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The Great Foreskin Debate

Basefan

Basefan

Something Edgy and Cool
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It's starting to clog up the Religion thread so made a new one.

magic9mushroom said:
Well, nobody celebrates Hallowe'en here except people who've imported American pop culture. Christmas is just better known, I guess.


WRT the Judaism thing, I do have one big beef with Judaism (the religion) that would likely result in a lot of Jews screaming for my head if I were ever in government. Specifically, circumcision. I think circumcision of infants should be outlawed as child abuse except when medically indicated. And if Leviticus says you have to then to Hell with Leviticus. I would kill if necessary to prevent someone from circumcising me or my babies unnecessarily.

(Circumcision of consenting adults, I have no issue with. Just like other consensual genital surgeries.)
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Basefan said:
Huh thanks good to know.

Why?
Isn't it a regular thing? All the penises I've seen have been circumcised and no one's complained.
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magic9mushroom said:
It's literally chopping one of the most sensitive parts of the dick off for no real medical reason*, but rather because the parents think it'd look nice and/or because of religion and/or because the parents want to sabotage their kid's masturbation and/or sexual experience (the last is the actual reason it became popular in the US).

It's mutilation, just like clitoridectomy, and it's disgusting.

*Some medical organisations recommend circumcision in areas of Africa where HIV is stupidly common. Some don't. Nobody recommends it in the West on medical grounds.
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Basefan said:
Hardly seems like a reason to ban it and charge people with child abuse. It's more like a cosmetic choice than any real harm to the child. My issues aside no one I've met has had issues with sexual pleasure circumcised or otherwise.
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magic9mushroom said:
Someone who was circumcised as an infant has no basis for comparison. I can tell you that my foreskin is rather sensitive and it makes masturbation mechanically much easier due to its gliding action.

Irreversible cosmetic choices should never be made for someone without their consent. If they want to be circumcised later, they always can be. The reverse is impossible.

Would you approve of someone who chopped a toe (not the big toe) off each of their kids? Because I mean it's not like those are spectacularly useful either, what with people wearing shoes everywhere.
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Basefan said:
Sure, it doesn't hurt the people involved in life so why not. I draw the line at hurting the functionality of a person. Although this has started to move away from religion
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magic9mushroom said:
Okay, fine. Your position's consistent, it just permits what I'd describe as whimsical mutilation of children. I'm very glad you weren't my father.
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vyor said:
Actually, as far as can be determined, the only time it impacts sensitivity is when the person grew up with it(the pleasure nerves have a chance to grow into it) and when they get a new one grown(may or may not make it more sensitive). No other information has ever been gathered that says otherwise.
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vyor said:
It hurts less and causes less issues when it's done while young.

So not mutilation.
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magic9mushroom said:
How does it hurt less when done on infants than when not done at all? The vast majority of the people in the West never medically need it. Thus the toe analogy (I'm sure that hurts a lot more for adults than for children as well, or at least the adults are better able to express and remember it).

It doesn't affect time to orgasm, I'll concede that easily (though time to orgasm doesn't necessarily correlate with sensitivity), but I'm not seeing how the removal of a sensitive area can have no effect on sensation. And there's the mechanical issue, chafing and all that.
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vyor said:
Because, as far as can be told, it's not sensitive... on it's own. All it gets are outgrowths from the pleasure nerves already present in the penis during puberty, those nerves grow anyway, so it shouldn't be able to impact sensitivity.

And not having it does not impact chafing very much, it impacts it a little, but it it doesn't produce that much lubrication. A bit of olive or sunflower seed oil is better than what it produces by a wide margin(note: do not use olive oil with latex condoms, it will eat the condom, not sure if sunflower oil also does this, check before you try).
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magic9mushroom said:
Where do the foreskin nerves go if there's no foreskin?

And I know I don't need any lube whatsoever to masturbate without chafing, which I understand isn't the case for the circumcised. Don't know about sex, naturally, being a virgin and all.
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And now you're all caught up.
 
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magic9mushroom said:
Where do the foreskin nerves go if there's no foreskin?

And I know I don't need any lube whatsoever to masturbate without chafing, which I understand isn't the case for the circumcised. Don't know about sex, naturally, being a virgin and all.
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The go into other bits of the penis.

And you don't need lube for occasional masturbation, I myself have only used it a few times. No chaffing.
 
magic9mushroom said:
Don't think you ever got back to me about the toe thing, vyor.
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Toes serve a vital function of helping you not fall down onto your face/onto your side. The foreskin fulfills almost no function and has been shown to be actively detrimental in some circumstances(it's a germ breeding ground, people who have it are more likely to get STDs without a condom, etc).

So... you know, false equivalency.
 
vyor said:
Toes serve a vital function of helping you not fall down onto your face/onto your side. The foreskin fulfills almost no function and has been shown to be actively detrimental in some circumstances(it's a germ breeding ground, people who have it are more likely to get STDs without a condom, etc).

So... you know, false equivalency.
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Quite a lot of this is still controversial, I will note; the big issue with sensitivity measurements is that 90% of it is subjective and there's literally no way to provide someone with both an uncircumcised and infant-circumcised experience. I will ask for a cite on the "nerves that would grow into the foreskin grow elsewhere instead" claim, since I haven't seen anything about that in the reading I've been doing.

There is still, in addition, the matter of forced removal of bits of a person, which has no major social drive for forcing (vaccination has herd immunity).

EDIT: Ugh. All this talking about dicks is bringing back memories of just how neglectful my mother was of teaching me anything about how to maintain the damn thing, and of how I engaged in penile self-harm a few years back. I'm crying right now and have been experiencing suicidal and mild murderous ideation (MILD; I'm not about to go kill someone dozens of miles away over water under the bridge). Please excuse me for a while.
 
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magic9mushroom said:
Quite a lot of this is still controversial, I will note; the big issue with sensitivity measurements is that 90% of it is subjective and there's literally no way to provide someone with both an uncircumcised and infant-circumcised experience.
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True.

So don't say something is or is not the case vis-a-vis sensitivity.

magic9mushroom said:
I will ask for a cite on the "nerves that would grow into the foreskin grow elsewhere instead" claim, since I haven't seen anything about that in the reading I've been doing.
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I was not able to find the paper I got that from(it was focused on sensitivity changes as a result of puberty IIRC) after searching. I did find this though:
http://thecircumcisiondecision.com/20000-nerve-endings/

Only posting because it's relevant to this.
 
So are foreskins kind of like appendexes?
 
I've always found the American stance on circumcision really freakin' weird. I mean, evidently it's fine. It works either way, but I've heard all sorts of things from yanks trying to justify it.

In the end, it's a cultural thing. There's no real hygiene reason for it, and whilst not harmful it isn't particularly beneficial either, sans an extreme issue with phimosis.

As to the cosmetic end of things, I feel pretty strongly that those sort of decisions should be left up to the individual.
 
Splodge said:
As to the cosmetic end of things, I feel pretty strongly that those sort of decisions should be left up to the individual.
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And at the end of the day, that's kinda the problem here... I mean, yeah, it "works", yes, but as this is an irreversible intervention into the bodily integrity of a person, no matter how miniscule, I do think this isn't something that should fall under the caretaker powers (and it should indeed only be caretaker powers) parents have over their children. Such body modifications should only ever be the choice of the individuals themselves, once they can give informed consent (so typically, as adults).
 
Splodge said:
In the end, it's a cultural thing. There's no real hygiene reason for it, and whilst not harmful it isn't particularly beneficial either, sans an extreme issue with phimosis.
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No, the surgery can go wrong. Worst-case scenario is accidental removal of the penis.

Circumcision is not risk-free.
 
Yeah but birth isn't an optional part of being a human.

It's a question of what amount of unnecessary risk a person is willing to take in their life, and whether that risk choice is something that their parents can preemptively take away. Ethically.
 
daniel_gudman said:
Yeah but birth isn't an optional part of being a human.

It's a question of what amount of unnecessary risk a person is willing to take in their life, and whether that risk choice is something that their parents can preemptively take away. Ethically.
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The risk is literally so low as to only cause an issue a few times out of several million. This is literally less risky than getting an ear piercing.
 
Since I think parents getting a baby's ears pierced is also ethically suspicious, I'm not particularly convinced by that facile comparison either.

Also you're wrong about the risk rate, it's severe complications (dick chopped off, lethal infection) that has the one-in-millions rate, a non-lethal infection or a surgical fuckup requiring more surgery to fix, those are in the one-in-thousands range. (Complications of Circumcision)

Numbers for piercings are about the same it looks like (I could only find abstracts on pubmed, not full text).
 
daniel_gudman said:
Since I think parents getting a baby's ears pierced is also ethically suspicious, I'm not particularly convinced by that facile comparison either.

Also you're wrong about the risk rate, it's severe complications (dick chopped off, lethal infection) that has the one-in-millions rate, a non-lethal infection or a surgical fuckup requiring more surgery to fix, those are in the one-in-thousands range. (Complications of Circumcision)

Numbers for piercings are about the same it looks like (I could only find abstracts on pubmed, not full text).
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Being that they both carry the same risk factor, are both for the same thing(except that one of these is possibly religious and the other never is), they are a valid comparison.

So, ya.
 
Splodge said:
There's no real hygiene reason for it,
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Kids never wash behind their ears, you think they're going to wash their dicks properly?
vyor said:
And You fail to see past your own gigantic fucking ego.

You have not proven that it is wrong, you have shown it carries risk, much like everything else on the fucking planet.
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Like driving a car, which is something near innumerable people do each day.
 
daniel_gudman said:
...wait a minute, are you kids really saying you don't understand the moral difference between necessary and unnecessary risks?
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You're calling us kids? Buddy, you got jack shit. A vitamin K shot is not a necessary risk. I't a useful one, but it's not necessary.

Driving in a car certainly isn't necessary. Everything you do, say, and breath carries risk. Being in a hospital at all carries risks.
 
Yes yes and your outrage when I insult you isn't hypocritical at all.

And yeah driving is necessary, I mean, it's transportation infrastructure. Get rid of all the cars and civilization collapses and we all starve and stuff. Stop all circumcisions tomorrow and, like, AIDS infection rates among adult males who don't use condoms goes up. So yeah, cars are necessary and circumcisions aren't.

It's balancing. You weigh the benefit of what you get against the cost is, or what the risked cost is.

My point was specifically that there are risks and costs associated with it and on a societal scale the cost outweighs the benefit. Assuming the risk isn't required to accomplish other stuff necessary to stay alive, so if the cost outweighs the benefit compared to the null case of not doing anything, then it's not really ethical to push it onto people who can't decide for themselves.
 
daniel_gudman said:
Yes yes and your outrage when I insult you isn't hypocritical at all.

And yeah driving is necessary, I mean, it's transportation infrastructure. Get rid of all the cars and civilization collapses and we all starve and stuff. Stop all circumcisions tomorrow and, like, AIDS infection rates among adult makes who don't use condoms goes up. So yeah, cars are necessary and circumcisions aren't.

It's balancing. You weigh the benefit of what you get against the cost is, or what the risked cost is.

My point was specifically that there are risks and costs associated with it and on a societal scale the cost outweighs the benefit. Assuming the risk isn't required to accomplish other stuff necessary to stay alive, so if the cost outweighs the benefit compared to the null case of not doing anything, then it's not really ethical to push it onto people who can't decide for themselves.
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Unless you believe that circumcision is necessary to avoid being sent to hell. You know, is jewish and some christian's belief.

Oh hey, look at that, you're still using emotional arguments. And I haven't shown any outrage, this is just how I debate against morons.
 
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