If you're opposed to circumcision, you're an anti-semite!

Yeah I don't think cleanliness is the issue here. I'm not even convinced that it ever was the issue, even when circumcisions began in different faiths of people.

I was told by a rabbi long ago that some practices, such as dietary rules, were created in order to deflect the tendency to assimiliate.

They came about in a time when the world's earliest urban centers were bringing together people of many cultures and faiths for the first time in the same place. Building ritual into daily occurances like eating meals, entering a home, going to sleep and so on, reminded people of "who they are." He put circumciscion in that category.

(shrug) Maybe he wasn't right on that, and I'm certainly no expert on why religious practices exist. But it seems a reasonable theory.

I'm not jewish, yet my parents still felt the need to have me clipped as a baby.

I remember a time in Jr. High in the boys locker room a guy next to me was changing and I happened to see his junk, and it freaked me out! It looked like his dick was a hose. I didn't understand at the time he wasn't circumcised, and to me it was not normal.

I agree in principle that we shouldn't be mutilating children for backwards social beliefs and shoddy health research.

But on the other hand, I don't feel the least butthurt or violated for having it done to me as a baby. I don't have any reason to care.

My observation is that men like their penises quite a lot, whether they are "cut" or not.

And I agree (if I am understanding you correctly), that circumcision is not a form of mutilation, or at the very least, not an experience that damages people emotionally, down the road.

It serves me well.

We've been over this before. The head of the penis is very, very sensitive. The foreskin protects it from contact until it's erect. Circumcision leaves the head rubbing directly against your underwear all day, which desensitizes it. It's still relatively sensitive, but not to the extent it could have been.

WebMD disagrees.

One study, on with a few dozen men with apparently widely differing ages and health levels and medical issues, couldn't prove a correlation.

And now, Wikipedia:

That's not good...

But more importantly,

Different researchers get different results. I could speak from personal experience, but no one wants to hear that.

Oh please, don't give me that shit. There's a hell of alot of difference between tattooing a child, and clipping off excess skin to make the penis more attractive. Jesus Christ and the Holy Mother of God, I've had it up to as far as my ass will take it with this "it's for the children" bullshit excuse to pass new 'stupid laws' which people will surely follow. They're banning sales of too much soda in NYC with CHILDREN as the basis, they want to ban guns with CHILDREN as the basis, they want to regulate what we eat and how we eat it with CHILDREN as the basis. FUCK THE CHILDREN. You people want to help kids? Stop worrying over the sizes and appearances of their penises and stop spending them into the grave before they even fucking grow up or are born!!!

Jesus, I don't remember a fucking thing about my circumcision. And when I fuck, my orgasms are still so strong they cause me to collapse like Hitler at the end of "Downfall."

WHYYYY do I have to live on a planet with so many godddamned stupid people????? Sometimes I seriously contemplate if I'm secretly already dead and in Hell. Only one way to test that theory!

oh and this bit of trash-

Do you have any idea how those glans smell? I'll tell you because I've gone down on guys with hoods. It smells like rotting FISH. Yes, I said ROTTING FISH!!!! I will do alot to please a guy but I will NOT PUT SOMETHING THAT SMELLS LIKE FISH INSIDE MY MOUTH! Fucking stupid world!!!! Stay out of Mom and Dad's and their doctor's affairs and worry about yourselves. ARRRRGH

Wow, that's certainly a lot of pent up rage you have over tattoos. Did your parents tattoo you as an infant? You've already admitted that they didn't ask for your consent when they mutilated your penis.

Except that I'm not aware of any evidence showing those studies to be flawed.

I really expected better from you, Chad. You've generally shown yourself to be a smart, well-reasoned poster up to this point, and here you've opted to the cheap cop out. Were this any other issue, you'd have made a rational, well thought out response, instead you opt for the cheap shot, and the same shortsightedness of certain other posters on political issues.

Let me leave you with a couple of things before I quit this thread. One is anecdotal, the other is backed up by numerous scientific studies and isn't the least bit controversial, to illustrate my reasons for thinking that circumcision really isn't that big of a deal.

The absolute best sex of my life was with my second girlfriend. This wasn't the "earth moved" kind of stuff of fiction, this was so mind blowingly good that I would have to stop in the middle of the act because I was in danger of blacking out. Now suppose that everything was the same, except for the fact that I hadn't been circumcised as an infant. What could I expect? A loss of control so that I did blackout? That's hardly ideal, or even romantic. The same experience with more partners than just her? Again, not that great, despite what people might think. Because after finishing, I couldn't interact with her in any kind of meaningful way. All I could do is lay there, gasping, and patting her, to try and let her know that I was still conscious and would recover. I couldn't engage in afterplay, or even tell her I loved her, all I could do is stare at the ceiling and wait for the stars before my eyes to go away. I loved talking to her, smelling her, touching her body, cuddling her, and I could do none of that until my damned body sorted itself out, by which time, much of the romantic moment was lost, because she was worried that something might be wrong with me.

And no, she was not particularly sexually experienced before we met. It wasn't the nerves in my dick which made sleeping with her so powerful. It was the nerves in my brain. For reasons too complicated to go into here, we couldn't see each other that often, and this led an intensity to the moment that I've not had with anyone else. It was nice to experience, occasionally, but I like being able to make jokes after sex, I like being able to go for "seconds" almost immediately after climaxing the first time, I like not wondering if I've over-exerted myself and am going to be in big trouble.

The second, and most important, is the body has ways to adapt to things which most people would think would prevent someone from being able to enjoy sex. People who're paralyzed below the waist are still capable of enjoying sex and having orgasms. Their erogenous zones simply migrate to another spot on their body where they are capable of having feeling, most often the tongue. It doesn't seem impossible to me that the brain would, gradually, rewire itself to counteract any loss of sensation caused by circumcision. Yes, I know that people who've been circumcised later in life often say that their orgasms have changed and are less powerful, but AFAIK, none of those studies have included things like long-term follow up or before and after brain scans to measure the level of activity in the brain during orgasm.

We're dealing with something highly subjective here, as well as verging on an area many people consider taboo. Women who've had hysterectomies or breast removal often say that they feel like "less of a woman" and that sex is "different" in the short term. Neither of those things are necessarily true.

And yes, I agree, we do need better sex education in this country, and we do have a lot of sexual hangups which are plainly stupid. None of which changes the fact that humans are going to fuck, and when the passion's high enough, they're not going to care if they've got condoms, or if their partner has been recently checked for disease. Again, I say that just responding with "condoms are the answer" is as overly simplistic and simpleminded as advocating abstinence as the sole method of preventing unwed mothers. We both know that its not.

I don't care if someone doesn't want their kid to be snipped. If someone wants their kid to be unsnipped, that's fine with me. If they want a medical professional to circumcise their kid, that's fine with me as well. We don't live in a perfect world and people don't use condoms when they should, even if they're well versed in the facts of life, and if someone thinks that they want to reduce their child's chance of catching an STD by circumcising their kid, I'm okay with that. After all, if you're going to complain about parents making life changing decisions with their child's body, you might as well complain about them putting their child up for adoption.

YES, THEY PUT A FUCKING STAR ON MY ASS AND IT TURNS OUT IT'S NOT EVEN MY FAVORITE COLOR! Oh, how I weep for this pathetic species to which I sadly belong.

Our son isn't. I really don't see the big deal over it all....it wasn't even an argument. Plus I didn't feel like driving to the other town and making the appointment and paying the money to have it done.

They're flawed because they took place in countries with high HIV rates and impoverished, often unhygienic conditions. And they were not fully completed for ethical reasons (something about knowingly risking the furthered spread of HIV).

Sorry if I offended you. Reading it back, I probably included a bit too much emotion when typing it out originally.

Not necessarily, but I can't truly answer that. Besides, the sensitivity argument along with the arguments regarding hygiene, STDs, and aesthetics are all secondary to the core issue I have with circumcising infants: it is done without their consent. I appreciate you feeling comfortable to share your story, though.

I realize it's pretty difficult to accurately measure and impossible to prove. I got into this with Captain X in the other thread, but as someone who is uncircumcised, it's easy for me to imagine a decreased sensitivity if I had grown up circumcised. If I were to walk around, fully clothed, with my foreskin retracted, the sensation of my exposed glans rubbing against my underwear would be enough to make things awkward. As a circumcised man, do you have difficulty with your exposed glans rubbing against your underwear? I would hope not. But again, this is still secondary to my main problem with forced circumcision.

Fair enough. I'm fine if a male makes the decision later in life to become circumcised for health or aesthetic reasons. I'm not fine with the decision being made without his consent. I'm not looking to legislate circumcisions out of existence, I'm just hoping the circumcision trend in the US continues to decline. It's clear we're talking in circles at this point, though.

I'm sorry for the trouble they put you through. Have you sought counseling?

I even refused to pierce our girl's ears until they are of age to ask for it themselves.

If you're opposed to gay marriage you're homophobic

If you're opposed to abortion or free contraception you hate women

If you're opposed to affirmative action you hate blacks

If you're opposed to open borders you're anti-hispanic

If you oppose teacher's unions your anti-education

If you don't believe in evolution or global warming you're anti-science

__________________________________________________________

Welcome to public debates in the 21st century.

I grew up in the middle of no where, not meeting a foreigner until I was a teenager and still made it to half a dozen third world shitholes before I got married.

I'm sure growing up in a cosmopolitan city in the 21st Century he'll never be in any such place.

The potential downsides are low and the upsides quite large.

I can't tell if that's a pro or anti-circumcision statement. Is it still the case that military personnel being deployed to certain places are required to be circumcised? I thought I heard something like that, but it was during WWII...

It's the easy answer.

People don't like hard questions, with answers that are of the "Maybe, maybe not" variety. It's much easier to give a "one-size-fits-all" answer and brand all who disagree with you as evil. Religion has been doing this for millennia with uncounted rules about what things are "sin" (there is almost no human behavior, invention, or desire that has not been branded as "sin" by some religion, somewhere, at some time). Why shouldn't the non-religious have the right to play the game?

You're those things if you're against "just because! ", yeah.

Or, if you're arguments are flimsy bullshit that expose themselves as pathetic excuses.

God, I was really mad last night, wasn't I? You'd swear I was on the verge on of declaring a jihad against the non-clippers. :jihad:

What other reason is there? I've certainly yet to hear any rational ones.

I don't believe I've ever heard or read a rational argument against it, either. Yet I get the sense that if a rational argument existed, you'd do backflips to avoid acknowledging it as such.

In the 21st century, anything less than slobbering adulation is "hate", if your special interest is "special" enough.

Here's a rational argument against the government recognizing gay marriage: The government shouldn't recognize gay marriage because the government shouldn't recognize any marriage. Marriage is primarily (though, granted, not exclusively) a religious institution, and as such, government recognition of it is just as much a breach of the separation of church and state as prayer in school is.

There. There's your rational argument against government recognition of gay marriage.

No, it is not the case. I wonder what the reasoning for this would be? We never fought naked, maybe tactics were different back in the old days.