Tag Archives: Circumcision

Penis Size and Circumcision

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A question from Yizreel:

Actually I have a question . Does circumcision have an effect on your penis size ? I’m 13 and want to be cut.

My reply:

Usually circumcision affects on your penis size no more than a haircut will make you look shorter. However, you are losing some skin, so of course your glans will appear to have a smaller diameter. Also, it depends on how much skin is cut off. If too much is cut, the lack of skin may restrict your erections, which may also cause discomfort; and some believe when infants are circumcised, and too much skin is removed, this restriction could inhibit penis growth. But at age thirteen, you may already be close to your full size.

This is an important decision for a guy your age to make. Think about it long and hard. If you’ve been teased in gym class or something like that, it would be tragic to give up your foreskin and then end up regretting it the rest of your life. And by the way, Yizreel, aren’t you supposed to be 18 to be on this site?

Side note:

Yizreel’s age points to an element of the human condition. This site is about human sexuality and the human body, presented in a frank and open manner, subjects we all are curious about once we reach puberty. If our society had it’s way, young people would be starved of this knowledge, picking up misguided scraps of information haphazardly. Our quest to protect young people from what has been labeled unsuitable for their age in effect jeopardizes an otherwise healthy lifelong perspective.

Consider the early American Indians, and various cultures around the world even today, families living in single room tents and huts. Nudity certainly isn’t an issue in these peoples lives, but what about the young people and even the children who wake up during the night and see their parents having sex? Or the ten-year-old that watches his mother breast feed a sibling? Are these young people detrimentally affected. Are they scarred for life? I happen to believe, as a whole, these young people growing up in these circumstances are far better adjusted to what should be the natural harmony of life.

Foreskin Mythology

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More Circumcision Myths You May Believe: Hygiene and STDs

Is circumcision cleaner and healthier?

Published on September 13, 2011 by Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. in Moral Landscapes. Photos added by me.

Myth: You have to get the baby circumcised because it is really hard to keep a baby’s penis clean.

Reality check: In babies, the foreskin is completely fused to the head of the penis. You cannot and should not retract it to clean it, as this would cause the child pain, and is akin to trying to clean the inside of a baby girl’s vagina. The infant foreskin is perfectly designed to protect the head of the penis and keep feces out. All you have to do is wipe the outside of the penis like a finger. It is harder to keep circumcised baby’s penis clean because you have to carefully clean around the wound, make sure no feces got into the wound, and apply ointment.

Myth: Little boys won’t clean under their foreskins and will get infections.

Reality check: The foreskin separates and retracts on its own sometime between age 3 and puberty. Before it retracts on its own, you wipe the outside off like a finger. After it retracts on its own, it will get clean during the boy’s shower or bath. Once a boy discovers this cool, new feature of his penis, he will often retract the foreskin himself during his bath or shower, and you can encourage him to rinse it off. But he should not use soap as this upsets the natural balance and is very irritating. There is nothing special that the parents need to do. Most little boys have absolutely no problem playing with their penises in the shower or anywhere else! It was harder to teach my boys to wash their hair than it was to care for their penises.

Myth: Uncircumcised penises get smelly smegma.

Reality check: Actually, smegma is produced by the genitals of both women and men during the reproductive years. Smegma is made of sebum and skin cells and lubricates the foreskin and glans in men, and the clitoral hood and inner labia in women. It is rinsed off during normal bathing and does not cause cancer or any other health problems.

Myth: “My uncle wasn’t circumcised and he kept getting infections and had to be circumcised as an adult.”

Reality check: Medical advice may have promoted infection in uncircumcised males. A shocking number of doctors are uneducated about the normal development of the foreskin, and they (incorrectly) tell parents that they have to retract the baby’s foreskin and wash inside it at every diaper change. Doing this tears the foreskin and the tissue (called synechia) that connects it to the head of the penis, leading to scarring and infection.

Misinformation was especially prevalent during the 1950s and 60s, when most babies were circumcised and we didn’t know as much about the care of the intact penis, which is why the story is always about someone’s uncle. Doing this to a baby boy would be like trying to clean the inside of a baby girl’s vagina with Q-tips at every diaper change. Rather than preventing problems, such practices would cause problems by introducing harmful bacteria. Remember that humans evolved from animals, so no body part that required special care would survive evolutionary pressures. The human genitals are wonderfully self-cleaning and require no special care.

Myth: My son was diagnosed with phimosis and so had to be circumcised. Continue reading →

Hung Naturally

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How do politicians like this get elected?

DENVER — Circumcisions would again receive state funding under a proposal introduced by several Colorado lawmakers.

The bill would allow Medicaid to again cover circumcisions. The procedure was dropped from Medicaid last year as a money-saving move. Several states have stopped covering circumcisions amid concerns that they’re not medically necessary. Colorado projected that it would save about $186,500 a year if it stopped covering circumcisions.

Colorado’s bill was proposed Thursday (1-19-12) by several Democrats. It awaits a hearing in the Senate.

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Note from Martin:

Those of us that have been circumcised, to some degree, have accepted it, albeit grudgingly. Circumcision is not natural. It’s not the way we were born. I’m usually not so opinionated on subjects that are considered subjective, but this issue is not subjective, it is wrong to cut off part of a male infant’s penis. There is simply no religious or medical reason that justifies violating a newborn’s human rights.

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Circumcision (check up to two)

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San Francisco is Getting It Right

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We’re down to somewhere between 33% and 35% of cutting male infants in the United States. More parents are beginning to question this bizarre, antiquated practice. I’m not really wanting to advocate more laws, but I wish there had been one when I was born.

The following is an article in the guardian.co.uk, written by Neil Howard and Rebecca Steinfeld.

Time to ban male circumcision?

San Francisco voters will decide later this year whether, like its female counterpart, male infant circumcision should be outlawed. If passed, article 50 — the “Genital Cutting of Male Minors” — would make it unlawful to circumcise, cut, or mutilate the foreskin, testicles, or penis of another person aged under 18. The bill includes an exemption for cases of medical necessity, but not for custom or ritual, which has profound implications for the many Jews and Muslims who consider it an essential part of their religious or cultural practice.

Unsurprisingly, the bill has attracted considerable controversy. Some regard it as a modern manifestation of western antisemitism, while certain feminist groups consider the idea of comparing male and female genital cutting to be both offensive and unsubstantiated.

 Neither the World Health Organisation nor the UN oppose male circumcision, and given that the procedure is so unquestioned that 33% of American boys still undergo it, one might think that they have a point. But is it really so simple? And are the differences between male and female circumcision really so straightforward?

 According to research, the sexual damage caused by female and male genital cutting can be extensive. Female genital cutting, which can involve removal of the clitoris, may reduce the likelihood of orgasm and cause complications during childbirth. Similarly, male circumcision can result in excruciating pain, nerve destruction, infection, disfigurement and sometimes death. Like the clitoris, the foreskin serves a sexual purpose, and it protects the “head” of the penis from outside elements.

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Circumcision From a Jewish Perspective

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There are growing numbers coming down on the side against circumcision. There are growing numbers of men who regret being denied the choice. Cutting off an infants foreskin needs to stop. It’s the way we’re born. Despite the fact some men would choose circumcision, they deserve the right to be old enough to make the choice. Even in Africa, where AIDS is so pervasive, where research indicates circumcision reduces the risk of this dreaded disease, is it a better alternative to education and good hygiene?

A Jewish friend of mine, fraught with his own mixed emotions about this time honored but controversial practice, has spent a great deal of time researching the Jewish point of view. He has found many who oppose circumcision among our Jewish brothers and sisters. A sampling of the opinions he has collected are listed below, followed by links to other informative sites.

The current San Francisco circumcision referendum has made the public aware of the severe physical consequences of the controversial surgery. The idea that an individual has the right to their own body is recent by historical standards. For many years, a number of courageous Jewish and Israeli scholars, historians, activists, and parents have raised serious objections to circumcision surgery. More and more Jews are choosing not to circumcise their sons. These Jewish voices against circumcision are just starting to enter the mainstream conversation.

 

Here are some of these pioneers in their own words.

“Coming from a European background… where many Jews reject a brit milah as an archaic and barbaric ritual… This author grew up in France in a traditional Jewish family. Not a single male of her generation or her children’s generation within her large family (or in her circle of Jewish friends) was ever circumcised.”

- Nelly Karsenty, Humanistic Judaism, 1988.

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“Judaism has always been a core piece of my identity, even though my practice and understanding have evolved over the years. I have great reverence for what we hold as spiritual. When the authorities of my tradition define the sacred in a way that violates the most elemental and life-giving forces, mothers and babies, then something is very wrong. That which is not ethical, cannot be spiritual. That is a basic Jewish tenet… It is Judaism that has taught me that reverence for life, the principle of pikuah nefesh, and the mandate incumbant upon all of us to distinguish (l’havdeel) between what is holy and what is profane. It is precisely these fundamental tenets of Judaism that have led me to conclude that circumcision is not holy in terms of Jewish ethics.… What is most satisfying to me is knowing that I have helped a number of parents, particularly Jewish parents, come to the conclusion that they can be good Jews and leave their baby intact.”

- Miriam Pollack, Defying Convention: An Interview With Miriam Pollack, Beyond the Bris, July 27, 2011

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“Circumcision is child abuse…It is a poor way to introduce a newborn male into the world and into the Jewish community. This presentation will focus on my experience as an active Jew living in an observant Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, who chose not to have his son circumcised. I will present the brit (literally “covenant”) b’lee milah (without circumcision) ceremony that my wife, a full participant in the decision, and I held on the eighth day of our son Sammy’s life.”

- Moshe Rothenberg, Ending Circumcision in the Jewish Community.

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“Mutilation of the divinely made human body is as far from Judaism as anything could be… Torah mentions circumcision only cursorily. Circumcision is conspicuously absent from the Sinai commandments, and from the subsequent listings of rules… Deut30:6 mentions circumcision metaphorically at most, “circumcise your heart.” No less likely is the meaning, “tame your pride.”

- Israeli Linguist Vadim Cherny, How Judaic is the circumcision?

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“Laurie Evans is the director of the New York Hudson Valley Chapter of the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers. She said that as a Jewish woman, it was difficult to stand up to her family.

“Once I witnessed a bris (ritual Jewish circumcision), understood the function of the foreskin and the long, lasting harm of circumcision, I had to follow my conscience and leave my son intact,” Evans testified.

“My son is now 20, is grateful, as he understands just what he was spared,” Evans said. “When I realized how many parents were uninformed about this surgery, I founded and became director of the New York Hudson Valley Chapter of NOCIRC.”

- WND, March 05, 2010

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Circumcision … A Jewish Perspective

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From the Jewish Daily Forward

By Jay Michaelson

For several decades, opposition to circumcision has been building in the United States and within the American Jewish community. This year, the people of San Francisco will see on their ballots a proposed ordinance banning circumcision entirely, with no exception for religious Jews or Muslims. As others have written in these pages already, this measure is offensive and overbroad, and at least some of its proponents are clearly guilty of anti-Semitism. (It is also, in my view, unconstitutional.) Civil liberties groups and Jewish organizations have roundly condemned it, and defeat seems likely.

But San Francisco is a harbinger of things to come, and critiques of circumcision are not limited to the lunatic fringe. Opponents say that circumcision is a brutal, nonconsensual mutilation of a child that results in a permanent loss of sensitivity. Our society doesn’t allow parents to abuse their children, this argument runs, so why should we allow this particular form of violence, which is irrevocable and damaging? Proponents counter that circumcision reduces the risk of HIV transmission and of some STDs, that the “mutilation” in question is relatively minor, and that, in the case of religious communities, it is time honored and religiously mandated.

Personally, were it not for my Jewish heritage, I would never circumcise a child of my own. (I do not have children, though my partner and I are considering it.) There is no question that circumcision reduces sexual pleasure, which I find philosophically repugnant. In fact, whether or not this was the original purpose of the mitzvah, the power of circumcision to reduce pleasure was well known to Jewish sages; Maimonides, for example, praises circumcision for just that reason. In addition, it is an unnecessary form of surgery, and it is indeed permanent; your son cannot change his mind about it later, even if he were to discontinue Jewish religious observance. And all of us who have been to a circumcision ceremony know that — for some babies, at least — it does seem to hurt. Finally, while there may be marginal health benefits to circumcision, I’d rather invest the time teaching my son about safer sex than slice into the body that God and nature have formed.

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A View on Circumcision

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The Long And Painful History Of  Circumcision

From: altpenis.com

By: Paul Aitken

If you’re reading this there is a 50 percent probability that your genitals have been mutilated. If you were reading this twenty years ago that figure would be over 80 percent. Between 1950 and 1980, almost ninety percent of newborn babies in the English speaking world were circumcised within days of their birth. Times have changed and this once ubiquitous practice is now generally discouraged in most Western countries (the United States, as usual, being the exception).

Jews circumcise their male infants shortly after birth and Muslim boys are circumcised in adolescence, for spiritual reasons; although how hacking off part of someone’s dick contributes to their spirituality is not really explained. Melanesians, Polynesians and indigenous Australians circumcised their young men as an adolescent rite of passage; something like a ritualized form of hazing.

The Spanish conquistadors put an end to circumcision in Aztec rituals, believing any attention paid to the genitals to be sinful. But so many disparate cultures practice or have practiced circumcision, that one is driven to wonder if there isn’t some inborn human proclivity to hack off chunks of our dicks. Where does the idea come from? Were a bunch of Neanderthals hanging around the campfire feeling bored and looking for something new to do? Did some bright young spark jump up and shout “I know, let’s mutilate our dicks!”?

We all know that guys are obsessed with their dicks, but is it possible that the same bizarre idea would occur independently to scores of isolated tribes and cultures scattered around the globe? Maybe yes, maybe no. There are competing theories and seeing as there is no real evidence to support these views, we can safely throw aside academic caution and speculate freely.

The apparent universality of circumcision has led some to conclude that the practice predates the original exodus of Homo Sapiens out of Africa. There is considerable genetic and archaeological evidence that the entire human race is descended from one tribe that crossed from the horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula about 125,000 years ago. If these early humans practiced circumcision, then it’s not surprising to find so many isolated cultures continuing the practice. After all, if intelligent, educated, modern men can subject their infant sons to genital mutilation for the singular reason that “he should look like me”, then it’s not absurd to think that such a strange practice would be passed on through the generations in more primitive cultures. The fact that circumcision is widely practiced in East Africa has been offered in support of this hypothesis.

But there’s also good reason to think the concept of hacking off one’s foreskin may have arisen independently amongst different cultures for different reasons. The first and most obvious is as a token of sacrifice. There seems to be a universal tendency among humans to offer sacrifices to the gods. The concept of reciprocity is deeply ingrained in our psyches. If the gods have total power over us and provide for us, then what can we offer them in return? A couple of primo sheep might do in good times, but what do you do after a couple of years of drought? It’s obvious the Gods are pissed off, but how to appease them? They’ve been offered boffo sheep, cattle, maybe a virgin or two; and it still hasn’t rained. What’s left? Well… how about some blood, pain and the permanent loss of pleasure? That should do the trick! When you think about it in this context, the idea of circumcision becomes less absurd. The foreskin is probably the only part of our anatomy that we can lose without incurring serious hardship. The book of Genesis makes frequent references to sacrifice. God wanted Abraham to sacrifice his son but relents and requires Abraham instead to make a sacrifice of his foreskin. Seems like a good trade-off to me. And hey, Abraham was in his nineties at the time and probably past his prime; what did he care?

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