Circumcision

[muma19]

DP wants DS circumcised however I don't. I also have MIL getting involved and pressuring me. What do I do? I want to be fair to my partner but I really don't want him veg for circumcised. HELP!!!!

Data from earlier studies indicate that monogamous women with circumcised sex partners are only half as likely to get cervical cancer as are women with uncircumcised sex partners. And the Tobian study shows that circumcision cuts the risk of HPV, the virus that can cause cervical cancer

So what parts of a baby girl's body do you propose should be routinely removed chiefly in order to lesson the risk to the the health of any men with whom she may or may not be sexually active when she's grown up? Or might it be slightly more reasonable and morally acceptable to leave it to adults - men AND women - to decide which of the various available methods they wish to use to protect themselves, should they choose to be sexually active with people who may have transmittable STIs?

You can certainly make a moral case that it's wrong to perform elective surgery on an infant, but the medical benefits are irrefutable.

Nonsense. There's historically been a great deal of controversy about the supposed health benefits, but the weight of medical opinion nowadays comes down on it NOT being proven to be beneficial.

Even if this were the case, what IS irrefutable is that circumcising a male will remove many thousands of sensitive nerve endings which would otherwise have provided him with full natural sexual enjoyment for many years - and this is completely irreversible.

There are countless documented cases of men who were circumcised as babies who have lifelong emotional and psychological issues as a direct result of it.

Apart from spurious claims from people who apparently believe themselves lacking in basic hygiene skills and thus considering themselves unable to teach their sons this rudimentary lesson, all of the purported medical benefits of circumcision relate to sexual activity. Therefore, why not give males the choice as to whether or not they wish to consider a circumcision shortly before they become sexually active?

This would enable them to weigh up the reported pros and cons for their own health and also take into account whether they are willing to have their bodies irreversibly mutilated at the request of a female partner who believes it to be beneficial to her health or, otherwise, if they believe such a request to be abusive and/or controlling and to move on to another potential partner instead.

As adults, they may well choose to strike a bargain between themselves that he have a circumcision at her request and she have, say, a breast reduction/enlargement or face-lift etc at his request, if that's what they both prefer sexually, for as long as their relationship lasts. In fact, he could go the whole hog and ask her to have a hysterectomy, which would guarantee that they wouldn't go on to have children together who may suffer from any illness or condition whatsoever.

Common sense would otherwise suggest spending a few quid on condoms, but if we're going to completely disregard a cheap, temporary method that's proven to be very reliable and instead look for extreme solutions....

Obviously, if she had any concerns about getting an STI from him for any reason, she could simply insist on a condom or decline intercourse, so it's not like there's any medical or health issue. Unless extremely paranoid about circumcision-related mythology, she would know that the risks of getting an STI from a faithful and/or condom-wearing intact man are far lower than those of it from sleeping with a promiscuous and/or unfaithful circumcised man - with or without a condom.

Your sincerely-held beliefs that baby boys should be circumcised because of supposed health benefits for themselves and any potential partners in later life are exactly the same sincere beliefs held by many people for their daughters and their possible future partners in many countries. Yes, there are plenty who do it purely to subjugate women, but probably the majority of FGM is actually performed at the insistence of older female family members. Regardless of their genuine beliefs of supposed benefits, if they do it to baby girls in the UK, they will be sent to prison.

As I said before, this is one of the very few cases where females' basic rights are considered of value and protected in law but those of males are not.

X-posted with nolongersurprised, who said pretty much the same as I did but much more succinctly!

Not a flawed analogy at all...you just missed the point

Those with foreskins survived, for some.reason, no matter whether they made it past 30, whereas infection killed.

Florescent that's not the only reason circumcised men have lower rates of STDs. The World Health Organisation recommends male circumcision as a preventative measure against the spread of HIV in countries with high rates. They say:

'There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.'
www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/

Posted too soon - note they also say the procedure is safe

I'd like my foreskin cut off please, said no man ever!

My husband was glad to have it done for medical reasons when he was about 8 or 9 - he was in a lot of pain beforehand. It's never bothered him in later life.

Just tell him that you will pay for it once your DS turns 18 and asks for it himself. It's ds's body, so he should decide.

why not give males the choice as to whether or not they wish to consider a circumcision shortly before they become sexually active?

Because by that age the risk of complications is higher, the recovery process is slower and more difficult, and the person will be fully aware of the process and usually never forget it.

If you live in a country where the vast majority of males are circumcised, then the responsible thing to do as a parent is to get it done at a young age when none of these disadvantages would be present.

Culture is often minimised as a factor of importance but actually the feeling of belonging, of having your place within a wider family, community and culture is very positive for emotional well-being and shared practices can cement that sense of identity and belonging.

It makes me wonder whether you have seen a foreskin retract on an erect penis, I guess not considering your culture has them all butchered.

I admire the passion your numerous posts on this show, smotheroffive.

Can you share what you actions you take against these butchering cultures? Writing to your MP? Demonstrating outside mosques, synagogues, African churches?

And presumably you also hold approach baby ear piercers in the street and give them a piece of your mind, too.

Surely you don't just froth and attack certain cultures on anonymous forums?

Oh and we don't get me wrong, I am no supporter of circumcision at all.
I'm just grown up and intelligent enough to believe there is a better way to debate this rather than insulting and berating other cultures and ridiculing people's 'stupid sky-alien' beliefs.

Smother, the argument about cleanliness is just going around in circles. You are the one talking about bacteria and sterility, I have not mentioned anything of the kind. I am talking about removing physical traces of impurities such as urine, pre-seminal fluid, faeces, menstrual blood etc. i.e. things that people either wipe off with tissues and/or wash off using a bidet or similar.

The kind of dirt present on the rest of the body other than the private parts of both males and females is not impurity, it is just sweat, dead skin cells etc. and doesn't need to be washed off before prayer.

What I am querying is whether it will be possible/difficult to clean urine or pre-seminal fluid from the underside of the foreskin. Again I never mentioned the word 'rolling'. Some posters referred to pulling back the foreskin and I queried whether that was meant literally or not.

You say you don't understand what I mean. Let's take an analogy. Try slightly pulling up the sleeve of your jacket while you're wearing it, toward your elbow, with one hand, without exposing the inside of your sleeve. This is what I understand by pulling.

Now try folding the sleeve back on itself slightly so that the inside of the sleeve is now on the outside. This is what I understand by folding.

Now try to think about whether retracting the foreskin is more akin to pulling, or folding.

If it is more akin to pulling (which I strongly suspect), then the underside of the foreskin is never exposed and thus can't be washed.

If it more akin to folding(which I strongly doubt), then it will just be difficult to do this every time you want to clean. Not difficult in the sense of deciphering the Rosetta Stone, just an everyday difficulty that it would be easier not to have to do.

Look on wikipedia, it shows your there! And yes, when retracted the inside skin of the foreskin is exposed. When erect there is no fold of skin at all

And by the way, I'm not declaring that any uncircumcised man is definitively dirty. The Islamic scholars disagreed and debated about whether it was essential for adult converts to get circumcised, and some of them mentioned that people became Muslim without getting circumcised and went ahead practising their religion and living their life.

I'm just saying that for me personally it would be a concern if I was male, and it's something that occurs to me every time I see people saying 'just learn how to wash' etc.

Ok dementedpixie fair enough. It's just a different perspective really. I guess if you do something often enough it doesn't seem like a difficulty and just becomes normal for you, although I still think it would be difficult when not in the shower. And obviously some people have different definitions of 'clean' and 'dirty' if they see urine as clean.

Again - it ISNT 'you personally'. It's not your penis. As has been explained the underside can be very thoroughly cleaned. But that isnt the point. It's not your cleanliness to worry about. It isnt your body.

Culture is often minimised as a factor of importance but actually the feeling of belonging, of having your place within a wider family, community and culture is very positive for emotional well-being and shared practices can cement that sense of identity and belonging.

But this is one of the arguments used to validate female genital mutilation. It doesn’t make it morally correct.

Where I live (Australia) the paediatric medical and surgical position statement is that any perceived benefit re STIs is offset by the complications of the procedure and there is no medical basis for recommending the procedure.

I have a son. Circumcising was never an option but it’d be a strange thought process if I were to look and him and think, “I know you will grow up and move to sub Saharan Africa where you will have sex with multiple partners and refuse to wear a condom. Therefore I’d better get you circumcised”.

The argument re “not remembering” is backwards. Older boys and men will have it done under GA and won’t remember. Newborns don’t - just because they don’t have sophisticated memories of the event doesn’t mean they haven’t internalised the trauma.

That should read that newborns don’t have it done under GA. Which is hideous in itself.

How can cutting the skin prevent herpes and warts?

Herpes and warts are/can be present on the intire penis and are passed through contact.

I'm not going to read those studies because there is nothing they can say that will make me believe them. People create studies to support whatever they want. They just manipulate the data and pay people to support them.

Talking about showering once a day or washing your back is irrelevant to what I was saying because as Muslims we have to pray five times a day at specific times, and if a person has urinated since the last time they had a shower they would have to clean themselves again before praying. If that was in the middle of the day on their break from work they wouldn't have access to a shower.

But presumably they need to wash irrespective of whether they have a foreskin or not? So you simply use the same washing method. And yes, of course, you can pull the foreskin back sufficiently to ensure the entire area is clean. It couldn't be easier.

DS1 had to be circumcised on medical grounds & it was awful!
I really wish that we had, had another option.
Having read up on the negative effects of circumcision I would never have a child circumcised for anything but medical reasons.
Would your husband read information that you gave him?

The whole cleaner argument/evidence of lower rates of STIs etc, is so illogical. The practice is fundamentally a religious/cultural one going back millennia. Now we live in a more enlightened age where cultural and religious practices are not unquestioningly carried out when they cause suffering to babies, people with vested interests seek to create evidence.

If you live in a country where the vast majority of males are circumcised, then the responsible thing to do as a parent is to get it done at a young age when none of these disadvantages would be present.

As a PP has covered, this is 100% the sincere beliefs held by people who practise FGM. However do you arrive at the conclusion that it's responsible parenting to cut off a part of your baby's body for no medical reason whatsoever?

If you grew up in a community where most of the people were deaf, would you feel that it was your responsible duty to cut off your newborn's ears? Do you believe that, because most other people have had something precious irreversibly taken from them without their being able to consent or to prevent it, then nobody else should ever be allowed to have or keep it?

As for the 'disadvantages', I'm shocked by your simple disregarding of the fact that a large part of a person's future sexual pleasure will be taken from him soon after birth and you don't in any way see this as a disadvantage.

Again, the proponents of FGM who cut off a young girl's clitoris and/or labia or sew up her vagina don't see her future inability to enjoy normal sexual relations as any kind of issue to concern themselves about - as long as she 'fits in' and complies with social norms.

but the weight of medical opinion nowadays comes down on it NOT being proven to be beneficial

This is an over simplification. As with any medical intervention there are risks and benefits. It may not be routinely recommended but that's very different from stating that there are no benefits. I note you don't bother to provide any supporting evidence for this assertion. This statement from the Canadian Pediatric Society is pretty typical;

Circumcision of baby boys: Information for parents

It says in part:

Potential benefits of circumcision
A few studies suggest that boys who have been circumcised may be:

Less likely to develop cancer of the penis later in life – although this form of cancer is extremely rare.
Less likely to get HIV and HPV infections.
Less likely to get a urinary tract infection during childhood.
Female partners of men who have been circumcised are less likely to get cervical cancer.

Potential risks of circumcision
Circumcision is a painful procedure.

Problems resulting from the surgery are usually minor. Although serious complications are very rare, they do occur. These can include:

Too much bleeding or infection in the area.
Too much skin removed.
Side effects from the method or medicine used for pain relief.
The risk of complications is lower in young babies than in older children. To minimize the risks, the procedure should be done by a trained and experienced practitioner using a sterile technique. Someone should follow up with you in the days after the procedure to make sure that bleeding has not increased.

people with vested interests seek to create evidence.

The medical studies gather data and evaluate it statistically, they do not "create evidence".

The fact that people are determined to ignore the overwhelming evidence that there is risk reduction tells me that this is a "don't confuse me with the facts, I've made up my mind" situation. You can make a perfectly reasonable decision not to circumcise without denying the science.

You don’t need to be “fair” to your partner, not his penis. You need to be fair to your son, let him make up his own mind when he understands all of the potential pros/cons.
Nothing to do with your MIL.

But someone decides to 'gather data and evaluate it statistically' don't they? It doesn't spontaneously erupt out of nowhere!

Why not remove all breasts at age 18? No doubt if you decided to gather data and evaluate it statistically, the risk of breast cancer would be significantly reduced.