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If you add the word "female" before circumcision, do you still believe that it should be up to the parents? I'm against either one being done to babies or children and I do consider it mutilation. I think it's difficult for most circumscribed men to be unbiased since they haven't experienced both ways. How one's father looks and what American women prefer should not be relevant. We don't lop off ears because they're a pain to clean. Cutting off a perfectly healthy part of someone else's body is wrong.
How can you possibly compare the two? Female circumcision is done to ensure that the woman will never enjoy sex. A suitable comparison would be to lop off the man's genitals entirely or castration.
Something has changed over the years as when i was younger 50s-60s i was the rare individual who was uncut, seemed circumcision was the norm for every one and i was viewed with disdain in the locker rooms, now it seems that attitude no longer applies and non circumcision seems to be the prevalent attitude of the day, at least from what i can deduce from the forum responses.
As some one who later in life required circumcision due to a medical malady i can comment on both sides of the issue and really find i'm ambivalent about being either way, its like 6 of one half a dozen of the other.
Would i put my kids through the procedure? i'd definitely let them make that choice when they were older.
To add/
Where did the ritual of circumcision in America come from and why was it so readily accepted as the norm..?
Do you feel that parents should be allowed to inject foreign materials into children without their permission in terms of immunizations? Children have died from receiving immunizations, and there are groups dedicated to getting rid of most of them. Do you feel children should have to agree to receive them?
If you want to take a hardline approach of children's bodies belonging to them, then saying children should be immunized without permission from them would not be consistent.
Circumcision does reduce the chances of disease and helps with cleanliness. There are benefits. This isn't strictly an aesthetics issue.
Of course it does. Just like removing your kidneys reduce the chance of a kidney failure. Should we go removing body parts based on what can happen later in life?
Where did the ritual of circumcision in America come from and why was it so readily accepted as the norm..?
I think mass secular infant circumcision in the USA can be attributed to soldiers returning from World War I. They brought back STDs from Europe and the thought was that if the men were circumcised, they would be less likely to contract an STD.
I think mass secular infant circumcision in the USA can be attributed to soldiers returning from World War I. They brought back STDs from Europe and the thought was that if the men were circumcised, they would be less likely to contract an STD.
Dude, just wash yourself. We don't cut off women's labia to make their girlie bits more "sanitary" and lower the risk of infection. We have to clean ourselves, just like boys and men who still have the foreskin they were born with.
Where did the ritual of circumcision in America come from and why was it so readily accepted as the norm..?
Circumcision rates have widely fluctuated over US history. Prior to 1840, it would have been almost impossible to find a circumcised man anywhere in the US. In the 1850s, as part of the Christian purity movement of the Second Great Awakening, we began routine circumcision of male infants in an attempt to prevent adolescent masturbation, and for decades nearly all newborn American boys were circumcised. It even became the norm for doctors to "prescribe" immediate circumcisions to any uncut male child caught masturbating. When the economy turned at the end of the 1920s, circumcision rates plummeted (they bottomed out at roughly the current rate of around 33%). Circumcision wasn't (and still isn't) cheap, so during the Great Depression people just stopped doing it. As the economy got better, rates steadily climbed.
The peak of US circumcision coincides with the Vietnam war. There were fears that intact guys in a tropical war zone would have hygiene issues, so circumcision mania re-swept the nation (peaking in the late 60s). I've read that many hospitals in the 50s and 60s had a policy to circumcise - they didn't even ask for parental consent. If you wanted your kid intact, you had to let it be known in advance. After Vietnam, rates slowly and steadily declined. Around 1999, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) released a policy statement that did not recommend infant circumcision. As a reaction to this policy, many insurance companies and state Medicaid programs stopped subsidizing them. It's still not cheap, so over the last 10 year many people, when forced to pay for it out of pocket, have opted not to. Currently circumcision rates for newborn males in the US is around 33%.
Circumcision rates have widely fluctuated over US history. Prior to 1840, it would have been almost impossible to find a circumcised man anywhere in the US. In the 1850s, as part of the Christian purity movement of the Second Great Awakening, we began routine circumcision of male infants in an attempt to prevent adolescent masturbation, and for decades nearly all newborn American boys were circumcised. It even became the norm for doctors to "prescribe" immediate circumcisions to any uncut male child caught masturbating. When the economy turned at the end of the 1920s, circumcision rates plummeted (they bottomed out at roughly the current rate of around 33%). Circumcision wasn't (and still isn't) cheap, so during the Great Depression people just stopped doing it. As the economy got better, rates steadily climbed.
The peak of US circumcision coincides with the Vietnam war. There were fears that intact guys in a tropical war zone would have hygiene issues, so circumcision mania re-swept the nation (peaking in the late 60s). I've read that many hospitals in the 50s and 60s had a policy to circumcise - they didn't even ask for parental consent. If you wanted your kid intact, you had to let it be known in advance. After Vietnam, rates slowly and steadily declined. Around 1999, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) released a policy statement that did not recommend infant circumcision. As a reaction to this policy, many insurance companies and state Medicaid programs stopped subsidizing them. It's still not cheap, so over the last 10 year many people, when forced to pay for it out of pocket, have opted not to. Currently circumcision rates for newborn males in the US is around 33%.
Where did you get your information?
Can you please cite your sources?
I think you are quite mistaken. For one thing, the number of baby boys presently being circumcised in the US is much higher than 33% ... in fact slightly over 50% (not as high as when "baby boomers" like myself were born ... it was something like 90% then).
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Oops ... okay ... I did some quick internet research ... according to National Hospital Discharge Survey here are some statistics for circumcision of newborn babies in the entire United States:
1980: 65%
1990: 59%
2000: 62%
2010: 58%
Yes, circumcision is a slowly declining trend, but it is still performed on the majority of newborn baby boys in the US.
Last edited by Clark Park; 11-12-2013 at 02:39 PM..
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