For context, I’m circumcised and expecting a son and my wife and I are torn about the circ. We’re American so from a cultural standpoint circumcision is the default choice. Thing is, there’s no real benefit besides practicing a religion we don’t believe in, and I’m uncomfortable about cutting the tip of my son’s dick off.
On the other side, I’ve met a guy who was bullied in high school so bad for it he got a circ as an adult. Apparently crazy painful recovery. I’ve also talked to women who are generally grossed out by uncircumcised men. I don’t want to make him feel like something’s wrong with him his whole life because I was uncomfortable with the idea.
From a moral standpoint I’m against it, but from a social and cultural standpoint I feel like I should do it? It’s a crappy situation. If there’s any uncircumcised American men who want to talk about their penis I’m all ears.
Edit: I really appreciate everyone’s responses I never expected to hear from so many people. With the decision hinging on social and cultural norms it’s been really helpful to be able to take the temperature like this. I obviously need to talk to my wife, but given the overwhelming support of dick hats I don’t thing we’re going to do it. Thanks, lemmings!
Dude I have a foreskin and it’s fucking rad. I can pinch it closed when I pee and it’ll fill up like a balloon. How could you deny your son that?
Can’t argue with that
Lmao love all this genuine life advice and you say nothing, one dude shows up and is like "I get to play with my dick like this and you’re 100% in hell yeah territory.
Rad.
It’s more relatable than some moral position hah
I feel seen
There’s also this wonderful comment about memories of playing “peek-a-boo” in the bathtub.
It’s important to take time to enjoy the simple things in life.
Can confirm
You can’t be bullied if everyone is uncut. And as you say it’s cultural, it makes absolutely no sense for me and I don’t understand parents who voluntarily butcher the genitals of their children. I can’t believe it still exists.
I had a “friend” in highschool try to make me feel bad about being uncut. Saying the typical pseudoscience of “you’re dirty” “girls don’t like it”, it was that day that I decided this guy was stupid beyond repair.
It still exists because people with circumcisions see it as an improvement. It’s better.
You may like it better, and it should be your choice to have it. It should be an elective procedure for the individual to make, that’s all I believe they are saying.
I’m glad I didn’t have to go through 18 years before paying to have it done and being in pain from the surgery.
Okay, but your experience isn’t universal. Some people may and some people may not have preferred to have it done as a baby when viewed in hindsight, but it doesn’t change that their individual choice was removed.
It isn’t universal, but in my country it’s the majority.
Because it was thought that it would prevent the moral danger of masturbation by the guy who made Kellogg cereals a thing.
That’s it.
Sole reason.
Good job simping for the dude that thought it you never pooped and only had colonics you’d live forever.
Who cares how it started? It looks better, women generally like it more, and it makes you less likely to get an STI.
Parents who perform unnecessary surgery on their children because society says they should are bad parents.
That might seem harsh, but it’s true. You have a responsibility to make the right choices for your kids, and “society” doesn’t get a vote.
I faced the same question, but found it to be a no-brainer. You don’t perform unnecessary surgery on a baby.
The reason it is performed in the US is to stop boys from masturbating.
Ignore any excuses for doing it that people have come up with since. That’s the only reason the US started doing it, and every other reason is just people trying to rationalize why they keep doing it.
The “reasons” people come up with to explain it now are based on extremely unlikely events. All the serious issues that come up are avoided with proper hygiene. Unless they still have a stupid masturbation hangup, it all comes down to this:
Parents feel icky about having to explain to their child how to wash their penis.
If you can’t handle that, I’ll tell you right now that you’re going to have a hell of a lot tougher conversations.
What I told them was to imagine they were wearing a hoodie in the shower. You’d need to pull the hood back before shampooing your hair. Same thing goes for the little head, but don’t use shampoo, that might burn.
Not circumcising my kids only caused me one problem:
My mom reacted like it was a direct personal attack on her, because I was circumcised. She saw it as me saying she was wrong. I found it difficult to convince her that I was not judging her. She didn’t have the same information available to her as I did. When I was born, she didn’t really have a choice.
How does it stop boys from masturbating?
Covering the organs with a cage has been practiced with entire success. A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed.
John Harvey Kellogg - Plain Facts for Old and Young
He got around. I keep hearing of things related to him and a lot of it’s not great. I’m skeptical of it working well but nice quote
I’m also skeptical the cultural reasons for circumcision have much to do stopping masturbation or Kellogg when I look at a map of where it’s practiced:
And surprised that map doesn’t line up with this one:
I guess it’s probably the abrahamic religions:
My bad
It’s primarily a Jewish and Muslim thing. Christianity doesn’t really require it.
True, and if you kind of remove the Muslim map from the circumcision map I think you’re roughly left with the US, Canada and Australia. I originally thought British colonies, but a lot of the commonwealth doesn’t circumcise much. It’s not even British colonies that are still christian, since the UK doesn’t seem to circumcise much.
Anyway, I wonder why it’s these non-Muslim countries. I don’t think the Kellogg-masturbation narrative would have had that strong a hold in Australia, but I’ve been wrong a lot before
Horrifying.
It doesn’t.
It was never actually effective, but by making it much less pleasurable. Turns out boys will do it anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This study doing an analysis of the research doesn’t seem to agree:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7691872/
A lot of comments in this thread agree with you though. Where did you get your information to be so confident?
I mean, there are people in this thread that were circumcised as a teen/adult and commenting on what that was like for them. That is, anecdotally, where my data comes from e:(as well as my own friends and acquaintances, and other threads like this online).
The study you linked seems to be categorising quality of data, with a focus on sexual function first and foremost. Sexual function has nothing to do with pleasure or sensation, it is merely about ability to get an erection, penetrate something and ejaculate. Neither myself nor others in this thread are commenting on that. Where it talks about pleasure and sensation, the cited studies seem to only ask a binary question of whether there was pleasure or not. Not if it had decreased, subjectively rating it, or trying to objectively rate it.
It also erroneously talks about the fact that sexual pleasure is attributed to the erogenous zones on the glans and underside of the shaft, not the foreskin. That seems to be hilariously slanted towards being pro-circumcision. I’ve never heard anyone, anywhere say that the foreskin is an erogenous zone, only that it protects them from desensitisation.
Can we also talk about the fact they went to the rural parts of an African nation to do a randomly controlled trial where they circumcised over 2000 people, some as young as 15, “in the name of science”. What the fluff is up with presumably western, presumably white people doing “science” on black people?? Even if they paid them (which is its own methodological issue) this is just really really messed up.
The study of RCT participants in rural Uganda by Kigozi et al involved sexually experienced males aged 15–49 years. Of these, 2,210 participants were randomized to a group that received immediate circumcision, and 2,246 were randomized to a control group to remain uncircumcised until after 24 months of follow-up. Participants completed a survey involving the IIEF tool. Sexual function, based on the ability to achieve and maintain an erection (99.7% vs 99.9%, respectively), difficulty with vaginal penetration (99.4% vs 99.9%), difficulty with ejaculation (99.7% vs 99.9%), and pain during or after intercourse (99.9% vs 99.6%), did not differ significantly between each group at the end of the 24-month evaluation.
Letters commenting on the Uganda findings were mostly positive. Bowa, however, suggested that if the dorsal slit method had been used rather than the sleeve technique, then sexual function may have improved rather than having remained the same. In response, Gray and Kigozi mentioned that the other 2 RCTs (in Kenya and South Africa) had used the forceps-guided MC technique. Sexual function was studied in the Kenyan trial and reported no difference (see next paragraph). A letter by Daar suggested that because the sleeve technique used made a cut 0.5–1 cm from the frenulum, erogenous tissue may have remained to explain the results. However, a systematic review (detailed in the next section) of histological correlates of sexual pleasure attributed erogenous sensation to the glans and underside of the shaft, not the foreskin, with the erogenous sensations claimed to arise from the frenulum actually stemming from stimulation of nearby genital corpuscles in the glans and shaft rather than the frenulum itself. A mostly positive letter by Drenth pointed to the inability of participants in a circumcision RCT to be blinded to the intervention. Drenth also considered that there were statistical anomalies in the data. In a response, Gray, showed that Drenth’s latter criticism stemmed from an inadequate understanding of statistics.
Krieger et al conducted personal interviews involving trained counsellors of RCT participants in Kenya the interviews, including 1,391 circumcised men and 1,393 control men aged 18–24 years. Participants were evaluated in detail at 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Sexual function parameters and results at 24 months included inability to ejaculate (1.3% vs 1.2%, respectively), premature ejaculation (PE; 3.9% vs 4.6%), pain during intercourse (0.7% vs 1.2%), lack of pleasure during intercourse (1.8% vs 1.0%), difficulty achieving/maintaining erection (2.3% vs 1.4%), or any of these dysfunctions combined (6.2% vs 5.8%). No statistically significant differences were found in frequency of any of the parameters between the circumcised and uncircumcised men. None of the circumcised men had long-term penile deformities or complications from the surgery, and 99% of the men were satisfied with their circumcisions. In each group, men reporting at least one sexual dysfunction at baseline averaged 24.7%, and this decreased over the 24-month trial period to 6.0% at 24 months, possibly from increases in experience and confidence in these 18- to 24-year-old males with time, as well as the general psychological counselling and support provided to trial participants. None of the men received treatment for sexual dysfunction.
The idea of wanting a circumcision has never once occurred to me. The notion of having my most sensitive area permanently exposed… eugh.
A few counterpoints to the circumcision pros that you mentioned:
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Circumcision rates are dropping across America. In some areas they ared dropping faster than others, but from what I recall the get are basically dropping everywhere to some degree. So I expect bullying about it is on the decline as it becomes less common.
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Also, the simple fact is that bullies will find any reason to be shitheads. So if it’s not circumcision it’ll be something else.
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Any straight women who are grossed out by a natural penis are idiots, and your kid will be dodging an asshole bullet if they do reject him over that.
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Better to let him decide if he wants to get it cut later or leave it uncut than to take away his free agency.
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Genital mutilation is inexcusable disgusting tradition - don’t do it.
Definitely not but I’m not American.
Please do not mutilate your child because of tradition.
I’m a chick, responding because you mentioned some women are grossed out by intact dicks.
Every penis is different in its own weird way so whether there’s foreskin or not is just an extra thing. Size/shape/foreskin/existence doesn’t affect how I think about the person.
Any person who thinks men ought to be mutilated to be attractive is lacking in empathy and judgment, and my entire friend group thinks the same thing.
The idea that you would cut off a part of your kids genitalia just so they could ‘fit in’ culturally is kinda blown away by the fact that it is now less common to be circumcised than being natural, even in the USA. By the time your kid is old enough to care, it will be a complete non-issue, and they can always get one as an adult if they want. Don’t take that agency away.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/generalpediatrics/117464
The idea that it has a population-level health benefit is completely debunked. It is medically advisable in only a tiny fraction of kids (sub 1%). The fact that %60 of the US population is circumcised is all thanks to religious hooey from puritans who don’t want children to masturbate, and think chopping a sensitive part of their genitals off to make it harder to enjoy is the best way to go - thanks to education and a wider exposure to the rest of the world via the Internet, US parents are finally realising this which is why it’s in decline.
“Hey internet I was thinking of cutting some of my babies dick off”
“Bro wtf what”
“Just a lil bit, just the tip!”
“Aw okay that’s fine mate!”
Did you think this would be how it goes?
Don’t… cut parts of your baby’s dick off dude, it’s a weird thing to do.
deleted by creator
Ooo something for me!
I am FORMERLY uncircumcised. I have a skin condition which led to phymosis a few years back forcing me to have a medical circumcision this year.
Uncut is superior in every way. Sex is better, it’s more comfortable when exercising, it’s generally less of a nuisance. And in Europe, I never had an ick reaction.
If I didn’t medically need it I wouldn’t have done it. That said, it’s better than phymosis, I do last longer in bed, and my partner says it’s actually a really nice oral experience now.
Remember: most countries don’t have a preference for circumcision, and a lot of people outside of America that are circumcised have it done due to medical issues, not moral or religious reasons.
As someone with similar experience - circumcision due to worsening phymosis as adult - and also in Europe - I feel great right now, felt good before circumcision too (with the exception of the phymosis moment). It’s a bit different as a feel (and maybe I last longer now, or self-control got better with years, who knows) but honestly in my case I probably even prefer how it is now, and cleaning up your bits is easier while circumsized.
I’m uncircumcised and I’m thankful every fucking day. Don’t do it to them. If you’re being bullied for your penis, there’s other problems at hand there. And women who won’t sleep with you over this aren’t worth sleeping with anyway.
Why are you thankful?
Nope, not even once. I find the idea of circumcision really bizarre.
Oh god no.
Grew up in the US. Heard one girl mention it was gross (she didn’t see mine) and one see it for the first time as was more curious. Never bullied but I also wasn’t swinging my dick out in the open.
Live in Europe now where the script would very much be flipped.
So thankful my parents didn’t mutilate me.
Why is Christianity always so obsessed with little boys penises? It’s fucking gross.
I agree, but that’s not the question.
As a woman, I’m genuinely curious on men’s opinions about this.
There is nothing Christian about circumcision
