This stirred quite the debate in the chat room, so allow me to elaborate on why I'm so much against the act of genital mutilation. I've been talking about this for a decade, so I'm used to pissing people off.
Let's get this out of the way: No, you're not a bad person if you've circumcised your kid. It's never done out of ill will towards the child, and that has to be recognized.
I just feel that parents who do this are misinformed.
I feel this topic is extremely important.
Circumcision today is being justified by certain medical benefits - which I will get to later - but it's often forgotten about that circumcision was invented and practiced long, long before any of these alleged benefits were made known.
So, let's take a look at the history.
The origins of circumcision are a topic of dispute, but the earliest documented evidence of it being practiced was found as early as 2400 BC, in Egypt.
Judaism adopted circumcision through Moses, who left Egypt with the Hebrew slaves.
The way the Old Testament lays it out is God telling Abraham to circumcise himself, his household, as well his slaves as an unbreakable covenant, showcasing his commitment to God. It was meant to be a sacrifice - a sacrifice is obviously not a sacrifice unless it causes pain and suffering.
It obviously had nothing to do with things like penile hygiene at this point.
Jewish rabbis argued that the foreskin was simply an imperfection that needed to be cut off from the male infant to reveal the "proper" form of the penis.
Boys who were not circumcised were to be forever cut off from God. However, it's a rather interesting tidbit to throw out there that a significant amount of Jews, in Israel of all places, are no longer practicing circumcision due to becoming aware of its barbaric nature.
But not all circumcision is even religious.
The non-religious form of circumcision came to English-speaking countries during the 19th century, but it was still not about health benefits.
The proponents of circumcision during this era were open about the fact that they advocated for it as a form to combat masturbation.
The foreskin plays a role in the male's sexual satisfaction, so the removal of the foreskin was seen as a way to keep men in check and not have them degenerate into masturbation. This era was very much against sexuality, especially masturbation, and controlling people's sexuality has always been a way to control the people themselves. Masturbation was also believed to be responsible for a huge array of different disorders.
The role of the foreskin in sexual and erotic sensation was well understood by physicians at this point, and they wanted it to be cut off because they saw it as a huge factor that lead boys to masturbate.
The medical justifications for circumcision arose later on, and can be seen as ex-post facto justifications at best. People these days have this idea that circumcision was always about the health benefits, but as discussed earlier, this is not the case.
A decreased risk of urinary tract infections is among the most common medical arguments. The correlation was discovered in 1982, but is commonly debated.
However, it's fair to note that intact males are at an increased risk of UTIs during the first month or two of life, but thereafter UTIs are predominantly found in females. The rate of UTI in males under two years of age is 1%, meaning that in order to prevent a UTI in one boy, 111 circumcisions need to be performed.
Also, the treatment for UTIs in females is prescribed antibiotics and the same works for males.
There is no need for circumcision as a way to prevent UTI.
It's been proposed that infant circumcision works to prevent penile cancer; however, the American Cancer Society states that due to the rarity of the disease neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the Canadian Academy of Pediatrics recommends routine neonatal circumcision.
Then there's the HIV argument.
Over recent years, it's been discovered that circumcision both does and doesn't have an effect on the spreading of HIV. The results are nothing but conclusive, even though people seem to treat it as a fact that circumcision works as protection against HIV.
Most of the studies that claim that circumcision is an effective method to decrease the spreading of HIV were conducted in Africa due to the continent's HIV epidemic. It should be pointed out that there are several different factors at play when it comes to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, so it's questionable to attempt to generalize results from one population to another.
During the AIDs epidemic in America in the 1980s and 1990s, around 85% of males were, in fact, circumcised - the rate being much higher than that of Africa's - and HIV still spread.
The American Medical Association states that behavioral factors are - obviously - far, far more important risk factors for acquisition of HIV and other STDs than "circumcision status", and circumcision cannot be responsibly viewed as protection against sexually transmitted diseases.
There's a far easier way to protect yourself from HIV, and it's called a condom - reducing the risk of HIV infection between 69%-95%.
And here's the kicker.
Population surveys in eight African countries found a higher rate of HIV infection among circumcised men compared to intact men.
One of the reasons for this could be that if people believe the being circumcised prevents HIV infection, they are more careless. It could also be that using a condom when circumcised makes the sex even less enjoyable, so circumcision itself acts as a disincentive to use a condom.
17 different observational studies that have been made have found no benefit in circumcision in regards to preventing HIV.
Among more developed countries, the US has the highest rate of HIV spread through heterosexual sex, even though the US also has the highest circumcision rate out of all developed countries. In fact, there are several countries that don't practice circumcision at all that have a much lower HIV rate than the US.
No National Medical Organization in the world recommends routine infant circumcision.
Furthermore, the American Association of Pediatrics has officially stated that keeping an uncircumcised penis clean requires no special action and that there is very little evidence to affirm the alleged association between circumcision and optimal penile hygiene. They further stated that forced retraction should never be required.
According to studies, the pain responses of newborns are actually greater than those of adults. Circumcision being highly painful is made even more horrific by the fact that no anesthetic has been found to prevent pain during circumcision in children.
Some children even go to traumatic shock due to the overwhelming pain of circumcision.
It's often stated as an argument that because circumcision happens as an infant, it's not a big deal because no adult will ever remember circumcision pain.
I always have a problem with this justification because I find it insane to suggest that the pain that happens right here and now is somehow irrelevant because the pain won't be felt a year from now.
Of course pain here and now matters. The baby is going through it here and now, he doesn't live in the future.
I broke my arm in two places when I was five or six, and while I don't remember how it felt like, I do know that I was in great pain, and at that moment it mattered. It wasn't nullified by the fact that two decades later I would have no recollection of the pain sensation I went through.
I also don't feel that it becomes morally justified to rape someone during their sleep, simply because the person would never be aware of it.
It's the violation of one's body that matters.
Just like it's not okay to punch an infant in the face and justify it by saying that he won't remember it as an adult.
That sort of reasoning is simply beyond asinine to me.
The pain for the infants isn't limited to the surgery alone; babies obviously urinate in diapers, thus putting uric acid against the surgery wound, causing additional pain. Circumcised baby boys are found to cry excessively when peeing or being placed on their bellies due to this reason.
Long-term effects of circumcision have not been studied, but changes in pain response have been demonstrated six months of age in circumcised boys.
Short-term effects of circumcision have been shown to include changes in sleep patterns, activity level, mother-child interaction, feeding, and bonding.
The rate of complications occurring in the hospital and during the first year has been documented to be as high as 38%, and these complications include hemorrhage, infections, surgical injury, and even death.
But it has to be made very clear that death is extremely rare. But those cases do exist, so they must be mentioned.
The reason I'm stating all this is because it begs the question of whether these risks and effects are necessary.
And that's the key here: necessity.
Yes, different kinds of surgeries may be required to be done on a newborn or an infant in order to solve a number of issues, but those surgeries are necessary, done in order to ensure the well-being of the child.
Circumcision cannot be claimed to be necessary in any way, which means that all of the risks and negative effects that can arise from it are unnecessary and preventable - which I feel is the reason to fight against it. Preventing unnecessary harm, I feel, is one of the most fundamental objectives as a human being in general.
Due to its place in culture, circumcision gets to exist in this sort of vacuum where otherwise agreed upon moral rules do not apply to it; if an adult man was strapped onto a bed against his will and his foreskin was forcibly mutilated off of his penis, it would be treated as an assault.
But when the exact same thing is done to a defenseless infant, it's called circumcision, and it's perfectly fine.
I can't seem to find a way to reconcile the two.
If anything, forced mutilation should be treated as more severe when done to a helpless infant. We can't ask the baby whether or not he's okay with it, but the act of crying can be seen as a signal of pain and discomfort, so it can be argued to happen against the baby's will because obviously he would rather not be in pain.
Circumcision also affects women, actually. It's been shown in studies that the male foreskin plays a part in women's sexual satisfaction, as well. Women have reported greater sexual pleasure while having intercourse with intact men, as opposed to circumcised men.
I was asked why is it that I'm so passionate about this. This doesn't directly affect me in any way, so why do I even give a damn.
I guess the way I see it is just that caring about the world - as hippie as it sounds - is a moral obligation of those intellectually adept at doing so.
It's easy to say just indulge yourself in pure hedonism and whateverism in the west in 2018, but whatever luxuries we enjoy in 2018 are things we have because before we got here, there were men and women who cared about shit.
Not all progress is positive, but whatever change is positive is the result of someone looking at the world in which he or she lived in, and thinking things could be better.
I can't think of another way to put it.
It could be you who's subjected to unnecessary harm of some kind that you yourself are powerless against.
I'm also often asked why is it that I keep reading the news, even though they clearly piss me off. And granted, I no longer follow politics and yes, it has made me a happier person. But I still keep up because the world matters, as annoying as it is.
When everything becomes a culture of whateverism and values die out, what's left? Chocolate?
