Circumcision is Somewhere Between Ear Piercing and Foot Binding

My guess is that the snip hurts, probably like it hurts to get your ears pierced.

Your guess would be wrong. The pain for an infant is agonizing and overwhelming. Kind of like if you started cutting off the clitoral hood of a little girl.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/3/423

http://jewishcircumcision.org/thejAdvocate1998.htm

Victoria said, “I don’t want our boy parading around in front of my family with a poor boy’s penis.”

Yes, because everyone in Somalia is a rich man.

I have to agree that it must hurt more than ear piercing, but hey.. I don't remember so I dont really know.

As for what looks good.. its all a matter of what you are used to. I work with a large number of guys from the UK and they tell me in the UK, circumcision is an oddity and that for the most part its only jews and muslims who do it. For them, the sight of a circumsized penis is the odd and ugly sight.

Finally, I think the bigget question you guys need to ask is "are you obligated to do it religiously?" if the answer is yes.. then I gusee the little guy looses his tip ! if the answer is no, then you have some more soul searching to do.

For them, the sight of a circumsized penis is the odd and ugly sight.

Asthetically, this makes more sense. Damaged organs/limbs are often considered unsightly in a healthy society.

<a href="http://blogs.rj.org/reform/2008/09/tribalism-reform-judaism-rites.html">We make the choice</a> to engage in our culture. Some choose to cut, others do not.

David, my father did many, many circumcisions in the course of his career as a urologist. His considered opinion was that at a week infants comparable discomfort at the procedure to blood draws and less than some of the other things he had to do. At four weeks it was totally different. They showed much more distress and pain and acted accordingly.

He was never quick to circumsize. If it were indicated because of injury extreme phimosis, or similar the foreskin came off. If parents wanted a bris he would oblige in order to make sure that it was safe, sterile and professionally done. And before you ask, no. It wasn't a moneymaker. He got lunch like the rest of the guests. Otherwise he left them alone.

Unlike you, he was careful, professional and honest and always prefaced it by "as far as I could tell" or "from what I've seen". He had to infer because he wasn't inside the baby's head. You, on the other hand, make blanket statements about things which you do not and can not know directly. That indicates either your agenda overwhelming your reason or simple dishonesty. Neither should inspire us to trust what you have to say.

Oh, the sensationalism!

David, the Pediatrics abstract you provided doesn't use the terms "overwhelming" or "agonizing" to describe the procedure.  That's your highly biased interpretation.  You'll be happy to know that the same group of researchers did another study 8 years later and found that the number of residency programs teaching pain relief for circs increased to 97%!

With respect to aesthetics, my favorite study was a survey of women conducted in New Zealand.  The authors claimed that approximately one in nine woman preferred an unaltered "member".  The kicker was that if you read the materials and methods closely, you'd see that the survey respondents were recruited from an anti-circumcision newsletter!  No... no problems with bias there!

Of course it hurts! Unbelievable. It's a very sensitive body part. I would NEVER do it to a son. No reason.

http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org

To: I'll stick with anonymous; Did you really "read the materials and methods closely"? The O'Haras' study wasn't conducted in New Zealand. Only some of the respondents came from an anti-circumcision site (and who's to say they weren't anti-circumcision because of their experience?), and the O'Haras say that the results were the same when those respondents were discarded.

There's a side by side comparison beetween circumcision and footbinding at http://www.circumstitions.com/Foot.html . I'd say it's closer to foodbinding than earpiercing (permanence - a pierced ear will close over without trace if not used; aesthetics - a pierced ear is usually just a means to an end), and the cultural parallels - "I do it to you because it was done to me"- are enormous.

Aesthetics? Upper-caste Chinese men considered the "lotus foot" to be highly erotic and the unbound peasants' feet to be disgusting. Sound familiar?

I'm thinking that cutting is a bad idea for several reasons.

1. Whether or not someone's parents had them circumcised does not determine whether or not they are Jewish. If a child is born of a Jewish mother, the child is Jewish. He can still go to synagogue and participate in religious life. 2. It is his body and should be his choice. It might be 'easier' to do in infancy (though certainly not for the baby) but then you risk permanently surgically altering his genitals against his will. 3. Many in the medical world and in society in general would argue that circumcision of children is unethical, infringes on their rights over their body, dimishes sexual sensation etc. some going so far as calling it mutilation - which gives new meaning to the phrase "poor boy's penis" you used. And what if he agrees with some of these not uncommon emerging views?  This in itself is potentially more damaging to a boy's psyche than any lockeroom angst (and if lockeroom angst is even issue he still has the option).  4. Regarding “I don’t want our boy parading around in front of my family with a poor boy’s penis.” If you ever find yourself in the unlikely situation where family members are sitting around disapproving of your toddler son's penis, the problem is with them, not your son's body. I can't imagine being in that type of situation and thinking "Oh no. They don't like the look of my son's penis", let alone doing it preemptively partially for that reason.  5. Why subject a newborn to unnecessary pain and surgery for non medical reasons? 

Medically speaking, there might be some who cling to outdated 1950s ideas about circumcision and hygiene, but the medical word has long since abandonned this view.  Healthwise, any benefit to that used to be attributed to circumcision can be realized through basic hygiene practices, such as bathing.

It may help to ask yourself how you would feel about having part of your genitals cut off when you were a baby, under a venear of normalcy, because of your parents' religious beliefs, to 'be clean', or because some people happened to think it looked better etc.

Yeah, I know the Jewcy and Heeb crowd have that nu-Jew steezo, but "Jews against circumcision" still looks fucked up when you see it in print, like "Christians for crucifixion" or "Muslims for bacon wrapped pork chops".

If you cut someone's finger when they're 8 days old they probably won't remember the pain later in life and won't complain about anything but that does not make cutting their finger just because you think your imaginary friend will send you to hell if you don't any less wrong and perverted.

Your traditions don't matter, are useless and they mean nothing. So stop doing it.

To Jews Against Circumcision: don't forget that Christians are taught that the crucifixion of Jesus was the second greatest thing that ever happened. I suggest that Jews Against Circumcision might seem odd now, but Christians Against Burning Heretics would have seemed just as odd a few centuries ago. And how about Muslims Against Chopping Off Hands?

WHEN U R READING THIS DONT STOP OR
SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN! MY NAME IS
SUMMER I AM 15 YEARS OLD i have BLONDE
HAIR ,MANY SCARS no NOSE OR EARS.. I
AM DEAD. IF U DONT COPY THIS JUST LIKE
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MORE SITES.. OR.. I WILL APPEAR ONE
DARK QUIET NIGHT WHEN UR NOT ExPECTING
IT BY YOUR BED WITH A KNIFE AND KILL
U. THIS IS NO JOKE SOMETHING GOOD WILL
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PAGES. (THIS IS NOT FROM ME BUT I HAVE
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I am circumsized. I (and my mother) are protestants. I am twenty years of age. I come from the UK. 

(So circumcision was not a choice based on jewish beliefs. And the health advancement was as 1987-1989 in a first world state (I am not sure the exact age I was circumsized))

Anyway, I was told by my mother the doctors at the time had to snip because I actually had a bad infection. That down stairs was inflamed a lot of the time and that circumcision was the answer.

If this were not the case they were not going to circumsize. My mother was not considering it apparently until the complications.

I have never seen any evidence i had such an infection, but anyway. 

Were there ever serious enough health reasons (infections or otherwise) that circumcision was the best answer (at the time circa 1990)? Were there any other real options in my case (assuming i did have an infection/serious inflammation)?

Or is my mother telling me a whole lot of hogwash trying to cover her decision to circumsize me?

I care because i don't like being circumsized and amongst my family, my cousins it is not common. to my knowledge everyone else in my family is uncircumsized. It has damaged my psyche and self-image. I also have some related power/control issues.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer me.

1) You mother's story is believeable.You would not have any remaining evidence of that infection, now. Yes, there are legitimate emergency circumcisions. A urologist could explain more. In fact, cases like this are exactly the point about health-driven, rather than religion-driven, infant male circumcision. There's another thread -on this very site -about the miseries of adult male circumcision, which infant male circumcision avoids forever, in exchange for a brief moment of crying at the age of a week. I know it's brief because I have been present. The infected men cry a whole, whole, whole lot longer than that baby ever did. I personally heard the baby. It was over quickly. His nervous system is immature, and they gave him something sweet to suck on. Look what he was spared, for the rest of his life.

2) It's tough to feel different from your family. But, even you aren't sure if they all are uncircumcized, however. Many, many infant boys have had this, with no cultural or religious reason, just for preventive health reasons. Given their ages, the US Senate is probably full of such persons.

3) Your life isn't any different because of this. This does not affect people's lives, or their experience. It is possible they are a tiny bit less sensitive, which just makes them last longer. Nothing wrong with that. Jewish men like their home lives just fine, just fine, just fine. 

4) It's cleaner. No matter how one scrubs, it just is. That can matter, for the well-being of the other people in the same room. Clean is healthier for them, too.

So, this is a justified interference with nature.

The problem is in people's mental images. They think and ponder and conjure up blood soaked dramatic mental images, and ask what did they do to me? But it's not the awful scene they imagine.

They should talk to some of the men who have a problem later in life. I have known of two cases, a one year old and a nine year old. Ouch.

So, opposing this is dumb, sorry.

Esthetically, there is no issue.

Your circuumcision may have successfully treated a real infection, but it may well not have been strictly necessary. There are often other means that are not tried because circumcision is so culturally ingrained (in the US) as a treatment of first resort (as the other responses indicate). 

The responses of "1) Your mother's story is" and "Not a problem" would make sense if every boy (or most or at least many boys) got an infection requiring circumcision but they don't, it's very very rare.

The US Senate is almost full of men circumcised for no good reason at all, nothing but custom. So? Maybe some of them resent it too. You can't tell how it is going to affect any man's sex life, or generalise from "It didn't harm me (so far as I can tell)" to "It never harms anybody." There are big ethical issues involved in cutting healthy sensitive tissue from non-consenting people, and they're not yet addressed.

"1) Your mother's story is"'s point 4 sounds as if the foreskin gives off a noxioous gas that will overpower people at a distance. Get over it! 3/4 of the world's men have one, and 3/4 of the world's women are not collapsing in the streets.

So yes, you have every right to resent having been circumcised, but it probably won't help to belabour your mother about it now - she did the best she was told at the time. For the power/control issues, it sounds as if you need the help of someone who is also senstive to the circumcision issue. They may be connected, but perhaps not in a direct way.