Circumcision???

Paddy Cow

paddyandy wrote: »

We have 500+- Suicides in Ireland every year and many murders but those Tragedies don't get much attention on Boards.ie i wonder why ????????
Now a Circumcision i would have thought is a relatively minor thing ?????

There have been many threads on suicide and murder but this is the only thread on circumcision I have come across. As someone else pointed out, there is a great support thread on Depression so your post makes no sense, unless you are simply out to be antagonistic.

If circumcision is such a relatively minor thing, then I don't understand why parents can't wait until the child is an adult and decides for themselves. A child who has had water poured over it's head at a christening can grow up to become an atheist or chose a different religion but a child who has been circumcised cannot chose to reverse the procedure or grow a new foreskin.

A child who suffers complications or even death from the procedure, cannot undo those consequences either. Even if only a few children suffer adverse affects, it's still too many for what amounts to a pretty pointless practice. I hear "religious reasons" being thrown about the whole time but I've never understood that. Could anyone from a religious background explain it please? I'm not being a smart arse here but I just don't get how believing in God requires you to chop off part of the penis of your child?

Miss Lockhart

I wonder what would happen if, for example, the scientologists came out in the morning and declared that all male babies had to have a nipple-ectomy because their nipples are clearly unnecessary and were, in fact, put there by Xenu to remind men of their inability to nourish children.

The justification for non-medical circumcision stacks up about as well as that nonsense.

Again, if grown men want to go down that road by choice then so be it - but how this can be done to babies is baffling.

ToddyDoody

I'd be a lot more comfortable being unequivocally for circumcision if there was a reverse circumcision procedure available (and heavily advertised in public fora)

1ZRed

Paddy Cow wrote: »

but I just don't get how believing in God requires you to chop off part of the penis of your child?

I never thought of that. You'd think if God didn't like foreskins he wouldn't have created men with them?
It's a stupid custom from thousands of years ago that shouldn't still be held up in modern times. I've said it before I'm indifferent to the subject but let these guys grow up and choose what they want. At least then they're doing it out of their own choice or for a medical reason if that's the case.

Stinicker

A bright, young, fresh-out-of-school auditor just joined the IRS, excited to begin tracking down high-powered tax evaders.

Anxious for his first high-powered audit, he was a bit dismayed when his assignment was to audit a Rabbi.

Looking over the books and taxes were pretty straight forward, and the Rabbi was clearly very frugal, so he thought he'd make his day interesting by having a little fun with the Rabbi.

"Rabbi," he said, "I noticed that you buy a lot of candles."

"Yes," answered the Rabbi.

"Well, Rabbi, what do you do with the candle drippings?" he asked.

"A good question," noted the Rabbi. "We actually save them up and when we have enough, we send them back to the candle maker. And every now and then, they send us a free box of candles."

"Oh," replied the auditor somewhat disappointed that his unusual question actually had a practical answer, so he thought he'd go on, in his obnoxious way...

"Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases? What do you do with the crumbs from the matzo?"

"Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi calmly, "we actually collect up all the crumbs from the matzo and when we have enough, we send them in a box back to the manufacturer and every now and then, they send a box of matzo balls."


"Oh," replied the auditor, thinking hard now how to fluster the Rabbi. "Well, Rabbi," he went on, "what do you do with all the foreskins from the circumcisions?"

"Yes, here too, we do not waste," answered the Rabbi. "What we do is save up all the foreskins, and when we have enough we actually send them to the I.R.S."

"The I.R.S.?," questioned the auditor in disbelief.

"Ahh, yes," replied the Rabbi, " the I.R.S. " ...and about once a year, they send us a little prick like you."

peewee_44

I love a man with no foreskin

LH Pathe

peewee_44 wrote: »

I love a man with no foreskin

the circumcision will not be televised

Festy

peewee_44 wrote: »

I love a man with no foreskin

Call me

ihsb

gcgirl wrote: »

Yeh but there's up to a certain point when the boy-becoming a man when they can't pull the foreskin back after that they can like when they start tugging themselves but their must of been a reason why he got it removed, tight foreskin thingy which begins with a p

Nope it was for a different medical reason. Wasn't cosmetic at all... it just ended up liking the way it looked.

Wibbs

Paddy Cow wrote: »

There have been many threads on suicide and murder but this is the only thread on circumcision I have come across. As someone else pointed out, there is a great support thread on Depression so your post makes no sense, unless you are simply out to be antagonistic.

Indeed, there are numerous regularly updated threads/stickies on mental illness, depression and suicide support links throughout this website. It's about the best general resource on the topic in this country and doing more online to bring the whole area of mental health out in the open and to help people than our own government. So I'm with Paddy Cow, I've no idea what the other poster is on about TBH.

Could anyone from a religious background explain it please? I'm not being a smart arse here but I just don't get how believing in God requires you to chop off part of the penis of your child?

Basic blood offering/sacrifice to a deity. Many religions have that kind of thing. Ranging from animal sacrifice, sacrifice of precious goods, all the way to human sacrifice. The Maya took it to a mad degree, tearing out the living hearts of victims to display to their gods.

Christianity's climax to the story is a blood/human sacrifice to the deity, with the beefy bonus that sacrifice is the deity itself and comes back. The rite of communion is part of that body and blood stuff. In the hands of your full on type like Mel Gibson you got The Passion of the Christ which was gore porn sure to give hard ons to the eye swivelers in the cheap seats and equally disgust others.

Humans seem to get off on the blood letting vibe throughout time. Women were often seen as holy because of monthly menses in some cultures. In some Papuan cultures the men jam sharpened sticks into their nasal membranes once a month to echo this. Of course that can go t'other way and other cultures hold them as unclean for the same reason. This human deity isn't terribly consistent.

Circumcision would be part of this blood for god lark. In other cultures it's also seen as a rite of passage from child to man and membership of the group more usually taking place in adolescence. Circumcision has that secondary, but highly important part of the group thing for Jews and Muslims.

peewee_44 wrote: »

I love a man with no foreskin

I like a woman with a tidy looking bajingo, I'd not suggest surgical intervention on baby girls though.

Jester252

No sharp object is going near it

philologos

Wibbs: I'm fairly sure that most faiths that incorporate circumcision don't do so on the basis of it being a "blood sacrifice". In the case of Judaism it is to mark the covenant relationship between Abraham, his subsequent ancestors and God.

The reason by and large that Christians haven't adopted it, is because Christians believe that by the death and resurrection of Jesus, we become God's children by adoption if we repent and believe in Him.

I still remain unconvinced that there is a sound argument for circumcision being detrimental or harmful in any way, that's before we get into claiming it is abusive.

Wibbs

philologos wrote: »

Wibbs: I'm fairly sure that most faiths that incorporate circumcision don't do so on the basis of it being a "blood sacrifice". In the case of Judaism it is to mark the covenant relationship between Abraham, his subsequent ancestors and God.

mark a covenant signed in blood. Of course it's a blood sacrifice.

The reason by and large that Christians haven't adopted it, is because Christians believe that by the death and resurrection of Jesus, we become God's children by adoption if we repent and believe in Him.

Nope, the main reason Christians didn't adopt it was because the Roman and Greek world the faith was spreading into wouldn't go for it. It was considered a barbaric primitive practice by both(Hadrian enshrined this in law with severe punishments attached). The faith would likely not have grown if they had insisted on it. Christianity became a romanised faith on the back of that contact. Ditto for the lack of dietary restrictions compared to Judaism. Now you can argue this back and forth as you do, but that's the history of it. I could add in links, but you'll happily ignore or dismiss them as per usual so arsed I couldn't be.

I still remain unconvinced that there is a sound argument for circumcision being detrimental or harmful in any way, that's before we get into claiming it is abusive.

The practice removes a good chunk of highly enervated and vascularised tissue that has a sexual/practical purpose. We evolved to have a foreskin and there's a reason for that. Before notions of "vestigial" pop up, it is not like the appendix, it has clear functions, even specialised cells found nowhere else on the body. Removing it will have an effect, doing so as a blanket thing because of fashion or daft religious reasoning is very hard to defend.

philologos

Wibbs wrote: »

mark a covenant signed in blood. Of course it's a blood sacrifice.

That's not true at least from the perspective of the Torah:

Genesis 17:9-14 wrote:

And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

It's not a sacrifice. It's a sign of the covenant.

Wibbs wrote: »

Nope, the main reason Christians didn't adopt it was because the Roman and Greek world the faith was spreading into wouldn't go for it. It was considered a barbaric primitive practice by both(Hadrian enshrined this in law with severe punishments attached). The faith would likely not have grown if they had insisted on it. Christianity became a romanised faith on the back of that contact. Ditto for the lack of dietary restrictions compared to Judaism. Now you can argue this back and forth as you do, but that's the history of it. I could add in links, but you'll happily ignore or dismiss them as per usual so arsed I couldn't be.

All I can say is, you should open the Bible and see what Christians really believe rather than what you would like them to believe.

The reality is Christians don't hold to dietary restrictions because Jesus very clearly said that what is unclean is what comes from the human heart:

Mark 7:18b-23 wrote:

Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” ( Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

There are plenty of passages that discuss circumcision in the New Testament. One example is Romans 2:12-28.

What you've said, simply isn't true about what either Jews or Christians believe on the subject. The New Testament was written long before Hadian's reign. It also ignores that there was a Jewish diaspora right across Europe long before Hadrian.

Wibbs wrote: »

The practice removes a good chunk of highly enervated and vascularised tissue that has a sexual/practical purpose. We evolved to have a foreskin and there's a reason for that. Before notions of "vestigial" pop up, it is not like the appendix, it has clear functions, even specialised cells found nowhere else on the body. Removing it will have an effect, doing so as a blanket thing because of fashion or daft religious reasoning is very hard to defend.

The Wikipedia entry I mentioned earlier goes through a number of cases that show that there are pros and cons to both being uncircumcised and being circumcised. I'm still far from convinced that it destroy's anyones capacity to enjoy sex.

Neeson

Was Jaysus circumcised then if all this stuff is in the bible?

ilovelamp2000

laoch na mona wrote: »

genital mutilation is always wrong

I got it done recently (on account of a broken banjo string). It's not genital mutilation at all.

It looks really good now. I might start modelling.

gcgirl

ilovelamp2000 wrote: »

laoch na mona wrote: »

genital mutilation is always wrong

I got it done recently (on account of a broken banjo string). It's not genital mutilation at all.

It looks really good now. I might start modelling.

Though it is if your a 6 month old baby,you've no say, you had to get it done because of a medical condition

giles lynchwood

I'm very proud of my purple Diamond Cutter and would never want an anteater in it's place.:cool:

ilovelamp2000

gcgirl wrote: »

Though it is if your a 6 month old baby,you've no say, you had to get it done because of a medical condition

It's not mutilation when it looks better, no matter what age you are

Gbear

ilovelamp2000 wrote: »

It's not mutilation when it looks better, no matter what age you are

Who decides what "looks better"?

An infant child doesn't anyway.

If they want to get it done because they think it's great then nobody wants to stop them from doing that later.

The problem is performing it on someone who has no capacity to consent when there's no downside to just leaving them get it themselves when they're old enough.

paddyandy

There are PLENTY of websites on what a Mohel does and a bris is .Some here have another agenda .It's discussed very badly on Boards.ie .Because you don't understand it is no reason to disapprove .Google it !!!!!! There is no excuse for not understanding these days so Google it and be certain it's a genuine website without political or religious agendas .

kylith

steddyeddy wrote: »

Actually it improves the sex lives of whoever I sleep with :P

That's your opinion. I've had great sex with both circumcised and uncircumcised men.

One thing I've found with cut guys is that you need more lube. One of the functions of the foreskin is to act a a plug, keeping natural lube in the vagina, a cut penis acts as a scoop, scraping the lube out.

Gbear wrote: »

?.. You cannot, on the other hand, regrow a foreskin.

actually you can. The skin on the penis can stretch like any other skin and will, eventually, cover the head and sensitivity can be regained over time.

philologos wrote: »

Should we outlaw all medical procedures because a small number of people may die from them? Or if you say that circumcision isn't medical, compare it to cosmetic surgery. I'd hazard a guess to say that most complications from circumcision are done by careless procedures.

I have no interest in circumcision personally, and I wouldn't advocate it, but I don't believe that considerable harm is done by circumcision for the most part.

Some by botched operations. Some by the incredibly bad idea that is keeping a fresh wound inside a nappy full of excrement.

Neeson wrote: »

Was Jaysus circumcised then if all this stuff is in the bible?

Sure he was, he was Jewish.

Gbear wrote: »

The problem is performing it on someone who has no capacity to consent when there's no downside to just leaving them get it themselves when they're old enough.

This. 1000 times this.

Gbear

kylith wrote: »

actually you can. The skin on the penis can stretch like any other skin and will, eventually, cover the head and sensitivity can be regained over time.

I saw a Penn and Teller: Bull**** episode on circumcision and they covered this. There was a pretty small sample size of men who regrew their forskin (or stretched it) on display but I don't think it looked the same and i'd be astonished if it was fully functional when regrown.

My name is URL

Monkey Priest of Killybashangel wrote: »

Ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh....ah ah ah ah!

Fair point

ilovelamp2000

Gbear wrote: »

Who decides what "looks better"?

An infant child doesn't anyway.

If they want to get it done because they think it's great then nobody wants to stop them from doing that later.

The problem is performing it on someone who has no capacity to consent when there's no downside to just leaving them get it themselves when they're old enough.

Will I post up some pics and we can have a poll ?

Wibbs

ilovelamp2000 wrote:

I got it done recently (on account of a broken banjo string).

If that was the only reason then you were ill advised medically. Like a dentist removing an otherwise healthy tooth when all you required was a small filling.

It's not mutilation when it looks better, no matter what age you are

Aside from the appearance factor which is debatable at best, dubious at worst(ring of scar tissue on my knob wouldn't be a look I'd be too happy with) would you extend this to women with "untidy" vulvas? Would you extend that to newborn baby girls in such a case? I doubt it.

What I find interesting are the reasons for circumcision in the male are remarkably close to those reasons given for female circumcision. For a moment let's not fly the red herring flag of damage done for a moment. Even removal of the clitoral hood, equivalent to male circumcision, is banned in most countries. Let's look at the reasons; religious, cultural, tradition, her grandmother had it done and I had it done, therefore... it's "cleaner", would put off a partner if not done, they wouldn't fit in if left intact, hell even the old guff about reducing fiddling with themselves is thrown in. Sounds terribly familiar. The reason we frown on "savages" who do that to young girls, but don't frown on the civilised who "augment" male genitals is down to the simple fact it's more acceptable in our culture. If cultures that practised FGM were the majority we'd likely be happy to go along with it too.

paddyandy wrote: »

There are PLENTY of websites on what a Mohel does and a bris is .Some here have another agenda .It's discussed very badly on Boards.ie .Because you don't understand it is no reason to disapprove .Google it !!!!!! There is no excuse for not understanding these days so Google it and be certain it's a genuine website without political or religious agendas .

What agenda? If it's an agenda that backs leaving the choice of body modification until a person is of an age to choose, then colour me in, I'll wear that tee shirt. That's what freedom is to me, informed choice. Doubtless religious/cultural/whatever groups will cry oppression and removal of choice, but what choice does a newborn have? None, that's what. Their "choice" is foisted upon them by their parent's culture. Our children rely or should rely on parents to nurture them to a point where they can make a choice, not make it for them on non medical grounds. If parents won't do it, then society has to take up that slack.

paddyandy

Wibbs Google it until you understand it .It's an extremely fine operation no more distressing than a baptism .No Parent has ever been known to object but i have no doubt we could dig up something . Could'nt we ? We always manage something on this kind of thread .

opinion guy

paddyandy wrote: »

Wibbs Google it until you understand it .It's an extremely fine operation no more distressing than a baptism .No Parent has ever been known to object but i have no doubt we could dig up something . Could'nt we ? We always manage something on this kind of thread .

Wow.

I've read Wibbs posts on this many times. I believe he is most expert on the topic

Toby Take a Bow

paddyandy wrote: »

It's an extremely fine operation no more distressing than a baptism .

Can you really compare an operation to a ceremony?

Wibbs

paddyandy wrote: »

Wibbs Google it until you understand it .

I suspect we could break Google's servers and it wouldn't be enough for some. Better translation? Google until you agree with me. Eh no. Doesnt work like that.

It's an extremely fine operation no more distressing than a baptism

Are you seriously suggesting pouring water on a baby's head is within sniffing distance of forcibly retracting an undeveloped adhered foreskin and slicing it off with a blade without anaesthesia? No really, are you being serious? read back what you wrote and have a little think about it.

No Parent has ever been known to object but i have no doubt we could dig up something . Could'nt we ?

What? Parents have objected, hence the fashion for it in non religious circles has dropped off. Some Jewish groups have objected and halted the practice.

We always manage something on this kind of thread .

You earlier spoke of agendas, I'd love to hear yours. I'd put money it's religious or cultural in nature.