Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
-us millions of men should be granted the right to have their parent's genitals excised when they turn the age of 18 if they so wish!
-and why stop there! also, everyone at the hospital who shares in the blame for cutting into infants genitals.
BUT any other sub and we will get accused of it?
Like, I am not allowed to speak of it outside of circgrief or intactivists or a few other niche subs. If I do then several people will go off on a rant about me hating on someone's religion. Even though I am circumcised because american doctors told my parents to do it despite them not being religious at all.
so somehow, me disliking having been tortured and traumatized with a drastically altered mind and body makes me a hater of little hat wearers?
I swear, I don't get it. Someone please explain it to me!
I need to find a life partner who is female that I can relate to! I can't be expected to share a lifetime with a woman who is unaltered mentally and physically. Me having mutilated non-working genitals and severe brain damage from my circumcision. I need a partner who has suffered the same body and mind crippling that I was subjected to as a one day old infant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1v9cjx5/circumcision_and_law_it_is_your_parents_right_to/
Please don't apply a blanket statement to all physicians/health care providers. As a physician and having performed circs, I don't like doing them and am very frank with parents regarding the literature - which is that its purely cosmetic at this point and I would avoid it if it were my own child.
Depends on hospital and practice - the peds I worked with as a student always asked because its better to do it before the baby leaves the hospital if it's going to be done. If you don't bring it up, and then they ask why didn't they bring it up, it may delay it being done which can carry other risks - usually best to at least bring it up from my memory.
But what do you mean by "at this point"
you expect me to believe that just a very short time ago most doctors thought that the "elective medical procedure" was harmless and beneficial. something that I would grow up to be happy was done to me without my consent
Yes that is exactly what I am saying minus the you'd be happy about it - separating out the moral question you ask from the medical question you ask.
Up until recently in 1st world countries and/or populations with access to appropriate means of hygenic care, the literature pointed to circumcisions decreasing the risk of infections of the glans both sexual and non-sexual in nature, and that this bennefit was greater than the risk of complications from circumcisions themselves.
When evaluated in the context of new data/literature, the cleanliness aspect no longer applies and circumcisions are purely cosmetic conferring no obvious medical benefit while maintaining the procedural risk ***IN first world countries or populations that have the means to maintain adequate hygiene***
To my knowledge, it's been a while since i've reviewed the literature, there is still a medical benefit/risk reduction of infection to populations who do not have access to routine hygeine/care.
Edit: Just as an asside, medicine is constantly evolving and changing, it is collectively allowed to change it's oppinions/recommendations based on new evidence it obtains, just like any good scientific field. That change can happen decades ago or yesterday.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I am not going to say the reason why I posted this.(yet anyways) I am curious as to why you all think that I did.
I wish someone would tell me what it is then.
you can no longer make a post at r/mensrights sub because the mods there say that the issue has been talked about enough.
It must be a women's issue then because women come here to intactivists sub and complain that cut men's penises are causing them issues with their vaginas. They amputate and alter our bodies to better suit them because they are obsessed with the appearance of things, especially I guess things that get inserted inside of them. Men have always done crazy things for the sake of women.
it gives the act credence and allows it to be accepted in the minds of everyone!
because circumcision is believed by nearly everyone to be a harmless and beneficial medical procedure endorsed by pediatricians.
It has no benefits whatsoever so we need to start calling it what it is. and that is genital amputation.
I forget how old I was. 4 or 5 I think. but I was telling anyone who would listen to me that I was john smith in another life.
The reason I bring this up is because I have a theory about something I wanted to share.
I think that if you were circumcised as an infant(sacrificial infant circumcision) and that it caused you to feel badly about your body due to the amputation of your body part.(not so much in my case)But what I definitely had was an instinctual knowing that sexual intercourse for me was incredibly lacking something which I couldn't put my finger on at the time. From my very first time I would think to my self "wow, is that all there is?" and up till then I was thinking it was going to be something incredibly awesome. I assure you it was not the fault of any of the women who I was sleeping with, and I was very into every single one of the women I have had sex with in my lifetime. Around about more than 15 and less than 20 different women. All from the age of 16/17 - 24/25. I stopped having sex for the most part after 24.
The point that I am trying to make is that I believe this along with me believing that I was john smith in another life at around age 4 is proof to me of reincarnation.
I knew how much better sex should feel from my past lives, lives where I didn't have essential parts of my penis missing, enabling me to fully enjoy the act.
I propose that anyone who feels so strongly to the core of their soul that their lives were destroyed by being cut as an infant is an old soul and those who are perfectly fine with being cut as an infant and don't notice anything peculiar with the act of sex are new souls.
And, no my circumcision isn't botched either, just the standard one received. Far from the least invasive type but also far from the most invasive as well. I'd say, somewhere in between.
I forget how old I was. 4 or 5 I think. but I was telling anyone who would listen to me that I was john smith in another life.
The reason I bring this up is because I have a theory about something I wanted to share.
I think that if you were circumcised as an infant(sacrificial infant circumcision) and that it caused you to feel badly about your body due to the amputation of your body part.(not so much in my case)But what I definitely had was an instinctual knowing that sexual intercourse for me was incredibly lacking something which I couldn't put my finger on at the time. From my very first time I would think to my self "wow, is that all there is?" and up till then I was thinking it was going to be something incredibly awesome. I assure you it was not the fault of any of the women who I was sleeping with, and I was very into every single one of the women I have had sex with in my lifetime. Around about more than 15 and less than 20 different women. All from the age of 16/17 - 24/25. I stopped having sex for the most part after 24.
The point that I am trying to make is that I believe this along with me believing that I was john smith in another life at around age 4 is proof to me of reincarnation.
I knew how much better sex should feel from my past lives, lives where I didn't have essential parts of my penis missing, enabling me to fully enjoy the act.
I propose that anyone who feels so strongly to the core of their soul that their lives were destroyed by being cut as an infant is an old soul and those who are perfectly fine with being cut as an infant and don't notice anything peculiar with the act of sex are new souls.
And, no my circumcision isn't botched either, just the standard one received. Far from the least invasive type but also far from the most invasive as well. I'd say, somewhere in between.
I propose MIGC = male infant genital cutting
who else has any other ideas to replace the old verbiage?
circumcision has got to go! We just keep digging the hole deeper each time we refer to MIGC as circumcision!
"there is nothing outside the text"
-Jacques Derrida
all human experience is mediated by language, signs, and interpretation, rather than denying the physical existence of the real world.
tact (meaning)
Tact is the ability to say and do things carefully so you do not make other people angry or upset. It means having social skill, good manners, and respect for feelings.
Social and Everyday Meaning
Psychology and Behavior Meaning (ABA)
1
: a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations with others or avoid offense
2
: sensitive mental or aesthetic perception
converted the novel into a play with remarkable skill and tact
Although some believe the word tact is short for tactics in phrases like "change tact" or "try a different tact," the correct word in such contexts is tack.
Tack in "change tack" and "try a different tack" means "a course or method of action especially when sharply divergent from that previously followed.”
Tack developed this meaning from its nautical applications. In sailing, tack can refer to the direction that a ship or boat is sailing in as it moves at an angle to the direction of the wind; or to a change from one direction to another direction; or to the distance traveled while sailing in a particular direction.
Tack developed the "course or method of action" meaning near the end of the 17th century; within 100 or so years, the phrase "change tack" was being used with the figurative meaning it has today.
While there is also a long history of people using tact where tack belongs, the use is widely shunned by usage guides, which means you might want to avoid it.
This word came to English directly from French (a Latin-based language), where it can also mean simply "sense of touch". Dealing with difficult situations involving other people can require the kind of extreme sensitivity that our fingertips possess. As Lincoln once said, "Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves", which doesn't usually come naturally. Someone tactful can soothe the feelings of the most difficult people; a tactless person will generally make a bad situation worse.
I can't accept the fact that we are unable to discuss this subject without it becoming a my side versus yours.
when we are unable to even bring up the subject anywhere besides our own small space here on reddit, that to me is an extreme problem!
"they" are not going to change to help facilitate us.
We need to change our approach if we are to have any hope of rational discussion moving forward.
our sides are so far apart at the moment, we are never going to be able to even rationally discuss the issue, much less take steps to end it.
our side is far left = we believe it is mutilation
their side is far right = we believe it is a beneficial medical procedure
If we have any chance whatsoever of getting through to pro-circ people then our methods and verbiage needs to change!
women already have that term, MUTILATION
It would help stop the argument made by many that FGM is so much worse than MGM
they say, "you can't compare MGM to FGM, because FGM is so much worse! Whereas circumcision is only just a little snippy medical procedure. FGM is sadistic and evil body tampering!"
I propose we change MGM from meaning male genital mutilation
to
male genital modification
Now, I'm certainly not saying that I don't believe it isn't mutilation. My point is that there needs to be a distinction between FGM and MGM, at least in the eyes of the pro-circ crowd. Take this comment for example made by someone from this post.
"I don't know of anyone who has problems with the historical facts you presented. The thing we object to his your use of the word "mutilation."
Part of the definition of mutilation is that the damage is SEVERE. Male circumcision just doesn't rise to that level.
The penis remains perfectly functional as the ability of Jewish men to have children and pee normally demonstrates. In fact, it statistically lowers the incidence of UTI's. Compare this to female genital mutilation which destroys the natural ability of the woman to experience sexual pleasure.
It is also seen as more attractive and sexy by many women--that is certainly not the reaction you see when people view someone mutilated by a sadistic criminal.
And finally, parents all over the world routinely make decisions for their children, including markers of tribal identity such as scarring or tattooing or applying the neck rings that will stretch the neck. I never hear the anti-circumcision crowd objecting to these practices. Any time I see a double standard, I know that bigotry is involved.
Anthropologists do NOT refer to male circumcision as mutilation. The only people who use the word mutilation are those philosophically opposed to circumcision, who use it as a way of emotionally inflating their cause. It's no different than calling teachers "groomers" for presenting positive LGBTQ materials, or using the word "fascist" for routine regulations.
Sadly, some folks are so culturally imperialistic that they are willing to butt into things that are none of their business. Haven't we had enough of westerners imposing our culture onto other peoples?"
I've seen so many people say otherwise and even believed it myself for some time. that there were so many other reasons why people choose to have their sons cut before they leave the hospital.
I've come to the conclusion that ignorance definitely is the utmost reason! Not ignorant though in the way that a lot of people think, but a different type of ignorance.
first they just trust in whatever the doctor says. They are the professionals when it comes to this kind of stuff. doc knows best. who am I to question his authority and expertise?
second, they wrongly think that it can't be so bad otherwise it would be illegal. At least somewhere in the world. most of the entire world seems fine with cutting infants genitals(even those countries that don't practice it openly like the US does, they also are indifferent to it. They just say "hey that's your thing" "not ours, but to each his own.") so they are led to believe that it is perfectly acceptable thing to do to their own children.
and lastly, people mistakenly believe that men are entirely fine and unaffected by it when they were subjected to it as infants , so there can't be any harm in it whatsoever. To the laymen or average american, men in the US seem to be quite normal. If they didn't appear to be so normal and 100% fine with what happened to them, maybe everyone wouldn't feel it is the appropriate thing to do to their infant sons.
In May 2005, Iceland amended its General Penal Code to criminalize female genital mutilation.
Any person who, in an assault, causes physical injury or damage to the health of a girl
child or woman by removing her sexual organs, partly or in their
entirety, shall be imprisoned for up to 6 years. If the assault results
in serious physical injury or health damage, or in death, or if it is
considered particularly reprehensible due to the method used, punishment
for the offense shall take the form of up to 16 years' imprisonment.
In February 2018, the Progressive Party proposed a bill that would change the words "girl child" to "child" and "her sexual organs" to "[their] sexual organs", thereby making Iceland the first European country to ban male circumcision for non-medical reasons. The bill was ultimately put on hold later that year following pressure from the United States, Israel, and various lobbyist groups.
A healthy baby is born.
He is not sick. He is not injured. His body is functioning exactly as human bodies evolved to function.
Then adults restrain him and remove part of his genitals.
He cannot understand what is happening. He cannot refuse. He cannot consent. He cannot ask them to wait until the body belongs to someone old enough to speak for it.
We call this circumcision.
That word has done an extraordinary amount of moral work. It transforms cutting into procedure, injury into tradition, and the removal of healthy tissue into parental choice. It allows an act that would horrify us in almost any other context to occur in hospitals, religious ceremonies, and clinics without the ethical alarm it deserves.
The central issue is not complicated.
A child’s body does not belong to his parents, his religion, his doctor, his culture, or the government.
It belongs to him.
Everything else is an excuse.
Circumcision is often protected by one of the most dangerous sentences in human history.
We have always done it.
Human beings have always done many things. We have scarred children, arranged marriages, beaten students, denied women legal personhood, sterilized disabled people, and punished anyone who questioned inherited authority.
Tradition tells us that a practice is old. It does not tell us that it is moral.
Circumcision did not begin as modern medicine. Ancient cultures used it as a religious sign, a tribal marker, a test of endurance, a ritual of masculinity, and a method of enforcing belonging. In the Hebrew Bible, it became a physical covenant carved into the male body. In other societies, it marked the passage from boyhood into manhood.
The meaning changed from place to place, but the structure remained the same.
The community declared ownership over the body.
The cut told the individual who he belonged to before he was old enough to decide who he was.
That is why the consent question is so threatening. Once we admit the child owns his body, tradition no longer gets the final word.
Circumcision did not spread through American hospitals because doctors discovered that every male child was born medically defective.
It spread during an era of sexual panic.
Nineteenth century physicians claimed masturbation caused blindness, madness, epilepsy, weakness, disease, and moral collapse. The foreskin became a convenient enemy. Doctors argued that removing it would reduce pleasure, discourage boys from touching themselves, and train them into sexual discipline.
John Harvey Kellogg openly recommended circumcising boys without anesthesia because he believed the pain should function as punishment.
Read that again.
One of the men who helped popularize circumcision in America did not hide behind hygiene or infection prevention. He wanted the procedure to hurt. He believed pain would teach boys not to masturbate.
This was not medicine.
It was sexual repression performed with a knife.
Yet the practice survived long after the original justification became embarrassing. Medicine did not admit that it had built a routine operation on moral panic and pseudoscience. It simply replaced the language.
Punishment became prevention.
Sexual control became hygiene.
The knife remained.
Modern defenders rarely describe circumcision as control over sexuality. They speak in cleaner terms.
Risk reduction.
Preventive medicine.
Parental preference.
Public health.
Routine procedure.
These phrases sound neutral because neutrality is exactly what they are designed to create.
The language removes the blood, the restraint, the screaming, the irreversible loss, and the person who will one day grow into the body being altered.
A permanent act becomes a billing code.
A moral conflict becomes a cost benefit analysis.
A child becomes a patient who is never asked what he wants.
Medical language is useful when it explains reality. It becomes dangerous when it launders reality.
There is nothing neutral about removing healthy tissue from the genitals of a person who cannot consent.
Calling it a procedure does not change what physically happens.
Calling it preventive does not prove it is necessary.
Calling it parental choice does not make it the child’s choice.
Circumcision defenders often retreat to potential medical benefits. They mention lower rates of certain infections, sexually transmitted diseases, or rare cancers.
Even if every claimed benefit were accepted without dispute, the ethical problem would remain.
We do not remove healthy body parts from children because those parts might cause problems decades later.
We do not remove breast tissue from girls because breast cancer is possible.
We do not remove the appendix from every infant because appendicitis may occur.
We do not remove healthy skin because it might someday become infected.
We teach hygiene. We provide vaccines. We encourage safer sex. We offer testing, condoms, medication, and treatment. When a medical problem develops, we respond to the actual condition.
We do not preemptively cut healthy children because adults fear what may happen in the future.
The foreskin is not a birth defect.
The intact male body is not a medical emergency.
Most boys can safely grow into men without having part of their genitals surgically removed.
If an adult man decides that the potential benefits justify circumcision, he can choose it for himself.
The entire ethical argument is contained in that sentence.
He can choose it for himself.
Religious freedom is essential.
Adults should be free to pray, worship, fast, dress, gather, follow rituals, and make sacrifices with their own bodies.
But religious freedom cannot mean permanent authority over someone else’s flesh.
A newborn cannot believe in a covenant. He cannot accept a religious obligation. He cannot understand the meaning assigned to the ritual. The adults act first and attach consent afterward.
That is not the child practicing religion.
That is adults practicing religion on the child.
The distinction matters.
A parent may teach a child a faith. A parent may bring the child into a religious community. A parent may explain traditions and values. But permanently modifying the child’s genitals crosses a line between guidance and ownership.
A child may grow up to embrace the family’s religion. He may reject it. He may reinterpret it. He may join another faith or none at all.
His body should not be permanently marked before his beliefs exist.
Religious traditions have changed before. They can change again. Some Jewish families already practice brit shalom, a covenant ceremony that welcomes the child without cutting him.
Meaning can survive without blood.
Faith can survive without removing flesh.
Western society condemns female genital cutting because it violates bodily integrity, causes harm, and is performed on children who cannot consent.
Then the same society defends male genital cutting as tradition, hygiene, or parental choice.
The ethical principle should not change depending on the sex of the child.
Healthy genital tissue is healthy genital tissue.
A child who cannot consent is a child who cannot consent.
Cultural acceptance does not transform an irreversible act into an ethical one.
The usual response is that female genital cutting is more severe. In many cases, it is. But severity does not decide whether bodily autonomy exists.
Removing a finger is worse than removing part of an ear. That does not make removing part of a child’s ear acceptable.
We do not need to pretend every form of genital cutting is medically identical to recognize the shared moral structure.
Adults are altering the genitals of children for reasons the children cannot evaluate or refuse.
One practice has been clearly named as a rights violation.
The other has been protected by familiarity.
Parents make necessary decisions for children every day. They authorize vaccines, emergency treatment, medication, and surgery when a child’s health is at risk.
That authority exists because children sometimes need protection before they can understand what protection requires.
But parental authority has limits.
Parents cannot tattoo an infant because they find the design beautiful.
They cannot remove part of a child’s ear because it matches the family.
They cannot surgically alter a healthy body merely because the father’s body was altered the same way.
Medical necessity can justify overriding consent.
Tradition cannot.
Aesthetic preference cannot.
Social pressure cannot.
The fear that a boy may look different from his father cannot.
The fact that something was done to one generation does not create the right to do it to the next.
Parents who chose circumcision are not necessarily cruel. Many trusted doctors, followed family customs, or believed they were protecting their children. The point is not to condemn every parent.
The point is to stop repeating the act.
Good intentions do not create bodily ownership.
Many circumcised men do not feel harmed. Some are satisfied. Some strongly defend the decision made for them.
Their experiences deserve respect.
So do the experiences of men who feel violated, angry, sexually diminished, betrayed, or grief stricken.
Yet men who object are often mocked. They are told it was only skin. They are called obsessive. They are told they should be grateful. Their distress is treated as proof that something is wrong with them rather than evidence that permanent bodily alteration can carry permanent psychological consequences.
This is how normalized harm protects itself.
First, the person is denied a choice.
Then he is denied the right to object.
The absence of universal trauma does not establish ethical consent. Some people may be perfectly happy with a decision others made about their bodies. That does not prove those adults had the right to make it.
Consent is not created retroactively by satisfaction.
A man who is happy to be circumcised loses nothing when future children are allowed to choose for themselves.
A man who wishes he had remained intact can never recover the choice that was taken from him.
That imbalance should decide the issue.
A healthy child should not have part of his genitals permanently removed unless there is an immediate medical need that cannot safely wait.
That principle is not radical.
It is the minimum standard of bodily autonomy.
Circumcision has survived because every generation inherited a ready made excuse. Religion. Hygiene. Masculinity. Sexual control. Disease prevention. Parental preference. Social conformity.
The justification changes whenever the previous one becomes indefensible.
The knife does not.
We tell children that their bodies belong to them. We teach them that no adult may touch their private parts without a legitimate reason. We claim that consent matters. We insist that bodily autonomy is a human right.
Then we create an exception during the first days of life, when the child is least able to defend himself.
That contradiction cannot be repaired with medical jargon.
Either the child owns his body or he does not.
Either consent matters or it does not.
Either healthy genital tissue may be removed without the person’s permission or it may not.
Circumcision is not merely a medical debate.
It is a test of whether our principles survive when tradition demands an exception.
The child cannot speak.
That does not mean he has nothing to say.
His body is the answer.
Leave it alone.
this kind of stuff needs to be talked about!
for me, I never had a conversation about infant circumcision with him. He did bring up the cutting of females in Africa though during a discussion we once had. He was appalled by that. Yeah, I know, he presented me with the perfect opportunity to confront him about my RIC. I don't know why I didn't because even at the time I was kind of awake about the damage it did to me. This was in 2013 or 2014. I know him fairly well and I'd say he just has stronger feelings towards the mistreatment of women as opposed to men.
Ultimately the reason why I feel he was fine with me being cut at 1 day old is his stance that, well it was done to me so you get it too, sort of thing. Not so that my penis would match his, but that I deserved the same treatment in life that he received. Not even that he would resent me being whole and him not. Possibly he would ahve been jealous of me. He didn't have a pleasant childhood. His stepfather was fairly abusive towards him. I think it is comparable along the lines of being the same as people who were abused as children grow up to be abusers themselves, in a lot of cases. He had a very good filter for BS and I think he knew for sure that it damaged him as a person and he wasn't about to let me escape the fate that befell him. Maybe like some sort of demented cosmic justice for him? IDK?
Do most redditors censor their own posts and comments? Some subs the comments are all mostly uninhibited. Or is it just extreme ignorance?
Take for instance this recent post at the sex subreddit.
as of now, 90 comments and not a single one of the comments suggests that maybe circumcision is the cause. There were a couple of men who say that they don't feel enough sensation to make any sort of vocalizations and just leave it at that.
and then there are many comments saying that they do make a lot of noise during sex. I wonder if these are all just the intact men?
I guess, I'll just post this here since it got immediately banned from r/sex.
I don't want your sympathy only a thoughtful discussion.
This is a serious question. I stopped having sex over 35 years ago because I derived no pleasure from it. I wasn't trying to create life with the act of intercourse. This ultimately led me to be utterly alone in life, since I lost my desire to procure a life partner.