why does the US still just routinely mutilate children? fuck john kellogg's eugenicist corn flake ass
Mutilating genitals is good but trans people asking for surgery is bad.
"How can a teenager possibly consent to permanently altering their body?" *Does elective surgery on a literal baby*
That's honestly a contradiction I've never thought of but it's spot on.
And really, circumcison is effectively irreversible. A lot of trans teens really just want puberty blockers, which is reversible (and now banned in the uk).
Doesn't mutilating genitals of either sex make GAS harder for trans people?
I don't know much about phalloplasty but vaginoplasty is largely unaffected. You get better results with an uncircumcised penis though because there's more skin to work with and more nerve endings.
Fuck circumcision, but if you are cut still love yourself, your body is still beautiful
Yeah part of the reason I'm wary of the Circumcision Discourse is that it seems like a lot of times it oversteps into promoting yet another dick-related insecurity? When the whole thing, at least before bringing religion into the picture, just seems like a simple question of medical necessity (i.e. it doesn't seem particularly medically necessary) and bodily autonomy.
Yeah, as someone with (severe) phimosis I can't help but wonder if things wouldn't have been different if I were circumcised.
But still, glad no one made a choice about me without my input.
Yeah, I do see it kind of go that direction sometimes which I think is not productive. I just try to spread body positivity where I can. Like don't get me wrong I'll make it illegal when I'm supreme leader of the People's Republic of North America, but I think a lot of guys do project existing insecurities onto it.
There is 0 reason to circumcise a kid, but anyone obsessing over their long-lost foreskin is sad
it's fucked up, and there's definitely some creepy psychology behind parents still doing it to their kids
It's primarily circumcised fathers who drive the cycle of abuse. To leave their son intact would be a tacit admission that they were robbed of something valuable, and that their parents did something horrific to them. This puts up a huge psychological barrier which makes it easier to simply cut their child and move on like nothing's wrong. It also doesn't help that men's ego's are strongly linked to their genitalia.
I've talked to couples who are parents that said they circumsized their son just because they didn't want their son to ask why their dick looked different from dad's, and men who said they'll circumsize their future sons just because they're circumsized. But I'm not circumsized, and when my relationship with my girlfriend became more "serious" we sort of talked about having kids. And she said it would be up to my whether we would circumsize any of our sons or not, and I was just like "it's not my penis, I'll let them do whatever they want with it but I won't make the decision to cut anything off".
they didn’t want their son to ask why their dick looked different
This is the result of the brain thinking (all subconsciously, of course) "I don't want to contemplate how my son's dick is different" and translating it to sound like it's for their son's benefit.
Yeah one of the couples I'm thinking of had already had their first son circumsized and had talked about how much he screamed during the process, and they were justifying why they would have their second son circumsized as well.
Let's be clear that not all fathers who circumcised their sons are driving a cycle of abuse. Especially not that long ago when it was just viewed as a normal thing many people did. These parents simply didn't know better. They weren't abusing their kids. They didn't do it based on ego. It was just something you did with newborns.
I do sympathize with parents who didn't know better, including my loving parents. The medical establishment is to blame. Nobody who chooses circumcision thinks they are abusing their son, nor are they criminally negligent. But I can't say that someone who circumcises their son isn't technically continuing the cycle. Also, sorry to hear about your son.
Lol I don't have kids and I'm not planning to. Just think people on here get a little extreme about the whole circumcision thing.
i would hope people would be "a little extreme" about widespread, normalized infant genital mutilation
you are the weird one for not being upset about it
Abuse is still abuse even if it's normal and even if you don't think it's abuse.
mutilating your child's genitals without anesthetic for cosmetic reasons is abuse. if you disagree with that you're fucking wrong.
That's the thing. A lot of parents didn't do it for aesthetic reasons. They thought it was healthier. This is what I mean when I say people are extreme about it. You're being completely hostile about it. The reality is it's an unnecessary practice we should stop doing but it doesn't negativity affect the lives of the vast majority of people it's done to. Implying that every circumcised male in history was abused by their parents is ludicrous.
mutilating your child's genitals because you couldn't be bothered to inform yourself about it is also abuse
imagine making this argument for literally any other form of abuse. hell, even any other form of mutilation. oh, yeah, i cut off the baby's earlobes because, uhh ... i get cysts in mine sometimes and thats kinda scary. earlobes must be bad.
and yes, im being hostile. we should be hostile toward INFANT GENITAL MUTILATION and those who support it.
Yeah, this is bullshit. My sister, among others, mutilated both her sons because she thinks intact members look "gross." I have heard similar sentiments, and their ensuing mutilations, from women in similar demos.
I didn't say that women don't participate in the genital cutting culture. Men are just more likely to give strong pushback to criticism of the practice because it's more personal. It also happens to be that almost all of the medical authorities and researchers responsible for endorsing and promoting circumcision are circumcised men, and they bear the most blame.
No, you just claimed that men hold the reins. This was almost certainly true once. At least in the U.S., not anymore - male mutilation has become a cultural issue as the “scientific” basis is questioned and the absolute rate drops. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/circumcision_2013/circumcision_2013.pdf
Men are just more likely to give strong pushback to criticism of the practice because it’s more personal
Do you have any sources for that argument? Or just an assertion about their psychosexual rationalizations?
It also happens to be that almost all of the medical authorities and researchers responsible for endorsing and promoting circumcision are circumcised men
Do you know that? Or do you just infer that they’re cut?
https://en.intactiwiki.org/index.php/Adamant_father_syndrome
https://en.intactiwiki.org/index.php/Psychological_issues_of_male_circumcision#Circumcised_medical_doctors
One of the reasons it continues IMO is that people continue to be in denial about just how significant the sexual loss is.
[T]he fundamental biological sexual act becomes, for the circumcised male, simply a satisfaction of an urge and not the refined sensory experience that it was meant to be. ---C. J. Falliers, MD., JAMA. 1970
i mean shit i just gotta take your word for it i guess
left wingers :solidarity: right wingers
Not wanting foreskin chopped off
lol all the right wing dudes i know are circumsized and as far as I know they plan on having their sons' foreskin chopped off too
You could make a case—anthropology observers have made this case, too—that women undergo a set of sufficiently, radically, psychophysiological transformations merely as a consequence of being feminine in nature, such that the additional rituals of transformation that might be necessary for men aren’t necessary. One of those might be menstruation, because that’s a pretty dramatic transformation. There has been some indication that circumcision is like the male equivalent of menstruation, because of the blood that’s involved and because of the locale. Of course, the same thing is the case with women when they give birth. That’s a particularly dramatic thing, as I just witnessed, because my daughter just had a baby this week. So thank God for that!
Love my floppy weiner and its skin.
Multiple different partners have drawn a face on it and pretended like it was talking. It's great.
I feel legitimate sadness for people that are immediately subjected to this abuse as children. Like "hey I'm born, just trying to get used to this world I'm sorta getting a hang of it, oh wait what's that knife for?" It has to have some kind of psychological effects.
hey I’m born, just trying to get used to this world I’m sorta getting a hang of it, oh wait what’s that knife for?
If you were a newborn and I crushed and tore off your thumb with a wrench, it wouldn't matter how much I believed I was doing it for your own good; your experience would be that of horror, agony, and trauma.
BTW did I mention that the vast majority of circumcisions in the US performed before ~2000 used no pain alleviation whatsoever?
Even if it were true that babies felt it but didn't "remember" it, that justification always struck me as an extremely fucked up. By that logic, the most barbaric torture would be acceptable as long as you erased it from the victim's memory in like, a week or two. Technically, none of us will remember anything in 200 years...
I was against circumicision until your 'balloon filled with piss' suggestion.
These are both true but I wouldn't recommend doing the second one outside of the shower
Also u can pinch the tip while u pee and inflate ur penis like a balloon
i fear the genius mind which figured this out first
USians when talking about genital mutilation in Africa: "Look at these disgusting barbarians! This needs to stop!"
USians when talking about genital mutilation in America: "Hey its not a big deal buddy, just get over it. Only losers cry about being circumcised."
Many anthropologists believe there are significant overlaps in the motivations, rationalizations, and degrees of psychological, physical, and sexual harm associated with genital cutting of both sexes. Some of the milder forms of FGC involve a pinprick that draws blood but removes no tissue.
[A]s the anthropologist Zachary Androus has written: The attitude that male circumcision is harmless [happens to be] consistent with Western cultural values and practices, while any such procedures performed on girls is totally alien to Western cultural values. [However] the factof the matter is that what’s done to some girls [in some cultures] is worse than what’s done to some boys, and what’s done to some boys [in some cultures] is worse than what’s done to some girls. By collapsing all of the many different types of procedures performed into a single set for each sex, categories are created that do not accurately describe any situation that actually occurs anywhere in the world.
Nancy Ehrenreich writes in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review: … the mainstream anti-FGC position is premised upon an orientalizing construction of FGC societies as primitive, patriarchal, and barbaric, and of female circumcision as a harmful, unnecessary cultural practice based on patriarchal gender norms and ritualistic beliefs. … Lambasting African societies and practices (while failing to critique similar practices in the United States) … essentially implies that North American understandings of the body are “scientific” (i.e., rational, civilized, and based on universally acknowledged expertise), while African understandings are “cultural” (i.e., superstitious,un-civilized, and based on false, socially constructed beliefs).
As Sara Johnsdotter has pointed out, there is no 1:1 relationship between amount of genital tissue removed (in either males or females), and subjective satisfaction while having sex, so “FGM” (and male “circumcision”)—of whatever degree of severity—will affect different people differently. Each individual’s relationship to their own body is unique
Rebecca Steinfeld, a political scientist at Stanford who studies ritual cutting, has speculated as follows: Alongside the differences in harm and misperceptions about the contrasting settings and ages at which the procedures take place, the double standard stems from two further factors: sexism and ethnocentrism. Male bodies are constructed as resistant to harm or even in need of being tested by painful ordeals, whereas female bodies are seen as highly vulnerable and in need of protection. In other words, vulnerability is gendered. And little girls are more readily seen as victims than little boys. The consequence of this … is that patriarchy often allows men’s experiences to remain unquestioned.
FGM is a lot worse but they are bad for the same reasons: violation of bodily autonomy and mutilation of ones gentials which impairs function.
Eh, male circumcision ain't worth marching for in these times imo.
Neither are climate change and local biodiversity loss, yet both are terrible things and we need to take them more seriously
Eh, male circumcision ain't worth marching for in these times imo.
Imagine being born with a foreskin lol yeah im uncut yeah i don't have a foreskin guess im just built different
Absolute lunacy. I'm glad my mum stopped it from happening after my dad half-heartedly suggested it out of tradition. Totally out of my control regardless. I know of people who have had to have it circumcised due to medical issues which is fine, but the idea of pointless mutilation that young is insane.
