cirumcision poll

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Asguard, Jan 7, 2010.

?

when i reached the age of medical consent I...

  1. Female: i chose to have the clit skin removed(FC)

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Female: I chose NOT to have the Clit skin removed (FC)

    2 vote(s)
    9.5%
  3. Male: I chose to have my forskin removed (MC)

    1 vote(s)
    4.8%
  4. Male: I chose NOT to have my forskin removed (MC)

    11 vote(s)
    52.4%
  5. Female: I chose to have more than just the skin removed

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  6. Male: I chose to have more than just the skin removed

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  7. Other (god only knows what you would put under this but *shrug*)

    7 vote(s)
    33.3%
  1. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    You think? You think wrong. A friend of mine suffered the very same problem I did, but his didn't manifest itself until puberty. He had to be circumcised, but because his penis was bigger at that age, the surgeon had more to work with, and he got a neater job with far less scarring than I have.

    Please talk to people with experience rather than trying to use common sense or emotional reasons.
     
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  3. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    haha... I loved this thread

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    Back when I was doing my PhD there was his guy who was so against cirumcisions he could only be described a NUT. I mean you couldn't have a drink, go to dinner, do pretty much anything around this guy without him talking about penis and his anti-cirumcision stance. In the end I just happened to be watching 20/20 and there he was, talking about his penis and how it had been hacked off during a cirumcision! Apparently he had no "head"... ouch! I can sympathize with the man but TALKING ABOUT HIS PENIS EVERY SINGLE TIME HE RAN INTO ANYONE ANYWHERE ... well sympathy has it's limit!

    Next, I'm at a conference dinner and end up next to this guy who wrote a book about why it's good to have a cirumcision. He couldn't shut up about it! I didn't realize there were so many people concerned with foreskin. Sure, it makes for a good in vitro cell culture seeder layer but jeesh....

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    I can only imagine these two in the same room together.... fisticuffs!


    lastly, being circumcised I do wonder ... .... .... meh, oh, it should be noted very, very clean circumcised men-italia over here ladies ... ... ...

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    Oh phlogistician I can sympathize I needed to have the very end of my urethra opened slightly for better flow, with a scalpel, which hurt like hell and so at the age of 7 I experienced Hell Fire on Earth ... yet I'm still an atheist?
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2010
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  5. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    Bit of a circumcision 'whoops' moment.

    That's right, the whole glans is missing.

    not an isolated case.

    if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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  7. superstring01 Moderator

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    That, thus far, is possibly the most intelligent post on this odd comparison.

    :::bows politely and exits discussion:::

    ~String
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Sorry dude, I was just raggin' on ya! You do come up with some remarkable stuff, but I know it's all true.
    That's my point. How do you get an objective measure of the difference in sexual sensations between two different men? On top of the obvious problems, it's not a situation in which it's easy to be objective. And apparently if a man gets circumcised later in life the results aren't the same as if it's done in infancy. So we can't even use the rare case of a Gentile man becoming a MOT (Member of the Tribe) to check his before and after readings!

    Let me go on the record that from what I've read here I have no doubt that there IS a difference. The evidence about nerve endings and such is scientific and straightforward. I just don't see how we'll ever know just how BIG the difference is.

    As I've pointed out on other threads, male and female sexuality are much different. Women are more likely to focus on whether one episode of intercourse is considerably better than another. With men it's more like, "Ooh! Sex! Good! More Later? Now Beer and Football!" Yeah we've all had a "bad fuck" or two, but there has to be something seriously wrong to categorize it that way.
    That's a fairly common slang word in the USA. I know a woman who works in a hospital, with doctors, who talks that way.
    Hey, you're in charge so you get to be imperious.

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    But seriously, I always stress to people that we've got members from lots of different places here, and we don't always understand each other's humor--or worse yet, even recognize it. It doesn't translate well from one language to another, or even from the USA to the UK.

    Insults in particular. Americans and Aussies are pretty free with sarcastic put-downs and it's just part of our culture--even though we don't use the same style. But you have to be careful about insulting someone from another culture--or insulting someone from your own culture with someone from another culture listening.
    Of course, but they require judgment, which not everyone has, especially in the heat of passion.
    Of course not. But when something becomes an epidemic, it is a matter of public health rather than private. The society as a whole must then adopt a statistical perspective rather than a personal one. In Africa it's gone so far that it challenges our sense of right and wrong. How many orphans are we willing to see that continent saddle itself with because their parents died of AIDS?
    * * * * NOTE FROM (A DIFFERENT) MODERATOR * * * *

    This isn't my turf but Ti could use some help. Please, please, PLEASE dial back the personal insults! If you disagree with an assertion, there is absolutely no reason to phrase your remark in the form of an insult.

    This is supposed to be a place of science and scholarship. (And anyone who is giggling about that should perform some introspection to make sure they're not part of the problem.) Get in the habit of following the scientific method. If you disagree with something someone says, point out in detail what you disagree with and why. That makes for a discussion rather than a flame war.

    Yes I know we all loosen up once in a while and bend the rules and I'm not talking about that. But this particular thread has been an incredible headache for Tiassa, so PLEASE cut him some slack and try to behave yourselves for a couple of days. Okay?
    This sounds like a thread on the Linguistics board in which we had a furious debate about the definition of the word "religion." The circumcision debate is a religion for this dude!
    Cultural norms have a powerful influence over us. As I noted earlier, many Jewish women have an aversion to uncircumcised penises just as many Jewish men will run screaming from the room if they see a drop of blood. I don't know if the woman who made the comment I'm referring to is Jewish (statistically she probably is not), but if she's American, in our country circumcision has been the norm for a long time and it could have the same impact on her.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2010
  9. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    So you are saying that if someone has unprotected sex with drug users and HIV infected people but happen to be circumcised that they will be AIDS and Herpes free? What of all the clipped men who have acquired both diseases? What of the women who have acquired those diseases from clipped men?

    There are uncircumcised women who have never had a clitoral orgasm but enjoy sex and there are clipped women who also say they enjoy sex. Would we make the argument that circumcised women who cannot physically enjoy a clitoral orgasm aren't missing much because they enjoy sex anyway? Women from Egypt and Africa also use the argument that its more 'hygienic' and remember that in many of these countries they are now having the procedure done surgically under general anesthesia. So why is one mutilation and the other 'necessary'?

    "Female circumcision does not reduce sexual activity 12:30 24 September 02
    NewScientist.com news service

    Circumcised women experience sexual arousal and orgasm as frequently as uncircumcised women, according to a study in Nigeria.

    The researchers also found no difference in the frequency of intercourse or age of first sexual experience between the two groups of women. These findings remove key arguments used to defend the practice, they say.

    Friday Okonofua and colleagues at the Women's Health and Action Research Centre in Benin City studied 1836 women, 45 per cent of whom had been circumcised.

    During the operation, all or part of the clitoris and the labia are removed. Proponents of female circumcision claim it makes virginity at marriage and marital fidelity more likely. Opponents condemn it as dangerous and painful.

    The women filled in questionnaires, asking about their sexual history. The results show "female genital cutting cannot be justified by arguments that suggest it reduces sexual activity in women," write the team in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology."

    http://www.circumstitions.com/FGM-sex.html

    Are you all going to go around clipping your daughters too? You made the argument that men cannot always control themselves regarding sex and so for health reasons its best to be clipped. Since the argument has been made in that study that circumcised women are more likely to remain 'faithful' maybe that is what makes it so appealing, I mean considering that men cannot keep themselves AIDS free unless they are clipped and women cannot help running around unless they too are clipped. Hell one can make the argument that clipped women would shag less and clipped men are less likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease and so clip them both! The report on clipped women mirrors your argument that sexual enjoyment cannot be looked at objectively suggesting that these women also enjoy sex as well as clipped men.

    God bless my European brothers and their untouched erect 'shar pei':thumbsup:

    Keep up the bloody tradition boys

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    Last edited: Jan 8, 2010
  10. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    ummmm!...woof
     
  11. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    LOL! Yeah! You keep it and we'll shag it

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  12. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    But you hardly know me,..wanna see a trick?
     
  13. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    Its the spirit of the thing!

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  14. Spud Emperor solanaceous common tater Registered Senior Member

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    Yep, you can't keep a free spirit down.
     
  15. phlogistician Banned Banned

    Messages:
    10,342
    Fraggle, if you'd read some of John's replies to my posts, you would understand why I asked the question. He seems to completely misunderstand things, and I don't think it's a language problem.

    It was a genuine question, and one I have asked of him before, and never got a straight answer for.
     
  16. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,967
    But this is really the point.

    You can SAY sex is better, but that's a single case, and there's really no way of knowing how true that statement is.

    There are scientific studies which show the opposite, namely that men who have had circumcisions late in life report little or no difference in sexual satisfaction.

    The thing that bugs me about this whole debate is that there seems to be a lot of chest beating going on, and no one is turning a rational eye to the matter. The same people who bitch at the global warming deniers for ignoring the science are turning a convenient blind eye to scientific evidence that doesn't support their preconceived notions.

    For example, I pointed to studies which showed how being circumcised leads to lower levels of AIDS transmission, lower levels of HPV transmission, and lower levels of herpes infection. WillNever replied something ignorant like ``why don't you just have sex with people who don't have AIDS?'' I can't even address that comment because of it's naivete: how do you know if your partner has AIDS, or HPV? Something like 80% of women get some form of HPV by the time they're 60, and HPV can lead to all kinds of different cancers in both men AND women.

    I don't care what you believe about this subject, but I only wish that more people would take a rational approach to evaluating the benefits and risks of the procedure, as opposed to making some knee-jerk reaction. Asguard believes that it should be the child's choice, but who is going to choose to have their penis altered when they're 15 and becoming sexually active? WillNever apparently has never worried about AIDS, and you've apparently never been stuck somewhere without a condom (which is great, if it's true

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    ).

    The point is that there are REAL public health benefits to the procedure, and there has been no legitimate counter-argument to that fact in this thread. I will add, such informed counter-argument is what one might expect on a science forum.
     
  17. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    Ok now read post # 146 addressing Fraggle. We can make the same arguments about female clipping yet we consider one barbarous and the other necessary.

    I still think this is more of a cultural issue than one of actual 'necessity'. Orgasms and cleanliness aside

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  18. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Do you claim that there is a public health benefit to female circumcision, whose disadvantages (pain during intercourse) outweigh it's advantages?

    And there is no post 164. Do you mean 144?
     
  19. John99 Banned Banned

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    It isnt a valid comparison. Seems to me there are very good medical reason to consider it for males. Once there is a medical component to a procedure it automatically make it reasonable to consider and for valid reasons. My own feeling is neutral, but i have no problem with it being an option because many people seem to prefer it.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    No I'm not saying that. As I said, once this became a public health issue the proper approach is a statistical one. Circumcision greatly reduces the probability of contracting HIV, without reducing it to zero. But because of the multiplier effect that characterizes the vector of contagion, that can very realistically turn something that is a catastrophic epidemic into something that is merely a big problem.

    I have seen estimates that the circumcision campaign now underway in Africa, even with all of its lack of rigor, could conceivably turn this specific catastrophe into "merely a big problem." I don't think it will take more than a few more years to see if that prediction comes true. Remember that we are not trying to eliminate HIV and AIDS in Africa, which in the USA would only be a hyperbolic goal, but in Africa in this decade is a preposterous one. We're trying to halt the near exponential growth of the population of orphans (not to mention the population of HIV-positive orphans!) in Africa that is overwhelming the pathetic social services network of this impoverished and poorly governed region, destroying entire family lines, reducing the workforce, and sending armies of HIV-positive refugees into other countries.
    Statistics, my dear Lucy, statistics. Please change your perspective to a statistical one. Look at averages, medians and trends, not at snapshot figures. We're not trying to eliminate HIV, because the best we can do is to manage it, and fortunately that will be good enough for now.
    Yes and there are also women who say they've never been able to have a vaginal orgasm and if any man tried to rip out their clitoris they would kill him "and all the male members of his phallocratic religion," to quote one of my more outspoken feminist friends. We need a very good reason to force any kind of controversial surgery on all the members of a gender. The argument under examination in this thread is whether we have that very good reason for circumcision on all the members of the male gender. There is no mirror-image argument underway to support the forcing of clitoridectomies on all the members of the female gender so that argument is not under examination in this thread.
    I did not use the word "mutilation," although I recognize that it often is used. But to answer your question anyway, the reason that people like me recommend circumcision is that scientific evidence very strongly predicts that it will turn the tide on one of the worst medical catastrophes of this era. And the reason that we do not put clitoridectomy in that same category is simply that no such compelling reason exists to promote the practice. Both procedures were once merely manifestations of ancient cultural traditions, with the usual vague links to health concerns that had a shred of validity thousands of years ago but are now obsolete, like those that support the Kashruth and the prejudice against keeping dogs and pigs as companion animals in the 21st century.

    We now have, putatively, a new 21st-century reason to justify circumcision. We do not have one for clitoridectomy.
    This is, properly, a statistical discussion. It carefully avoids saying that all women who have been the victims of clitoridectomies are able to reach climax as those without them. For the sake of the women who cannot reach climax without their clitoris, it's difficult to make a compelling case to force it on them.

    A few years ago the same argument could be made against ritual circumcision for male humans, and you would not find me on the wrong side of that argument in those days. But times have changed. Today there is a compelling argument for promoting circumcision, at least in regions whose economies and social fabric are being destroyed by AIDS such as much of Africa. Even we libertarians understand that individual liberty must always be weighed against the good of the whole population, and today the balance has unfortunately shifted to the side of public health.

    There has been no new development to make forced, ritual clitoridectomies any less a violation of individual liberty than they were twenty years ago.
    That was not my argument. Perhaps you're quoting someone else. People of both sexes have trouble with self control in the heat of passion. Perhaps it's a bigger problem for men, but plenty of women forgo even contraception, especially when they're drunk, which has always been an argument in favor of pharmaceutical contraception instead of condoms.
    I understand. But suggesting that someone has "a mental health problem" is not a proper, scholarly, scientific way to respond to anything they say, no matter how stoopid it may appear. It inflames tempers and is an invitation to a flame war.

    I did not mean to appear that I am coming down on you personally or that your sentence was worthy of any more attention than it's getting casually in this thread. It was simply a quintessential example of the style of discourse that needs to be totally squelched on this website.

    I always make exceptions for humor and just plain silliness. And since A) this is not a true academy of science and B) the majority of our members are very young, I believe that we need to be rather lenient with the boundaries of good taste in our definition of humor and silliness. But this thread has gotten out of hand, tempers are flaring, and we clearly have a multicultural mix here, including people who have strong traditional feelings about the subject. So let's rein in the hyperbole and the (perhaps) good-natured American and Australian over-the-top wink-wink-nudge-nudge good-ol-boy insults and try to stick to the dry language of cross-cultural scholarship.

    Okay?

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  21. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    I'm not claiming anything its that research study that makes the claim that women are enjoying sex without a clitoris and that its more hygienic and they find it useful because women don't run around, the last example was just to counter Fraggles response that one cannot objectively determine whether sex is pleasurable or not. So I figure if that is a good enough argument for male circumcision then it ought to be for female clipping. Its in that same post I referred you to you can take a look at it as its not long (the report I mean)
     
  22. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    Do you have the stats on HIV infection in European men as opposed to the clipped ones from the US? How does that compare? I would like to see if the stats suggest that European men have a higher chance of contracting the dreaded diseases because they were or are not clipped?

    I'm not arguing whether there is enough data to warrant clipping all men as Europe doesn't seem to find the need to automatically clip men even with this data AND the health issues.

    I know you didn't use the term mutilation. We tend to use the word mutilation in regards to clipping women not men which was my point. There are also plenty of women and men who would go after you with a knife if you suggested that their child be ceremoniously clipped on the off chance they may contract a STD. I consider male circumcision as unnecessary. Do the men and women in Africa have a choice in this? I mean do they get to decide the fate of their sons willy?

    Ok it was this:

    Fraggle: People of both sexes have trouble with self control in the heat of passion. Perhaps it's a bigger problem for men, but plenty of women forgo even contraception, especially when they're drunk, which has always been an argument in favor of pharmaceutical contraception instead of condoms.

    This is the reason why I asked if you would clip your daughters too since the research paper showed that there was a 'benefit' to female clipping which is that they tend not to shag as often but they still enjoy the sex, in the same way you say that its safer for men to get clipped since they forget their condoms but they too still enjoy the sex. Well all I suggested is that if this is the case why not clip them both and be done with it as it would make sex 'safer' for both. As for the clipped women who say they cannot enjoy sex how can we compare them to the women who are clipped but say they do? I mean given that there are women who are not clipped and still have problems in that area. Sorry I don't mean to take this off topic. Ignore me if you like but I think you get what I was trying to point out in terms of male circumcision and the discussion of 'arousal', 'cleanliness' and the fact that someone may be less likely to contract something whether it be from lack of control or lack of desire

    You wouldn't have slags and you wouldn't have rogues

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    Wiki has it that less than 20% of European males are circumcised:

    Europe


    The following countries have a circumcision rate of less than 20%: Iceland,[5] United Kingdom,[5][32] Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Austria, Belarus, Russia, Cyprus, Georgia.[5]

    A national survey on sexual attitudes in 2000 found that 15.8% of men or boys in the United Kingdom (ages 16–44) were circumcised. 11.7% of 16-19 year olds, and 19.6% of 40-44 year olds said they had been circumcised. It also found that, apart from black Caribbeans, men born overseas were more likely to be circumcised.[32] Rickwood et al. reported that the proportion of English boys circumcised for medical reasons had fallen from 35% in the early 1930s to 6.5% by the mid-1980s.

    An estimated 3.8% of male children in the UK in 2000 were being circumcised by the age of 15.[33]. The researchers stated that too many boys, especially under the age of 5, were still being circumcised because of a misdiagnosis of phimosis. They called for a target to reduce the percentage to 2%.

    Denniston reported in 1996 that the neonatal circumcision rate in Finland is zero and that the rate of later circumcision is 1 in 16,667.[34] Similarly, Wallerstein estimated in 1980 that the Finnish rate of adult circumcision for health reasons is six per 100,000.[35]

    Schoen et al., however, reported in 2006 that data from 1996-1998 indicate a circumcision rate of about 7.1%;[36] Houle reported the same figure in 2007.[37] Finland's Ministry of Social Affairs and Health reported in 2004 that, "some 500-1000 circumcisions are performed as a therapeutic measure annually in Finnish hospitals",[38] amounting to 710 nationwide cases in 2002.[39]

    The overall prevalence of circumcision in Spain is reported to be 1.8%.[9]

    In 1986, only 511 out of approximately 478,000 Danish boys aged 0–14 years were circumcised. This corresponds to a cumulative national circumcision rate of around 1.6% by the age of 15 years.[40]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

    Its higher in the States so that's why I asked for the HIV/Aids stats. You guys are better at stats than I am so maybe you can find the answer for me.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2010
  23. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    10,342
    It was a question, not a suggestion, and I for one do not fall into the trap that asking a question implies an answer nor that the question itself has merit.

    I was genuinely curious. John seems to lack some cognitive function. I was genuinely wondering if he'd ever had it diagnosed.

    I am a British Citizen, not Australian or American.
     

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