Re: End Routine Infant Circumcision
To begin with: I was circumcised as an infant. I am very happy that
my parents and doctor made the right decision to have it done. Every male in our extended family is. (We are Protestants.) Yes there was no doubt that I had pain.
But the medical reasons for circumcision are:
(1) a first line of defence against STDs and against HIV/AIDs.
(2) Several scientific studies in many countries including France, which does not advocate infant circumcision, have concluded that circumcisiion provides a major defence against HIV for 60% of uncut men worldwide.
(3)After circumcision, nerves in the foreskin actually grow in the penile shaft and provide more erotic feelings there. They are not dead. I know from experience.
(4)The glans also expands providing an enlarged source of erotic feelings. (I don't think that the frenulum should be excised.) Othewise there is no difference in intercourse feelings between uncircumcised men and circumcised men.
(5) Circumcision avoids phimosis, balantitis and the growth of smegma, which needs to be washed off under the foreskin two or three times a day with mild soap and warm water. Of course with circumcision the accumulation of bacteria and oily secretions are nonexcistent. Hygiene is simplified. Consider also the neglect of hygiene in 20% of all uncircumcised boys and men in the United Kingdom who do not practice daily hygienic washing
(6)What has changed since I was circumcised in the late 1960s is that deadening creams or pain killers to the penile nerve prevent the pain of surgery. I know that both of my boys slept through this minor surgery. There was no crying at all. I was there.
(7)Circumcision is not a mutilation like female clitorectomy (wrongly called female circumcision). My wife who likes oral intercourse says that she only would have sex with a circumcised man because it looks better and is completetly ready to have me enter her mouth.
(8) Circumcision also prevents penile cancer which is rare.
I am not intolerant. Although I think that infant circumcision is a plus for the above reasons. But remaining intact is all right too if that takes place with the parents' understanding of what circumcision
means for the infant boy.
In the U.S.A.80-90% of all Caucasians, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans are circumcised. Only Latinos have about 50% of their infants remain intact. Native Americans in the Western part of the U.S.A.seldom circumcise. These statisics have remained for the last 40 years given 5% differences upand down every year.
The highest number of circumcised infants take place with parents who graduated from college and graduate school who also have high incomes. A majority of middle class parents have their infant boys circumcised. Those who are in poverty groups no longer have Medicaid in their states because they can't afford to pay for it. Education and income are important. I went to a first rate university. Amost every student that I knew was circumcised.
Finally:
The problem with the anticirc minority, mostly overpowering in this discussion, is lack of understanding of medical and scientific studies. They also make demands when suggestions pro and con are better for the parents. Psychologically the foreskin is a fetish to be worshipped. Their biases both in propaganda not in truth, realism and knowledge and with distortion and with fear for others who don't know that circumcision may be really a plus in their child's life. Politically they are dominant. They are brain washed persons with one point of view only. They are like sects in religion.
P. S.
Yes, there are fewer circumcisions in Europe. But history indicates they will not practice circumcision because of a long history of antisemitism against Jews and now against Muslims. Adolf Hitler in Germany wiped out millions of the Jewish people in the Holocaust
In Latin America it is influence of conservative Roman Catholic doctrine so most men are intact, except for Mexico and some Central American countries. But religious reasons not to circumcise are not the same as sexual reasons, etc. for American Roman Catholics and Protestants along with the religious practices of Jewish and Muslims.
