People tend to like it when I rant, so I figured I’d indulge the folks out there with a rant about something pretty bloody important to roughly 50% of the population out there… the penis, or more specifically one very specific portion of it.
When we found ourselves pregnant, my wife and I talked about all different kinds of scenarios and one of them we discussed was if we were to have a boy, would he be circumcised? My wife was pretty well indifferent on the subject, and I was close to, but I leaned in the direction of preferring not to do it.
Why? Well for one thing, it’s not fuckin’ reversible. I figure if our kid grows up and hates his foreskin in the future, or in the (incredibly unlikely, where we live) event he wants to marry an orthodox jewish girl, he can make the decision himself. After all, it’s his dick he can cut it up however he want.
Also, despite what the first hit for google on the subject might tell you, there are almost zero proven health benefits to doing so.
I’m not bitter about it, but here’s a novel aspect of looking at it. Historically, circumcision was often done to curtail masturbation in boys. Essentially it was seen as a way of reducing sexual pleasure to curtail deviancy. There’s another group of people out there who arbitrarily mutilate a kid’s genitals to prevent deviant behavior…
… some tribesfolk do it to young girls, because they think it’ll prevent promiscuity. This is seen as a grossly inhumane practice when backwards folk cut bits off little girls for no good reason, but here in the west it’s done all the time to little boys and most parents put more thought and effort into getting a car insurance quote than they do deciding whether to mutilate their kid’s junk.
I can certainly understand trusting your doctor and taking his word on what’s best and not giving it too much thought, they were only doing what they thought was best for their kids with the information they were given. But some of the crazies out there who vehemently defend their choice are just straight up fuckin’ hilarious – here’s some of the awesome reasons my wife’s heard behind it:
- It protects from STDs. One lady even went so far as to claim, unsourced, that uncircumcised males were 60% more likely to contract “STDs”. Not entirely sure which of the STDs happen to really, really like living under the foreskin, or who came up with the 60% figure, but any idiot that does more than 10 minutes worth of research can see there’s zero accepted evidence for this statement, or any of the other alleged health benefits.
- They’ll get teased at school, or will feel different from other kids. I know how I was raised, and while I’m by no means an expert on parenting I fully intend to do my very best to ensure my kid understand that his penis is supposed to stay in his pants during school hours. He shouldn’t be showing his off, and he certainly shouldn’t go out of his way to look at other kids’ equipment.
Since people on this subject like to make unsubstantiated claims, I’ll throw one out too: based on my limited experiences, communal showering after PE is one of the leading causes of mental trauma amongst pubescent boys. Boys who can shower after PE without having to look at each others goods are, in my uneducated opinion, going to grow up healthier. Aren’t unsourced claims awesome?
- Dad and boy should have matching equipment, so boy doesn’t grow up self-conscious. What the fuck? When your kid is old enough to compare, that’s when it’s time to stop being naked around your kid. Even if you decide that cutting bits of skin off your kid’s most sensitive areas without his say-so isn’t abuse, surely showing your junk off to a kid old enough to comprehend what it is would be!
So think about that for a second, think that for any reason behind male-circumcision you can come up with, tribes-people can make the same case for allowing female-circumcision, a practice which in the west is almost universally abhorred. The practice is no more or less barbaric because of the gender it’s being done to.
