There is an interesting thread about FGM vs. Circumcision, which got started because some more billboards raising awareness about FGM (Excision) have been going up in France.

https://x.com/LegateCorvus/status/2087234816714375223

Naturally, since this is the ONLY time that polite society will ever discuss genital mutilation, someone brought up the comparably much more common practice of male circumcision.

Now, I've been told that circumcision is firmly opposed and reviled in Europe, but what I'm seeing is more like a combination of apathy, acceptance, and even respect.

Is it really just demographics?
Some of those involved claim to be atheists. The arguments used are also firmly focused on hygiene and health, not religious or cultural obligation...

>"Reassure me, you didn't just compare an instrument of torture used to prevent sexual intercourse with circumcision, whose benefits are so widely recognized that it's practiced by atheists because it's more hygienic, benign, and painless for the little one*."*

I don't know if they actually believe this nonsense, but I know that this little setup where FGM and circumcision are made into "polar opposites" keeps coming up for a reason, it serves very well the political cause of advocating against FGM, and so we will keep seeing it.

>"Uh... no, not really. Removing a foreskin is a relatively benign mutilation.."

>"Except that one of them (circumcision) has a use: pleasure/hygiene/medicinal without real consequences"

>"It is a hygienic practice and/or necessary depending on the case. Nothing comparable to excision."

None of these comments appear to belong to followers of Islam or recent arrivals.
You must remember that the image of circumcision has been carefully sanitized in recent times, with its proponents medicalizing it to obscure cultural and religious obligations, and perhaps we are seeing the fruits of that.

>"tu fais un peu du whataboutism là"

>"le whataboutism est tellement mal"

Well, there's some of that American cultural impact for you!

Okay, now let's be real for a second, and take a look at why Europe does not have to deal with circumcision.

1. There was never a WW1/WW2 military tradition of forcing (some) conscripts through circumcision, men who would later be vulnerable to arguments about neonatal circumcision being easier than adult circumcision.
2. The medical establishment simply refused to offer the option of routine infant circumcision to new parents.

I've never seen any evidence that Europeans have some kind of natural aversion to circumcision, after all they do not hesitate to circumcise little boys for phimosis and treat the matter with about as much gravity as pulling a loose tooth.

Let's add all the foreskin pathologization that's gone down in Europe with the relentless and abusive forced retraction of boys, which went on for a century and still goes on even to this day in places like Central/Eastern Europe, where pediatric advice is still lagging behind.

What the hell is so special about European parents exactly?

They are perfectly willing to hurt their little boys so long as a person in a lab coat gave the order, just like every other parent.

The person in the lab coat gives the order to start retracting little boys even if they cry and fight it, the parents start, the person in the lab coat gives the order to stop, the parents stop. Simple as.

The only reason why most Europeans have been spared circumcision is that their medical establishments held fast during a pivotal time period from the 1930s to the 1960s, when circumcision was aggressively promoted around the world, and continental Europe only just barely eked out a win on this matter.

https://preview.redd.it/8asqam0zjujh1.png?width=668&format=png&auto=webp&s=58bdd47643f04c2ad1cfdd707ee10165d74fc78a

The original instructions for using the Goldstein Manufacturing Company circumcision clamp are firm that the infant's prepuce must be crushed for at least 5 minutes straight, regardless of the pain involved, in order to force hemostasis and force the procedure's "safety".

https://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/gomco/

Recently researchers and surgeons have been playing around with the crushing time, and implicitly the pain involved, while some surgeons decided to not use the Gomco clamp's hemostasis function at all.

Article saying there is little difference between 5 minutes or 2 minutes of violent crushing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34433622/

Article saying no crushing time is necessary and hemostasis can be easily handled in other ways: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/141/1_MeetingAbstract/439/1949/The-Length-of-Gomco-Clamp-Timing-and-Its-Effect-on

Video showing a Gomco clamp being used without the hemostasis function is available on the Blood Stained Men's website on the "About Circumcision" page.

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So the most traumatic and painful element of a Gomco clamp circumcision is actually variable and even optional, and always has been...

I mean, doesn't this SEVERELY blur the line between circumcision and torture?

To this day circumcisers do basically whatever they want, and decide on a whim how much crushing force to apply to a child's genitals for how long, and with how much if any pain relief.

The process of circumcision has always been a creative experiment, an artistry of pain and disfiguration. Circumcisers will pick a tool, try different ways of using it, select pain relief at their own discretion, an innocent child's body is their canvas.

To have an idea of what this crushing might feel like when done to you, there is a testimony on r/CircumcisionGrief where an older boy insists that he received a Gomco clamp circumcision in the Midwest in the early 1990s, with little to no pain relief, the same protocol that newborns often received.

He said the pain of the very long crushing sequence was the worst of them all, and so bad that he couldn't even scream and could only cry, and that the medical stuff looked at him in disgust and left the room, since they had nothing to do during the crushing phase but wait, and preferred to wait outside to avoid seeing the pain and distress they were causing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CircumcisionGrief/comments/hwar1m/my_surgery_my_grief_my_anger_and_my_confusion/

I looked into it and the story is plausible because Gomco clamps with different sized bells and pieces are known to have been made, and they were made for only one reason - to circumcise older boys who escaped circumcision in infancy. The 1990s is also the time when protocols were first being updated to include pain relief for infants.
Knowing all that it's plausible to me that an older boy was put through the exact same protocol as infant boys and lived to remember it, and the story is probably true.

https://preview.redd.it/hh9mtpwkjv9h1.png?width=1067&format=png&auto=webp&s=d99eceb3f077b49600613f98be4394d6786df162

Yes, this was absolutely was a medical emergency that justified humiliating this boy into attempting to demonstrate full retraction in front of a committee formed by his parents and medical staff, multiple times, until they finally got their holy grail and relented.

I don't know why everyone keeps acting like this never happens. I was going through it during my childhood in Romania, and it happened to this young man from Germany as well.

Obviously the medical system is tolerant of abuses like this.

The only thing that actually is rare: successful resistance in the face of this much malevolent force.
Ironically it's only those that have already been traumatized that are able to resist like this, they know what the stakes are.

This case provides some insight into what happens when you resist "medical" circumcision as a boy in Europe.
Coercion will be used in conjunction with the medical system, either full physicals will be scheduled year after year, or a circumcision appointment will be made and then only deferred, not cancelled if you show intense non-cooperation, until they can finally break your will.

No medical problem has to be present like a UTI or infection for this process to begin, and once it's started no input from you has any effect except for intense non-cooperation and pleading. You will have to beg your parents and the medical staff not to do this to you.