I wouldn’t go snipping just yet.

X, are you suggesting that Africans have different biologies than the rest of us?

At long last the WHO has finally come out and admitted what the rest of us have known all along.

Silly me, I thought it was a victorian anti-masturbation attitude and an attempt to portray males as inherently vile or bad, and females as inherently enlightened. I heard petticoating was an effective and widespread practice in the UK in the 1800s to ‘make boys more civil’ (thus assuming they inherently were not, and that by, becoming more like girls (and dressing as), they would).

Sorry for reviving an old topic like this. Just couldn’t let this pass.

I also don’t agree on forcing an infant to be circumcized. I have three brothers (14, 17 and 23), all intact foreskins, and I’m glad it wasn’t forced on them (I live in Canada).

Anecdotes are difficult to use in medicine, which is why most people prefer peer-reviewed studies with statistical validity. Nerves are concentrated in the foreskin, but the brain is the most important sex organ, so how the brain interprets it is different from person to person and influenced by expectations.

If you are in a committed relationship and neither partner is infected with anything, I see no reason to run out and get circumcised.

In Africa, poverty and lack of supplies might make circumcision a good health preventative. Recognize that it’s a statistical thing — circumcision will slow down the rate of infection, and overall, it will help with the HIV problem in Africa. As an individual African, though, if you are relying on circumcision to protect you, the results could be fatal.

For Americans, the math is far different. Anyone having unprotected sex and relying on circumcision is an idiot or drug user. Ok, so that’s sort of redundant. Will people think of circumcision as a “backup” emergency plan rather than frontline defense? In the event of condom failure, will they be less likely to seek intervention with antivirals? In theory, circumcision should cut the HIV rate. Now, maybe I’m just cranky today, but I wouldn’t be surprised to watch the HIV rate go up with the recent push for circumcision. The jury is still out on whether humanity is too stupid to live.

Ever wonder why cars with ABS get in as many accidents as those without? Now you know.

I’m firmly in favor of the HPV vaccine, by the way, but it I’ve always thought that those receiving the vaccine should be carefully taught about what the vaccine can and can’t do, or the paradoxical stupidity of humans might make things worse rather than better.

Were I sexually active with multiple partners, I would certainly get circumcised. I’d still use condoms and I’d still seek medical help in the case of condom failure.

As someone in a stable relationship, no way. We have fun with things as they are, thank you.

If I had a boy baby…I honestly have no idea what I would do, and that gives me the creeps.

“The study shows that the foreskin is the most sensitive portion of the penis,” said study coauthor Robert Van Howe, a pediatrician at the Marquette General Health System in Marquette, Michigan. “It’s not like you’re chopping off plain old skin. The analogy would be like removing your lips, because the lips are more sensitive than the skin around them.”

here’s the article:
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/festa/howinsensitive/

here’s the actual study:
http://www.nocirc.org/touch-test/bju_6685.pdf

Best of luck, and enjoy Dubai!

It’s quite simple: both males and females, as they come equipped by nature, have some control over their sexual encounters. The delicate tissue of the foreskin and frenulum, hung-up on a dry and tight labium of an unwilling female, is simply going to rip if the owner tries to push. This is a rather painful rebuke. Circumcised men, with a pole devoid of its protective sheath, are thus equipped to rape if they so wish, and take sexual control with less fear of injury. Haven’t you heard the American term “rough sex?” Circumcisers happily promote this outcome when they fret that the foreskin is prone to tears and injury. Circumcision was designed for sexual control by allowing men to penetrate under conditions not possible with a normal penis.

The evidence abounds where genital mutilation is the norm. In large parts of Africa circumcision is a man’s sexual coming-of-age ceremony, while the first sexual experience of many females is rape. We know this and read about it in the New York Times and wonder what we can do to help those poor Africans, missing the obvious connection because America too is a mutilating and raping society.