Remember those attempts to get circumcision banned in San Francisco and Santa Monica? They never had a chance of passing because such a ban would violate the religious freedoms of Jews and Muslims, but California Governor Jerry Brown has put an end to all this ballyhoo by signing a law banning circumcision bans. That’s all good and well until a future governor signs a law banning the ban of circumcision bans. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle.
Image via nerdcoregirl
Little Kiwi
*looks down*
thank you, mum and dad, for not making a decision about my body for me. it may be a parent’s “religious belief” or “feeling of tradition”, but it’s your son’s fucking penis. no pun intended.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Little Kiwi:
Agreed. The decision belongs to the person who owns the penis.
Hyhybt
Is the photo from Dress Up As What People Call You Day?
Bryan
While I never had to choice whether or not I wanted to be circumcised, I love my cock that way and I really couldn’t be bothered about all the pleasures I’m supposedly missing. I just love the way a cut cock looks, sorry to uncut guys, but there’s something very unappealing about a flaccid uncut cock, it just looks weird.
John
I’m cut and I’ve always hated it. While mine actually came out fine, unlike many of them, but it still makes me mad that my parents cared more about themselves than me and apparnetly thought I’d never be worthy enough to make my own decisions about my body. I disagree with Bryan. I think cut penises look sad and the scars are gross. They don’t work as well either and there’s definitively a pleasure difference (all uncut guys I’ve been with say there’s pleasure in the foreskin and we don’t have it, therefore….). In any case, one’s personal sexual fetish is NOT a legitimate reason to force a baby into surgery. While I respect the decision of an adult male to choose it for himself, I think it’s disgusting, unethical and immoral (outside of Judaism and Islam) to force a child into it. It’s irreparable, it’s more risky than having a foreskin and you can’t know what he’d choose in the future. Also, just b/c he doesn’t remember or say anything, doesn’t mean he doesn’t look down every day and hate himself. I honestly cannot figure out why anyone would want to do this to a child; it’s horrible.
John
I’m cut and I’ve always hated it. While mine actually came out fine, unlike many of them, but it still makes me mad that my parents cared more about themselves than me and apparently thought I’d never be worthy enough to make my own decisions about my body. I disagree with Bryan. I think cut penises look sad and the scars are gross. They don’t work as well either and there’s definitively a pleasure difference (all uncut guys I’ve been with say there’s pleasure in the foreskin and we don’t have it, therefore….). In any case, one’s personal sexual fetish is NOT a legitimate reason to force a baby into surgery. While I respect the decision of an adult male to choose it for himself, I think it’s disgusting, unethical and immoral (outside of Judaism and Islam) to force a child into it. It’s irreparable, it’s more risky than having a foreskin and you can’t know what he’d choose in the future. Also, just b/c he doesn’t remember or say anything, doesn’t mean he doesn’t look down every day and hate himself. I honestly cannot figure out why anyone would want to do this to a child; it’s horrible.
Pete n SFO
Hopefully, the campaigns raised awareness about the fact that an adult should be making the decision, as an adult, regarding any changes to his genitalia.
It’s baffling to me that people deride that notion, or the proponents of leaving infants intact as crazy-thinkers, and in some cases defend their cut penises… as though that has any bearing on the question of another’s personal choice.
The religion my parents gave me has absolutely nothing to do with my life today. The State should take more responsibly its duty to protect individuals FROM religious practice.
Obviously, you can count me as a guy that wishes they had recognized my junk, as mine alone.
JayKay
So they’ll be legalizing female circumcision any day now, right? I mean we wouldn’t want to violate the rights of those parents, right?
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@JayKay:
Heresy! Vaginas are sacrosanct. They are delicate flowers, meant to be placed on a pedestal, to be worshiped and cherished. A penis is just a floppy piece of meat, attached to a useless male, meant to be surgically altered to suit the whims of women.
Scott
If you are against parents making decisions about circumcision are you also against a parent deciding on an abortion? Vaccinations? What kind of education to give the kids? Parents make decisions for their children that affect the rest of their lives and that’s the way it is. Having a choice is better than having state mandates and a parent’s right to choice trumps the child’s unless a criminal act is involved.
I was upset as a teen that, due to my parents, I was stuck in a rural public school with minimal resources while friends at other schools had advanced placement, large theatre departments, gay groups, etc. I turned out okay in the end although I don’t enjoy privilege afforded those who attended a prestigious boys academy or an ivy league.
Riker
@Scott: However, things like vaccination are very relevant to the child’s health. Circumcision has absolutely no useful medical purpose whatsoever.
Besides, Jesus spoke out against it. “His disciples said to him, ‘Is circumcision useful or not?’ He said to them, ‘If it were useful, their father would produce children already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become profitable in every respect.’ (Thomas 53)
lemon-lime
@Riker: Gosh it’s a good thing everyone in the country is Christian. Those pesky Jews and Muslims don’t count, shucks.
Making a law banning circumcision in one town is just about the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Talk about a non-issue. If people want to have their kids circumcised they’ll just take them one suburb over and have it done there.
If infant circumcision rights are that important to you, you’ll have a much easier time changing hearts and mind by speaking directly to the issue and convincing parents that it’s simply not a good idea rather than trying to legislate away parent’s perceived rights on a town by town basis.
If the support is really there, then you can change the law at the state level. That makes more much more sense to me.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Scott:
Parents make decisions for their children that affect the rest of their lives and that’s the way it is.
So then I presume you support a parent’s right to send a gay, queer, or questioning child to a gay camp to pray the gay away, and make the child straight? Howabout sending the child to a psychiatrist, or re-orientation counseling?
Scott
@lemon-lime: … they’ll just take them one suburb over and have it done there.
/stereotypical Nazi accent on/You vill brring your son to ze police station and prove he has not been mut-i-LA-TED! /accent off/
I wonder, in the mid-west, say, Kansas, will women who’ve had an abortion out-of-state be forced to prove they didn’t once they get back home? Once a state has banned something can’t they go on to punish their citizens who went ahead and did it anyway somewhere else?
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Scott:
/stereotypical Nazi accent on/You vill brring your son to ze police station and prove he has not been mut-i-LA-TED! /accent off/
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Rolling Eyes
@John: seriously, get over it. There are so many other things to focus your energy on than hating your mom and dad for deciding to get you circumcised. Get on with your life.
lemon-lime
@Mr. Enemabag Jones: Yes, that is their legal right until such kinds of therapies are rendered illegal. I doubt Scott would support it personally.
There seems to be some massive conflation going on here between what is morally right and what is legal. Even if you find circumcision morally reprehensible, that isn’t sufficient to demand everyone follow your system of morality.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@lemon-lime:
Yes, that is their legal right until such kinds of therapies are rendered illegal.
But they won’t be made illegal because that would impede a parents religious rights. So you support parents sending their children–against their will–to organizations that will force them to be “straight”?
I doubt Scott would support it personally.
Now, why don’t you let Scott answer the question on his own? I’m sure he’s fully capable of speaking for himself.
There seems to be some massive conflation going on here between what is morally right and what is legal. Even if you find circumcision morally reprehensible, that isn’t sufficient to demand everyone follow your system of morality.
So you support a person exercising their religious belief that homosexuality is morally reprehensible, and using that belief to enact laws banning equal marriage, adoption, and so forth? You may think that is morally reprehensible, but it’s legal.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
@Rolling Eyes:
John wrote that he hates being circumcised. He didn’t write anything about hating his parents.
SuperCat
It’s just sick. We wouldn’t make religious exemptions for a religion that mutilated underage girls, or performed any other form of ritual body modification on children.
It’s so disgusting, watch a circumcision video of a baby. They literally have to scrape the foreskin off because at that age it doesn’t slide yet, it’s stuck to the glans.
evilqueen
@John: While I respect the decision of an adult male to choose it for himself, I think it’s disgusting, unethical and immoral (outside of Judaism and Islam) to force a child into it.”
So why isn’t it disgusting, unethical and immoral within Judaism and Islam? Why are you giving these patriarchal superstitions a pass?
Dmitriy
@SuperCat:
yes of course: removing a piece of skin is equivalent to cutting off part or all of a woman’s clitoris
SuperCat
@Dmitriy:
All medically unnecessary mutilation of children is wrong.
Besides there are versions of female circumcision that don’t remove the clitoris, simply the clitoral hood which is just “a piece of skin.” They are for the most part banned too, as they should be.
Besides it’s not just a piece of skin, it’s full of nerve endings. Removing the foreskin is a permanent removal of some sexual sensitivity. In fact the very reason circumcision was so widely encouraged in the past was to stop boys from masturbating.
uncutfag
@Dimitriy:
This “piece of skin” is part of my genitalia just like the clitoris is part of a woman’s genitalia. So yes, removing it is, strictly speaking, genital mutilation.
declanto
There was a wide-spread urban myth about smegma (headcheese)causing uterine cancer in the 60’s. There was also some mumbo-jumbo from the AMA that prompted post-war circumcisions in infants, although the practice had already gained a foothold in the US. Europeans generally do not circumcise their sons. The foreskin can actually be grown back with some “encouragement”, although it would never be a sensitive as the original.
declanto
I was circumcized at age 5, along with my two older brothers. The thoughtful Dr. gave us a “group discount” rate. He’s the one i really hate, for duping my ignorant parents into mutilating me for no other reason than money.
Peter
@SuperCat: Not only that, because our glans are covered most of the time by the foreskin, it actually retains more sensitivity than if the foreskin is cut and the glans is constantly rubbing on underwear and everything.
Hyhybt
@SuperCat: *A* reason, not *the* reason….. and the same was used as a reason to buy corn flakes. I’m NOT arguing in favor of circumcision here, just pointing out that an outdated marketing campaign is no reason to ban something.
Diabolically_Random
This is clearly a plan cleverly devised by lube makers to take over the world. They knew that masturbation was an untapped tapped market. Clearly people masturbate far more often that have actual sex and they wanted their piece of that.
the crustybastard
This is as insane as a religion that requires parents to tattoo their infants.
SteveC
I think any parent (including jewish and muslim parents) who circumcise their infant sons, in the absence of a medical need to do so are idiots.
How circumcision became so commonplace in the US (but not in Europe or Asia) is a mystery.
Thankfully the rates of circumcision are plummeting in the US. There is no medical need for it in the vast majority of cases.
Scott
@Mr. Enemabag Jones
>>So then I presume you support a parent’s right to … make the child straight? How about
>>sending the child to a psychiatrist, or re-orientation counseling?
You presume too much, sir. I would have to sigh and admit that parents do have the right to screw up their kids. I’ve seen plenty of parents eff’up their children. My 4 brothers are all alcoholics. I don’t support trying to make children straight. That’s a form of child abuse and SHOULD be recognized as such. Male circumcision isn’t child abuse.
My parents attempts to make me straight bought them a lifetime without me. I had nothing to do with them after age 21. My parents had the right at the time to do what they would. It backfired on them because I had the stronger sense of self.
Anyone who feels they were mutilated by their parents can go back to them as adults and complain. Go ahead and tell your parents how rotten they were and that you were scarred for life. Sue them. Does that seem appropriate? Too little? Excessive? When I think about the nightmare I lived through as a child, my father beating and trying to strangle my mother and having fist fights with my older brothers and having affairs, this circumcision discussion seems petty.
Now I might support sending a child to a psychiatrist if the professional doesn’t have an agenda and can help the child deal with conflict and become a better or healthier person. My version of healthier, not the socially conservative right-wing version.
Queer Supremacist
Aborting a baby: fine.
Removing a superflous piece of skin from an 8-day-old baby boy that, unlike the clitoris, has no function: Should be banned.
Gotcha.
Once again, the problem is not circumcision, it is those goddamned gentiles.
Disclaimer: I am 1,000% pro-abortion rights and believe it should even be mandatory in some instances. And my circumcised boyfriend and I, who am also circumcised and damn glad of it, have some of the best sex imaginable.
Little Kiwi
i liked being a single uncut gay male in America. it’s a hot commodity 😉
carol
What the hell is wrong with those people in san Francisco? They have nothing better to do. There are so many other issues to fight about. I have seen a lot of penis and.believe me the.ones who.were not circumcised stunk. That’s because the penis is enclosed can’t breath. And please do not say circumcising a female Is the same thing because that’s not the case. Circumcising a female is like chopping the penis off. We are talking about the foreskin. For those parents who are against circumcision think twice. If your son got an incurable disease and/or cancer because he wasn’t circumcised how would you feel? Give the penis a chance to breath. Circumcision is healthy for males prevents rancid urine trapped between the skin.
William
Queer Supremacist: In abortion no extreme, prolonged pain occurs. The embryo, that isn’t even self-aware, is just removed. In circumcision, a baby boy has knives taken to his penis (or a plastibell) while completely aware, has a no-anesthesia surgery, screaming his head off for the entire surgery. And while you may be circumcised and glad of it, lucky for you, because there are plenty of men angry about circumcision that want their foreskins back.
carol: Then why did foreskins evolve? Clearly, you’ve smelled (?) penises of men that don’t wash them. I’m circumcised and my penis smells pretty bad too, even though I take plenty of showers and keep myself clean. Also, if your son got a mishap from circumcision and had their sex lives ruined for the rest of their lives, how would you feel? Give a penis a chance to NOT breath, and if there are bad things happening, like cancer, then it can be removed, for there is a good reason.
Jews and Muslims: Sorry, but your religious rights end with someone else’s body. You don’t get to snip a piece of skin that has a purpose of some baby boy screaming their head off in the pain the entire time.
Thank you for reading. I just can’t stand female circumcision being illegal and shunned while male circumcision is being encouraged or tolerated by many.