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!
Male circumcision is genital mutilation.
If it’s your culture, your culture is dumb.
Except it has more upsides than downsides. In fact, except for extreme outliers there are no downsides. Not once in my life had I ever thought “I wish my parents would have not circumcised me as a baby”. From a US perspective, I think it looks better, most women think it looks better, and it saved me from cost, pain, and awkward teen years of waiting until adulthood to make the decision.
OP, you said it yourself, really. You aren’t unhappy to be circumcised. You know at least one guy in real life who hated not being circumcised. Do you know anyone in real life; not the internet where people with negative outlooks on an issue tend to be the most outspoken, and not from all the other countries with different cultures and norms, but that you actually know that was mad about being circumcised? I work in a field that’s very… Not shy about bringing up things like this. I’ve never met a guy who wished he wasn’t circumcised.
Nanook can go ahead and call it mutilation, trying to lump it in with a dangerous and sexual pleasure ruining practice done to women in a handful of places, but I’ll hard disagree. Mutilation is “a severe and disfiguring injury.” I don’t see circumcised as any of that, and neither do most people where OP or myself are from.
There is like, no upside its literally you making up reasons to justify your condition lol.
You’re doing the same thing, but hey, we can both start throwing links at each other to back up our points, if you’d like.
But you know what, lets just say for the sake of argument neither dick has any medical or hygiene or STI risk differences (because there’s loads of evidence showing uncircumcised people are at a greater risk of getting those)
I think it looks better, and most people in my country think it looks better. Personal preference? Sure. But personally, we got better looking dicks. The other medical benefits are just a bonus.
The infection risk only becomes an issue when you’re old. I’m getting circumcised at 70, I’m keeping my dick whole until then. Your dick looks ugly, sorry not sorry.
Also, I’m happy you like your dick, I’m sure you’d also like it if your parents didn’t remove a piece.
I don’t know who told you it was only a risk when you’re old, but that isn’t true at all.
Sure buddy, go play with your half dick
Smegma
Imagine arguing “I’m a child who can’t clean his own body” in public to justify mutilating children so their genitals are prettier
You’re not going to bring up the sensitivity arguments? Foreskin is a natural part of the body, the fact that it’s the norm is meaningless. If we were chopping off the tips of ears or male nipples would there be “no downsides” either? Why not just NOT do the thing? You can’t undo a circumcision.
Sensitivity arguments? Go check Google search trends and tell me if the searches for guys trying to last longer is larger than the searches for lasting too long.
No.
You are wrong.
There are literally 0 upsides.
There are 0 medically valid reasons to fully or partially circumsize a penis that is not suffering from some kind of rather rare, actual congenital malformation.
The only things you list as upsides are aesthetic, fashion choices, they’re only ‘popular’ where you are … because they are common where you are.
It literally is a disfiguring injury.
It signifcantly changes how the thing looks, and works. Thats disfigurement.
No, it is not as severe as female clitoral removal.
But, the foreskin has a ton of nerve density in it, comparable to how many nerves your head/glans has in it, as opposed to the significantly lower nerve density on a cut shaft.
A circumcised XY male person literally is not physically capable of experiencing the same level and variation of sensation, of sexual pleasure, as an uncircumcised person.
It also removes the ability of the penis to ‘glide’ along the foreskin when inserted, which means it changes how it functions.
Automatic male circumcision at birth is literally a brutal, nonconsensual method of reducing the pleasure an XY man can experience from sex.
Thats what it is.
Thats a cultural norm in the US, mainly, and not so much anywhere else.
For the record:
Circumsized guy here, done at birth, then, I learned things.
The US is a brutal and delusion place by the standards of basically everywhere else.
We are the weird ones, we are the brainwashed ones.
We just happen to also make the most porn, and we invented the internet, so our cultural norms have had an outsized importance and level of influence.
Outside of the US, male circumcision is generally only done by fairly extreme religious groups, and for very rare but actually medically necesssary and valid reasons, like some kind of actual congenital abnormality/malformation of the penis that is present at birth.
You say their are literally 0 upsides, but then you name a couple of upsides. Lol.
Also, if you want to be a dick about it, there have been several scientific studies done showing that HIV and most other STI’s are significantly less at risk of contraction if you’ve been circumcised.
You realise people can scroll up and read what he said?
Outside very rare medical conditions, circumcision has zero medical benefit.
Several studies have proven circumcisions significantly reduce the risk of getting an STI, including HIV, during sex.
There are a number of men who are upset about it, they’ve formed advocacy groups and some use therapies and procedures to regrow foreskin.
https://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/
For some balance, this isn’t very informative, but it does fairly frame the debate:
I mean, there’s groups for everything. If just 1% of men in the US were unhappy about having been circumcised, while the other 99% were happy or indifferent about it, that’s still over a million people unhappy. It’s still a super minority of people.
If any other elective medical procedure had a 1% chance of extreme regret, it would be considered psychologically risky, in addition to the chance of complications.
Do we know the actual numbers for how men feel about the procedure? I think that’s important if we’re debating this on the merits of joy/regret.
I couldn’t find any good sources that surveyed adult men on their parents’ circumcision choice.
Don’t do it. Let your kid choose as an adult. You can’t undo circumcision.
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 confirm
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.
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.
Frankly, it’s a bloody weird thing to do unless medically required. Leave him be.
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?
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.
I’m uncut and went through my childhood and teenage years in the US. No one cared in preschool, and no one cared in the Highschool locker room, none of the women I slept with cared. It might be painful as an adult to do, but it’s a choice the person gets to make for themselves. I am grateful my parents stopped the doctors from cutting.
It’s painful regardless, the baby just can’t complain about it. I’m not circumcised nor are my kids, with the first kid, the nurse let out an unintentional “good” after we said no to it.
Don’t mutilate your kid. If there’s a medical reason go ahead, otherwise leave it be.
Your son can’t put it back if you remove it, but he can remove it if you leave it. Let it be his choice over his body.You could also consider chin implants to give your son a strong chin. A strong chin is definitely going to have a positive impact in his life later on, and recovery will be faster and less painful as a child. Another thing to consider would be earlobe separation if his earlobes are joined. This will make sure he looks more normal and won’t be made fun of in school. If you are asian you should definitely also consider eyelid surgery since it can reduce problems with vision and lead to healthier eyes
Or you could avoid cosmetic procedures on non-consenting children entirely.
Particularly one that is not solely cosmetic and will have a substantial impact on his sexual experience as an adult. That skin is meant to be there, it protects the sensitive parts of the penis from over stimulation when not erect. This constant stimulation on the head of the penis from clothing makes it less sensitive over time. And the skin being removed, itself, has sensitive nerve endings. Removing this skin means that circumcised men simply do not experience that same level of sensation from sex as they would have otherwise.
Beyond that. There are risks as well such as too much skin being removed causing the skin to become stretched with an erection, which can be painful and a possible source of sores and infection.
There is no good reason for it except. In the US, at least, it stems from weird prudish attempts stop boys from masturbating and has since then just become a norm that isn’t questioned. Well question it. Forget it is the “normal” thing for a second. Would you cut off your daughter’s labia to make it easier to keep clean or not breed bacteria or pass on STD’s or whatever other justification they have for circumcision? Are there any other parts of your newborn you want to permanently remove? To flay off? No? Then dont do it to your son’s penis.
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I’m circumcised, but I can give the answer to if I wish I were uncircumcised. I would only want to choose circumcision if I looked into it and determined it to be good.
There’s someone whose name I forgot who called this out as being barbarism at Harvard or Columbia before getting kicked out for basically giving the truth on circumcision.
I did as a kid because I was different from everyone else.
As an adult I’m so incredibly thankful that I didn’t suffer genital mutilation because of social pressure from people I couldn’t care less about.
I’m very happy being natural.
