Recent Content by TLCTugger

Of course without the foreskin sex is greatly diminished. Only the boy himself has the moral right to choose to alter his sexual experience. Not one national medical association on earth endorses routine circumcision.

Please view the medical video "Functions of the Foreskin" (two 10-minute segments):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9DoCn3gATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps1dkbcOKfA

I think you will never dismiss what is lost to circumcision again. Certainly before permanantly amputating part of someone's sexual organs, watching at least one of the video segments is not too much to ask.

-Ron

The problem is it's risky surgery which robs a male of a HUGE measure of pleasure-receptiveness. No national medical association on earth endorses routine circumcision, so for a minor it is a non-consensual cosmetic amputation - a gross violation of his basic human rights.

What part shall we find nothing wrong with cutting off of you?

-Ron

You implied kids might have a hard time in school due to being intact.

I cited that about half of today's US infants (3/4 in the Western states) are being left intact, so intact kids will by no means be the oddballs.

95% of the non-Muslim world does not circumcise.

-Ron

I don't know what you mean. 95% of the non-Muslim world does not circumcise. In the US about half of infants are left intact today. In California and the 4 Western states, over 3/4 of infants make it home from the hospital with their foreskins.

That would certainly be true if this were about the convenience of caregivers.

The plastibell gives the worst result with respect to residual pleasure-receptivity. It takes the greatest possible amount of frenular tissue. The frenulum is the connective tissue on the underside that normally pulls the foreskin back over the glans after an erection. It is also the single most nerve-rich spot on a man's body. It really is the male clitoris, and the Plastibell takes much more of it than a free-hand circumcision by a compassionate mohel does.

I've been studying circumcision ever since I became a parent in 1992. At the time, I had no opinion. I've since become convinced that it is NOT a parent's choice; it's HIS body and HIS decision.

At http://Circumstitions.com I found a wealth of info. It's so easy to see a headline like "Circumcision doesn't reduce sensation" and smugly say "good, that's what I thought." When you look into it, there are recent studies where they carefully measured the phallus of many many men in 17 defined spots. The 5 most sensitive spots were all on the foreskin.

Then you see that the other study about "Circumcision doesn't Reduce Sensation" was done by AIDS researchers in Africa. They questioned men who had recently been circumcised as part of a trial to see if circumcision fights HIV transmission. They asked the men the strangest questions, like "Is penetration difficult since you were circumcised?" The numbers they got were like 98.77% of cut men are satisfied with sex, and 98.79% of the men who remained intact are satisfied. Therefore there's no difference! Well, this was done shortly after the circumcisions, so the glans was still tingly and raw and hadn't had much chance to get numb. These were guys who sought circumcision. And in other studies, no more than 90% of any group of people report general sexual satisfaction.

In other words, they got their finding by not measuring anything related to actual sexual satisfaction, using a biased sample, and asking about it well before circumcision could have all of its effects. And by the way, they even reported HIGHER satisfaction among the intact, but that is not the headline for some reason. Follow the money and you find out these researchers are tied to groups trying to import circumcision tools and training from the West into Africa.

I think it was at http://Circumstitions.com where I saw that Daniel Halperin - one of the researchers - is the grandson of a ritual circumciser, and he's quoted in a magazine about how he sees his mission in life to be the carrying on of his grandfather's work. Not exactly unbiased, yet these non-double-blinded non-placebo-controlled studies are heralded throughout the world as gospel. If you ask me, the only study that matters was done in the US over the course of the last 3 decades. Most of the US men who have died of AIDS were circumcised at birth. There is zero probabilty that circumcision is a relevant way of fighting AIDS.

It's scary. I'm not a conspiracy monger, but it seems like stories that show problems with circumcision don't get nearly the play in the press. People can watch out for these biased anti-circumcision web sites. But it's not biased when the full text of the actual medical studies are right there, linked from the peer-reviewed medical journals where they first appeared.

Maybe she knows that the foreskin includes over half (20,000) of the male's specialized pleasure-receptive nerve endings. It protects the glans and mucosa from the drying and abrasive effects of clothing and air, and it provides an exquisite frictionless rolling/gliding mode of intimate interaction that is not possible when the normal slack is absent.

It's risky surgery. The baby is so tiny nobody knows how much he will grow and how much slack skin he will want or need to accomodate erections. Any tiny procedural error is magnified as the boy grows. In infancy, the foreskin is still fused the glans (like a fingernail to a finger) and it must be torn away to do the circumcision and the tearing often causes permanant gouges or pits in the glans. Healing in diapers and without the ability to communicate if things don't feel just right can cause infections, ugly skin bridges, and adhesions. It is estimated that the amount spent on circumcsion-related corrective surgery in the US is close to the $400 million billed annually for the initial procedures.

Every mammal on earth evolved a foreskin before there was surgery, soap, or even running water. The interior space is kept hygienic by the flushing action of sterile urine leaving the body. Until the boy is old enough to retract his own skin and rinse with clear water, the skin protects him from pathogens. The AAPs advice for foreskin care is LEAVE IT ALONE (which they capitalize). Only the owner should ever try to retract a foreskin.

No national medical association on earth endorses routine circumcision. 95% of the world's non-Muslims don't circumcise. In the US, the cutting rate is down to about 50/50, although in the 4 Western states only about 25% are cut.