Ditto that.

Did he make a comment/push the issue or was he just asking the question? If he was just asking the question, that’s a pretty over the top response, regardless of how you feel about circumcision.

Your comment is amusing in an ironic way, since the original medical justification for routine foreskin removal (made in the late Victorian era – what a surprsie!) was that it prevented/discouraged men from wanking off when they got old enough to discover that wankery could be fun. After all, masturbation caused blindness, palsy, epilepsy, and insanity!

Yes, they really believed that.

Mind boggling.

Anti-masturbation efforts also were the justification for Graham crackers and Kellogg’s corn flakes. Apparently bland, unstimulating foods would help the penis from getting spontaneously tumescent.

Then there were the cage-like contraptions that men could purchase to wear to bed, to prevent them from losing seed in their sleep via nocturnal emission, since spontaneous ejaculation was also seen as medically hazardous. And being poked (or worse) by a complicated chastity belt wasn’t? These things make the toys found in adult catalogs of a specialty nature, called “The Gates of Hell,” look positively gentle.

Read Reay Tannahill’s book _Sex In History_ for more information. (She also wrote an interesting anthropological study of food called _Food In History_.) It’s… interesting.

Sorry that was ambiguous. My DSS thanked them for leaving him intact.

Can I get the sources you got those numbers from? Seriously that might help my situation.

For anyone concerned about hygiene and being intact… if a woman doesn’t take a shower or bathe properly, then what would you expect? It’s not any different for a boy. It would be impossible to have hygiene issues if you bathed properly.

Re: UTIs. Here (in England), routine circumcision isn’t done, and there isn’t an increased rate of UTIs. I read an article a while back that postulated that the increased rate of UTIs in the US wasn’t from circumcision, but from the hyper-sterilised atmosphere of birthing in US hospitals. Normally the mother’s bacteria would be passed to the infant, and this would protect the boy from UTI, but if she’s cleaned up/sterilised/whatever, then he’s not getting that bacteria and in that case circumcision brings him back to the status quo, as it were. I’ll have to see if I can find that link again.

This isn’t the article, but I found this study abstract helpful: http://adc.bmj.com/content/90/8/853.abstract It says there appears to be a 1% reduced risk of UTI with a circumcision, but a 2% risk of haemorrhage and infection, thus there’s no net benefit (indeed, there’s a net risk).

If anyone wants to see what the NHS says and why it isn’t routinely done here, here’s the link: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Circumcision/Pages/Why-is-it-necessary.aspx

awesome Guggie!

What do ‘anti circumcision activists’ have to gain by spreading misinformation?

Fundamentally, those against circumcision are human rights activists and those who deplore child abuse. It’s a simple position which doesn’t require anything in the way of justification or debate. We are all, men and women, entitled to the genitals we were born with.

The pro-circumcision lobby is another story altogether. There are those who profit directly, those who profit indirectly, and a gaggle of fetishists who feel the need to justify the harm that was done to them by encouraging it to be done to others. No doctor worth his salt, with even the most basic grasp of bioethics, would promote this.

Beware circumcision fetishist sites too, which is what most of those links are. The CDC and Mayo are also coming under great fire for supporting faulty studies in order to justify a lucrative social surgery.

There is no justification for medically modifying a non-consenting minor’s genitals without actual medical cause. (Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this: which nation has the highest rate of STDs in the developed world? The US. Which nation has the highest rate of circumcision in the world? The US. How odd! It’s almost like it didn’t prevent a thing!) Circumcision does not prevent disease. Therefore, it is not medically justifiable.

It is a social construct as disturbing as Chinese foot-binding and African neck-stretching of their children. In parts of the world where female circumcision is still practiced (regardless of its legality) the exact same arguments are used to justify removing the female prepuce, better known as the clitoral hood, as those used for male prepucectomy: it’s cleaner, safer, prettier, harmless…..blah, blah, vomit, blah.

Consenting adults may choose to have their genitals surgically altered all they wish, but performing cosmetic surgery on a minor without true medical need is abuse. Fortunately, the statistics show that more and more US parents are figuring this out and catching on to what the rest of the world has always known (that it is unnecessary at best, and barbaric at worst) as the percentage of boys forced to undergo cosmetic prepucectomy is dropping steadily. In another generation or two we will look back on circumcision advocates with as much pity and disdain as we do on 18th century doctors with their jars of leaches.

I don’t think I would trust any of your links since I clicked on the first one and the very first statement was false.

“Circumcision is a very popular procedure.”
Sorry, but it’s not. The fact is that only about 20% of men world wide are mutilated.

I always find it strange when people advocate for the hacking off of perfectly good body parts for aesthetic reasons.

I lived in England for a while and none of the men I knew while I was doing graduate work there had any problem with UTIs, cancer, lack of hygiene, etc.

They do, however, consider Americans barbaric for routinely mutilating newborn infant boys, a view which I share.

And really, that is the bottom line. It’s unnecessary surgery that only came about as a medical routine in our country thanks to the antimasturbation crusades of figures such as Harvey Kellogg. It’s an institution that goes largely unquestioned by most members of the medical establishment and by about half of American parents, and if you look at the demographics on a map, that support is geographically skewed – the coasts and most urban areas have rates of 50% or less, while the heavy support for the inhumane procedure comes mostly from rural areas and small to mid-size cities in the “heartland.” There are probably various reasons for this – I’m not a sociologist. I just look at the map and report on what I see.

Anyway, I have no kind words for those who would cut their children. Let alone push cutting on somebody else’s child, especially when that person is on the fence or even leaning against the mutilation but is having a hard time defending her position in the face of social/familial opposition. As with breastfeeding, if the tide is against the mother, it’s generally very hard for her to hold her ground.

Which I am sure the pro-mutilation health care professionals know, and exploit to the hilt. Hmm?

You had ONE yeast infection and got surgery to solve it? I’ve had at least a dozen yeast infections and no one ever suggested surgery to me. I wonder why doctors think parts of the male genitals are disposable, but parts of the girl aren’t (anymore, at least).

I thought you weren’t supposed to clean under there? It’s like sticking a Qtip in your ear: Don’t. You also aren’t supposed to retract it at a young age at all. Forcibly retracting it to wash under there with cleansers causes inflammation, microtears, yeast infections, and other nasty things. My pediatrician told me to NEVER retract the foreskin of my boys, and to NEVER come at them with solvents (such as soap, iodine, rubbing alcohol, etc.) of any kind. Mother nature/g-d/flying spaghetti monster supposedly knows best in this.

An important point in your post is that YOU MADE THE DECISION AS AN ADULT. You got to decide that one yeast infection (based on poor medical advice, from the sound of things) was enough to send you to surgery. You got to have effective pain relief, both during and after your surgery. 96% of US baby boys undergo prepucectomy without proper anesthesia (usually just a quick application of EMLA which only numbs the outer surface of the tissue for a few minutes and is not even given enough time for that pittance to work). During your surgery your doctor was able to work on a fully retractable, adult-sized penis with clear boundary between the prepuce and the shaft. Baby boys’ genitals are not much bigger than a pencil and the prepuce is adhered to the foreskin exactly like your fingernails are adhered to you fingers – the delineation between prepuce and shaft is pure guess work, and doctors frequently guess wrong. Baby boys are sent home unconscious from pain (ever heard someone say “he was a champ! he slept through the whole thing!”? No, he didn’t. He fainted from the pain of surgery with no anesthesia). They’re given Baby Tylenol if they “seem uncomfortable” – you were probably sent home with some form of codeine or better. Baby boys get to have the open wounds on their genitals soaked in urine and sometimes even feces, leading to certain worse pain and possible infection. You got to ensure that nothing touched your penis that could cause it further pain, and could act to help yourself if you did feel pain.

I feel certain that you were given poor medical information that led to your decision to have that surgery. But the point is YOU GOT TO CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF!

Your foreskin was clearly not ready to be retracted if it swelled up like that. You aren’t supposed to at all until its very easy to.

I suspect the yeast infection was a result of you using soap. Only water should be used to clean under the foreskin. Otherwise, its self cleaning. Its the same reason women shouldn’t use douches in their vagina- its self cleaning and introducing soaps and chemicals like that upsets the ph- often resulting in yeast infections. They should have educated you before jumping immediately to surgery.

You know what else is a moist, warm environment where bacteria can grow? Armpits. Between your toes/your feet. Under women’s breasts. A woman’s vagina.

Only water is recommended to clean any sensitive part of the body – both male and female.

Men can contract yeast infections from women. My son had yeast infections from being in diapers. Circumcised men can get yeast infections.

I’m sorry you had surgery when doctors did not properly educate you, or before waiting to see if it would be a recurring problem. HOWEVER, your story is exactly why circumcision should NOT be allowed as an infant. You were given the choice as an adult to circumcise yourself. It’s horribly unfair to put an infant through that, risk damaging the penis, all because of the kid maybe getting a yeast infection or retracting the foreskin before it was ready to be pulled.

I do have a question though: was sex better before or after circumcising?

1) Phimosis GENERALLY does not happen if the foreskin is not forced to retract before it is ready to do so, or if it is in the process of maturing, is not forced to retract further than it wants to.

2) I’m sure whatever painkillers you had were far, far better than the sugar water and EMLA cream given to defenseless newborn baby boys.

3) The vast majority of men in the world are uncut. They do not struggle with yeast infections or urinary tract infections as a result of being uncut, for the most part. Also, while I can’t speak for all of them, since I am not that promiscuous or, heck, superhuman, the ones that I HAVE dated and had in bed most certainly did not smell, and did not have any sign of bad hygiene. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone on to have sex with them. I have sensory hypersensitivity issues and bad smells are a serious turnoff for me.

4) There is no medical justification for circumcision. Very few doctors worldwide will even entertain the thought. Americans are just weird in that regard. Weirdness is not something that should be inflicted on a newborn. Weirdness is something the child can pick up at a later date if he so chooses, when he’s actually able to make up his mind after having had a chance to gather information.

5) The poster asked if sex was better for you before or after losing your foreskin. From my own experiences, I can safely say that sex with men who lack a foreskin is a lot less fun – even when an intact male wears a condom, there is an appreciable difference. Mutilated men have sex in a different way. The thrusting is different. It’s usually a lot harder, somehow, and often has an uneven rhythm, and I dry out a lot quicker and then we break out the lube and even so, it still hurts me to pee afterward because I’m raw. Which, if it were unprotected sex, would in theory be a health risk, because HIV and Hep C are transmitted via blood to blood or semen to blood contact, and when my skin is raw, that means there are little tiny cuts and abrasions in my vaginal membranes, which puts me far more at risk for contracting an STD of that nature – very, what is the word, “hygienic,” no? Fortunately I did not make a practice of unprotected sex before marriage, but it’s the principle of the thing.

I mean, think about it. Cutting an infant boy to prevent future yeast infections, even if this were justified and backed by medical authority (and that would take a real leap of the imagination) basically means that the father’s desire to cut the son to prevent yeast infections or whatever is more important than his son’s future lover’s (or lovers’) need to have more comfortable sex and be more protected from incurable STDs.

Wow. Just wow.

*like*

Thats my view. If my 10yo son wants to be circumcised like his Dad, he can choose to do so at 18. I am not going to make that choice for him. My husband is cut, but does not see a point to elective surgery. Not that he is anti-circ, just that he does not see a point if there is no benefit. Oh well, at least it is headway (‘scuse the bad pun).