NobleSavage
Veteran Member
For infants, it should be illegal. For adults, your junk, your choice.
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Should circumcisions be illegal?
- Thread starter NobleSavage
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Ya, it should be legal. Not really an important enough issue to bother banning it.
fromderinside
Mazzie Daius
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More botched tonsillectomies than circumcisions I'd think. Both done for 'health' reasons yano.
Health reasons....such as....
NobleSavage
Veteran Member
Don't know, but I found a lawyer specializing in circumcision law: http://www.thecircumcisionlawyer.com/FAQs.aspx
NobleSavage
Veteran Member
There is some evidence that circumcision decreases the chance of getting HIV, STDs, and UTIs. The general idea is that bacteria or viruses can collect under the foreskin.
Perspicuo
Veteran Member
Jarhyn
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My junk my choice. Genitals are, like it or not, fairly central to our activities and self image. Other people executing irreversible executive authority over that just isn't acceptable, especially when this element has no appreciable effect on the well-being of society.
PyramidHead
Contributor
Has this really been established, though? If it could be shown that circumcision had a significant impact on e.g. STD transmission, would you still object to it being done on infants? If so, would you have the same stance on the vaccination of infants?
J842P
Veteran Member
Vaccination has no alternatives that offer the same level of protection. There are many alternatives to circumcision if you want to lower your chances of getting infected with an STD.
ETA: Anyway, the whole STD thing is a red herring. The reason circumcision was started as a practice for non-religious reasons in Western society was to prevent boys from masturbating. It was explicitly begun as a way to dampen male sexual feeling because of Victorian prudishness. Back then, people believed all sorts of nonsense with regards to masturbation.
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Perspicuo
Veteran Member
Not only is it a red herring. If STD prevention is the goal, instead of circumcision why not get a condom on? An uncircumcised penis is still completely on the STD shooting range, whereas a rubber has the penis covered.
When there is no illness-related reason to proceed, there's no [real, non-superstitious] reason to circumcise, unless you're planning on not giving your boy sex ed (granting the red herring for the sake of discussion).
When there is no illness-related reason to proceed, there's no [real, non-superstitious] reason to circumcise, unless you're planning on not giving your boy sex ed (granting the red herring for the sake of discussion).
I've heard of a natural experiment in this--I forget where in Africa but one group circumcises, one does not. The researchers can't find any other noticeable behavioral issue--but they can see the difference in HIV rates.
dystopian
Veteran Member
I've heard that being referenced before. It's a favorite of circumcision advocates to trot out. Of course, it completely fails to acknowledge that there is no significant observed difference in HIV rates between circumcised and non-circumcised males in the developed world (or even the entire world itself), which means that even if the researchers could be absolutely certain it was specifically due to circumcision (which they can't) it would still be a complete non-argument when it comes to applying it in the west. Circumcision is common in the US, but rare in Europe; yet the latter has a lower HIV rate than the former. Even in Africa we see no real correlation between the HIV rate and the rate of circumcision at the country level; there's countries that have the same level of circumcision with wildly different rates of HIV, and vice versa. So even if they've found some noticeable effect in two isolated groups in Africa, we don't see the same noticeable effect when we look anywhere else; any effect that may or may not be there is obviously drowned out by other things to the point of being insignificant.
Rate of Circumcision by country:
HIV/Aids rate by country:
Looking at these maps, I don't see how anyone can conclude there's a link.
PyramidHead
Contributor
Yeah, it must be nearly impossible to control for all other factors. I'm not surprised that the link they observe in a single population does not map perfectly to the entire world--that's just statistics.
Agreed--it's only an indication of what happens when you don't have decent sex ed or resources. Condoms are far superior.
NobleSavage
Veteran Member
Because then penis jokes would become incomprehensible and you'd be cutting out about 90% of the world's humour. The world needs to laugh, man. Try thinking of somebody other than yourself for a change.
dystopian
Veteran Member
Because then penis jokes would become incomprehensible and you'd be cutting out about 90% of the world's humour. The world needs to laugh, man. Try thinking of somebody other than yourself for a change.
I'd never be able to finish a rambling story that everyone's stopped listening to halfway through with "...and then I jerked off." ever again.