Going for the snip

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
We have no evidence that removal of the clitoris lessens female enjoyment of sex, just hearsay. And god knows why girls cry when you cut off their clits. They could just be hungry or something.

Ok, time to chime in. Ive stayed out so far, cause frankly I dont care if gentiles get circumsized or not. No skin off my back, so to speak.

But the notion that its the equivalent of a clitorectomy is absurd. what percentage of the folks in your study said there was NOT a difference in sensation? Think youd find the same for clitorectomies? IIUC women whove had clitorectomies cant orgasm. At all.

Female genital mutilation is, quite properly a legal issue. Circumcision must not become so.

[Wezil]

unnecessary medical/religious procedures

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher

Not sure why all these men would be lying.

If I had something that had been part of me all my life, that was intimately part of me, and then had to have it removed for medical reasons, Im sure Id be resentful, and this would bias any answers in a study.

guys are saying that sex without a foreskin is two or three times as pleasurable.

I assume the other pleasures of life are identical whether or not you have a foreskin - eg fine wine, playing civ, studying physics. Ergo it would follow that all uncirced men would spend far more time on sex than all circed men (including those circed as infants) Any evidence this is the case?

[Sandman]

"Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom." - George Bernard Shaw

[lord of the mark]

"Circumcision in the United States: Prevalence, Prophylactic Effects, and Sexual Practice
E.O. Laumann, C.M. Masi and E.W. Zuckerman.

Abstract
Objective: To assess the prevalence of circumcision across various social groups and examine the health and sexual outcomes of circumcision.

Design: An analysis of data from the National Health and Social Life Survey.

Participants: A national probability sample of 1410 American men aged 18 to 59 years at the time of the survey. In addition, an oversample of black and Hispanic minority groups is included in comparative analyses.

Main Outcome Measures: The contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, the experience of sexual dysfunction, and experience with a series of sexual practices.

Results: We find no significant differences between circumcised and uncircumcised men in their likelihood of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. However uncircumcised men appear slightly more likely to to experience sexual dysfunctions, especially later in life. Finally, we find that circumcised men engage in a more elaborated set of sexual practices. This pattern differs across ethnic groups, suggesting the influence of social factors.

Conclusions: The National Health and Social Life Survey evidence indicates a slight benefit of circumcision but a negligible association with most outcomes. These findings inform existing debates on the utility of circumcision. The considerable impact of circumcision status on sexual practice represents a new finding that should further enrich such discussion. Our results support the view that physicians and parents be informed of the potential benefits and risks before circumcising newborns."

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I assume the other pleasures of life are identical whether or not you have a foreskin - eg fine wine, playing civ, studying physics. Ergo it would follow that all uncirced men would spend far more time on sex than all circed men (including those circed as infants) Any evidence this is the case?

That is incredibly shaky logic.

[lord of the mark]

http://www.circs.org/library/collins/index.html

http://www.circs.org/library/waskett/index.html

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Lorizael


That is incredibly shaky logic.

isnt that precisely the logic behind FGM, which has been quoted here?

[Asher]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
If I had something that had been part of me all my life, that was intimately part of me, and then had to have it removed for medical reasons, Im sure Id be resentful, and this would bias any answers in a study.

10% of the people in the study did it without medical reason (religious, or personal). They still said the same things...

guys are saying that sex without a foreskin is two or three times as pleasurable.

Don't even see how that makes sense. If you pull the foreskin back, you've got same bits as a circumcised man.

[Asher]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

http://www.circs.org/library/collins/index.html

http://www.circs.org/library/waskett/index.html

These studies focus on sexual drive, etc. far more than sensation. They are very different things.

Unless you've adjusted the size of your prostate or removed a ball or two, your sexual drive, erections, and everything else they "looked at" won't be affected.

[Asher]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Results: We find no significant differences between circumcised and uncircumcised men in their likelihood of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

Good show, LOTM.

It's funny that supporters of circumcisions discredit their own case by citing so many studies, all of which have contradicting results.

The moral of the story? There's no proven benefit to circumcision. This is why virtually every pediatric society in the world does not recommend routine circumcision.

Now, I have no problem if it's done for religious reasons. That's fine. Believe what you want.

But when it's done for cosmetic reasons ("look like their dad"/"don't stand out in the locker room") or for ridiculous medical reasons "may or may not reduce HIV transmission rates without a condom" that it gets absurd and unnecessary.

[Asher]

Circumcision may have an impact on male impotence later in life.

http://www.cirp.org/news/Mothering1997/

The Case Against Circumcision
Paul M. Fleiss, MD

...

Western countries have no tradition of circumcision. In antiquity, the expansion of the Greek and Roman Empires brought Westerners into contact with the peoples of the Middle East, some of whom marked their children with circumcision and other sexual mutilations. To protect these children, the Greeks and Romans passed laws forbidding circumcision.1 Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has passed many similar laws.2,3 The traditional Western response to circumcision has been revulsion and indignation.

Circumcision started in America during the masturbation hysteria of the Victorian Era, when a few American doctors circumcised boys to punish them for masturbating. Victorian doctors knew very well that circumcision denudes, desensitizes, and disables the penis. Nevertheless, they were soon claiming that circumcision cured epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, elephantiasis, tuberculosis, eczema, bed-wetting, hip-joint disease, fecal incontinence, rectal prolapse, wet dreams, hernia, headaches, nervousness, hysteria, poor eyesight, idiocy, mental retardation, and insanity.4

In fact, no procedure in the history of medicine has been claimed to cure and prevent more diseases than circumcision. As late as the 1970s, leading American medical textbooks still advocated routine circumcision as a way to prevent masturbation.5 The antisexual motivations behind an operation that entails cutting off part of the penis are obvious.

Today the reasons given for circumcision have been updated to play on contemporary fears and anxieties; but one day they, too, will be considered irrational. Now that such current excuses as the claim that this procedure prevents cancer and sexually transmitted diseases have been thoroughly discredited, circumcisers will undoubtedly invent new ones. But if circumcisers were really motivated by purely medical considerations, the procedure would have died out long ago, along with leeching, skull-drilling, and castration. The fact that it has not suggests that the compulsion to circumcise came first, the "reasons," later.

...

What Are the Foreskin's Functions?

The foreskin has numerous protective, sensory, and sexual functions.

* Protection: Just as the eyelids protect the eyes, the foreskin protects the glans and keeps its surface soft, moist, and sensitive. It also maintains optimal warmth, pH balance, and cleanliness. The glans itself contains no sebaceous glands-glands that produce the sebum, or oil, that moisturizes our skin.11 The foreskin produces the sebum that maintains proper health of the surface of the glans.
* Immunological Defense: The mucous membranes that line all body orifices are the body's first line of immunological defense. Glands in the foreskin produce antibacterial and antiviral proteins such as lysozyme.12 Lysozyme is also found in tears and mother's milk. Specialized epithelial Langerhans cells, an immune system component, abound in the foreskin's outer surface.13 Plasma cells in the foreskin's mucosal lining secrete immunoglobulins, antibodies that defend against infection.14
* Erogenous Sensitivity: The foreskin is as sensitive as the fingertips or the lips of the mouth. It contains a richer variety and greater concentration of specialized nerve receptors than any other part of the penis.15 These specialized nerve endings can discern motion, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations of texture.16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23
* Coverage During Erection: As it becomes erect, the penile shaft becomes thicker and longer. The double-layered foreskin provides the skin necessary to accommodate the expanded organ and to allow the penile skin to glide freely, smoothly, and pleasurably over the shaft and glans.
* Self-Stimulating Sexual Functions: The foreskin's double-layered sheath enables the penile shaft skin to glide back and forth over the penile shaft. The foreskin can normally be slipped all the way, or almost all the way, back to the base of the penis, and also slipped forward beyond the glans. This wide range of motion is the mechanism by which the penis and the orgasmic triggers in the foreskin, frenulum, and glans are stimulated.
* Sexual Functions in Intercourse: One of the foreskin's functions is to facilitate smooth, gentle movement between the mucosal surfaces of the two partners during intercourse. The foreskin enables the penis to slip in and out of the vagina nonabrasively inside its own slick sheath of self-lubricating, movable skin. The female is thus stimulated by moving pressure rather than by friction only, as when the male's foreskin is missing.
* The foreskin fosters intimacy between the two partners by enveloping the glans and maintaining it as an internal organ. The sexual experience is enhanced when the foreskin slips back to allow the male's internal organ, the glans, to meet the female's internal organ, the cervix-a moment of supreme intimacy and beauty.

The foreskin may have functions not yet recognized or understood. Scientists in Europe recently detected estrogen receptors in its basal epidermal cells.24 Researchers at the University of Manchester found that the human foreskin has apocrine glands.25 These specialized glands produce pheromones, nature's chemical messengers. Further studies are needed to fully understand these features of the foreskin and the role they play.

...

How Does Circumcision Harm?

The "medical" debate about the "potential health benefits" of circumcision rarely addresses its real effects.

* Circumcision denudes: Depending on the amount of skin cut off, circumcision robs a male of as much as 80 percent or more of his penile skin. Depending on the foreskin's length, cutting it off makes the penis as much as 25 percent or more shorter. Careful anatomical investigations have shown that circumcision cuts off more than 3 feet of veins, arteries, and capillaries, 240 feet of nerves, and more than 20,000 nerve endings.31 The foreskin's muscles, glands, mucous membrane, and epithelial tissue are destroyed, as well.
* Circumcision desensitizes: Circumcision desensitizes the penis radically. Foreskin amputation means severing the rich nerve network and all the nerve receptors in the foreskin itself. Circumcision almost always damages or destroys the frenulum. The loss of the protective foreskin desensitizes the glans. Because the membrane covering the permanently externalized glans is now subjected to constant abrasion and irritation, it keratinizes, becoming dry and tough. The nerve endings in the glans, which in the intact penis are just beneath the surface of the mucous membrane, are now buried by successive layers of keratinization. The denuded glans takes on a dull, grayish, sclerotic appearance.
* Circumcision disables: The amputation of so much penile skin permanently immobilizes whatever skin remains, preventing it from gliding freely over the shaft and glans. This loss of mobility destroys the mechanism by which the glans is normally stimulated. When the circumcised penis becomes erect, the immobilized remaining skin is stretched, sometimes so tightly that not enough skin is left to cover the erect shaft. Hair-bearing skin from the groin and scrotum is often pulled onto the shaft, where hair is not normally found. The surgically externalized mucous membrane of the glans has no sebaceous glands. Without the protection and emollients of the foreskin, it dries out, making it susceptible to cracking and bleeding.
* Circumcision disfigures: Circumcision alters the appearance of the penis drastically. It permanently externalizes the glans, normally an internal organ. Circumcision leaves a large circumferential surgical scar on the penile shaft. Because circumcision usually necessitates tearing the foreskin from the glans, pieces of the glans may be torn off, too, leaving it pitted and scarred. Shreds of foreskin may adhere to the raw glans, forming tags and bridges of dangling, displaced skin.32

Depending on the amount of skin cut off and how the scar forms, the circumcised penis may be permanently twisted, or curve or bow during erection.33 The contraction of the scar tissue may pull the shaft into the abdomen, in effect shortening the penis or burying it completely.34

* Circumcision disrupts circulation: Circumcision interrupts the normal circulation of blood throughout the penile skin system and glans. The blood flowing into major penile arteries is obstructed by the line of scar tissue at the point of incision, creating backflow instead of feeding the branches and capillary networks beyond the scar. Deprived of blood, the meatus may contract and scarify, obstructing the flow of urine.35 This condition, known as meatal stenosis, often requires corrective surgery. Meatal stenosis is found almost exclusively among boys who have been circumcised.

Circumcision also severs the lymph vessels, interrupting the circulation of lymph and sometimes causing lymphedema, a painful, disfiguring condition in which the remaining skin of the penis swells with trapped lymph fluid.

* Circumcision harms the developing brain: Recent studies published in leading medical journals have reported that circumcision has long-lasting detrimental effects on the developing brain,36 adversely altering the brain's perception centers. Circumcised boys have a lower pain threshold than girls or intact boys.37 Developmental neuropsychologist Dr. James Prescott suggests that circumcision can cause deeper and more disturbing levels of neurological damage, as well.38, 39
*


* Circumcision is unhygienic and unhealthy: One of the most common myths about circumcision is that it makes the penis cleaner and easier to take care of. This is not true. Eyes without eyelids would not be cleaner; neither would a penis without its foreskin. The artificially externalized glans and meatus of the circumcised penis are constantly exposed to abrasion and dirt, making the circumcised penis, in fact, more unclean. The loss of the protective foreskin leaves the urinary tract vulnerable to invasion by bacterial and viral pathogens.

The circumcision wound is larger than most people imagine. It is not just the circular point of union between the outer and inner layers of the remaining skin. Before a baby is circumcised, his foreskin must be torn from his glans, literally skinning it alive. This creates a large open area of raw, bleeding flesh, covered at best with a layer of undeveloped proto-mucosa. Germs can easily enter the damaged tissue and bloodstream through the raw glans and, even more easily, through the incision itself.

Even after the wound has healed, the externalized glans and meatus are still forced into constant unnatural contact with urine, feces, chemically treated diapers, and other contaminants.

Female partners of circumcised men do not report a lower rate of cervical cancer,40 nor does circumcision prevent penile cancer.41 A recent study shows that the penile cancer rate is higher in the US than in Denmark, where circumcision, except among Middle-Eastern immigrant workers, is almost unheard of.42 Indeed, researchers should investigate the possibility that circumcision has actually increased the rate of these diseases.

Circumcision does not prevent acquisition or transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In fact, the US has both the highest percentage of sexually active circumcised males in the Western world and the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Rigorously controlled prospective studies show that circumcised American men are at a greater risk for bacterial and viral STDs, especially gonorrhea,43 nongonoccal urethritis,44 human papilloma virus,45 herpes simplex virus type 2,46 and chlamydia.47

* Circumcision is always risky: Circumcision always carries the risk of serious, even tragic, consequences. Its surgical complication rate is one in 500.48 These complications include uncontrollable bleeding and fatal infections.49 There are many published case reports of gangrene following circumcision.50 Pathogenic bacteria such as staphylococcus, Proteus, Pseudomonas, other coliforms, and even tuberculosis can cause infections leading to death.51, 52 These organisms enter the wound because it provides easy entry, not because the child is predisposed to infection.

Medical journals have published numerous accounts of babies who have had part or all of their glans cut off while they were being circumcised.53,54,55 Other fully conscious, unanesthetized babies have had their entire penis burned off with an electrocautery gun.56,57, 58 The September 1989 Journal of Urology published an account of four such cases.59 The article described the sex-change operation as "feminizing genitoplasty," performed on these babies in an attempt to change them into girls. The March 1997 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine described one young person's horror on learning that "she" had been born a normal male, but that a circumciser had burned his penis off when he was a baby.60 Many other similar cases have been documented.61,62 Infant circumcision has a reported death rate of one in 500,000.63,64

* Circumcision harms mothers: Scientific studies have consistently shown that circumcision disrupts a child's behavioral development. Studies performed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine showed that circumcision is followed by prolonged, unrestful non-REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep.65 In response to the lengthy bombardment of their neural pathways with unbearable pain, the circumcised babies withdrew into a kind of semicoma that lasted days or even weeks.

Numerous other studies have proven that circumcision disrupts the mother-infant bond during the crucial period after birth. Research has also shown that circumcision disrupts feeding patterns. In a study at the Washington University School of Medicine, most babies would not nurse right after they were circumcised, and those who did would not look into their mothers' eyes.66

* Circumcision violates patients' and human rights: No one has the right to cut off any part of someone else's genitals without that person's competent, fully informed consent. Since it is the infant who must bear the consequences, circumcision violates his legal rights both to refuse treatment and to seek alternative treatment. In 1995, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics stated that only a competent patient can give patient consent or informed consent.67 An infant is obviously too young to consent to anything. He must be protected from anyone who would take advantage of his defenselessness. The concept of informed parental permission allows for medical interventions in situations of clear and immediate medical necessity only, such as disease, trauma, or deformity. The human penis in its normal, uncircumcised state satisfies none of these requirements.

Physicians have a duty to refuse to perform circumcision. They also must educate parents who, out of ignorance or misguidance, request this surgery for their sons. The healthcare professional's obligation is to protect the interests of the child. It is unethical in the extreme to force upon a child an amputation he almost certainly would never have chosen for himself.

A long article, but a very good, well-cited one.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher


Good show, LOTM.

It's funny that supporters of circumcisions discredit their own case by citing so many studies, all of which have contradicting results.

The moral of the story? There's no proven benefit to circumcision. This is why virtually every pediatric society in the world does not recommend routine circumcision.

Now, I have no problem if it's done for religious reasons. That's fine. Believe what you want.

But when it's done for cosmetic reasons ("look like their dad"/"don't stand out in the locker room") or for ridiculous medical reasons "may or may not reduce HIV transmission rates without a condom" that it gets absurd and unnecessary.

Like I said, i dont care whether or not gentiles get snipped. Heck, maybe if they do so less it will reduce assimilation But exagerations and false statements are being thrown around of the kind used to justify banning it on all grounds. including the analogy to FGM.

[Asher]

The analogy to FGM was made in jest to illustrate the faulty reasoning behind Mrs. T's argument...

[lord of the mark]

"In fact, since his circumcision, Chelgak (a Jew from Ukraine who was circed as an adult) has had only good things to say about it. Not only does he say he feels healthier -- recent reports point to a lowered incidence of AIDS and certain cancers among circumcised men -- but even his sex life has improved, he said."