To be pretty uncomfortable with home circumcision

[EastofEast]

We get on very well with our neighbours and are pretty close but I was a bit shocked today, one of those moments where you find you really have opposing views on something quite fundamental.

Neighbour has a (gorgeous) two week old boy. She knocked on the door earlier to return my car keys (went to get a new battery for hers in my car) and I mentioned her new ds was unsettled for the first time ever; joking maybe he wasn't the perfect baby after all. My baby is demanding much more vocal about her needs. She said it was because he was circumcised today. I must have looked a little put off, I don't agree with it at all, as she then said 'oh he's doing really well. We were lucky the doctor came to house to do this one, all the others had to go to a clinic'. I was stunned, I'm amazed you're allowed to do such a thing at home in such an unregulated way. Frankly I wouldn't allow any deliberate harm to come to a child that wasn't medically necessary, but considering some people do do it I thought the rules would be tighter. We're both from (different) backgrounds which circumcise, although I refused to change my son, and I knew she'd do it after a related chat about whether fgm was that bad over a coffee one day but it's still upset me a bit the way it's done. The poor little thing is grumpy with loads of adults around to celebrate the event passing him round and round at 8.30pm.

I know the circumcision vs no circumcision has been done already, and not everyone shares my strong views, but at home? Should this be ok? I can't think of other similar procedures happening in a similar environment.

Where does this kind of rubbish come from

Well I got it from the assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California Medical Center.

Am looking for more sources to be sure, but there are a lot of figures like that for the human body that sound unlikely, but happen to be true.

M. Davenport, "Problems with the Penis and Prepuce: Natural History of the Foreskin", British Medical Journal 312 (1996): 299-301

Stumpetron, are you plugging your own blog, or appropriating someone else's writing? codenamemama.com/2010/06/10/circumcision-newborn/

As for the Mark Davenport BMJ article, it is interesting to note that it predates the body of current scientific evidence on the health benefits of circumcision.

If current science isn't that important to you, I'm sure I can dig up some adverts from the '50s on the health benefits of smoking. :)

I think it's pretty obvious I'm copy and pasting since I left the reference numbers in

Don't talk about 'current science' to me when you support non medical circumcision.

Let's stop with this silly straw man that 'benefits of circumcision' is.

Removing our tonsils as a child could benefit us.
Removing our appendix as a child could benefit us.

Why don't we remove those? Oh... because a religious man hasn't said we should.

So really, lets be honest here and say it isn't being done for medical reasons. It's being done because of a misguided religious practice that things it has the right to remove a piece of someones penis.

Again, would you have been happy if your parents had decided to remove part of your labia at birth?

Thebody, of course low socio-economic achievement is associated with a higher incidence of child abuse. I'm puzzled as to how you can even deny that, if that's what you mean by 'no class having the high ground', even just for the sake of an argument.

The point I was making is that accusations of 'ignorance' don't really seem to fit with the distribution of circ in the population, whereby the better informed classes tend to be more in favour of it than the lower classes.

After giving birth to a beautiful and precious baby boy, what sort of person thinks 'oh we must begin planning the removal of part of his penis!'

Stump, I have said this before but let me say it again - I am an atheist. So no religious motivations here, sorry to disappoint you.

None of the examples you give are remotely comparable. Removing tonsils or appendix would require invasive surgery. Circumcision doesn't. And please point me to the scientific evidence of health benefits for labia removal in infants?

Here we go again. Only EVIL, baby-abusing, SADIST mothers would do that, right?

So one in three worldwide, then.

You must be really scared when you set foot out of Blighty that you will encounter those terrible cruel blood-thirsty people. Who knows what they might do to you? And I really don't recommend a quick shopping trip in Tooting, it's awash with THEM you know.

Primafacie even if the article is old I imagine the facts about the design of the human body remain the same. Unless god did a bit of redesigning since.

He ought to really now that he has admitted he made the penis all wrong.

Ah so you're health motivated then? Funny how after all these years it is not an accepted intervention at birth in the medical world. I wonder why...

So would your thought process be 'I will remove his foreskin because it'll reduce his chance of HIV in the future'.
Instead of letting your newborn stay intact, instead of facing HIV with condoms when he's actually of age to be at risk, you remove part of his body. You cause the child pain, you put him through an irreversable process because you think he might go shagging without a condom and catch HIV? It's actually laughable the thought process some of you have.

Breast ironing isn't invasive. It can destroy the breast tissue, therefore lowering the chance of breast cancer. We don't do that though now do we?

Half of the people in here knew - and mentioned - sod all about these 'health benefits' (of which do NOT outweigh the risks by the way) until they were outweighed with facts against circumcision.

Whoever thought of it in the beginning was a right nasty old perv anyway. Why would it even cross their tiny little minds.

Anyway, live and let live, but lets hope that none of your sons are the ones growing up and typing on forums because they have no-one else to talk to about how they feel disfigured

Personally I wouldn't run that risk if I didn't have to, which you don't.

The scientific evidence aspect is a bit of a red herring Prima because it's a chicken and egg situation. The only reason evidence exists about circumcision is that it's such a widespread practice. You can't get evidence about labia removal because it doesn't happen on a significant scale. There might be all sorts of pros and cons in chopping your little finger off but until it happens nobody would find any evidence.

www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/pdf/2012-08-26A_Commentary.pdf

This. I honestly don't understand how anyone can still support this barbaric procedure.

Cote not all men are fine about their genital mutilation.
www.circumstitions.com/Resent.html this is just a handful of famous few.

Vile and needs outlawing other than for medical reasons. Horrible.

I'm with clarinsgirl.

Chopping off bits of your children's genitals, without a medical requirement, (and WITHOUT ANEASTHETIC!)is barbaric. Home or not home.

Whether you agree with circumcision or not,I don't understand why everyone is arguing about it being without anaesthetic. Even if it was performed at home it would be possible to use local anaesthetic right? There are other anaesthetics than a GA.

Bazil - I didn't say "all men are fine".

I said: "1/3 of global male population is circumcised and only a handful seem to have had problems. That is a vanishingly low complication rate. (About as low risk as death by ear piercing, it seems - not zero, but pretty close)"

It might help you to quote the post that you are replying to. That way, you would see for yourself that you are attacking a Straw Man.

"The scientific evidence aspect is a bit of a red herring Prima because it's a chicken and egg situation. The only reason evidence exists about circumcision is that it's such a widespread practice."

That is not what Red Herring means. Unless you are about to argue that the scientific evidence on circumcision is irrelevant to the topic of circumcision, that is. (Please do. It would be fun for me )

Red Herring is something that is irrelevant to the actual issue, a diversion used to mislead or detract from the issue being discussed. It is a seemingly plausible, though ultimately irrelevant, diversionary tactic. Learn about it here.

"Whoever thought of it in the beginning was a right nasty old perv anyway"

Is that what you call Abraham?

well what other word is there for an adult man with a fascination for newborn babies dicks?

seriously though...how did this even come to be considered a good idea?

It's like shaving your armpit hair off all over again....

some genius thinks that they can do better than millions of years of evolution for some made up ridiculous self-justifying / money making reason...

Or we have science....and science says the pros do not outweigh the cons. Why would anyone with more than half a brain do anything for which the cons outweighed the pros?

"Fascination"? You seem to think you are funny.

"science says the pros do not outweigh the cons"

Please share. Which science is that?