I agree with your discussion about the socio-economic differences. The U.S. has greater extremes of wealth and poverty, IMHO.
I am willing to bet that religion plays a part too, as you hint.
BTW, what exactly is the "truck driver method" of birth control?
Then there is a starkly obvious question which presents itself. If your father was so thorough in his research about the alleged benefits of circumcision, why did he not have himself circumcised?
It was not fashionable for his generation but it was for yours.
If the benefits were overwhelmingly positive he would surely want to have himself cut? Doesn't that follow?
Or was he worried about the pain involved?
So how did your careful, scholarly, Dad come to want you circumcised when he saw no reason to have the same procedure himself?
I think it goes something like this. You and I had flared jeans but our Dads would not have been seen dead in them. My Dad was advised that cutting was unnecessary, your Dad was told otherwise.
Our dress norms at that time were universal, whereas the circumcision norm was strongly local in the US and weakening elsewhere.
At 38, a lifetime of cleaning properly and getting good reports from his doctor? Seriously? No, that does not follow. Probably somewhat worried about the pain, mostly concerned with the idea of letting his sons have a better life than him.
Maybe he made a bet with my mom and lost; he could have been pruning a tree one day and thought "Hey I'll prune my sons branches!"; my Dad occasionally drank, he might have been inebriated at the hospital and slurred exactly the wrong word(s)
Jeans analogy is inaccurate.
You seem to want to make this some kind of affront or attack on my Dad and myself. Whether true or not we can keep this a reasonable discussion and dispense with the smarmy and slightly sarcastic "careful, scholarly Dad" and other detritus.
Here is the real problem. A circumcised man that was cut right after birth has no idea what it means to be uncircumcised. So he has no concept or way to compare not being circumcised. How would you know what you are missing?
There are many things people do to their bodies that there is not need to do.
Tattoos - OK
Piercings - OK
Bone in nose - OK
Metal rings around neck - OK
binding the feet of women - Mostly OK
forced female castration - NOT OK
Bee stinging test - OK
Walking on hot coals - OK
Penis circumcising religious or otherwise - NOT OK
So, in essence, everything I say is wrong and mean and you are not inclined to read the scientific evidence offered by "Not Posting". No, not everything.
You seem not to want to engage in discussion of the profits doctors in the US make from the procedure. You have no explanation of why, despite high circumcision rates, STDs remain a major problem for American men and women alike. Healthcare in the US IS for profit.
You see nothing odd about the low circumcision rates in Europe, Canada and Australia, being linked to lower STD Incidence than in the US. Prove the the low STD incidence rate is directly related to low circumcision rates.
You don't like to be told that foreskins are normal. Europeans are not all dying from an epidemic of some awful 'cock-rot'. If anything, those illnesses are more likely in the US. I don't? Prove it! No you're all dying from bad teeth.
You trust parental judgement implicitly. Well, so too does a Somali mother as she and her sisters hold down their daughters before cutting off their clitorises with a borrowed razor blade. Do you get my drift? Already said that practice needs to stop post haste; they don't do it for health reasons, they do it so the girl will never experience orgasm. It's a patriarchal control thing.
Personally I distrust all claims of parental authority by virtue of tradition. I'm sure you will be outraged at that comparison. You will say "but doctors are consulted too."
Well, one of the doctors mentioned in the link offered by "NotPosting" was an American doctor who believed it was ethically OK to make a small, 'chargeable nick', in the clitoral hood of girls whose parents want some sign of cultural continuity.
That doctor was also the AAP ethics adviser who part-drafted the latest US position statement on circumcision. The document you trust. The only document I trust is a new roll of toilet paper.
I could care less about your father, likewise I care less about how much "lube" you and your wife require to get it together. When you're older you and your SO will be in the same boat, so to speak.
But since you are reluctant to discuss science, research or ethics I am required to join you in talking about the topics you introduce.
I realise that nothing I could say to you could possibly change your mind, so I think we are about done here, don't you? I didn't join this thread to discuss science, research or ethics. I joined to contribute my $.02.
But hey, thanks for that apology. You are probably a good man but we are not going to get along.
Have a good one.
Now that's more like it. That was funny.You are all dying of bad teeth
Truck driver method = pull back and unload
The OK's are the ones where the person chooses to do it themselves. The Mostly OK is because most of those people sound like they were old enough to consent, and it was a status thing that they agreed to do. The NOT OK's are all not OK, because they had no say in it. A permanent choice is made for them, by someone else, to change their body when it wasn't necessary.
The "hygiene" argument makes as much sense as people advocating amputating toes saying that the space between toes would pose "difficulties" washing...so the best solution would be to amputate them.
Let's face it though, many parents ARE facing TONS of pressure from Religion, Business (doctors/hospitals) and our society to do so.
I agree with you 100%
Cut off your eyelids and nose too. Those eye snots and buggers are nasty!
We should fill in the belly button too, daily fuss is just annoying.
I don't give a damn what my partners like, I don't want to be cut! I want those 40K nerve endings back. No one ever asked me they just did it.
I don't give a damn what my partners like, I don't want to be cut! I want those 40K nerve endings back. No one ever asked me they just did it.
I don't get this argument at all. Parents make plenty of decisions for their infant children without asking for consent. That's why they are the parents.
I have no issue with people arguing about the benefits / downsides of circumcision from a medical standpoint but this whole "nobody asked me" just sounds like a bunch of new-age nonsense. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be vaccinated either. I didn't get a say when my tonsils were extracted. I didn't get to choose where I grew up. My daughter didn't get to choose when we had a suspicious growth removed from her face as an infant. Tough beans.
Dude, they make decisions like what to feed them for lunch and what toys they can play with, NOT what body part to remove today. How you can compare that with basic parental decision making is completely baffling.
Right. That's all they do, decide what to feed them. Got it. I guess I should be crying about the fact that my tonsils were removed without me giving consent. That's a body part. I'm less whole now because my tonsils are missing right? Decisions are made by parents on what they think is best for the child, that's the point. I don't need consent from my kids to do what I feel is best for them.
The fact that you seem to think I need consent from my kids to do anything beyond animal level parenting is baffling to me.
Tonsils being removed to prevent sickness and suffering is one thing, but we are discussing something different. A parent has to make hard choices sometimes to allow a child to suffer temporarily in order to get better. This is basically how many doctor visits go, with shots and all that.
But again, DUDE, you are talking about removing their penis skin and for no good reason. Why would you do that?
You can make the argument that circumcision is done to prevent sickness and suffering as well. It isn't that difficult if that is genuinely what the parent believes. That is why the original question you posed "Is circumcision moral?" is such a tricky one to answer. the answer depends on whether you believe it is simply a ritualistic religious act or whether you believe there are real physical benefits.
Just to be clear, with the tonsil thing I was addressing the whole "nobody asked me" nonsense I keep seeing pop up. Discuss the pros and cons of the act not some silly child permission thing.
Removing people's genitalia is not a silly matter. Parent's may have chosen to do this back in the day when they were ignorant about the health benefits, or even mislead by their doctors, but today things are different. People know better and to do it anyway IS immoral.
Regarding tonsils, if they are going to make your kid sick, then you do the hard thing as a parent and choose, for your child, to have them removed. You protect your kid by making hard choices. Circumcision does NOT fall within that category unless there is actually something wrong with the foreskin, and almost all the time there is nothing wrong with it.
I never said it was nor did I mean to imply such You are completely missing my point.
And I still have yet to see any conclusive evidence one way or the other for/against circumcision and any health benefits. I am fully willing to be open about the discussion but I have yet to see any real conclusive evidence, just studies from both sides, generally skewed to wuit their argument.