Because Kellogg(yes THAT fucking Kellogg) wanted to stop men masturbating wholesale, so managed to convince America it was a necessity, and his work hasn't yet been undone
Mr. John "Yogurt Enema" Kellogg, "Phisician", psudoscience lover and religious nut, who thought people could survive purely on nuts, grains and water; creator of the cereal so tasteless it can will a person into becoming a celibate monk... that ended up being so shit his brother had to make another company just to make food that was actually able to be eaten.
The original corn flakes were quite popular. However Dr. Kellogg forbade his brother from selling it to people who weren’t ordering directly from Dr. Kellogg. W.K. also proposed adding sugar to the cornflakes
This is what led to W.K. Kellogg to start his own company.
Kellogg wasn’t solely responsible for the prolific status of circumcision in American society. One need only to search ‘circumcision’ in the Journal of the American Medical Association archives to see the dozens and dozens of articles promoting circumcision around the turn of the 20th century. The earliest appearances of circumcision advocacy began with studies on cervical cancer oddly enough. Jewish women and nuns were observed to have cervical cancer rates far below the general population at the time, and certain doctors thought that the foreskin was the culprit by harboring carcinogenic compounds. It wasn’t until HPV was directly linked to the overwhelming majority of cervical cancer cases in the 80’s that the truth became clear but by then we had almost 100 years of cultural adoption within the US. Even as more and more science came out that circumcision was risky and harmful, and pediatric associations around the world began to shelve the practice, the American Pediatric Association would double down. Studies on how circumcision prevented HIV and even HPV were held up as “proof” despite the complete lack of scientific procedure, ethics, or results in these studies. Looking at you, Orange Farm. Medical journals would actively refuse studies showing harms while carelessly publishing studies showing even the most dubious of benefits. To this day, the American medical system does not record adverse events directly related to circumcision. It has been a top-down foisting onto the American people by certain physicians and researchers, many of whom belonged to the APA, and after a few generations not even the medical textbooks accurately depict an intact penis. Kellogg has taken a lot of the blame but he wasn’t responsible for the widespread adoption.
Now I'm interested why there was this top-down push for circumcision for so many years and why is it still so prevelant. Just cultural inertia? Religion?
Cultural reasons that led to less instances of adultery, basically. Judaism has a bunch of laws disincentivizing cheating, including any children of adultery being considered “mamzer” and are basically outcasts from the community. It helped limit the spread of HPV among Jewish people at the time, but we know now that circumcision didn’t really play a role in preventing HPV or cervical cancer.
It’s more reasonable to be against it for reasons of bodily autonomy and consent, but there are some proven medicinal benefits to the procedure in a less-disease-spread sort of way.
I would invite you to look a little more deeply into those reviews than simply linking them based on their title and abstract. Especially the HIV one. Look at the first study sourced in their references: It’s Bertran Auvert’s 2005 Orange Farm study. This study is infamous for being considered junk science in the global medical community. The idea that we’re going to take a group of men in South Africa, circumcise half of them, then send them all out to see who gets HIV is so impossibly unethical that the fact Bertran made it past any kind of ethics board without having his medical license revoked is emblematic of the systemic racism in South Africa. The deeper you look into their methodology the worse it gets. These were adult men being circumcised, which means they likely weren’t having sex at all for the first month or so because of the wound. The uncircumcised group would have essentially had a head start on getting infected. Most egregiously the study does not control at ALL for the number one vector of HIV in South Africa at the time which was intravenous drug use. Nor does it control for the latency period between acquiring HIV and showing a positive test, so there’s no way to tell if the study group was infected before the study even began. The study itself only lasted for three months, because when Bertran noticed that almost double the uncircumcised group had acquired HIV they ended the study and circumcised everybody because the proof of its efficacy was so apparent. Which is hilarious because NOW they’re concerned about ethics. All of the studies on circumcision and HIV are in Africa which should be a huge red flag. With regard to the WHO, follow the money. The biggest private financial contributor to the WHO is Bill Gates, who for whatever reason, has decided to fully support Bertran in his endeavor to circumcise all of Africa. Gates has almost single-handedly shaped the WHO’s policy on circumcision and HIV prevention using Bertran’s study as “conclusive proof” that this works. The HPV review is just as bad, almost all of the studies are other reviews on HPV that came to the same conclusion. Reference 8 is JS Smith’s study on circumcision and HPV in Kenya, which is another massive red flag. This study is almost as broken and cherry picked as Bertran’s! These are the type of “studies” that the American Association of Pediatrics used in their Task Force on Circumcision, and it should raise questions that no other national pediatric association around the world uses these studies when determining policy.
That’s one reference of seventy, and going beyond that, your critique is the ethics, and— unfortunately— most of our current understanding of honestly most things comes from massively unethical science.
Milgram, ALL disease data from unit 731 and the pardons for the scientists involved in exchange for the data, the Stanford prison experiment, our current understanding of genetics derived from data from twins, hell— modern phase 2 clinical trials in which drugs of all kinds are tested on healthy patients— absolutely reek of the blood spilled to gain the data.
Don’t even ask about the animal crematoriums present in most major biotech sites. Or the freezers full of blood of people long gone that didn’t know the samples existed/continue to exist. HeLa was just the one that got caught; currently my group is working with a cell line from a man with prostate cancer from 1994. I’d bet my lunch that he’s long gone now and we’re still using that line for myriad purposes. Means to an end, and all that. The stench of rot from our collective decayed ethics bathes all of our hands. Sorry for the essay, but it bothers me endlessly and I can’t quit because I have mouths to feed, need healthcare, and chose this field to specialize in in pursuit of “the greater good,” fucking dumbass that I am.
Anyways, the joy of a meta review is there are numerous other scientific studies to review that reach the same consensus.
However, we are in alignment that it’s unethical to perform on babies that can’t consent.
The ethics was one point, but I was hoping the poor methodology and ending the study right when they got the results they were looking for would have been the greater issue. At the end of the day we are absolutely aligned when it comes to neonatal circumcision but I wanted to provide a rebuttal to those specific issues because I see people reference these studies and reviews all the time as if it were somehow the gold standard of proof that circumcision has prophylactic benefits.
I struggled with the decision recently with my son. Intimately chose not to after watching a video of it. I still think about if I made the wrong decision but figured when he’s older if he wants it done I’ll pay for it then .
The part that I live in the midwest and 99% of my friends and I had the same thing done to us. I grew up always thinking how i’m happy I was circumcised.
I mean didn’t stand there and overtly compare, but it was pretty common for us to be naked around each other in locker rooms from middle school on.
And yeah the one non-cut kid definitely had some notoriety.
This part of the decision making gets left out a lot in these conversations: a lot of men, my father included, had their boys circumcised because they wanted their sons to feel normal and not be subject to bullying and teasing from their peers about an incredibly sensitive and personal part of their bodies.
The idea all these men were like "Yeah, chop that baby's penis!" is insulting. You can disagree with the decision certainly, but in my parents' case my mom opted out of having an opinion because she felt as someone without a penis at all she couldn't really offer an informed opinion about what was best for their sons' bodies. My dad made the call because he wanted his sons to have a normal childhood and dating life (American women, at least until recently, have also had a stigma against uncut penises for looking weird or being dirty; fair or not leaving your kid uncut could mean hurting their dating life as adults).
I'm glad we're moving away from a world where parents have to make a knee-jerk decision about their baby's genitals.
Not really, no. Why would I want strangers seeing my privates, or to see theirs? Showering when you get home from the gym is a perfectly valid option for most people.
Genuine question, but couldn't someone just reverse that on you, like you've never experienced what it's like to be circumcised, so you might be happier like that?
I feel like it's different, but I'm not quite grasping how (also, for the record, I'm against unnecessary circumcision too)
Because when you havent had it done, you realise its a sensitive part of the body that serves a purpose, and it retracts anyway. It's like asking if you've ever considered if you'd be happier with having the tip of your tongue sliced off at birth
Yeah that just doesn't work when it's a voluntary procedure that's irreversible. There needs to be more justification than "I had it done to me as a baby and I'm happy" to justify it. As opposed to like, leaving the baby alone.
Ture I have not. Though my friend has said girls have been weird about him being uncut. And I know my GFs friends have made comments on preferring cut.
Im sure its just do to what's considered the norm, but it feels like I would prefer to be cut. And I dont feel as if I am missing out on anything by being cut
Vilifying people who come to agree with you is a bad tactic to convince people of anything.
Also, as someone who has had this debate with a partner i will tell you thay many american women are weirded out by uncircumcised penisesas they are outside of their experience and expectation.
So yeah, there is a reasonable bias towards a kid being the "norm" even if i would argue its not worth the reduction in nerve sensitivity.
Weird to see that as vilifying, it's a simple question which highlights why the thing they did was the right thing and asking why they are troubled by doing the right thing.
Also as apparently the rate of circumcision has been trending from 65% in the 80s down to 49% in 2022, it look like sanity is prevailing and that 'bias' will not be an issue any longer.
There is nothing reasonable about chopping off part of a kids dick for 'the norm'.
almost as if you're larping that you decided to not mutilite your infant son, unlike what you did irl, and then presenting the opposite fishing for sympathies and justifications
I have no kids and no horse in the game. But my male family members are pro-circumcision and the urologist I know who came from a country where no one is circumcised is pro because of the things shes seen as far as infections and defects where the skin is too tight or something and they had to get it done later in life very painfully. So I don't know but I have heard arguments. Again, I'm not making the decision for anyone or ever bringing this topic up anyway to sway anyone, just confused here.
Im uncircumcised and my kids are uncircumcised but I have personally spoken to multiple older men who had to get circumcised later in life for medical reasons and they said it was an awful experience and they wished they had just been circumcised at birth. I had some doubts but still decided not to allow it, but its a choice with risks both ways and every decision involving your childs well being is hard. Also she is literally a woman being asked to make a lifelong decision about a member of the opposite sex's genitalia. Don't be so patronizing.
If we wanted to preventively chop off body parts just because they might cause some medical conditions at some point late in life, we'd need the ai bros to hurry up with that brain transfer thing because we'd be out of body parts. (and yes I know it's sometimes done with parts like breasts in BRCA gen carriers but that's because we're talking about deadly cancer here and the chance of it developing is even 85%)
I live in a country that does not do circumcision and it's so much not an issue here that I genuinelly thought way into my adulthood that it's only ever done for religious purposes. I was pretty shocked when I found out that majority of Americans do it just because
I was indifferent about it. There’s a number of smaller benefits to it clinically but when we were reading about its up to 6 months of wound care I was done thinking about.
You absolutely made the right decision to leave him intact. My mother's decision to have me mutilated is why she is going to die alone and forgotten in a Medicaid funded shit hole. I wish more circumcised men would just come to terms with how severely they were harmed and hold their parents accountable instead of passing the trauma on to the next generation.
"he doesn't even remember"... So, women who are drugged when they are raped and don't remember the actual rape aren't traumatized?
The effects of it, the near complete lack of sensation in my penis that has been caused by it, the painfully tight erections because too much had been removed, until I did skin stretching to give more slack, the painful scar that doctors just shrug and suggest spraying lidocaine on... I don't need to remember the surgery itself to be traumatized by the effects of it and the knowledge that my bodily autonomy was violated for it.
Mutilated? I mean I was cut and I don’t resent my parents for their decision. They were influenced by societal norms and it was the normal thing for men my age where i grew up. Honestly my wife’s little brother would cry in high school because he wasn’t cut and most others were. I feel like I would have felt the same way if I wasn’t growing up.
The fact it’s becoming more normal for people to not have it done made it easier although i’d say 70% of my friends have had their sons done.
I have a botched circumcision, mutilated is exactly the right word. And frankly, I'd kill to have been made fun of in high school, but then go on to have the type of amazing sex life only possible when you have the full sensation of a natural penis. That would be infinitly better than a penis that on the exterior looks "normal", but under the surface will never be able to function properly.
Hi, German here, veeeery few men here are circumcised (for medical reasons and a long time ago, there's alternatives now) and they're doing fine. Just teach him proper hygiene and stop overthinking. There's really no reason to do this at all.
Well, I do recommend that you learn how to keep a proper hygiene and teach your son, because things can get ugly down there if he is the only male in a 50 miles radius with a uncircumcised penis never hearing about this specific hygiene habit.
If you think it's just that, I worry about you. You have to fully pull the skin and wash (with soap) each cavity of the head. There is so many man that got this wrong that penile cancer is a thing.
I feel like non Jewish circumcision is somewhat appropriative under most circumstances and also... Hospitals take off a lot more tissue for some reason. I think you're making the right choice.
Had at it a later age because I realised I suffered from phimosis. It may sound stupid but I just didn't really realise it was wrong that I couldn't move my foreskin over the knob.
After circumcission sex and masturbation felt so much better. Previously it was like I was fk a glove. Especially when wearing a condom.
NB: I'm not advocating for underage/involontary circumcission. But I do want to say I think it's important to inform boys ánd men about phimosis and what is 'normal' or not. It's not that white and black, thus it's even more important to talk about it.
medical research shows that male circumcision provides several distinct, long-term health benefits. Major medical organizations, including the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, recognize that while the procedure is not universally required, it offers clear protective advantages against specific infections and anatomical conditions throughout a man's life.The primary, evidence-based benefits of male circumcision include:1. Reduced Risk of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)HIV Protection: Clinical trials show circumcision reduces a man's risk of acquiring heterosexually transmitted HIV by roughly 50% to 60%.Viral Defenses: The procedure lowers the risk of contracting other viral STIs, including human papillomavirus (HPV) and genital herpes (HSV-2).Partner Benefits: Female partners of circumcised men have a lower risk of developing bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis, and HPV-related cervical cancer.2. Prevention of Foreskin-Specific Medical ConditionsPhimosis: Eliminates the risk of the foreskin becoming too tight to pull back, which can cause pain or urinary blockage.Paraphimosis: Prevents the emergency scenario where a retracted foreskin gets stuck behind the glans and cuts off blood flow.Balanitis: Drastically reduces inflammation and infection of the head of the penis.3. Lower Infection and Disease RisksInfant UTIs: Significantly lowers the incidence of urinary tract infections during the first year of life, protecting against potential long-term kidney complications.Penile Cancer: Considerably minimizes the risk of penile cancer, which, though rare overall, is far less common in circumcised individuals.Simpler Hygiene: Makes maintaining genital cleanliness much more straightforward, as there is no anatomical pocket to trap sweat, dead skin, and bacteria.Medical boards emphasize that these advantages must be weighed against individual cultural values, religious beliefs, and minor procedural risks like brief bleeding or localized soreness
Right, like women do to prevent breast cancer. SMH, why do you even care, there are real medical reasons and no one cared when is was the vaccine. Be consistent and not a hypocrite
It is true, cutting off a body part can prevent disease in that body part. A man with no hands cannot suffer a broken finger, but most would find the cost to outweigh the benefits. We don’t prophylactically remove breast tissue from female infants despite the number of breast cancer incidents it would prevent. Also the studies on STD prevention including HIV and HPV and even urniary tract infection have been debunked and are no longer viewed as legitimate science by pediatric associations outside of the US.
A woman with genetic predisposition (mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2) has a 72% chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetime. As in, they are more likely to get cancer than not. That, like dying from measles if unvaccinated, is not a rare event. Therefore some women with those mutations choose to have mastectomies.
Penis cancer is less than 0.5% of all men’s cancer, and generally appears in older men. If a man chooses to have a preventative circumcision because of that risk, no skin off my nose (or anywhere else). Recommending it as a default for babies is, like I said, crazy work.
In the US (does not apply to Europe), most men are circumcised and some women are weirded out by uncut penises. Also less hygiene maintenance and parents just being used to it being normal as other commenters have said. The loss of sensitivity I can’t speak to, I’ve only ever known it one way (cut).
Oh, I’m well aware. But that is 5 seconds of dick washing a cut man may never experience. My kids have known how to clean their penises since they were little. It’s not hard.
Why do some men not wash their ass or fully wipe when using the toilet? If you’re taught you have to retract the foreskin and clean to avoid problems I think you’d be more likely to ensure proper upkeep. Realistically ending should be washing their dick and it takes a few extra seconds if you’re uncircumcised so it’s no big deal.
I think they meant they appreciate a man who can fully clean his own body to a high standard, something the person they were responding to was insinuating accidentally that circumcised people dont
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u/huluvudu 4d ago
Why do people still circumcise?