wat. I said infants. Obviously as children age they gain autonomy. My goodness this debate brings out absolute aids

The rebuttals were almost certainly unsatisfying. Like humans began taking a blade to children's foreskin for good reason, gtfo.

I draw the line at permanently altering their body for religious purposes. And I was grunching but I did read some of your posts, and you clearly have some skin in the game, or lack thereof.

The Canadian Paediatric Society has been mentioned itt and although

sounds a little tepid it's a safe bet that they'll never take a 180 on this stance and I can only foresee them taking a stronger stance against removing foreskin as time goes on. It can be no other way.

Fingers are there for a reason and so is foreskin. You're correct, it doesn't add anything, it removes something for no rational, logical reason, which is right in religion's wheelhouse. And justifications like a potential reduced chance of disease are a joke, this practice didn't begin because of concerns about HPV, it began because humans are ******ed. It's like football, if this **** were invented today it'd be outlawed.

A big part of the problem is putting the law before we consider what consent is about when it comes to children (and possibly a very negative attitude towards religion in general).

Yes children cannot consent because they don't understand properly and therefore the moral idea is that we make decisions for them, trying to do what they would want if they could have understand. Then we get a relatively straightforward way to tell where things fall on the good/bad spectrum i.e years later, what do people think about the decision taken on their behalf years earlier.

The law only has to step in where people are imposing a decision which the people it was imposed on object to having had it imposed on them* (so they needed protection under the law) afaik, unlike with women, it's very unclear that men do generally have a problem with having been circumcised so it's not very compelling to make it illegal (especially given it's a sensitive issue for other reasons). This allows for change as attitudes can change - if men start to object more then a) they will do it less to their sons and b) the case for a law becomes stronger.

An objection to the above would be if people are pressurised into doing it to their sons when they don't really want to. This may be a valid objection which can be addressed by education/public discussion and in extreme cases the law.


*there are examples where this fails but they don't apply here

Semi-grunch

Has anyone with a foreskin confirmed this mini vagina thing?

Real vagina feels better, but basically correct.

That assumes they have a reasonable ability and willingness to make an accurate assessment, which isn't the case here at all. Black and white TV is great.. until you see color TV. If you're asking a population where most of them don't know that color TV exists and the rest have only heard about it but never seen it, you're going to get a wildly inaccurate reporting of the quality gap. Furthermore, when it comes to something personal like dick chopping, people are reflexively loathe to admit that their parents mutilated them and cost them pleasure, and some will even go to extreme lengths of self-delusion (like a certain somebody ITT) to avoid accepting reality even when they know it on some level.

I don't know why this keeps getting repeated, when it's factually untrue. Someone earlier posted a statement from the American Academy of pediatrics which said that medically there may be some benefit.

The whole religious dimension to this debate is irrelevant. It's a medical procedure. It has very low risks and it has some very low potential benefits. Experts are not in universal agreement on whether the risks outweigh the benefits. For something like that, it seems reasonable to let parents make the call. We give parents the ability to make decisions which are far more potentially damaging all the time.

I'm going to go out on a huge limb here I know, but given parental attitudes towards basic risk-mitigation things like sex ed and birth control, it's *really* hard to believe that a significant fraction of parents in the western world who dick chop are choosing to chop so tiny Peter will be statistically a little safer rawdogging diseased poon later in life. So, given that, it *is* factually true that it's usually being done for no rational reason.

God created man in his image, but apparently he forgot to remove foreskin so circumcision is just doing the Lord's work?

It has very low risks in 2018, God knows how many children have died from infection or been maimed over the past few millennia because of circumcision.

On that they are in a similar position to those who made the decision for them. We all know that both circumcised and uncircumcised exist but almost no men have any idea what both are like.

It's a common drag on progress but not a showstopper. Enough people make progressive decisions without making some huge fuss or blaming people for decisions made with with good intent (or at least no bad intent).

@Morphismus

Complete bull****. The vast majority of non-Jewish/Muslim Americans circumcise because they believe there is a medical benefit, the main one generally cited being cleanliness and decreased infection (not from HIV as everyone in this thread has tried to strawman). The other 5-10% do it so their kid doesn't look different from everyone else, which is kinda silly but also actually reasonable. Whether or not the benefit actually exits, it's obvious that's what they think and/or are advised by their doctor. The idea that people are chopping their childrens' dicks for "no reason" just because they feel like it is hilariously ridiculous.

FWIW I am circumcised and almost never use lube to masturbate.

Since we're running on anecdotes at this point - as you said it's obviously nearly impossible to get real stats on this - I will say that the majority of women from around the world that I've talked to say that uncircumcised penises generally feel softer and have worse texture.

Think of it less like a mini vagina and more like a mini condom.

Nah, they do because it was done to them. The "medical benefit" is just some post hoc rationalization. This practice didn't begin because of medicine or science.

North American legal eagles and judges may not want to touch this subject with a ten foot pole for various ethical and cultural reasons, but the truth is that Iceland is likely just ahead of the curve, as usual.

What year do you think we're in?

Indeed. It's like someone arguing for adherence to a dietary law because something used to be a high food poisoning risk in the olden days. It's moot as to whether it was ever true but irrelevant even if it was.

2018, I was just putting that out there because you gave me the impression that you believed it has always been that way.

And "ya it's been an unnecessary risk to children's health for centuries but today we're much better at it" doesn't strike me as that great of a rebuttal. I know, I know, unnecessary risk to children's health has always been their lot in life, no reason to complain.

Your qualified statement at the end is different than the one I was responding to. I don't know about usually, but some people may do it for reasons that are not that well thought out.

However, in the end, I think the prevailing factor should be the procedure itself. In this case we have a procedure where the risk benefit analysis is close. So, however the parents want to make that decision is fine. There are so many other areas in which important parental decisions are made in frankly stupid ways, and the state doesn't step in there

Of course not. The thread is concerned with contemporary proposed legislation. That's what I'm addressing.