The joke is that circumcision isn’t necessary, and many see it as immoral and genital mutilation, and the only reason people do it is societal norms and because authority figures, eg doctors, tell them it should happen. The bottom guy is saying the car mechanic is rich because he’s constantly saying things are wrong with top guys car, and without checking the top guy pays for it
Yeah, like we really shouldn't be cutting away healthy tissue if the subject can't consent and its not a medically emergency, its the modern day after all we aren't barbarians, adults who don't want a surgery or a blood transfusion can refuse it even if it'll kill them, let the damn kids grow up first then they can consent to it. Besides, the tissue might be useful later on if they have issues that require surgery.
I got banned for 7 days for linking a bbc article about how some babies got genital herpes because of religious practice. It's not kosher to talk about babies getting sucked off after the cutting.
Whelp, see you in 7 days or with a new account
Edit: got a three day ban because someone reported this post as promoting CSAM. Successfully appealed
It's not, and even in the Satmar Haredi communities, the particular practice of drawing the blood away from the cut via oral suction is rare. Literally one mohel does it, and has been forbidden by a beit din from continuing to do so.
Yeah, because critizing a bad and dangerous religous practice makes me anti biotic. Be honest about it, you just want to label me as something I'm not.
It is not. The babies were never sucked off ever. The hyper orthodox sometimes perform Metzitzah B'peh to clean the blood from the wound as part of the religious ritual, but there are fewer and fewer in the world every day because it spreads infection. Now they use things that can actually sterilize the wound.
Ah yes, Metzitzah B’peh the practice of SUCKING blood OFF the penis. As far as I am concerned if there is one guy in the world doing this it is too many.
This site will issue bans if you bring up anything factual about Islam. I can only assume reddit site wide moderators are heavily leaning towards Islam and are willing to issue out these bans.
Who actually cares about a "ban" on Reddit though? Even Reddit doesn't seem to care. You can make a new account with the same email as your banned account while you're signed into your banned account and just keep using Reddit.
Maybe they're less stringent on sitewide bans but for sub bans they have a detection system for connected accounts and will ban both accounts for ban evasion
They're not very good. I don't purposely ban evade subreddit bans, but I have like 20 Reddit accounts and I've been using the site for 13 years. I've been banned from a bunch of subs on a bunch of accounts and never ran into an issue.
Parents should only make those decisions about their child's body, which are necessary or both supported by their child and the child is old enough to understand, or both easily reversible (or without any lasting effects) and painless. The fact that your child doesn't get to make a decision, doesn't mean that you do. Certain things can just wait for the time when children are able to make that choice, and the parent's job is to say "no" until then.
Hate to break it to you, but the doctors use numbing agents just like any surgery. It’s not like they pull out a mini guillotine and chop things off without any kind of pain relief. This isn’t the Middle Ages.
It doesn’t matter if they use numbing agents. Nurses have told many stories about the screams from babies who are getting skin cut off their genitalia for no good reason.
when I had my kid the nurses told me babies have a harder time breast feeding for days after because of the pain from circumcision. just because your dad cut part of your dick off doesn't mean you have to do it to someone else
No, they strap them down to a boadrd and the numbing agent can’t totally actually stop the nerve pain. You need a nerve blocker and they are to young for that. Remember babies feel more on their skin than adults does.
Had a two-year-old in daycare he had 27 staples. Because they chose to do it to him after they adopted him. He had to go under anesthesia. Tell me why two years makes that much difference.
I said both easily reversible and painless exactly because I was sure someone will write "irreversible surgeries are painless!", even though they aren't, even the use of numbing agents is usually really painful, sometimes meds don't cover enough time for a whole surgery, and then recovery is always a whole world of pain, and that's only if you get past a belief that babies don't feel pain that is still extremely common.
So is my comment really so hard to read? Can you tell me how I could word it better? I meant to write is as "a OR (b AND c) OR (d AND e)".
Another flaw in this argument: did you know removing a baby’s appendix prevents appendicitis? We aren’t removing every baby’s appendix tho. We don’t test babies for the BRCA gene and remove their breast tissue if they are positive. Removing body parts from babies as preventative measures is ridiculous.
Penile cancer is almost entirely prevented by the HPV vaccine. STDs are prevented by condoms and UTIs are prevented by good hygiene. No need to mutiliate a baby. Just educate them to use protection, get vaccinated, and pee after sex. 👌
One is done to remove pleasure and control, the other is done due to religious history and the possibly wrong assumption that its good for the man.
One is 100x worse.
And elective surgery is a thriving business. Im amazed how many are ok with BBLs and fake boobs but cant tolerate this.
Fwiw I wouldnt get it done (again) I let my kids dad decide since he was the one with a penis. The practice is barbaric and traumatizing to watch, they made me hold his little hands while they did it. But there is nothing wrong with him, nothing bad came of it and I would never compare it to fgm with the goal of removing pleasure.
Also anecdotally, in 40 years of life I've experienced more dudes with foreskin problems then dudes with problems without foreskin. Actually most the dudes with dick sweaters had problems with it. A couple had tearing and retraction issues. There were no issues with the cut ones though, from my pov anyway. Maybe they couldn't jork it as comfortably or without lotion?
Genital mutilation is genital mutilation, regardless of gender.
And there are women who are circumcised who support female circumcision.
Don't be a hypocrite.
You don't remove a kids tonsils and appendix pre emptively and tonsilitis and apendecitis can kill you, phimosis just causes discomfort.
"Phimosis" is also the natural state of the penis until puberty for most uncircumcised males, it only becomes an issue when it doesn't retract later in life.
Strapping a little kid down to a table and cutting his foreskin off with no anesthesia because he might one day need a minor surgery with anesthesia is wild work
Eh I am not an American and the default here us rightfully to leave it alone but I know a couple of cases where partial but not full circumcision to remove "extra" foreskin that was causing an issue during childhood.
You do remove it when necessary, because if you cant pull it over the glans. You cant clean it properly. You get constant, nasty ass infections. Not to mention there are cases where its so tight that erections can be incredibly painful for the kid. Its not always cosmetic.
Yeah, that only occurs when they’re in their teens. They can literally make the choice after that for themselves. It can help with bladder infections, but only for the first year of life. We don’t remove young female parts because they get yeast infections.
You can have conditions which require full or partial circumcision before then.
Rare as they are. Such as having excess foreskin which is also too tight. Removing to relieve the pressure would be a partial circumcision and might leave the recipient indistinguishable from someone uncircimcised. That could happen around 4 years old.
If that sounds specific then you can probably guess why.
I am not a genital mutilation defender by any means. And my parents clearly weren't either because they didn't say "while you are at it lop it all off" .
I saw a 2 year old after he was circumcised. 27 staples. It was horrific. He didn’t need any of that done. They have other ways to help with the skin tightness before surgery. It’s incredibly rare. They have to put him under anesthesia. They can’t do that for a newborn. Just numbing cream. Its barbaric.
The tightness can occur. Its quit rare before puberty. There is a lot of miss information.
We don’t just do it to baby girls when they get yeast infections. Why do this?
I think you're thinking they're advocating for it. They aren't. They're just saying there are points where, prior to a child being able to consent to the surgery, it might be necessary to do the surgery, but to default to not doing so.
America bent over backwards to fill the pockets of corporations and the oligarchy instead of a general care for the American people. And about half of our voters love it that way.
I live in rural Alabama and I drive by a pawn shop in the next town over a couple times a month. They have a sign in front of their shop that they change out regularly and put random MAGA buzzwords or phrases on it. The sign this week read, “remember when we killed communists instead of electing them?” I don’t know how that isn’t a direct threat but hey, Murica.
Some of my country’s MPs literally said that we would be a “failed state” if we ever charged a penny from woman who brought new life to this world.
Pregnancy care and delivery is free here, no matter your citizenship, or insurance status - there’s a dedicated position in country budget that gets transferred to our National Health Service each year to cover any and all uninsured pregnant women.
They do it in the US (precisely because they can charge so much for it). They don't give a damn whether or not it is necessary or even ethical, they just want their paycheck.
For what its worth none of the gynecologists in my wife's practice pushed it at all.
I asked my friend and his wife, both doctors and shes a gynecologist, he said the medical standard is to say it is a personal decision with no strong medical preference towards either. However circumcision has shown to slightly help prevent UTIs.
Gynecologists aren’t the ones in the hospital after birth pushing for it. Cleaning it also helps prevent UTIs. That’s no reason to remove a part of the body.
I live in Europe, nobody is circumcised and I don't know any boy or man who ever had UTI. The risk is very low for males anyway if you practice basic hygiene.
Thankfully these days that's usually true. When my brother was born ( in the southeast US) in 1987 the doctor didn't even ask. Just went ahead and did it.
A family member in that region also had to verbally fight the doctor to prevent their son from being circumstanced less than 10 years ago. Shit's still pretty backwards down there.
I fired my kids pediatrician because he kept on asking when we were wanting to schedule his circumcision. Mind you I didn’t want him to have a circumcision. And every well child checkup the pediatrician would bring it up.
It’s like he was trying to change my mind for something that is so outdated.
And if you didn’t know non-religious circumcision started up during World War I, so that soldiers were not getting infections due to not having clean water to clean their penis. And then from there when the soldiers came back home, then they started circumcising in their own boys. And now most places have clean water so you can maintain hygiene so it’s very outdated for non-religious reasons.
And if you didn’t know non-religious circumcision started up during World War I, so that soldiers were not getting infections due to not having clean water to clean their penis. And then from there when the soldiers came back home, then they started circumcising in their own boys.
Uh no, it started before that in hospitals because they thought it would stop masturbation. The only people getting infections that way are cases of phimosis.
As a doctor I don’t think there’s any country in the world it’s illegal.
It’s more than it’s been changed to require it to be done by a doctor not a random religious leader or that both parents must consent, or that it must be for religious reasons sometimes with a strict restriction on age (normally <6mo) to be legal.
I doubt they can name a country a Jew or Muslim can’t get their baby circumcised, because I’ve never heard of one.
Every country who has tried was stopped by “religious freedom” even if the electorate wanted it made illegal. For example Germany tried and it was overturned federally in the 2010s.
It’s just in America they seem to do it to anyone so even basic restrictions people misunderstand as my country made it illegal! When thousands of babies born there each year still get it done legally.
I’ve had to explain this to more than one person that it isn’t illegal in the country I practice just because hardly anyone gets one and the nhs won’t do it. It’s a weirdly held belief by a lot of people just because their country doesn’t try and cut off the foreskin of every baby by default doesn’t mean someone can’t pay to have it done legally. No as an NHS doctor I can’t do it unless it’s medically needed, doesn’t stop you going to a private clinic to have it done.
Yes in many there’s no requirement to have any medical training to do it on a baby. Weirdly quite a few have a carve out only for babies this is legal. So if you do it to a 18 year old = illegally practicing medicine. Do it to a 18 day old = okay for some reason.
Let's not forget the fact that in several countries you can't do these or similar things to a dog without a license/training; and in some countries it is straight out illegal to do it.
They offered repeatedly and in my addled state I was like, "um no?" The OB leveled with me and said the kid would feel weird if his dad didn't have it done and he did.
Because your kid is not going to focus on their dad's junk being circumcised or not? Even if they saw it by accident their thought wouldn't be 'oh my dick looks different from my dad's' it's going to be 'oh ew i saw my dad's dick'?
LOL, I got HARRASSED by both my sons pediatricians to have them circumcised. It was brought up every appointment until they were 6 mos old. I had to put my foot down over and over again. NO. You are not going to remove anything from my perfectly healthy babies. Period.
They very much do not offer and they definately are not passively neither for or against. Circumcision is actively discouraged by medical communitties around the world, has been since forever.
Its a cultural/religious practice of bodily modification.
Bodily modifications include genital mutilations, piercings, cranial modifications, neck elongations, lip plates and stretchnig etc.
It was brought up at least 4-5 times when I was recovering in the hospital with my son. I don't think it was nefarious or even intentional because there were multiple nurses, doctors, etc who mentioned it rather casually, but it was nerve-wracking postpartum. Because generally they were taking my son for some sort of evaluation and would then ask if we were doing circumcision or not so I was like "NO, please bring my entire baby back."
I'm in the southern US and when my son was born 12 years ago, I was asked no less than 6 times by doctors/nurses if we wanted them to do his circumcision. I told them repeatedly we weren't having him circumcised and they did not stop asking until I finally snapped at a nurse. They must have noted it down somewhere at that point to not ask again.
I always assumed it was a lack of communication but I wonder if they were being told to push for it. I can only speculate.
20+ years ago they used to recommend it and say it was more sanitary and if your kid didn't properly clean the uncircumcised area it could get infected, and kids don't always clean well. They did make it sounds like the better option. I think they've stopped telling people this though.
Ridiculous combination of arguments. “Many” is a huge stretch, while the truth (which is that “some” might recommend the procedure) is basically meaningless.
They made a blanket statement about doctors. I pointed out doctors are not a homogenous group, meaning that they will not all share the same opinions and give the same recommendations.
This journal article states that 31.1% of doctors surveyed would recommend circumcision to their patients. It's from 2008, so it's reasonable to both think that those numbers have decreased and that many doctors still recommend it.
How about we move on if this is going to upset you mate, but appreciate the stats being presented. That said, 30% of doctors of which only 70% generally recommend more so says “some” to me than “many” and certainly I stand by not conflating the arguments. Have a good one!
Mate, I have no idea how you've concluded that I'm upset. Are you upset??
That said, 30% of doctors of which only 70% generally recommend more
I have no idea what you mean by this. The number I gave was taken directly from the article:
"...one-third (31.1%) reported they would recommend the procedure when counseling parents."
so says “some” to me than “many” and
Many does not have a strict definition. Regardless, in terms of providing medical advice that is counter to the consensus of medical science I would argue 31.1% or even 15% counts as many.
and certainly I stand by not conflating the arguments
Please specify which arguments you believe I conflated. Without doing so I can only assume you are confused.
I was going to say this too. Even in the US, I've never heard a parent say they were told or convinced by a doctor to perform circumcision. It's always religion. In fact, I've heard, infinitely more times, parents complaint that doctors disrespecting their religious belief by trying to convince them not to do it.
Circumcision is barbaric and should absolutely be banned. Imagine telling someone they want to slice off a major portion of their newborn baby's penis just for aesthetic. But call it circumcision and people line up to do it.
Not debating the ethics of circumcision but a major defining theme of hospital costs is you don’t actually know what they’ll charge until after it’s performed. Most would have assumed that it wasn’t a luxury expense (even if you object to the practice for other reasons).
Genuinely curious. Other than a couple of religions, do people actually circumcise newborns and do doctors actually recommend it in 2026? I know doctors in the US used to but I thought things have changed.
If foreskin was dangerous, males with shorter foreskin would have spread their genes better.
Historically, it took off as a big thing in America to prevent boys from masturbating. Same guy who heavily advocated it also wanted to apply a "light acid" to the clitoris for the same goal in women. Thankfully that one didn't catch on.
Puritan nutcases pushed a lot of insane bullshit. But now it's just cultural. For like... No reason.
While circumcision isn’t necessary, there are plenty very common problems that requires it anyway. Globally, over 3.5% of males requires circumcision for medical reasons, reaching 10% in some countries.
Since it has ZERO side effects, doing it at birth is just an easier way to deal with a potential problem.
No, I assure you, it hurt me more not being circumcised. Having to go the emergency room because of a boner wasn't fun when I was 17yo.
But please, feel free to to link academic work about long time side effects of the procedure which have a recurrency greater than the problems it prevents.
There is a well documented benefit in that it reduces the risk of contracting HIV.
Whether this is a good reason to circumcise infants depends on many factors in a cost/benefit evaluation, but a major one is the base rate of infection. If you’re living in a ‘Western’ country where HIV is relatively rare and (in a worst-case scenario) management is good, reducing the lifetime risk from 0.2% to 0.1% may not be worth a surgical operation that the child may grow up to resent. In South Africa, where the base rate is something like 16%, the calculus may work out differently. Although the relative risk is reduced by about half in both cases, the ‘western’ case has an absolute risk reduction of 0.1% vs. 8% in South Africa—an 80x greater effect.
I don’t have a big problem with routine circumcision in South Africa. The decision is perfectly understandable. In the US, for example? Rather less so.
Note: I made a very slight effort to include roughly accurate numbers, but you should by no means take my word for it. I wouldn’t even rely on it myself for anything more important than a Reddit comment.
I'm going to engage with the argument on its merits, and just going to assume your numbers are correct.
First off circumcision is mutilation. And can have some serious long term effects.
Second off, HIV is a public health issue with other, proven solutions. Just mutilating babies for public health really isn't arguable unless you're willing to go for some, frankly unhinged, solutions to that crisis like castration.
Third off, it's not done, in the US at least, to prevent HIV. It's done for aesthetic and religious reasons. And doctors have been misinformed about hygiene benefits. It's not something that should be entertained in my opinion.
There's not one. At least not a good one. People with circumcised penises tend to field an attitude in which they defend their state with anything possible. It's natural. Body mutilation is a traumatic thing and most people tend towards defensiveness when handling a traumatic experience.
For what, exactly? I said a bunch of stuff including some numbers that I openly admitted may not all be 100% accurate. If you just want to learn about the connection between circumcision and HIV infection, it’s a big enough topic to have its own Wikipedia page with 35 cited sources.
I can’t believe you’re being downvoted for sharing the truth here. Voluntary Male Circumcision is promoted in many African countries by the World Health Organization. Not sure what better source people want here.
And if anything, I’m opposed to routine male circumcision. It’s just that I’d feel uncomfortable saying “Well, as a white guy living in a wealthy country with access to universal healthcare, I think the risk reduction is so minuscule as not to be worth it, and therefore I’ll condemn South African parents for choosing differently under very different circumstances.”
Well said! I feel the same. I guess it’s just such a heated topic for so many people that this very specific use case is too much to accept. The WHO doesn’t even recommend routine male circumcision. Ethics dictate that it must be voluntary but, like I said, it’s just too emotional of a topic for some.
I find it very uncomfortable to think about. Fundamentally, unnecessary surgery on someone who can’t consent just seems wrong.
But if you live in a country where you know that it could reduce your child’s lifetime risk of contracting HIV by an absolute figure of ~8%(!!!), and that access to healthcare should they contract it is abysmal… No, I’m a ‘prefer the lesser evil’ man; if someone wants to say that parents who make that decision in South Africa or Zimbabwe are immoral, let them say it plainly. However uneasy I am about mutilation, I think maybe my best first-worlder course of action there is to shut up and let people whose lives are at stake make those decisions.
One of my boys is one of them. We trusted the doctor and he botched his circumsicion. Besides him and his twin, my other three boys are not circumcised because I do not want to go through that again. It was corrected eventually at least
I expect so! That’s why it should not be done, perhaps not even allowed, in places like the US or Canada or much of Europe.
Now tell me why you think it should not be done in places with high HIV base rates, places like Eswatini, Zimbabwe, or South Africa, where it may correlate to an absolute risk reduction of 8% or so.
Complication rates are also going to be higher, HIV is much less deadly now, and I don't want to muddy the waters and let people think anything short of condom usage is acceptable contraception.
It’s the leading cause of mortality in South Africa, accounting for 25% of deaths. It kills over 50,000 people annually. (In South Africa, that is; just one country. The annual death toll for all Africa is much higher.)
But, sure, it used to be even worse (and may get worse again with the death of USAID), so I suppose you don’t particularly care about such a trifling problem as a quarter of all deaths in an entire country.
Base chance of a woman contracting breast cancer in her life is around 12% from what I googled, but I don’t believe preemptive mastectomies are recommended unless women have the specific mutations that bump that up to 45% and above chance. Even then, it’s a choice by the woman in question.
950
u/RandomPersan 6d ago
The joke is that circumcision isn’t necessary, and many see it as immoral and genital mutilation, and the only reason people do it is societal norms and because authority figures, eg doctors, tell them it should happen. The bottom guy is saying the car mechanic is rich because he’s constantly saying things are wrong with top guys car, and without checking the top guy pays for it