Why is circumcision for religious reasons tolerated, while other religious barbarism

seamus

blatantrereg wrote: »

Priapism isn't the condition where the foreskin becomes tightened. Priapism is when you have an erection that won't go away.

Indeed, I used Google to check the spelling, should have used it to check the condition. I did actually mean phimosis, d'oh.

Circumcision does help prevent infections - including serious infections - in healthy penises as well as ones with some existing condition. If you check your facts you'll find that the statistics demonstrate this.

I think if you check the facts, the statistics in fact don't demonstrate this.

It also makes sense intuitively: Things dont usually go into the male uretha, and it is a pretty small opening compared to a vagina.

"Intuition" is not a good reason tbh. Many things seem intuitively common sense but when you actually look at the reality, they don't.
Logically if you think about it, the foreskin still exists after a few hundred million years of mammalian evolution. Which means that at worst it has no effect on reproductive health. If it had a deliterious effect on reproductive health, it wouldn't exist, it would have been kicked out of the evolutionary line a long time ago.
So it's a little bit arrogant (though typical of humanity tbh) to think that we know better than evolution and whip things off just because we don't like them.

It's not a clear cut issue. You could just as easily say it's unethical not to circumcise people because it would reduce the spread of disease - particularly HIV.

Again, the statistics don't back this up. As you rightly point out, most boys born in the USA are circumcised, primarily for cultural reasons above anything else.
Yet HIV is far more prevalent in the USA than it is in the EU, where the vast majority of males are not circumcised.
Circumcision has at best no effect on the spread of HIV.

At any rate, even assuming that circumcision did have an effect on STI rates, that still doesn't justify removing them from children. An STI is an avoidable, preventable disease. Why is surgery and amputation preferable to education?

A number of studies have also shown that circumcision can in fact cause problems in bed:

In a landmark study of US women, 85% who had experienced both circumcised and intact men preferred sex with intact men. Sex with a circumcised man was associated with pain, dryness and difficulty reaching orgasm (O'Hara 1999). In another study, women were twice as likely to reach orgasm with an intact man (Bensley 2003). Even when a woman said she preferred a circumcised partner, she had less dryness and discomfort with intact men (O'Hara 1999).
...
Men who are circumcised are 60% more likely to have difficulty identifying and expressing their feelings, which can cause marital difficulties (Bollinger 2010). Circumcised men are 4.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with erectile dysfunction, use drugs like Viagra, and to suffer from premature ejaculation (Bollinger 2010, Tang 2011). Men who were circumcised as adults experienced decreased sensation and decreased quality of erection, and both they and their partners experienced generally less satisfaction with sex (Kim 2007, Solinis 2007).

In essence you are risking lumbering your son with mentally difficult dysfunction as an adult rather than take the simple steps of educating them properly in looking after their mickey.

But again, this is still all retrospective story re-writing. At some point a few thousand years ago, some desert-dweller heard voices in his head which told him to whip off foreskins. Since then people have been scrambling to invent scientific reasons for maintaining a practice which is completely unnecessary. There is no benefit, medically or socially, to circumcision. The statistics back this up completely.

The other factor is the level to which a religion is accepted. People are often critical of the muslim form of animal slaughter, but you dont hear many people talk about the Jewish form of it, even though they are pretty much the same as far as the animal is concerned. So perhaps a second factor is the level of acceptance for the religion. [The more a religion is accepted, the more its practices are too, and vice-versa).

While that's a fair point, I think the "acceptance" of Jewish slaughter practices is more etymological than anything else. That is, the word "kosher" in everyday language is a synoym for "OK", "acceptable", "above board". It has a positive sentiment. So for people who do not know what "kosher" methods involve, the assumption is naturally that if it's "kosher" then it must be humane and good. "Halal" doesn't have any alternate use, so nobody has any assumptions about it.

Odysseus

fedor.2. wrote: »

What a strange person. You may be thinking about this way too much.

Interesting response, but yeah, anything that provokes a strong reaction in people like this I find interesting. But then again, I'm not in my consulting room, but my training makes me interested intrested in these type of reactions.

Odysseus

Matt_Trakker wrote: »

I think the whole idea of anything to do with circumcision is disgusting, wrong, brutal & unnecessary.
Each to their own indeed, but if some douchebag comes near my kid with a knife and tries to hack off part of his dick and then wants to suck the blood from the wound then that chaps gonna be getting a his knife in his eye.

But parental consent hasn't been an issuse here is it? All of these cases have consent from all the parent; I imagine any parent would feel the same if this was done without their consent.

blatantrereg

seamus wrote: »

I think if you check the facts, the statistics in fact don't demonstrate this.
"Intuition" is not a good reason tbh. Many things seem intuitively common sense but when you actually look at the reality, they don't.

Reduces risk of acquiring HIV significantly (and recommends it is done as a matter of course in high risk zones):

http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2807%2960312-2/abstract

Reduces risk of UTI:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1720543/pdf/v090p00853.pdf

Significantly reduces risk of HSV-2 HPV and HIV infections:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19321868

I could continue; there are thousands of papers on the subject

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=prevention+of+infection+circumcision&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=hNV6UNT0IMWwhAf_9oHADA&ved=0CBsQgQMwAA

Logically if you think about it, the foreskin still exists after a few hundred million years of mammalian evolution. Which means that at worst it has no effect on reproductive health. If it had a deliterious effect on reproductive health, it wouldn't exist, it would have been kicked out of the evolutionary line a long time ago.
So it's a little bit arrogant (though typical of humanity tbh) to think that we know better than evolution and whip things off just because we don't like them.

But the practice of circumcision has evolved independently in societies across the world. That suggests that societies that practice it have some advantage over those that do not.

Again, the statistics don't back this up. As you rightly point out, most boys born in the USA are circumcised, primarily for cultural reasons above anything else.
Yet HIV is far more prevalent in the USA than it is in the EU, where the vast majority of males are not circumcised.
Circumcision has at best no effect on the spread of HIV.

It very clearly does have an effect on reducing the spread of HIV, as the links I've already provided indicate. Obviously it is not the only factor involved; saying that it has no effect because there are more infections in the USA than the EU is simplistic to the point of silliness.

At any rate, even assuming that circumcision did have an effect on STI rates, that still doesn't justify removing them from children. An STI is an avoidable, preventable disease. Why is surgery and amputation preferable to education?

Personally I agree. I never said it was preferable to education though. I just pointed out that it has advantages and that it's nonsense to compare it to ritual killing or aparthied and so on.

A number of studies have also shown that circumcision can in fact cause problems in bed:
In essence you are risking lumbering your son with mentally difficult dysfunction as an adult rather than take the simple steps of educating them properly in looking after their mickey.

But again, this is still all retrospective story re-writing. At some point a few thousand years ago, some desert-dweller heard voices in his head which told him to whip off foreskins. Since then people have been scrambling to invent scientific reasons for maintaining a practice which is completely unnecessary. There is no benefit, medically or socially, to circumcision. The statistics back this up completely.

There are very significant medical benefits to it. You are confusing correlation with proof of cause in your interpretation of statistics. If you take a moment to consult the huge body of research on the subject you'll see that right away.

JuliusCaesar

blatantrereg wrote: »

Reduces risk of acquiring HIV significantly (and recommends it is done as a matter of course in high risk zones)....There are very significant medical benefits to it. You are confusing correlation with proof of cause in your interpretation of statistics. If you take a moment to consult the huge body of research on the subject you'll see that right away.

BUT a critique of the meta-analysis points out that

The results from this re-analysis thus support the contention that male circumcision may offer protection against HIV infection, particularly in high-risk groups where genital ulcers and other STDs 'drive' the HIV epidemic........

(my bolding)

In any case, the controversy is about encouraging circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa to try to impact on AIDS; there's not a hint of a suggestion that it is such an advantage that it should be commonly practiced in Europe or the Western world.

blatantrereg wrote: »

But the practice of circumcision has evolved independently in societies across the world. That suggests that societies that practice it have some advantage over those that do not.

Advantage? Or maybe it was used as a mark of identity, eg the Jews.

the Jews of the time, circumcision wasn't as much a spiritual act as it was physical: it was an outward sign of their covenant with God,

regarding pre-history:

Remondino suggested that it began as a diminishment of full castration of a captured enemy: castration certainly would have been fatal, while some form of circumcision would permanently mark the defeated, yet leave him alive to serve as a slave.

Egyptians circumcision surely concerned purification, and was associated with those committed to spiritual and intellectual development

regarding Aboriginals and Polynesians

circumcision likely started as a blood sacrifice and a test of bravery

etc etc etc - all from Wikipedia if you'd like to look there. IMO, tattooing would be preferable.