glans inside and causing it to dry and become hard and keratonised. (I did not mean to imply that the glans is cut off too, if that is the mental image everyone suddenly had.)
 
And, maybe, getting your ear pierced is just like being stabbed with an ice pick, and getting a tattoo is just like ritual scarification. Things that are only remotely similar are magically transformed into exactly the same thing...

I'm going to try this at the bank... $1 and $100 bills and the same shape and size, so they are pretty much the same thing. I'm sure the bank would swap the 16 dollar bills in my wallet for 16 crisp new $100 bills.:rolleyes:
 
JoeEllison said:
It is closer to this:

A fingernail is part of a finger. Cutting off the end of a fingernail is therefore the same as cutting off the end of a finger?
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So you think that cutting off the foreskin is just like trimming a fingernail?

I don't know how it's possible for anyone to be that ignorant, and yet, there you are.
 
rex said:
So you think that cutting off the foreskin is just like trimming a fingernail?
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Nope, but it is one hell of a lot closer to that than to cutting off the end of the penis, or genital mutilation, or any of the rather stupid comparisons that people have made in this thread.
 
JoeEllison said:
And, maybe, getting your ear pierced is just like being stabbed with an ice pick, and getting a tattoo is just like ritual scarification. Things that are only remotely similar are magically transformed into exactly the same thing...
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JoeEllison said:
Nope, but it is one hell of a lot closer to that than to cutting off the end of the penis, or genital mutilation, or any of the rather stupid comparisons that people have made in this thread.
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And you know a lot about foreskins, and what they are, and what they do... how?
My limited experiences are:
1) having had an intact boyfriend in the past
2)mother of an intact child

Many of the posters here arguing with you actually have the sexual organ in question. But you're the foreskin authority based on what experience?
 
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kellyb said:
And you know a lot about foreskins, and what they are, and what they do... how?
My limited experiences are:
1) having had an intact boyfriend in the past
2)mother of an intact child

Many of the posters here arguing with you actually have the sexual organ in question. But you're the foreskin authority based on what experience?
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I...ummm... own one? That makes my experience more "hands-on" than yours. :rolleyes:
 
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