Bad Threads on Circumcision

[ml66uk]

Originally Posted by JustAGirl

Can you elaborate? How would it measurably hurt less if done later in life?

Two main reasons:
1) If it's done later in life, then general anaesthetic can be used. Doctors used to say that newborns couldn't feel pain. That always seemed ludicrous to me, but latest research shows that not only do they feel pain, but they may be a lot more sensitive to it than older children or adults. There are parts of the NHS in Britain that circumcise Muslims, but they won't do it till the baby is at least six months old, so that general anesthetic can be used. Worldwide, only about 20-25% of boys will ever get circumcised, but only about 2% are circumcised shortly after birth. The others will usually be at least 8-10 years old.

2) If you wait, you don't have to separate the foreskin from the glans. This is actually the most painful part of the procedure. It's comparable to ripping thumbnails out. The early forms of religious circumcision didn't do this btw as they only removed the overhanging part of the foreskin and left most of it intact. The form of circumcision that's common today was only introduced around 130AD, and appears to have been to prevent Jewish men from hiding their Jewishness.

Good luck to sera300 for a speedy and fully recovery!

[JustAGirl]

If it's done later in life, then general anaesthetic can be used. Doctors used to say that newborns couldn't feel pain. That always seemed ludicrous to me, but latest research shows that not only do they feel pain, but they may be a lot more sensitive to it than older children or adults. There are parts of the NHS in Britain that circumcise Muslims, but they won't do it till the baby is at least six months old, so that general anesthetic can be used.

I'd be interested to see that research. I would think that for the limited surface area that this surface area covers, local anaesthetic would be sufficient; have there been adult circumcisions performed with local only, to your knowledge, and was there commentary afterwards about its degree of pain?

If you wait, you don't have to separate the foreskin from the glans. This is actually the most painful part of the procedure. It's comparable to ripping thumbnails out.

Excellent point, thanks for the explanation.

Wishing Sera a swift recovery!

[sera300]

Hey to Everyone;

Realize I am in the hospital and drugged to the max until they decide what to do to me. Plus the nurses are watching me--cannot use laptops.

Anyhow, ML, Andre, Pal., Hugh, etc. I did get the chance to see some of the info you posted. One matter is the operating system for Windows does not allow much to be viewed--in fact it stinks.

I see your point. There is not doubt that baby's feel pain, I avoid them like the plague for suturing lacerations, head injuries, and even vaccinations. I despise causing harm to anyone.

ML, you clearly lined out reasons for non-circumcisions. I do know they use anesthetics where I am and that was why I accompanied my nephew so screw ups.

I really believe the practice needs to be examined for several reasons:
1- Jewish men should not be done for religion. Gee, I am Catholic and the most anti-establishment person you will find.

2-Parents of uncut boys must wash their male children well and continue teaching as they grow older.

3-Americans MUST get over their phobia of talking sex and proper sex practices with their kids. Mainly HIV transmission is a big issue here--ignore it and it will vanish. Abstinence is not an option [President Bush opinions]. I think I have become a Democrat.

4-If a man or young boy is to be cut, general is not needed since they have developed alternative drugs where not patient knows what happens using a good anesthesiologist is primary.

5-Cut men transmit diseases too--even those well educated.

I do wish to digest more of the info you all have provided but need my brain without pain meds to do so...and to get surgery done is imperative. Gee, I do not even drink! Lipase 1200 and Amylase of 600?

Plus to flat tires and a post in the driveway run over? All in one week.

Will continue to follow.

[andremara]

Sera,
I am very sorry to hear about your situation and hope you have a speedy recovery. You’re interest in this topic despite being in a hospital tells me it’s having an impact on you; either that or you just like the company I’m encouraged that you and others are getting a different perspective on circumcision and glad you desire a more general reexamination of circumcision. I’d like to offer some more perspective.
A few posts ago you said: “Each of you Men have your personal reasons for why you feel as you do, whatever experiences you have or have [not] had [regarding circumcision].” I may be incorrectly interpreting this based on your most recent post, but the way this was received by me anyway, was that an operation was performed, followed by an emotional response (or not) of the recipient. My sense was that there was tolerance and acceptance for how someone feels; a willingness to accept and listen to people with an opinion or an emotion about being cut. At the same time the validity of the operation - the premise that the operation must have been deemed necessary, and therefore was necessary – by a medical professional; that premise didn’t seem to be challenged as much in that comment, but your most recent post does seem to be suggesting that you’re willing to reconsider the merits of the surgery. So, good!
About the video from Doctors Opposing Circumcision. It’s only around 10 minutes, but describes all the useful things a prepuce does and is. This is a crucial element that helps ground any discussion about circumcision. Because none of us were taught this –no doctor is taught this today during formal studies - and because the producer packs SO much information into that short video, even my first viewing was not as useful because I missed a lot. My belief is that when something is seen as useful, as serving a purpose, the strong tendency will lean against eliminating it, despite any supposed health benefits that may obtain by its removal. This will hopefully occur with the prepuce…of the male – it’s already helped the female. That is why other body parts are not routinely removed as often, like appendix and tonsils since we understand there to be a function to these. Medical knowledge and actual medical practice, like anything else, experience a lag time before synchronizing, and this lag time can be decades. Common, public knowledge can take even longer. Medicine DOES know about the prepuce, but it’s a highly charged issue – doctors are people who grew up in a particular culture – and it contradicts what they learned (foreskin is…what you cut off during circ; its disease-prone, dirty, etc), during a most grueling education process that is highly competitive and cannibalistic. You don’t question what you learned, you learn it well and excel, so you can become a doctor, or a nurse, etc. My father’s a cardiologist (chief of cardiology for many years at a prestigious hospital, wrote books, well-respected), mother’s a nurse, sister’s a Physician’s assistant, sister-in-law is a labor/delivery nurse; growing up in a medical household has given me this perspective. I’m the black sheep I guess By the way, I am very proud of my father, and grateful for the analytical process each of these members takes in evaluating a disease process; their strength in strong adherence to their education in the case of circumcision becomes their weakness. Otherwise it is a positive quality. Fwew! Next.
One fallacy that must be reexamined, Sera, is the notion that the penis with a foreskin is dirty dirty dirty. Wash it constantly. Be vigilant else the little guy will have to be circumcised. I would like to argue the contrary by analogy, a weaker form of argument, but I think possibly a stronger impact on the reader than playing the ‘citation, please’ game, ok? So, what other body part must be fastidiously washed…or else? How do we clean a toddler’s vagina. Her anus? Her mouth? Each body part is treated a bit different, and there are differences in how the parent treats them. I’ve seen a friend clean an infant’s vagina, especially around her prepuce with amazing scrupulousness. Others simply rinse the area. Most clean the anus well. None wash a toddler’s mouth out. Regarding the prepuce on the male, there is ample reason to leave it alone, to simply rinse the area. This has been covered elsewhere and I don’t wish to repeat. I’ll summarize by saying that the prepuce is fused to the glans and this probably serves to protect the infant from bacteria entering his body. Breastfeeding serves a critical function in inoculating the infant with beneficial bacteria that reduce the chance of UTI’s. Sounds much nicer than cutting off a body part, and kind of more, um. Balanced? Kinder? Proper diet for the mother may also help strengthen infant’s immune system. I know less in this area, but do know for example, that consuming gluten in a gluten-intolerant infant can cause a sustained immune battle that diverts energy from protecting against pathogens. Bonding in terms of touch is probably very important too. There’s another nice, simple thing we can do; touhing rather than cutting. What a concept Females and males do get UTI’s; is there a proportional difference in acquisition based on moms who eat properly (in general, and specifically for their infant’s chemistry if that’s possible to know), nursed regularly, and offered consistent touching, etc? Again, males aren’t in possession of a disease-prone penis any more than a female is. Females get UTI’s more frequently. Females are also treated conservatively and gently. Males are told their sex must buck up and go under the knife; or rather, ride directly above the knife as they are cut without anesthesia or rather ineffective anesthesia.
Body image is an issue big-time for females in this country. Be thin or else. Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf, part of the fourth wave feminist movement, clearly describes this in her book. We all know this sad commentary on an American obsession which has spread globally. Have we stopped to think about what effect the demonization of the prepuce has caused men? Unlike women, who assume being fat is a standard, and one in which they have a right to fight, most men don’t even question the wholesale vilification of their own natural bodies, specifically their prepuce. Yes, it’s dangerous. Thank you for cutting it off of me! Let’s institute mass cutting to save all boys from their own anatomies! Medicallized vilification, because medicine is the new religion. Question it at your own peril. Risk being ostracized. The vanguard who question medicine AND who resent having their sexual anatomy amputated are doubly scandalized, marginalized and humiliated. Just try to mention this in pubic and see what happens! We’ve all seen it here on this board – and this one’s tame compared to many I’ve witnessed. Not only is the male’s own issues with having his penis cut marginalized, but he’s not a real man for complaining about it. He’s also scoffed at and required to have a citation for everything he says. When he does, and shows how studies linking “uncircumcised” (read, unfinished, dirty) to disease (like the Wiswell studies on UTI’s) are flawed, he’s told he’s biased, or not allowed to comment without being a doctor. Meanwhile the status quo quotes Time magazine or makes an appeal to the current medical authorities without requiring any thought or argument of their own for why they choose to hold that position other than the tautology that it’s right because it’s right.
Whoa! There’s a lot of emotion here. I must pause…. There must be an understanding here that I am very grateful and happy to see some of the senior members on the board here beginning to question the status quo. I am grateful to their probing, useful questions. This diatribe is not aimed at them personally, although it appears to glance the bow on occasion. Referring again to Naomi’s book The Beauty Myth, her anger is more than apparent, and it is widely accepted as justified. When someone’s penis had been partially amputated and is angry about it, he’s seen as extreme. Does this make sense? This issue to me is the first wave of the new men’s movement, because it is the first assault done by force to his body as an infant, and has remained in effect, primarily through force of societal shaming and alarmist attitudes inconsistent with any other body part, first by the public, and then buttressed and perpetuated by the reigning medical establishment. When more men such as myself, Hugh, Joe and by the way, MANY others currently, find their voice and voice their opposition, we will see this topic really explode into a national discourse. Then we may have a real ‘reexamination of the issues’ as Sera wishes. Charting a course to that destination involves a willingness to discuss the issue in its larger social, ethical context. It never was primarily a medical issue, and the insistence of corralling it into this tertiary narrow scope will lead it down the dark quite hallways of acquiescence, where it mostly rests currently. (Continued in Part 2.)

[andremara]

To address Sera’s question on how I frame the issue, one need only reexamine the assumptions underlying tacit acceptance of male body cutting, and squaring them with seemingly very different assumptions regarding female body cutting. What makes them different? What makes them the same? If medical benefits similar to those allegedly bestowed on the male were extended to the female, what then would prevent us from considering cutting her anatomy without consent? Should an adult female in control of her own body be considered mentally unstable if she wishes her vulvar parts to be removed based on medical ‘proof’ of a benefit? At the same time, should an adult male who chooses to remain ‘unclean, unfinished, uncircumcised’ – intact, whole, normal in reality - be considered irresponsible and jeopardizing himself and his partners, as many on this post and elsewhere believe? A Tanzenian study shows a reduction in AIDS acquisition by cutting females’ genitals. Why don’t we jump on this study, and if found to be good science, seriously consider cutting females to lower AIDS rates? Why don’t we do more studies to determine if UTI’s STD’s cancer, etc is reduced by cutting off sexual tissue of females? After all, there’s a LOT more studies that should be done to determine how much benefit can be obtained by cutting females, so let’s get moving! What makes the vagina sacred; her clitoris, prepuce, outer labia, inner labia, etc. while making his penis sacred; his glans, erectile tissue, scrotum, except for his prepuce, the part that covers up to 90% of the shaft and imparts the most sensitivity??? Asking these questions is a great way I believe to help identify the core assumptions that prevent us from considering sexual surgery as an option EVEN if medical studies showed some benefit in a number of areas.
As you all know by now, I hold the bodies of all people - males and females – to be sacred due in large part for my immense respect for the incredible complexity of function whose purpose is for health and happiness. We are all sophomores in our understanding and act in hubris when we think we can outsmart the body by cutting off parts that are currently healthy. No, this is not a starting assumption; on the contrary it is the inevitable conclusion based on my personal experience and knowledge. And since it may inappropriate to presume any opinion unless blessed with the degree of doctor, it is also the conclusion of a goodly number of doctors as well.