I think they're referring to the differences between FGM and circumcision. FGM is often much more extreme and destructive, whereas circumcision still leaves the penis functional and (largely) sensory-intact.
You're right, it was inaccurate of me to issue a blanket statement on the effects of circumcision. However, I will say that FGM is more commonly severe due to how its performed. Basically, it seems that the extreme results of botched circumcisions are quite similar to the typical results of FGM.
I will say that FGM is more commonly severe due to how its performed.
This is not borne out by research.
Interestingly, both male and female genital cutting have effects on sexuality that are difficult to measure, despite both involving a large loss of erogenous tissue. This is likely because human sexuality is very resilient.
Research by gynecologists and others has demonstrated that a high percentage of women who have had genital surgery have rich sexual lives, including desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction, and their frequency of sexual activity is not reduced. This is true of the 10 percent (type III) as well as the 90 percent (types I and II). One probable explanation for this fact is that most female erectile tissue and its structure is located
beneath the surface of a woman’s vulva. Surgical reductions of external tissues per se do not prevent sexual responsiveness or orgasm. It is noteworthy that cosmetic surgeons who perform reductions of the clitoris and
the clitoral hood in the United States, Europe, and Canada recount that there is usually no long-term reduction in sexual sensation, which is consistent with the findings of research on African women.
Thanks for linking that - it led me down an interesting rabbit hole that I never would have gone down otherwise. What do you think of the criticisms made of the paper described in this press release? I haven't had the chance to properly comb through everything but it does raise some apparent issues.
I would also note that outside of the traditional definition of FGM things like the "husband stitch" also exist and cause definite pain and damage.
Even the most common side effect of circumcisions is bleeding (usually remedied by pressure to the area and dressings like usual), and that is only 1% of all circumcisions. More significant complications are a lot rarer.
I would wager the proportion of the replies we're seeing here result from:
People with botched circumcisions (or are otherwise displeased with their circumcision) are more likely to engage with a post discussing circumcision than those who have not had a negative experience with it
Anti-circumcision activists are disproportionately common on reddit, and this site is basically a replacement for a banned subreddit
Leftists are probably more likely to be against needless circumcision as it aligns with a lot of leftist thought against stereotypical american culture
Again, I'm not suggesting that unnecessary circumcision (botched or otherwise) isn't something to be upset about. But it needs to be viewed contextually alongside FGM. To equate the two is foolish.
(usually remedied by pressure to the area and dressings like usual), and that is only 1% of all circumcisions. More significant complications are a lot rarer.
100% suffer loss of the most erogenous part of the penis (the foreskin). The other negative effects of circumcision have never been properly studied, so they can't be confidently stated. Meatal stenosis alone could effect more than 20% of those circumcised. Not to mention the psychological damage.
But it needs to be viewed contextually alongside FGM. To equate the two is foolish.
I recommend this great essay by Brian Earp, a bioethicist who studies genital cutting. He addresses this conception directly.
That first link seems to be behind a paywall, so I can't really engage with that. On psychological damage, I found this study that seems to refute that, but I haven't read through it beyond the abstract and skimming the whole body of it. Additionally, a lot of the claims rely on doctors not using proper anesthetic, citing studies from over twenty years ago. Searching around, pretty much all of the hospital website pages on circumcision state they use some form of anesthesia. I can't speak as to the situation at every hospital, of course.
The essay was really cool, and definitely upended some of my thoughts on the matter. The biases on viewing male circumcision in the best of lights vs. female circumcision in the worst definitely caught me off guard, as I hadn't really thought about that at all. However, there were still some things that didn't seem quite right. For instance, Earp mentions 400 deaths because of circumcision in South Africa. According to this article the leading causes of death were dehydration, malnutrition, and sepsis rather than being solely the fault of circumcision. I'm sure circumcisions were responsible for some of the deaths, but the exact proportion is unclear (unless it's listed somewhere else I can't find), so it feels dishonest to write all the deaths off as caused by circumcision. Additionally, given the relative secrecy of the initiation rituals specified, isn't it possible that some of those sepsis deaths were caused by non-circumcision related wounds? Again, the article is unspecific and if you've got any additional details on the matter that would be dope.
That refutes nothing. First of all, the sample size was 20. They measured stress markers in subjects hair, and found no significant difference. But nowhere does anybody claim that every traumatic experience would leave a measurable glucorticoid difference in adulthood. That's why the authors don't even make the claim that their study proves the absence of trauma.
Searching around, pretty much all of the hospital website pages on circumcision state they use some form of anesthesia. I can’t speak as to the situation at every hospital, of course.
IIRC, around half of hospitals/practitioners today use no anesthesia during circumcision. Of course they would not advertise their lack of adequate anesthesia. Additionally, nothing short of general anesthesia is capable of adequately reducing the pain, which is not safe for use in infants. Therefore, circumcision of infants is torturesome 100% of the time, even when local anesthesia is used.
According to this article the leading causes of death were dehydration, malnutrition, and sepsis rather than being solely the fault of circumcision.
This is being pretty nit picky IMO. If you die from complications arising from a surgery, I believe that it's still fair to claim that the surgery was the cause of death. Just as if someone dies from a blood clot resulting from COVID-19, their death certificate might list "blood clot", but the virus is still responsible for their death. I don't think that's dishonest at all.
isn’t it possible that some of those sepsis deaths were caused by non-circumcision related wounds?
The authors do say "Thus, our findings provide evidence that male circumcision does not promote psychological trauma." You bring up a good point about sample size, but I'm having trouble finding research that is both recent and statistically substantial.
I also can't find anything definitive on proportions of anesthesia used during circumcision today, with the closest thing I can find being this study from Turkey in 2017, which deals with primarily 3-6 year olds and shows what appears to be universal use of anesthetic. I don't entirely understand the idea that only general anesthesia can properly stop pain during circumcision, as from what I can gather nerve blocking anesthetics stop all sensation apart from pressure, which can still upset infants of course.
Just as if someone dies from a blood clot resulting from COVID-19, their death certificate might list “blood clot”, but the virus is still responsible for their death.
Yeah, but in that case the blood clot is directly resulting from COVID-19, whereas malnutrition is typically not a direct side effect of circumcision. The sepsis is of course a result of improper wound care, and it's sensible to blame that on the circumcision. Still, given the apparent secrecy of the initiation rites I don't see how we can conclusively say all infections are resulting from circumcision barring some intimate knowledge of the rituals. Ritual scarring is a common practice in Africa, alongside any manner of potential injures that could occur as a young boy proving his manhood.
At the end of the day circumcision absolutely sucks and should not be done without good medical reason IMO. I'm just saying that in most cases it seems less damaging on average compared to FGM, while still being capable of being just as bad or even worse depending on the severity. Earp makes a good point in saying that our own individuality makes it impossible to say which practice is objectively worse, but that doesn't mean it can't skew in a fashion where one is generally more severe than the other.
Among the 74 physicians questioned, 57 (76%) used no analgesia, and of the 17 who used analgesia, only 3 (4%) used dorsal penile nerve block anesthesia.
The issue is that all this data is from over twenty years ago, prior to a wave of recommendations made by various medical associations for universal use of local or topical anesthetic. That's part of why this is all so hard to talk about properly, because so much of the data is either decades old or too general to draw conclusions from. I did find this press release claiming 97% percent of relevant training programs teach effective pain relief techniques for circumcision, and that's from fourteen years ago. Given the scale of medical advances made since then in all manner of fields, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
This obviously isn't to discount the many (and overwhelming majority if we're looking at total performed in history) non-anesthetized and traumatic circumcisions of the past, but to show that despite the senseless and dangerous nature of male circumcision-as-default it has been made safer and more comfortable, something that I'm not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
I agree that the rate today is probably higher than the 24% that it was in 1995, but keep in mind that a significant number of doctors practicing medicine today graduated from medical school before ~1980 (including the family doctor who cut me).
something that I’m not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
All of the societies in the world which practice FGC also practice MGC, and they use the same level of medical technology on both sexes.
https://www.academia.edu/8817976
In this African context, genital cutting (of whatever degree of severity) is most commonly performed around puberty, and is done to boys and girls alike. In most cases, the major social function of the cutting is to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, and it is typically performed in the context an elaborate ceremony. Increasingly, however, African, Middle Eastern, Indonesian, and Malaysian genital alterations (again, of both boys and girls) are being carried out in hospital settings by trained medical professionals—and on infants as opposed to teenagers—on the model of male circumcision in the United States.
Not always - I'm circumcised and and don't use lube at all and everything works just fine. I guess they just sorta messed it up and left me some foreskin? And I would implore you to do some research on the severity of FGM. Just reading from here:
Female genital mutilation is classified into four types:
Type I: Also known as clitoridectomy, this type consists of partial or total removal of the external part of the clitoris and/or its prepuce
Type II: Also known as excision, the external part of clitoris and labia minora are partially or totally removed, with or without excision of the labia majora.
Type III: The most severe form, it is also known as infibulation or pharaonic type. The procedure consists of narrowing the vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and appositioning the labia minora and/or labia majora, with or without removal of the external part of clitoris. The appositioning of the wound edges consists of stitching or holding the cut areas together for a certain period of time (for example, girls’ legs are bound together), to create the covering seal. A small opening is left for urine and menstrual blood to escape.
Type IV: This type consists of all other procedures to the genitalia of women for non-medical purposes, such as pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization
Immediate consequences of FGM include severe pain and bleeding, shock, difficulty in passing urine, infections, injury to nearby genital tissue and sometimes death. The procedure can result in death through severe bleeding leading to haemorrhagic shock, neurogenic shock as a result of pain and trauma, and overwhelming infection and septicaemia, according to Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Almost all women who have undergone FGM experience pain and bleeding as a consequence of the procedure. The event itself is traumatic as girls are held down during the procedure. Risk and complications increase with the type of FGM and are more severe and prevalent with infibulations.
“The pain inflicted by FGM does not stop with the initial procedure, but often continues as ongoing torture throughout a woman’s life”, says Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
In addition to the severe pain during and in the weeks following the cutting, women who have undergone FGM experience various long-term effects - physical, sexual and psychological.
Women may experience chronic pain, chronic pelvic infections, development of cysts, abscesses and genital ulcers, excessive scar tissue formation, infection of the reproductive system, decreased sexual enjoyment and psychological consequences, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Additional risks for complications from infibulations include urinary and menstrual problems, infertility, later surgery (defibulation and reinfibulation) and painful sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse can only take place after opening the infibulation, through surgery or penetrative sexual intercourse. Consequently, sexual intercourse is frequently painful during the first weeks after sexual initiation and the male partner can also experience pain and complications.
When giving birth, the scar tissue might tear, or the opening needs to be cut to allow the baby to come out. After childbirth, women from some ethnic communities are often sown up again to make them “tight” for their husband (reinfibulation). Such cutting and restitching of a woman’s genitalia results in painful scar tissue.
A multi-country study by WHO in six African countries, showed that women who had undergone FGM, had significantly increased risks for adverse events during childbirth, and that genital mutilation in mothers has negative effects on their newborn babies. According to the study, an additional one to two babies per 100 deliveries die as a result of FGM.
Is circumcision damaging to the penis? Most of the time, yes. Can it cause complications later in life? Absolutely. But equating it with FGM is ridiculous.
lol the vast majority of people who are circumcised do not use lotion to masturbate. Why use extreme exaggeration to argue when actual facts are on your side? It's a pointless procedure with zero benefit except when medically necessary. Dont weaken your argument but making shit up.
"it is IMPOSSIBLE to masturbate without using lotion!!"
-> cut to me effortlessly jerking off with my mutilated penis
like?? I get that you're upset you were circumcised or whatever but for christs sake stick to actual facts. YOU HAVE THE WINNING ARGUMENT ALREADY - WHY MAKE SHIT UP LMAO
lol my good dudebro, while I do accept that circumcision should never be performed on somebody without their consent unless medically necessary and that doing so is child abuse and medical malpractice, it is not equal to the practice I'm referring to It's not medically equivalent and it's purpose is explicitly repressive.
You should know what fgm is before you draw equivalences, I'm assuming you don't- benefit of the doubt. Read what the practice is first. In fundamentalist countries wives with sewn vaginas are thought to be a 'tighter' sexual experience and also virgins because it's so painful for them.
and one other thing: there are sometimes medical reasons for circumcision. Even if the overwhelming majority of them are arbitrary cruelty, the procedure has medical validity. I'm not a doctor, but I doubt there's ever been a medical reason to cauterize a 7 year olds clitoris.
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I think they're referring to the differences between FGM and circumcision. FGM is often much more extreme and destructive, whereas circumcision still leaves the penis functional and (largely) sensory-intact.
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You're right, it was inaccurate of me to issue a blanket statement on the effects of circumcision. However, I will say that FGM is more commonly severe due to how its performed. Basically, it seems that the extreme results of botched circumcisions are quite similar to the typical results of FGM.
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This is not borne out by research.
Interestingly, both male and female genital cutting have effects on sexuality that are difficult to measure, despite both involving a large loss of erogenous tissue. This is likely because human sexuality is very resilient.
https://www.sfog.se/media/295486/omskarelse_rapport.pdf
Thanks for linking that - it led me down an interesting rabbit hole that I never would have gone down otherwise. What do you think of the criticisms made of the paper described in this press release? I haven't had the chance to properly comb through everything but it does raise some apparent issues.
I would also note that outside of the traditional definition of FGM things like the "husband stitch" also exist and cause definite pain and damage.
I just read the press release and the criticisms seem pretty minor.
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Even the most common side effect of circumcisions is bleeding (usually remedied by pressure to the area and dressings like usual), and that is only 1% of all circumcisions. More significant complications are a lot rarer.
I would wager the proportion of the replies we're seeing here result from:
Again, I'm not suggesting that unnecessary circumcision (botched or otherwise) isn't something to be upset about. But it needs to be viewed contextually alongside FGM. To equate the two is foolish.
100% suffer loss of the most erogenous part of the penis (the foreskin). The other negative effects of circumcision have never been properly studied, so they can't be confidently stated. Meatal stenosis alone could effect more than 20% of those circumcised. Not to mention the psychological damage.
I recommend this great essay by Brian Earp, a bioethicist who studies genital cutting. He addresses this conception directly.
That first link seems to be behind a paywall, so I can't really engage with that. On psychological damage, I found this study that seems to refute that, but I haven't read through it beyond the abstract and skimming the whole body of it. Additionally, a lot of the claims rely on doctors not using proper anesthetic, citing studies from over twenty years ago. Searching around, pretty much all of the hospital website pages on circumcision state they use some form of anesthesia. I can't speak as to the situation at every hospital, of course.
The essay was really cool, and definitely upended some of my thoughts on the matter. The biases on viewing male circumcision in the best of lights vs. female circumcision in the worst definitely caught me off guard, as I hadn't really thought about that at all. However, there were still some things that didn't seem quite right. For instance, Earp mentions 400 deaths because of circumcision in South Africa. According to this article the leading causes of death were dehydration, malnutrition, and sepsis rather than being solely the fault of circumcision. I'm sure circumcisions were responsible for some of the deaths, but the exact proportion is unclear (unless it's listed somewhere else I can't find), so it feels dishonest to write all the deaths off as caused by circumcision. Additionally, given the relative secrecy of the initiation rituals specified, isn't it possible that some of those sepsis deaths were caused by non-circumcision related wounds? Again, the article is unspecific and if you've got any additional details on the matter that would be dope.
That refutes nothing. First of all, the sample size was 20. They measured stress markers in subjects hair, and found no significant difference. But nowhere does anybody claim that every traumatic experience would leave a measurable glucorticoid difference in adulthood. That's why the authors don't even make the claim that their study proves the absence of trauma.
IIRC, around half of hospitals/practitioners today use no anesthesia during circumcision. Of course they would not advertise their lack of adequate anesthesia. Additionally, nothing short of general anesthesia is capable of adequately reducing the pain, which is not safe for use in infants. Therefore, circumcision of infants is torturesome 100% of the time, even when local anesthesia is used.
This is being pretty nit picky IMO. If you die from complications arising from a surgery, I believe that it's still fair to claim that the surgery was the cause of death. Just as if someone dies from a blood clot resulting from COVID-19, their death certificate might list "blood clot", but the virus is still responsible for their death. I don't think that's dishonest at all.
Possible? I suppose, but I highly doubt it.
The authors do say "Thus, our findings provide evidence that male circumcision does not promote psychological trauma." You bring up a good point about sample size, but I'm having trouble finding research that is both recent and statistically substantial.
I also can't find anything definitive on proportions of anesthesia used during circumcision today, with the closest thing I can find being this study from Turkey in 2017, which deals with primarily 3-6 year olds and shows what appears to be universal use of anesthetic. I don't entirely understand the idea that only general anesthesia can properly stop pain during circumcision, as from what I can gather nerve blocking anesthetics stop all sensation apart from pressure, which can still upset infants of course.
At the end of the day circumcision absolutely sucks and should not be done without good medical reason IMO. I'm just saying that in most cases it seems less damaging on average compared to FGM, while still being capable of being just as bad or even worse depending on the severity. Earp makes a good point in saying that our own individuality makes it impossible to say which practice is objectively worse, but that doesn't mean it can't skew in a fashion where one is generally more severe than the other.
I found some data on anesthesia use.
http://cirp.org/library/pain/lander/
http://cirp.org/library/pain/wellington/
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/newborn-circumcision-should-not-be-performed-without-anesthesia-Jv03okKBWD
The issue is that all this data is from over twenty years ago, prior to a wave of recommendations made by various medical associations for universal use of local or topical anesthetic. That's part of why this is all so hard to talk about properly, because so much of the data is either decades old or too general to draw conclusions from. I did find this press release claiming 97% percent of relevant training programs teach effective pain relief techniques for circumcision, and that's from fourteen years ago. Given the scale of medical advances made since then in all manner of fields, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
This obviously isn't to discount the many (and overwhelming majority if we're looking at total performed in history) non-anesthetized and traumatic circumcisions of the past, but to show that despite the senseless and dangerous nature of male circumcision-as-default it has been made safer and more comfortable, something that I'm not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
I agree that the rate today is probably higher than the 24% that it was in 1995, but keep in mind that a significant number of doctors practicing medicine today graduated from medical school before ~1980 (including the family doctor who cut me).
All of the societies in the world which practice FGC also practice MGC, and they use the same level of medical technology on both sexes.
https://www.academia.edu/8817976
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Not always - I'm circumcised and and don't use lube at all and everything works just fine. I guess they just sorta messed it up and left me some foreskin? And I would implore you to do some research on the severity of FGM. Just reading from here:
Is circumcision damaging to the penis? Most of the time, yes. Can it cause complications later in life? Absolutely. But equating it with FGM is ridiculous.
lol the vast majority of people who are circumcised do not use lotion to masturbate. Why use extreme exaggeration to argue when actual facts are on your side? It's a pointless procedure with zero benefit except when medically necessary. Dont weaken your argument but making shit up.
deleted by creator
"it is IMPOSSIBLE to masturbate without using lotion!!"
-> cut to me effortlessly jerking off with my mutilated penis
like?? I get that you're upset you were circumcised or whatever but for christs sake stick to actual facts. YOU HAVE THE WINNING ARGUMENT ALREADY - WHY MAKE SHIT UP LMAO
lol my good dudebro, while I do accept that circumcision should never be performed on somebody without their consent unless medically necessary and that doing so is child abuse and medical malpractice, it is not equal to the practice I'm referring to It's not medically equivalent and it's purpose is explicitly repressive.
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You should know what fgm is before you draw equivalences, I'm assuming you don't- benefit of the doubt. Read what the practice is first. In fundamentalist countries wives with sewn vaginas are thought to be a 'tighter' sexual experience and also virgins because it's so painful for them.
and one other thing: there are sometimes medical reasons for circumcision. Even if the overwhelming majority of them are arbitrary cruelty, the procedure has medical validity. I'm not a doctor, but I doubt there's ever been a medical reason to cauterize a 7 year olds clitoris.