Is this anti-semitism?

circumcision rate in the US is well below 50% for newborns the last few years, no longer "SOP"

If medical professionals were pushing it tho, I imagine it's bc they actually believed it was medically valuable + worth doing, which invalidates the "pro + anti circumcision equally crazy" equivocation.

― Mordy, Sunday, June 5, 2011 10:56 AM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark

i'm willing to believe that ancient tradition and modern medicine might well be equally crazy, not that i have a horse in this race.

― orchestral pygnoeuvres in zee park (contenderizer), Sunday, June 5, 2011 6:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark S

yah i wouldn't go as far as this but i don't think 'modern medicine' in general thought it was worth doing: it didn't catch on in europe anyway.

circumcision rate in the US is well below 50% for newborns the last few years, no longer "SOP"

― buzza, Sunday, June 5, 2011 7:03 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

adjusts bowtie, 'i don't think it's ever been over 50%'

I think the real problem with the equivocation is that no one is trying to push a mandatory circumcision law, ppl are trying to make it illegal (here in the US and abroad).

― Mordy, Sunday, June 5, 2011 10:58 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah, the movement to ban male circumcision seems excessive (esp given the well-documented disease prevention benefits), don't think there's any disagreement there.

interesting wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision#Medical_circumcision_from_1870_to_1950_in_English-speaking_countries

circumcision rate in the US is well below 50% for newborns the last few years, no longer "SOP"

Ah, right. I didn't realize it had declined so much.

"91% of men born in the 1970s, and 83% of boys born in the 1980s were circumcised."

from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#United_States

Seat belts and foreskins: not just good ideas, they're the LAW!

adjusts bowtie, 'i don't think it's ever been over 50%'

would love to see some stats on this, esp as broken down by region, race/ethnicity, etc. based on my admittedly limited (anecdotal) experience, i'd have guessed it was well over 70% (a lowball shot in the dark) in the mid-to-late 20th century. like uncircumcised kids were damn rare where i grew up...

x-post comin through

This ILE thread becomes #1 Google hit for "circumcision" in 3...2...1...

no, no, it was a 'they don't circumcize women' HFJ

xpost

gotcha

yah i wouldn't go as far as this but i don't think 'modern medicine' in general thought it was worth doing: it didn't catch on in europe anyway

oops, i didn't mean to suggest that "modern medicine" in general might be crazy (it certainly isn't), just that this or that common medical practice/belief might well be wildly off-base.

Not a lot of women seem emotionally caught up in this thread right now.

me and my bruv were both circumcised in the 70s, it was like tonsilectomy then, first sign of a problem and whip it off. but i've never had a problem whatsoever with it, dudes who are butthurt about being circumcised seem really weird to me.

like where's the "give me back my appendix you savages" support groups?

Not a lot of women seem emotionally caught up in this thread right now.

― Aimless, Sunday, June 5, 2011 2:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

if there could be an ilx "site description"

dudes who are butthurt about being circumcised seem really weird to me.

it's their doctors who are weird in this case

like where's the "give me back my appendix you savages" support groups?

― banter panchali (Noodle Vague), Sunday, June 5, 2011 11:13 AM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark

unsex organs playing catch up

Is it wrong to find "foreskin restoration" kind of funny?

This is the next wave of stem cell research money, f'sure.

how could foreskin restoration not be funny. be better still if it was like property restoration and they had to match the appropriate period and style

it could not be funny (read entire link) but i won't ruin a good time :P

I read some article about foreskin restoration once & one guy was hanging fishing sinkers from his dong for hours on end. That's something.

did he get a bite?

one guy was hanging fishing sinkers from his dong

Next big wave of spam emails, f'sure.

but i've never had a problem whatsoever with it, dudes who are butthurt about being circumcised seem really weird to me.

I don't know, more sensitivity could be good. Kind of hard to say, isn't it?

http://guanabee.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/isabel_mastache_fall_winter_2010_cibeles_es_es_1266566285203.jpg

thanks buffandmaxsmom

tooshay

dry but helpful

Meantime, Sullivan's seen the comic and all and is duly disenchanted:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/06/the-anti-semitism-behind-san-franciscos-anti-circumcision-proposal.html

has he determined if trig was circumcised?

There's plenty of dumb old testament shit that people don't do anymore because people have woken up and decided to apply common sense to their lives instead of the arbitrary rules of a fer-christs-sake god. A god. Don't chop up your children until they an give informed consent, imo. I'm not saying people need to make laws or anything - this isn't on the level of murdering homosexuals or selling your daughter or whatever. But this is totally arbitrary at this point and worthy of the making of fun.

i don't think there's much point to it anymore either but when the old testament was written and health and hygiene were unrecognizably different than in the modern first world it made more sense. people make up god-commandments sure but they don't just pull them out of a hat.

or maybe they just wanted to make sure nobody was having too good a time. i dunno.

Oh sure! Things were mad different back then! But shit changes...we got the internet now.

AND I'LL NEVER KNOW, NOW

Don't chop up your children until they an give informed consent, imo. I'm not saying people need to make laws or anything

^100% agree with this.

Going back to before this stuff was traditionally/routinely done - how did circumcision start? I mean who was the first guy to think "I'm going to cut a bit of my son's dick off" and WTF was he thinking?

o_O @ Foreskin Man wtf

Like mythologically? It was Abraham and he was thinking, "God told me to circumcise myself and my sons. Better get to that." Historically I have no idea.

This might be a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision

god collects prepuces to make a coat iirc

xp Hygiene was one reason why circumcision was promoted in the US starting in the late nineteenth century, but the main reason was to prevent masturbation. Really. Why the doctors didn't realize that there are other methods of male masturbation other than moving the foreskin up and down, I don't know.

far be it from me to say this is the weirdest bit of the bible. but it's pretty weird.

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.

Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision

read that last night, oddly enough. it is fascinatingly oblique.

There's a whole midrash about that. Moses neglected to circumcise his kids in a timely manner so God sent a snake to swallow him. The snake had like halfway Moses when his wife went and did the circumcision herself and saved her husband's life.

halfway eaten*

there's a line a little later where Moses describes himself as having "uncircumcised lips". could be a mistaken transposition of an epithet applied to Pharaoh but i love this unexplained mysteriousness.

i think actually not just halfway, but like had swallowed him on both ends in such a way as to leave just his own penis uncovered and that's how Tzipporah knew that the problem was circumcision related

reading that recently too, it is one of those deep dark strange moments of the bible.

xp
cool that clears it up.