You don't mutilate your daughters - why do you mutilate your sons ? (Discussion concerning human se

reply to post by InterestedUK


Not at all. I don't remember it. I don't suffer from it. Why should I care?

It's effectively the same getting your nail plucked off from slamming it in the door. it hurts like a mofo. You get over it. Sorry that I don't agree with your pretty tree and happy bunny view of the world, but pain is temperamental and a guarantee in life. I could hardly give a damn about it. I do not suffer from it. it is my religion. I will not care for the opinions of others.

reply to post by ofhumandescent


First off, it isn't extremely painful. I know men that have done this as adults and they were not traumatized. As you say yourself, the nerves in the foreskin are pleasure nerves. They are not pain receptors. My 2 year old can do things with his junk that makes me cringe. It isn't painful.

Secondly, the clitoris and the foreskin are entirely different. The foreskin is more like the labia. Removing a women's external labia would be akin to a female circumcision. I have seen some cases where plastic surgery in that region was entirely called for and necessary, but in general it seems like wasted effort.

Thirdly, Doctors do disagree about whether or not there is less risk of STDs when circumsized, but as a male that has had many risky encounters, I am very happy that my parents had me circumsized. I have never had a major STD, and I probably should have had many. If a male is circumsized, his skin is healthy and uncompromised, and he has good hygiene habits, he can get away with a lot of risky behavior. I don't recommend it, but it is a fact.

Fourthly, most males do not need extra incentive in the realm of sexual stimulation. There is a major market for desensitizing creams to allow males to last longer. Therefore any sensation that is lost is made up by longer encounters. I think males and females alike will appreciate a longer pleasureable experience instead of a very short intense one.

Lastly, who cares about the locker room? Boys/Men are going to have plenty of things to argue, tease, or ridicule in the locker room. Circumcision may be one of the topics, but if your child is raised confidently they will be able to return the taunts equally either way. Worrying about lockerroom conversations for your son is dumb. My 2 year old is not cut (b/c of complications at birth that made an extra surgery to risky), but my 4 year old is cut. My 2 year old makes fun of my 4 year old because his looks like a lollipop! We planned on cutting the other son after he got bigger, but as I said before, he likes to do all kinds of funny tricks with it, so we can't cut it now, he would be heart-broken, LOL! It is his favorite toy!

Ok, thought I would read all replies before posting mine, but 18 pages it too much. =P

I am un-circumcised and I laugh when people say silly things like circuncision prevents cancer because it is cleaner. OMG! Should we also remove our noses, so we dont get nose cancer with all the dirt it accumulates inside it? Of course not, since it is not that hard to clean your nose. And it is so easy to wash your penis, that this is ridiculous. You just pull back the foreskin and wash it. The skin can be pulled all the way back. My penis is pretty clean, thank you very much.

BTW, here in Brazil circuncision is not common. I actually don't even KNOW someone who has been circuncised. So, this is probably cultural. I wouldn't want people to remove the foreskin from my penis.

I actually find it protects the penis, because the head is very sinsitive. I can't imagine myself living without my foreskin. It brings shivers down my spine. Specially when I think of a circumcised man wearing jeans with no underware. Argh! Poor bastard! =P

reply to post by getreadyalready


They take a newborn baby that has no conception of what is being done to him.

They tie him down..............retraining by tieing you down when you don't even know enough yet to understand must in and of itself be terrifying.

Then with no anesthesia your forskin is snipped off must be painful. A cut is a cut and to me being cut is painful.

Now, you son doing whatever he does, he does of his own free will.

Free will, the ability to decide who does what to your body.

Cuting the foreskin is painful, don't tell me it's not..................I heard my youngest son give out a blood curdling scream, through a heavy solid oak door. I heard the second they snipped his foreskin off.

Don't tell me it's not painful and being done to a baby that cannot understand why this alone would traumatize.



No this is wrong on so many levels.

reply to post by Gorman91


You consciously don't remember it................but deep within your brain the memory and trauma lie.

reply to post by ofhumandescent


Being held down is the reason they scream, not the snip. My son that is 2 years old now, went through many, many procedures that were far worse than a circumcision. The scariest part for them is being held down, being in a bright cold room, having many strangers all around them. I insisted on controlling my own son every step of the way. We did a spinal tap on him when he still weighed less than 4 lbs! I had to double him over and hold him perfectly still while they ran a large caliber needle into his spine for several moments! He had weekly EEG's done where they had to use an abrasive gel and scrub raw spots on his head, hook him up to dozens of leads, and then hold him still on a cold table under a strobe light for almost an hour! Every week! Twice per week he had blood drawn, and his little 2 lb body did not have sufficient arteries and veins to be able to thread the needle. Sometimes it would take many, many tries and multiple nurses before they could draw the blood. Sometimes I would lose my nerve and tell them NO WAY, that is enough for today, we'll be back next week.

I was there when my first son got circumsized. 5 minutes of squeeling, mostly because of the restraints. He was happy and playing before we made it out of the hospital and to the car. Then a day or two of making sure he was clean, and no lasting effects. Relatively painless. It is only my opinion, but the benefits far outweigh the suffering. It just isn't that big of a deal. I won't force my other son to do it, because he already enjoys himself too much to go changing things on him, but if he could have done it at the younger age, I would have opted for it.

reply to post by ofhumandescent


OMG will you knock off the emotive baby trauma crap? Babies scream when they are hungry, thirsty, too warm, too cold, not sitting the way they want, when they want a toy, etc. etc. etc. I've been pretty hungry, but I certainly don't scream the way a hungry baby does. The babies are probably much more traumatized by being strapped down, then the procedure itself. There nervous systems aren't fully up and running, and I would guess they probably feel less pain than adults.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Wow, my son had to have a spinal tap when he was 7 weeks old. He developed a high fever and they couldnt figure out what was wrong with him, so they admitted him to the children's hospital. I also insisted on being there, and he held my finger as they twisted him sideways and did the tap, it was awful, but they ruled out meningitis.

My friend only had this done when he was 19, and a few hours after the operation he got an erection, split his stitches and had to go back to hospital. He had to have it done for medical reasons though, like the alternative sounded even more grim...

If it's gotta be done it should be done before it can be remembered. I haven't had it done and boy am I glad I didn't. I can't imagine what it would be like in terms of chaffing in your trousers. After a few days of that there would be no nerve endings left to stimulate. You also no longer have the option to go commando in a pair of jeans. Maybe I am a little naive to the whole circumcision fiasco. But I can say that to suggest it reduces the risk of prostate cancer as mentioned in the OP is ludicrous, and that doctor was worthy of a punch in the head.

Avoid any medical procedures, and hospitals/doctors etc, unless absolutely necessary. That is and has always been my moto.

Oh and keeping your genitals clean whilst owning some foreskin isn't difficult. One of the other reasons a circumcision is often suggested. Seriously how retarded are people? If you can't take care of your own hygiene you also need a punch in the head, and deserve to have foul smelling genitals...

There is no good reason to subject any male to circumcision. Some say it reduces the risk of STDs when engaged in a risky behavior, but it sounds like a pretty @ss-backward argument. What next, castration?

reply to post by buddhasystem


Yeah totally, pop on a rubber, problem solved.

If you're going bareback no amount of mutilation is going to help prevent STDs, short of full amputation, and then you would be just scissoring.

reply to post by Big Raging Loner

Oh and keeping your genitals clean whilst owning some foreskin isn't difficult. One of the other reasons a circumcision is often suggested. Seriously how retarded are people? If you can't take care of your own hygiene you also need a punch in the head, and deserve to have foul smelling genitals...

Wasn't there just an ATS thread about an $800,000 grant to teach men in Africa how to keep their junk clean?

I didn't read the thread, because I suspected it would just make me angry with no resolution in sight. I agree with you to an extent, but you have to admit that there are more nooks and crannies for a tiny little bacteria or virus to hide in. If you tend to have a rough session that may compromise some skin integrity, combined with a nice hiding place for those nasty bacteria, you are going to have a little higher risk of infection.

When it comes to lifelong or life-threatening STDs, I will error on the side of some pain that I can't remember anyway compared to a 1% higher chance of lifelong complications from one drunken encounter.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Ha ha yeah there was. I remember that thread!

In regards to the "rough session" without being to graphic I don't go to town on my genitals in the shower. Just a good ole wash. If you shower once a day there should be no problem. If you have no foreskin and a lot of chaffing going on then you are also going to be susceptible to infection, due to the small grazes you are constantly inflicting on your willy being exposed to bacteria etc.

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
But I can say that to suggest it reduces the risk of prostate cancer as mentioned in the OP is ludicrous, and that doctor was worthy of a punch in the head.

Um, HOW can you say that? What is your medical background? I'm sick to god damned death of reading all this ignorant, uneducated BS where people seem to think they know more than doctors. You all pick and choose when you agree with the medical community, and when you don't. Here is the info on how it reduces the risk, it goes into all the infections that are more likely in uncircumcised men....these are peer reviewed studies...

Such infections may establish in the prostate a state chronic active inflammation, which is associated with a variety of cancers [Correa, 2005]. The rate of STIs has risen over the past decade in many developed countries (e.g., in the UK there are approx. 700,000 cases per year, one-third being in London [Boulos et al., 2005]).

Uncircumcised men have a 1.6 to 2.0 fold higher incidence of prostate cancer compared with circumcised men [Ravich & Ravich, 1951; Apt, 1965; Ewings & Bowie, 1996], and prostate cancer is rare amongst Jews [Alderson, 1986]. In Southern California the reduction in risk in circumcised men was 0.5 in whites and 0.6 in blacks [Ross et al., 1987].

In Sweden, uncircumcised males had twice the risk [Apt, 1965]. Of men operated on for prostatic obstruction, only 1.8% of obstructions were cancerous in Jews (circumcised), compared with 19% of non-Jews [Ravich & Ravich, 1951]. A study in the UK in 1996 found an odds ratio for the reduction in risk in circumcised men was 0.62 [Ewings & Bowie, 1996]. Circumcision rate shows an inverse correlation with prostate cancer incidence in 51 countries (P = 0.022), supporting it having a protective effect against this disease (J.H. Waskett, Manchester, personal communication).
www.circinfo.net...

Are you going to go punch all those doctors in the head, because they go against YOUR personal beliefs? You sound like a real smart dude.

reply to post by 27jd


What's your medical background? Google? Like everybody else...

Here's my research project on the subject of Circumcision and Prostate cancer risk;

Prostate cancer accounts for one-quarter of all new cancers in males in the USA (American Cancer Society statistics), Australia and the UK. In the USA, it accounted for 25 deaths per 100,000 men in 2005 (American Cancer Society statistics). In Australia prostate cancer was the cause of 7% of deaths [Australian, 2004a] and in the UK 13% of deaths [Cancer, 2005]. Risk of prostate cancer correlates with a history of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) [Ross et al., 1987; Hayes et al., 2000; Oliver et al., 2001; Dennis & Dawson, 2002; Correa, 2005; Fernandez et al., 2005; Taylor et al., 2005; Radhakrishnan et al., 2007], most consistently syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and HPV.

HPV causes cervical cancer, but no consistent association has, however, been seen between rate of prostate cancer and rate of cervical cancer in different geographic localities [Ross et al., 1983]. A study of 20,243 men in Finland found infection with HPV18 was associated with a 2.6-fold increase in risk of prostate cancer (P < 0.005) [Dillner et al., 1998]. For HPV16 the increased risk was 2.4-fold. This is similar to the increased penile HPV infection in uncircumcised men [Castellsague et al., 2002]. In contrast, a Swedish study found an association of HPV33, but not HPV 16 or 18, with prostate cancer [Adami et al., 2003]. In a study in Crete, however, HPV was found in only 5% of samples, none of which had the common high-risk types 16 and 18, so making a role for HPV unlikely [Balis et al., 2007]. Consistent with this, a study in Saudi Arabia was unable to detect HPV in any of the prostate biopsies of 56 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia or prostate cancer [Gazzaz & Mosli, 2009].

So it would appear that it is an indirect effect of circumcision preventing STIs as supposed to the circumcision itself preventing Prostate cancer. It is the exposure to sexually transmitted disease that increases the risk of Prostate cancer.

Therefore as I rightly mentioned in my original posts keep your genitals clean and where a condom and hey presto you don't have to be mutilated to prevent Prostate cancer.

I assume you got your info from circinfo.net too being that it was one of the top Google results. You just happened to ignore the first part, and most importantly the findings from a more recent study than you quoted.

www.circinfo.net...

As for being a 'smart dude' you are only as smart as your search engine allows. Of course you knew your material of by heart didn't you? Smart dude...

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
What's your medical background? Google? Like everybody else...

Nope. I've been in the medical field for over 10 years, in a clinical setting working with doctors and nurses.

So it would appear that it is an indirect effect of circumcision preventing STIs as supposed to the circumcision itself preventing Prostate cancer. It is the exposure to higher risk of sexually transmitted disease that increases the risk of Prostate cancer.

Therefore as I rightly mentioned in my original posts keep your genitals clean and where a condom and hey presto you don't have to be mutilated to prevent Prostate cancer.

Which is exactly the point I made, thanks for reiterating it. I'm not sure though that you can always keep every nook and cranny in your foreskin scrubbed and clean as often as it takes to prevent bacteria. Either way, to refer to circumcision as "mutilation" just shows how emotional and ignorant you really are.

reply to post by 27jd


So your not a doctor or nurse just working in a clinical setting? Hmm you know I think the receptionist at my local GP also has several years working with doctors and nurses. But I certainly wouldn't ask her for medical opinions... Unless of course she had Google.

Originally posted by 27jd
Which is exactly the point I made, thanks for reiterating it. I'm not sure though that you can always keep every nook and cranny in your foreskin scrubbed and clean as often as it takes to prevent bacteria. Either way, to refer to circumcision as "mutilation" just shows how emotional and ignorant you really are.

Before you continue to use the word "ignorant" describing people who advocate condom use, consider that the whole of female reproductive organs have innumerable "nooks and crannies" that can't possibly be kept clean. If you cut off a part of a male's body that was in the original delivery package, yes, it's mutilation. Basically you are saying that circumcision can help reduce the STD risk during unprotected sex. I find this argument in favor of the procedure quite dumb.

This thread is starting to become slightly ridiculous (no offence to the OP)...

As far as I'm aware, being circumcised, does not help prevent STD's/STI's. I have already mentioned, like others, that I'm an uncircumcised male and have never had a sexual illness or disease in my entire life.

Also, as people have already mentioned, being circumcised isn't cleaner and anyone who find themselves unhygienic down below, whether circumcised or not, has issues with personal hygiene or they are unlucky enough to have a medical reason causing the problem.

When I was a child I was always reminded when taking a shower or having a bath to "wash my bits"

It really isn't such a difficult concept to understand, my penis gets washed when I have a shower in the morning - just like my anus get washed, my face gets washed, my hair gets washed etc etc

I'd be interested in whether circumcised males on here neglect the washing of their parts because they don't have foreskin's to pull back and clean the head of the penis?

Personally, my foreskin still covers around 90-95% percent of my penis when I'm erect and the act of my partner pulling it back is very arousing in itself. I've wondered before when I've watched porn (yes I'm this sad) how circumcised males masturbate as having a foreskin makes it possible for me i.e. the act of moving my foreskin up and down over the head of my penis but hey each to their own...

Obviously I know it's still possible for a circumcise male to masturbate but I've tried masturbating how they would and it doesn't feel right at all, certainly no where near as pleasurable to how I normally masturbate.

Getting back to the point of the thread, I don't think it's right for babies to be circumcised as they cannot make that decision for themselves and as such I don't think it's right or fair.

If you want to get a circumcision for religious or personal reasons such as you believe it will make you cleaner or even because you would like the sight of a circumcised penis more then fair enough but that decision should be made by the individual when they are at an age to comprehend their actions; not allowed by a babies parents when the child can't make his own decision.

As for female genital mutilation mentioned in the OP, well I could go on forever how that disgusting and wrong that process is but I'll start going off track so I'll stick with the main topic of the thread.

reply to post by 27jd


Just wanted to pick at something else you said since you resorted to calling me ignorant on a few occasions there, which irritates me somewhat.

You all pick and choose when you agree with the medical community, and when you don't.

So let me get this straight what you are proposing is that we all blanketly accept everything the medical community states as fact?

You do realise that this is imposible due to the thousands of contradictions within members of the medical community? Have you also never heard of doctors, dentists etc on the ole pay role for pharmaceutical companies?

I think you are a bit ignorant too.