Cultural circumcision in babies/young boys

[junipermarten]

1 of my DS's is circumcised due to a medical issue, he was 3 at the time and it was bloody horrific.

When he was going through it, a good friend gave me tips on after care and offered the number of a private doctor. She has sons who were circumcised shortly after birth for religious reasons.

I personally don't agree with circumcision unless medically required however I respect others choices for religious reasons.

It got me thinking about the high % of boys in the US who are circumcised for cultural reasons, just over 2/3rds. Why is it so prevalent there?

I was having a look at % of male pop per country and the highest were mainly Islamic, but also Samoa was almost 100% which surprised me but apparently its cultural as opposed to religious (I think).

But do you realise how daft that makes you sound? Doing something because everyone else has done it? It’s literally like sheep jumping off a cliff if that’s the case. Whatever happened to having your own thoughts, researching things for yourself, especially when it comes to your own child!

Im sorry but if your religious belief is that you should mutilate a baby then yes, I do judge

Where I work the idea of doing something "because we have always done it this way" with no rational and logical thought process is very much frowned upon. And the same should go for outdated barbaric practices.

Yeah we can teach boys to clean their penis properly. Chopping off the bit that’s tricky to clean because you don’t trust them to clean it is so so extreme. Like me saying chop off my arm because I don’t want to lift it to clean my arm pit. Secondly, if men can’t be trusted to do this one simple bit of maintenance, how can you trust them with the big issues like tying their shoe laces or voting?

Why would you consider something just because it’s culturally unacceptable to people OUTSIDE if your culture? It seems to be that a lot of people from the Western world believe that their way is best simply because that’s all they know. If I want to do something that’s apart of my culture, I don’t stop and think ‘oh hang on, the majority of Brits don’t agree as this isn’t done in their culture so maybe I should give it a re think 🤔’ that doesn’t make much sense.

In regards to women on their period not being allowed to fast, I kindly suggest you Google it

Does anyone know why King Charles had this procedure done as a baby? Apparently the Chief Rabbi at the time performed the procedure, but why?

Unfortunately I wasn’t alive when God gave the commandment to Abraham that he must circumcise his sons. So I wasn’t able to run these other points past Him

@ForgetBarbie Surely the point isn’t to not follow your own culture but to blindly follow another but instead to question parts of it? That applies to all cultures. I think there are some bad parts in all cultures.

Agree with you wrt cultural issues here, @ForgetBarbie

Well I did say that I did my research and the more I discovered, the more I was happy for DS to be circumcised. I was just answering the question on behalf of someone else as I thought the question asked was quite narrow minded

And maybe this is a good time to remind people here that religious belief is a protected characteristic?

@RampantIvy to be fair, India and China make up almost a quarter of the world's population. If you wanted to be sure what you were doing was acceptable by 'most people', you may not get very far with that!

western culture is a progressive one where we challenge things that don’t work and adapt. We accept a plurality of cultures and ideas because our differences make us strong. It works as long as nobody thinks they’re better than the rest. If you live in a place you should uphold and respect its values and laws don’t you think?

and Barbie, most British people I know, and cultural, shower/bath/wash every day, so please take your derogatory implications elsewhere.

Absolutely barbaric and totally unnecessary. I watched a video of the procedure and heard the cries of a newborn baby, don’t know how anyone could put their baby through that for religious or cultural reasons. If God had wanted boys/men circumcised then surely he would of created them without a foreskin? Hmm 🤔

and where abouts in the world do we have laws that protect religious beliefs again? And where in the world do they persecute/ tax/ execute people for not following the main religion of the country?

yeah.

I should have been more specific @LicketySquid and stated in the UK.

I agree with @ThomasinaLivesHere that regardless of which religion or culture you are part of you should still be able to question and challenge any practices that you feel are barbaric dubious, and not just blindly follow them "because we have always done it this way"

‘Derogatory implications?’ Oh sorry I was basing my opinion on the 1000 threads I see across MN where people speak about not having a shower everyday

When they’re young, the procedure is so simple and just causes a bit of soreness for a week or two

That's so sad. I cannot imagine bringing a newborn into the world and intentionally causing the baby to suffer pain for a second, let alone weeks. A brand new human and you cause it pain on purpose. It's abhorrent.

Yep. Agree.

😂

I think my son will follow in his fathers footsteps and need it for medical reasons. DH really struggled with a necessary medical adult curcumsision and wishes he had had it earlier (all the men his family had for various non religious/cultural reasons) When doing research i saw that the risk of penile cancer for circumcised men was significantly lower .
I do think that circumsision is preventative of a number of issues that we obviously don't become aware of due to them preventing it. Circumcised men are very very rarely bothered by the fact, I was looking at a map that showed the distribution globally and the UK is statistically lower.
To be deciles advocate, if there was an option to have such a procedure for women (not genital mutilation) that prevented cancers and later issues - would we consider it?

And wtf is that wine thing? Does anyone here defend that part of the practice? (I know it's not common but still). Is doing that to a baby acceptable because of releifion/ culture?

I don't think education is working fast enough. It is child abuse and the law should reflect that. Yes, it will still occur, but it sends a v clear message and would reduce the number of boys being mutilated. We should not tolerate genital mutilation of anyone.

The bit of the bible that covers this also has Abram / Abraham (age 99) getting Sarai / Sarah (age 90) pregnant. So it is a most reliable text.

if there was an option to have such a procedure for women (not genital mutilation) that prevented cancers and later issues - would we consider it?

A good few women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent undergo prophylactic double mastectomy annually in order to avoid breast cancer. There are also hormonal therapies that can be considered. If I were aware of a heightened risk I would certainly consider that.

HPV vaccines are another way that women and men alike can reduce the risk of cancer.