The bigger question for me is why American Protestants and their colonial programs do it :amerikkka: :stalin-gun-1: :stalin-gun-2:
Kellogg (yes, the cereal guy) was a contributing factor. He was also a segregationist https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-dawn/200902/time-boycott-kellogg
It's easier to perform surgery on an infant than to tell a child they need to clean themselves lest they get an infection.
Also sex is bad and you'll die if you do it a lot so it has to feel less good than it does.
It’s easier to perform surgery on an infant than to tell a child they need to clean themselves lest they get an infection.
Semi-fun fact: circumcision is the only routine "prophylactic" surgery performed in modern medicine.
The reason Americans do it is actually because it's covered as standard in health insurance so doctors bring up the option. In the UK rates of circumcision were identical to the US until the NHS wouldn't cover it and US health insurance started including it as standard.
Protestants love cosplaying as Jews, adapting the "chosen people" language to themselves.
The origin is probably multi-faceted, but I've read that the practice evolved in part as a more humane replacement for the Pagan practice of ritual sacrifice (which is forbidden in Judaism). Instead of sacrificing a whole human life to show your devotion to god, you're giving up the most valuable and erogenous part of the male body.
It should be noted that the history of circumcision in the US has remarkably little to do with Judaism (or Islam, for that matter, which is also a circumcising religion), and everything to do with puritanical Protestants, so blaming Jews for the prevalence of circumcision today is extra idiotic. The historical Jewish circumcision also happens to remove a lot less tissue than the more destructive American version (hurray). The Statue of David is actually circumcised in this manner although it appears uncircumcised compared to American penises.
Kind of like a secret handshake. To let people of the same kind know who each other are so they can show ingroup solidarity towards each other. I'm not saying they whip out their dicks and have a swordfight, but an extreme body modification like that is impossible to fake and unlikely to be done by anyone other than the faithful.
Then at some point it became standard in US hospitals to mutilate newborn boys in this way. It was done to me when I was a few days old and nobody asked for anyone's consent.
As a Jew who is circumcised, I've never understood the fuss. Sex still feels amazing, I like how my dick looks... idk. Like, nothing against people who are uncircumcized or people who are and wish they weren't... obviously everyone gets to have their own opinions about their own bodies... but I've just never understood it personally.
No, no. you misunderstood. I'm merely saying that I understand and respect the validity of the opinion of those who are upset that it was done to them. while expressing that I'm personally quite content with my parents decision to have me circumcised.
yeah, sorry. what I was trying to say was that I personally don't understand why other people wish they weren't circumcised. not that I don't understand the concerns around the practice, generally, Just offering up the voice that I'm circumcised and perfectly happy with that, since I mostly only hear people who were unhappy about it. BUT that's completely separate from any question about agency over one's own body. I totally get how my initial comment wasn't clear.
No two circumcisions (or penises for that matter) are identical. My cut left me with little sensation in my dick, which makes it difficult for me to orgasm. I also have zero gliding mechanism remaining because I got cut "high and tight" style, so I can't masturbate for long before it gets tears and bleeds. Even if sex feels amazing you never know what you're missing out on (NSFW example), like a person born colorblind. I once heard an intact cis-man describe the sensation as "if I could lend you a foreskin for one day you would flee the country and change your identity to keep it forever". I'm a bisexual man and I love playing with cute men's foreskins and it makes me sad when I compare theirs to my scar---which disturbs me additionally because I see it as two pieces of dissimilar skin tissue (mucousal and regular) that are fused together in a Frankenstein way. There is also the matter of the trauma from the pain (it's not possible to sufficiently aenesthetize a newborn as they could for an adult going through the same procedure), which can effect a permanent change in personality even without a conscious memory of the event. It fucks me up to think about how something like that could have changed me psychologically, even if the possibility is small.
according to Sapolsky, stuff like this is plausibly the result of a obsessive compulsive personality disorder among shamans
We know that lots of middle eastern cultures practiced circumcision, and we know that the practice came into conflict with Hellenistic practices once Alexander conquered Judaea (this was around 300 BCE I think?). Some Jews began a practice to reverse circumcision so that they could compete in sports in the Greek Gymnasium without looking "different" from the pagan Greeks.
We don’t have a whole lot of sources outside the Hebrew Bible, but only one nation in the Levantine was specifically identified as intact (uncircumcised)- the Philistines who may have been Minoan or Greek originally. In the book of Joshua, flint knives (sharper than bronze) are referenced as a tool for circumcision.
Those arguments from a health and hygiene standpoint have been used for at least a century to justify the circumcision of both sexes, and all of them were created after the practices were already well established and searching for new justifications in the face of changing norms on sex. The health benefits are also weakly supported and irrelevant because it's fundamentally an issue of bodily autonomy. Cleaning intact penises is not at all difficult. Washing the foreskin in the shower is pleasurable even.
I have great respect for bioethicists like Brian Earp who study child genital cutting and advocate for its elimination in the academic sphere. It's a heavy topic to devote your career to, but most human rights causes are like that.
