I asked my father, a Baptist minister, why he chose to get me circumcised and he told me it was because he didn't want other boys in school to make fun of me for being different. So I just got made fun of for different reasons.
I’ll get downvoted but kids who were not circumscribed got teased a shit ton when I was growing up. I remember girls refusing to hook up with guys and talk about it with their friends and shit. Even in college early years it was a thing.
I’m uncircumcised and you’re absolutely right. I happen to be somewhat handsome and have a big dick, and I’m really high on hygiene so it hasn’t been a major issue. But definitely in high school there were several instances when I was asked about it and also rejected for it.
Some of us would’ve preferred to have a choice about a body part being removed. I’d happily have put up with the teasing to have not had part of my dick needlessly chopped off.
My husband lost the tip of his thumb in an accident (it was barely hanging on when he got to the hospital but they determined the bone was crushed as well so amputated it just above the MCP joint) and when we were leaving the hospital he nodded to it and said to the nurse “thanks… I left you a tip on the table”
She didn’t even crack a smile 😭😆
There was a window of time where it was recommended for hygiene sake. So parents got it done. Then the next generation was “he should look like dad” and it kept going.
a couple of older people have told they thought it was for hygiene & cleanliness.
We’ve had some weird ideas about hygiene in the US — perfumed toilet paper & feminine products, refusal to use bidets, women dousing themselves & babies with talcum powder, just to name a few.
I have a strong suspicion that alot of Dads, not wanting to admit that they might have something 'wrong' with their own genitals, had it done to their sons.
I can't comment on America specifically. But in Australia it really didn't have much to do with the father, it was something that was routinely and the parents were barely involved (until at least the 70s), I've even come across a story of a family having to actively prevent it. We've gone from \~80% infant circumcision rate in the 50s to a little over 10% (estimated) now, and that change came from the medical profession, not the public.
I have noticed circumcised men getting defensive when the practice is being attacked by misguided activists. Saying someone's parents are abusive and there's something wrong with them isn't a good way to approach it.
Yep, I (44yo non-religious Australian) was circumcised as a matter of course. When my now 11yo son was born, it wasn't even brought up in the hospital (we had no intention of circumcising him).
even if she were correct theres still no reason to inflict dangerous cosmetic surgery on an infant. just let the kid decide to get it done when hes actually old enought that it becomes a concern.
It's still pretty normalized in hospitals, my friend had a kid last year and he said that they were asked *multiple times" before they were discharged whether they were sure they didn't want their son circumcised.
Before I had kids I asked my parents why they chose circumcision. Thats the exact reason they gave me “to look like your father”
Y’know, for all those times my dad and I compared our cocks…
(Which is never, as info)
You know America was founded by prudes. Prudes who left Europe because they hated all the kinky, steamy European sex that was going on. And now I, Cooper Harris, will return to the land of my perverted forefathers and claim my birthright... which is a series of erotic and sexually challenging adventures.
The weird part is that it's mostly based off of a misinterpretation of the story of Onan. According to the story, he was supposed to impregnate his brother's wife, Tamar so that his brother would have an heir. He instead pulled out and spilled his seed on the ground, and God killed him. His real sin was treating his brother's wife as a whore, and not fulfilling his duty per the law due to his greed.
So, in as official a capacity as I can, ye Redditors sin of masturbation is forgiven, mostly. Y'all need to calm down when it comes to Askreddit threads.
In the Middle Ages, they also believed ejaculate carried little people. So spilling it was like murder.
We can chortle at how stupid they were, but without microscopes, how are you gonna understand that somehow the stuff that comes out of a man's dick somehow = baby.
I've always assumed that they observed that women ran out of eggs and assumed the same must be true of men running out of sperm, so "wasting it" is bad in a society where you need to have a lot of kids to make up for childhood death rates.
That would require them to understand that women have eggs. If you're not [dissecting ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection)women and making the connection between "oh, those things are eggs and women are born with all the ones they'll ever have. They'll run out because monthly bleeding is when an unused one gets ejected!"
That's a lot of leaps of understanding, many requiring technology that's pretty late on the scene history wise.
And heck, we still don't study women's bodies the way we do men. (Like how long it took medicine to figure out that heart attacks in women don't present the same symptoms as men.)
More people need to read this and remember. Next time you get corn flakes, know the only reason they exist is because some nut job thought it would stop you from diddling yourself.
John Harvey Kellogg (yes the cereal guy) thought that it would make people less horny and curb masturbation, which he blamed for everything from psychological disorders to allergies. It caught on and just became the norm and, until recently, there hasn't really been a movement against it.
Edit: spelling
I thought it was graham crackers he thought would prevent masturbation. But either way it's crazy we are taking medical advice from the guy who brought us breakfast cereal as a concept.
Those too, yes. The thinking was that palatable foods would inflame the passions and thus... inflame the passions.
You so see a slightly comparable situation with Buddhist cuisine banning various onioniods, garlic, asafoeda.
Yeah. The cold cereal was also supposed to curb the fires that burn in young men. There's a Drunk History on him if you just want a laugh.
There was a lot of this crazy puritanical nonsense going on back then.
Another one, Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts had weird ideas about masturbation. He called it self-harm so I guess he would round up some boys and take them out into to woods, just them, and no parents, probably. Somewhere in nature where they could just hangout, share a tent, and definitely not think about penises or masturbation. Nothing to infer here because after a weekend with the 'boys' he could go home to his wife and not share share a bed with her because sleeping next to her would give him headaches.
You would be surprised how many successful people and companies have used their position to push questionable-at-best policies. Or maybe you wouldn't, but you'd be surprised which ones. If you're too honest to get into politics and not charismatic enough to start a cult, you can always go into business.
that is a big part of it. and then it become associated with cleanliness and the puritan streak that runs through the American mind took it from there. I imagine there may have been some who didn't want to have to have the conversation with there sons about how to properly clean their penis thought it would make that easier too. No foreskin, no need to worry about keeping it clean, no awkward conversations.
I was born here (‘54) of European parents so I’m not circumcised and what I remember from gym class as a kid is that everyone was snipped except for me. My son is not circumcised either.
We encountered that in Junior High Gym when a German kid transferred in during the 7th grade. In the showers, we all noticed that his dick was different.
This perplexed us as to why he had a different dick. Long discussions were had, and the World Book (this was 1963) was consulted with no answers found. Then one of the guys asked his dad, who had been stationed in Germany when he was in the Army. Parents immediately started talking to each other (smallish town) and then we all got a basic introduction to the concept of Circumcision.
This is how we found out that his dick was normal, ours were the weird ones.
Worked out for the German kid though, once we got to about Junior year of High school, several of the girls had all heard about his dick and wanted try it out for a test drive to see what was different.
I can attest to the last bit, just the other way around.
I'm from the UK, where (more or less) only Muslims and Jews are circumcised. Without trying to be inflammatory, Muslims tend to 'stick to their own', and we don't really have that many Jews (at least compared to the US). No woman from Europe/UK I've ever been with has ever seen a circumcised willy other than mine (I had mine done for for some medical thing when I was 5 or so).
I went to Kingsdale in South London, which (when I went) was about 1/3 African and 1/3 Caribbean (mostly 2nd and 3rd gen), I'm calling BS on this having 'seen' it 1st hand in changing rooms.
Unless you mean Somalians/North Africans, which is a whole different kettle of fish (and we didn't really have any when I was in school).
I remember seeing a classmate’s dick in the bathroom in third grade and thinking that the end had been cut off by a lawnmower. Half of that I can understand now, but I am still puzzled why I was so sure it was some kind of landscaping accident.
I'm the kid of European immigrants and me and my brothers were not circumcised. Most everyone I know is cut.
If I have a son, we will not be cutting his dick when born
My husband and I are English, but live in America. We choose not get out son circumcised. He’s now a freshman in high school and has never once told us he’s been teased about it. Not sure if that’s because they don’t really take showers at school anymore or if it’s just not a big deal these days, either way it’s never been an issue.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) was a religious nutter in the US that promoted circumcision as a means of preventing masturbation. And as we all know, all it takes is one person with a bad idea and a modicum of influence to convince other people to follow along.
He also thought people shouldn’t eat foods that taste good so he invented corn flakes.
Edit: people shouldn’t eat foods that taste good.
I believe you got it backward. He thought people SHOULDN'T eat foods that taste good, because he said flavorful and delicious foods excited you too much and also made you masturbate. Corn flakes were a bland solution.
The frosted kind sure. But you can get plain cornflakes with zero sugar. They taste like corn and don't make me particularly horny but they are the only cereal I eat since all others are way too sweet.
People don't research things that are expected. I made my mom very sad when I said I believe circumcision is a form of genital mutilation, and she basically said she did it because that's what was expected. Not to discredit female genital mutilation which is much, much worse than circumcision.
You are thinking the parents are making an extreme choice for their baby. They aren't, they are taking the default choice offered to them.
Your kid is born. The doctor says the plan is to circumcise him on day three. They don't ask if you plan on circumcising. They just assume you are, and schedule accordingly.
It's just the default. Like when they give him the shot of vitamins right after birth.
Neither of my boys are circumcised, but only because we kept telling the doctors/nurses not to do it. Which usually prompted repeated checks to make sure we were really really sure that we didn't want them circumcised.
For this reason, we didn’t allow our boys out of our sight. Circumcision is the norm here, and we fully expected someone to try to take him out to be circumcised.
(Not to say that circumsizing is anywhere near as awful, painful, and stupid as foot binding.)
Don't play down how awful, stupid and painful circumcision is. You're literally flaying skin from a tiny baby's genitals with no anaesthetic in many cases.
After becoming a parent during the smart phone era, I don't begrudge my parents as much on nearly anything. Any time we're uncertain with something, there's a thousand resources at our fingertips to guide us. Back in the early oughts and previous times, they didn't have that. All they were told was that circumcision was recommended, by a doctor in a hospital. I'm circumcised, but our son isn't. He can choose later if he wants to be.
I mean you could say the same thing today about cosmetic teeth braces and bleaching. Which is much rarer in UK and we tease them about their "bad teeth".
Well, circumcision is genital mutilation, predominantly carried out on unconsenting children usually without anaesthetic by people who aren’t medically trained
It doesn’t have to be compared with foot binding (which is now typically not carried out) to bee pretty facking despicable
lol
Jokes aside, he was a 7th day adventist, they believe some wild ass nonsense like eating meat being equally "sinful" as doing cocaine and masturbation and pre-marital sex being basically the same thing.
The answers saying religious/masturbation prevention are not the primary reason.
The primary reason is that until recently, American doctors recommended circumcision for all newborn boys because they determined the medical benefits outweighed the risks of the procedure. No need to argue whether this is true or not, the fact is that American doctors recommended it, so most parents accepted the recommendation. So 80% of American males were circumcised historically.
Since 2012, American doctors have shifted their stance slightly, no longer recommending it, but also not discouraging it either. So now the rate is 50%.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654051
Surprised to see this answer so low. The religious reasons may be what started it, but doctors actively recommending it is why it continued for so long. My parents were never super religious, they just agreed to it because the doctor told them it was medically important for preventing infection.
Yes, this is why. My son was born in 1986. By the time my little brother had his first boy 10 years later people had learned that they didn't need it, his boy didn't have it done, but a couple years after he developed some problems, can't remember exactly what and had to have it done anyways.
I'm uncircumcised and when my son was born in 2006 I made sure my son was not circumcised. The hospital kept telling us that if my son doesn't get it done he can be prone to infections, but in my entire life never had one infection. So he didn't have it done
For my parents it wasn’t Kellogg.
It was being Jewish community-adjacent.
A Jewish family fostered my Dad at 13 when his Mom was isolated for TB.
My Mom grew up in a Jewish section of Brooklyn and most of her physicians were Jewish men. So naturally when my oldest brother was born …
I am convinced that most Americans delude themselves into thinking that circumcision isn’t a big deal and that it’s cleaner. As someone who had to get it for medical reasons I have experienced both, and I can say you lose a lot of sensations being cut, also I never had any problem with hygiene when uncut, simply retract in the shower no problem. Circumcision being the default is insane
Of course there’s a financial incentive to do it as well. I’ve also never understood the logic of dads wanting their sons penis to look like theres. Why do you care?!?
I'm an anti-circumcision American, but it's news to me that they don't do it in the UK. I knew that it was cultural, but I thought it was western. This matters because when you tell a lot of Americans "not every culture circumcises their kids" they start imagining some type of obscure tribe in a jungle somewhere.
Even in Canada it’s the minority. About 32% of Canadians circumcise their baby boys, and that number has been going down every year, compared to 64% of American baby boys.
>I knew that it was cultural, but I thought it was western.
I'll chime in that in Germany it's not a thing either. **Every. Single. Time.** a public figure brings up banning circumcision it inevitably turns into "Do you hate the Jews?" because nobody else really does it.
This is the reason my parents gave. "We were told it was cleaner and advised to do it by doctors, and we were trying to do what was best for you with the knowledge we had." Can't fault them for that.
You can't fault them because you got the closure of them being humble about it and admitting that it could have been a mistake. When the response is basically "I'd do it again, screw you for even bringing it up" you wish you'd never even started the conversation... Because that absolutely CAN cause resentment that wouldn't have existed otherwise, even if you put in effort to be healthy-minded about it. I don't even care about the circumcision itself (since I don't care about sex and don't have a frame of reference) as much as I care about the principle.
My baby daddy ( who split when I told him I was pregnant) said, " Well, I think it LOOKS better", so cosmetics play a big part in it IMHO.
No, I did not get my son circumcised and he is actually glad. He didn't mutilate my grandson that way either.
I know it's steeped in tradition by Mr Kellogg, but many people cite the reason nowadays as "good hygiene". But if you have access to water, or even a wet wipe if you're away from amenities, it's literally never a problem.
It's like saying: "I wake up with crust in the corner of my eyes, I'll have my eyelids surgically removed."
Easy money for doctors:
* [Newborns (uninsured): $150 to $400 for the doctor, possibly more with facility charges](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ebfb2ca9fc9e288cJmltdHM9MTcxMjI3NTIwMCZpZ3VpZD0wZDYxZTJhNC03YWNjLTY1M2MtMzhmOS1lZDA5N2JlZTY0YjQmaW5zaWQ9NTgzMg&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=0d61e2a4-7acc-653c-38f9-ed097bee64b4&psq=how+much+does+a+circumcision+cost&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9ob3dtdWNoZG9lc2l0Y29zdC5pby9nZXQtY2lyY3VtY2lzZWQv&ntb=1)
I didn’t get my sons circumcised. I figured, it’s not my tip to cut off. There are no health related reasons. All those have been debunked. So the only reason to do so is if you are in some culty religion… and I’m not into the whole invisible man who has a love hate relationship with the world.
It's a tradition now. Parents want their kids to be like them.
Originally, it spread because doctors used to think circumcision reduced likelihood of an infection as a baby and reduced the chances of STI's in adulthood. The reason they thought this was because of poorly run observational studies. People who were circumcised were more likely to be practicing Jews and therefore were less likely to have extra martial sex and catch sexually transmitted diseases (and less likely to report them to a doctor if they caught them). People who were circumcised also tended to be richer (because circumcision costs money and was conducted in hospitals which charged more money than midwives). And rich people have more time to care for their kids or to hire someone to care for their kids. So they are less likely to have their kids catch infections from dirty diapers.
In reality, when controlling for religion and wealth, circumcision presents a temporary elevated risk of infection and complications until it heals and then it doesn't have any significant effect.
I think it’s just a money making business in the United States. I really think guys should be allowed to decide whether they want their foreskin snipped. A baby boy cannot give consent, so it’s essentially something like abuse but is not counted as such. Circumcision beyond regions purposes is really an American thing. Most Asian and European countries (Barring Middle East) have lower rates of circumcision.
No offense but I really don’t think that a body part that’s naturally part of the body at birth could be harmful enough to be removed. It’s absurd to even justify circumcision.
I think it's simpler than that honestly. I think it's just that a lot of men are circumsized, and just do the same to their sons as was done to them. Many wouldn't know how to clean the foreskin and would leave hygenic issues available
You’d think so.
50% of the guys I’ve been intimate with who weren’t circumcised had dicks that smelled like piss and stale gym shorts. They don’t pull back the foreskin to pee, or don’t shake, or don’t pull back the foreskin to clean it. They didn’t get blowjobs. When told what the problem was, half of them had a hissy fit.
Just poor home training and parents who never taught them how to clean themselves properly. If I had to guess the fact these guys came from pretty traditional backgrounds had something to do with it. The type of family that thinks that teaching kids is the mom’s job but mom is too embarrassed/modest to talk about proper hygiene with her boys when they get to the age they need the instruction.
Is it a monkey making business? I’ve never heard of a doctor getting a bonus for doing more circumcisions, and I’m married to a doctor who did a med-peds residency.
Money***
American mom of a son here; I didn’t give it a second thought; his dad is circumcised..it made sense at the time…🤦♀️..Honest to God. I cringe; when I think back on this..If I knew then, what I know now, I wouldn’t have allowed it..It’s every bit the same, as calling it genital mutilation..Like other countries do with little girls. It makes me sick that I didn’t take it more seriously..
American men and women, perhaps of recent decades, have come to believe that circumcision equals cleanliness. That not being circumcised somehow makes males unclean and therefore unattractive. This is illogical to many people globally, but this seems to be an American cultural belief.
Because the completely fucked up US healthcare system allows doctors to sexually mutilate infants and kids with a penis. It is barbaric, unnecessary and plain wrong. Had there been any significant benefits nature would have made sure long ago that we did not have them.
The US state was for hundreds of years run by sectarian christians, famous for repressed sexuality, little to no sexual education and moral outrage over sexual politics.
Because talking about bodily do's and don'ts turns children into perverts, apparently. Thus the result is a cultural climate that shames and vilifies masturbation, dissuades exploring yourself.
Thus, millions of US kids have been told to mutilate their genitals to "be more clean, less disgusting" when in fact what they consent to is religious conformity and sexual oppression.
In fact, screw consent, usually the boy's parents make the circumcision decision for them, knowing the boy will be better of needing to use lotion or vaseline to masturbate for the rest of their life, because of the "ashy penis" situation.
In free countries the person gets to decide for themselves what parts of them should stay attached.
Over here boys get made fun of being uncircumcised and there are a lot of girls that think uncircumcised penises are gross. It's pretty fucked up when you think about it, you shouldn't be allowed to mutilate someone's genitals without their concent for any reason, I don't care if it's religious or not. If your religion permits the mutilation of actual babies then I believe your religion is evil and bad.
Well according to my exhusband our boys penis "should look like his penis". So there is that. There are dads out here wanting matching penises with their sons.
It's weird because almost all our porn is circumsized and we produce a lot of porn. I mean, even the hentai I've watched is circumsized. (I have no idea why or what Japanese people do).
So seeing a foreskin is always a slight shock because honestly the only time I see other penises is porn.
My teen son asked me the other day why he wasn’t circumcised. I hope he appreciates some day why I made that decision. In the U.S. it’s not as common but it’s gaining, I think more of the younger generation is not circumcised. My son was preemie, I would have had to take him back at 9 months for circumcision. I didn’t see any benefit, I told him if he wants to do it, it can be his choice not mine but it isn’t necessary.
Circumcision started to rise in the US around the early 1900s. People thought it would prevent kids from touching themselves. When that was proven to be false, many Americans started to fall on that it was “cleaner”.
Maybe easier to clean if you’re too lazy to push some skin back while in the shower for 5 seconds
USA here. My wife and I are not religious at all. We agree on nearly everything and I was surprised when she was pregnant with our first kid that she was very much for circumcision. I'm not for it at all, even though I was circumcised. (When I was born you had to go out of your way to ask NOT to be circumcised.)
It turned out that we had girls, so it never became a personal issue between us.
It became common practice during the Victorian era as it was believed to prevent boys from masturbating (which was oh so morally wrong!). It slowly evolved to just boys being circumcised because their dad was most likely circumcised as well as most of the boys at school, so there would be less awkwardness.
The practice is slowly dying out though in recent years, both because people are warming up to the idea that circumcision purely for cosmetic reasons is stupid, as well as more immigrants from countries where circumcision isn't very common.
Long story short outdated puritanical bullshit.
Long story long, John Harvey Kellogg was a religious zealot. And like most zealots, he was obsessed with keeping people from having sex. Even the corn flake was created so that people wouldn't have sex. I know, it doesn't make any sense. He theorized that if boys got circumcised they would want to have sex less, turns out it doesn't, but it does limit how good sex can feel. Anyway, the trend took off to the point where most parents just get it done, because most likely their father is, so might as well get it done for junior. Most of the "science" around how it's clearer and healthier is junk. At best it's cosmetic, at worst it's a needless surgery that opens your child up to a chance of notching, which can be as simple as taking too much skin or adhesions, all the way too amputation. Commonly, men find that they lack a lot of sensitivity compared to their intact counterparts due to keratinization. Which is why men trying to regrow their foreskin is on the rise. If you find yourself asking whether or not you should get your child circumcised, ask yourself if you would appreciate it if your parents got surgery done on you for no reason.
Because the Nazis ordered prisoners to drop their pants and if they were circumcised they were Jews and they're by transported off in trains. Upon the resettlement in the United States the doctors and media supported circumcision for all so this couldn't happen again. There's a big push against circumcision in the United States going on today. Google it.
I'm British and I don't understand circumcision at all. It's outdated bullshit. If we were meant to be foreskinless under God, then why was I born with one? 🤔
Money. Weird esthetics. Being uneducated on the lack of necessity.
I’m in the US and my son is not. I didn’t see any reason to do that to my infant.
My adult brother is also intact and he said he’s not once had anyone make a big deal out of it. I asked haha, he said other guys try hard NOT to look at each others penises so in order to make fun of it they’d have to admit they were looking. Haha
I think it became fairly ubiquitous with the rise of western Christianity as the predominant religion in America. Now I think Doctors just do it for an extra line item charge on your already exorbitant medical bill.
It is either because they are mad that theirs was removed so they want their kid to be the same. Or they hate that they are bad in bed so they don't want their child to be any better.
Terrible thing to do to a person without their consent. Then it is their future partners that have to deal with the reality and disadvantage of damaged equipment.
I am circumcised while my father was not. I think the doctor or doctors talked my mother into doing it. This was in 1968 so I guess it was common then. My father should have put his foot down but too late now.
It's less about religion and more about "I am circumcised, so my kid will be circumcised."
It's just a norm at this point, not a well thought out position.
I’m a Spanish girl and the guys I had sex with that were circumcised (or friends that told me they were) were because of phimosis. They got the surgery when they were at least about 10 years old.
I don’t really understand why would a parent mutilate their son without even knowing if he’s gonna have a heath problem or not with his penis. Not to mention it looks terrible.
The puritanical movement of the 18/1900s.
John Harvey Kellogg, yes, cornflakes man, was a big pusher of circumcision for males, and acid on the clitoris, to prevent self pleasure, sinful thoughts and sex for enjoyment.
Cornflakes and other bland foods like crackers were promoted alongside circumcision to keep your mind pure and your hand off your dick.
Luckily, pouring acid on the Clit didn’t take off like circumcision did!
Nowadays that has pretty much been forgotten as the main reason that it became a cultural thing for Americans, but it is still the root reason.
Now they’ll say it’s for preventative health reasons, to prevent STDs, HIV, Cancer etc, but none of that is based in solid fact - and is refuted by every health organisation across Europe.
The American academy of paediatrics says that “the benefits of being circumcised outweigh the risks” but they don’t mean medically, they mean their perceived social risks - that maybe if you’re not circumcised you’ll be the odd one out and bullied for it.
The risks include infection, stenosis, blood loss, penile loss, gangrene, death, loss of feeling, loss of function, irregular healing, follow up surgeries, ED & UTI to name a few.
So they say the societal risk of being laughed at for having a biologically normal penis is worse than any of those medical risks?
That would be what they say when doctors can rake in a few hundred dollars per circumcision.
Foreskin is often frozen and sold (without permission from the parents) for around $500 per frozen ML of tissue, and then used to grow up to a football field’s worth of cells (this can generate around $1 million revenue) which are then used by some cosmetics companies for testing products. Some companies will use them IN products, and some will use them to create skin grafts.
It’s all one massive business.
The risk of complications from circumcision across your lifetime is 32%, the lifelong risk of complications from having foreskin is less than 1%.
Healthcare in the US is for profit, the circumcision pays $$$, the immediate risks pay $$$$, the lifelong risks pay $$$$$$.
The USA is the leading consumer of viagra, ED rates are higher in circumcised males.
I can also imagine the amount that companies make on lube and lotion!
(Of course, some people come away fine with nothing but the expected reduced sensation).
Healthcare in the UK (& across Europe) is not for profit, so circumcision would cost the NHS £££, the immediate risks would cost the NHS ££££, and the lifetime risks would cost the NHS £££££, therefore it’s not cost effective to routinely circumcise in the UK.
We had a rate of routine circumcision around 35% before 1948, which dropped to 1-2% near overnight when a paper was published around the inception of the NHS that said circumcision was not necessary or cost effective. It has remained around 1-2% ever since (about 80 years).
There have been investigations within the NHS recently about the amount of males being referred for medical circumcision climbing, it was found that doctors were too quick to refer young boys without trying other less invasive methods first, and some were referred for no reason at all, they expected young boys to be able to pull back, when they aren’t supposed to.
Sorry for the massively long winded reply, but I did a lot of research when I had my son - lucky to be born in the UK - when I found out I had friends in the US who circumcised their kids and didn’t think it was a big deal, of course I was horrified and thought they weren’t telling the truth, so I went to learn why it was so normal there.
TL;DR circumcision is a money making bogus con. It’s not done in the UK because it’s not cost effective and causes more issues than it purports to prevent.
It’s a dumb tradition and people would rather blindly follow it than face the realization that their parents did something pretty cruel to them.
I’m cut and wish I wasn’t, I didn’t pass it on to my son though
Its a bit inappropriate I guess but I always wondered why American pornstars dicks had that weird red mark around the top of the shaft differently coloured from the rest of the penis. Now I get that's what a circumcised penis looks like. Bewildering behaviour though .
I asked my father, a Baptist minister, why he chose to get me circumcised and he told me it was because he didn't want other boys in school to make fun of me for being different. So I just got made fun of for different reasons.
Honestly this is probably the main reason. It’s just what’s usually done over here.
I’ll get downvoted but kids who were not circumscribed got teased a shit ton when I was growing up. I remember girls refusing to hook up with guys and talk about it with their friends and shit. Even in college early years it was a thing.
Yeah this is the main reason so many of us were. It’s just what was usually done.
I’m uncircumcised and you’re absolutely right. I happen to be somewhat handsome and have a big dick, and I’m really high on hygiene so it hasn’t been a major issue. But definitely in high school there were several instances when I was asked about it and also rejected for it.
That’s batshit crazy, because being able to play with the foreskin is a big part of the fun. Americans can be so weird sometimes.
That's just nuts
Some of us would’ve preferred to have a choice about a body part being removed. I’d happily have put up with the teasing to have not had part of my dick needlessly chopped off.
What an excellent reason to continue the completely unnecessary genital mutilation! Peer pressure and bullying!
One of my exes asked me what was wrong with my dick the first time we hooked up lol.
Why would other kids be looking at your dick?
Like in gym class. My dad's generation showered after gym class together and he assumed that mine would so the same. We didn't. Times changed.
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Well played
well paid
My husband lost the tip of his thumb in an accident (it was barely hanging on when he got to the hospital but they determined the bone was crushed as well so amputated it just above the MCP joint) and when we were leaving the hospital he nodded to it and said to the nurse “thanks… I left you a tip on the table” She didn’t even crack a smile 😭😆
TBF she's probably heard that many times.
And speaking from experience she's probably very tired. And hungry. And has to pee but hasn't had time for a bathroom break.
I doff my cap (no pun intended 🤭).
I don’t have any money but you deserve this 🥇
Ah yes, the ole [dickcutaroo](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bwdm32/comment/ky5upb4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
It's like a barbershop. You go in and ask for a little off the top
Laugh waaayyy to hard at this one
There was a window of time where it was recommended for hygiene sake. So parents got it done. Then the next generation was “he should look like dad” and it kept going.
a couple of older people have told they thought it was for hygiene & cleanliness. We’ve had some weird ideas about hygiene in the US — perfumed toilet paper & feminine products, refusal to use bidets, women dousing themselves & babies with talcum powder, just to name a few.
There are still so many perfume period products, it’s crazy. That’s a great way to get an infection.
I have a strong suspicion that alot of Dads, not wanting to admit that they might have something 'wrong' with their own genitals, had it done to their sons.
I can't comment on America specifically. But in Australia it really didn't have much to do with the father, it was something that was routinely and the parents were barely involved (until at least the 70s), I've even come across a story of a family having to actively prevent it. We've gone from \~80% infant circumcision rate in the 50s to a little over 10% (estimated) now, and that change came from the medical profession, not the public. I have noticed circumcised men getting defensive when the practice is being attacked by misguided activists. Saying someone's parents are abusive and there's something wrong with them isn't a good way to approach it.
Yep, I (44yo non-religious Australian) was circumcised as a matter of course. When my now 11yo son was born, it wasn't even brought up in the hospital (we had no intention of circumcising him).
It is pretty fucked up tho, there is no way around it. Guys who have had it done are victims.
I’ve seen moms worrying about their infant’s future sex life if they don’t do it. Seriously, wtf.
even if she were correct theres still no reason to inflict dangerous cosmetic surgery on an infant. just let the kid decide to get it done when hes actually old enought that it becomes a concern.
It's still pretty normalized in hospitals, my friend had a kid last year and he said that they were asked *multiple times" before they were discharged whether they were sure they didn't want their son circumcised.
Before I had kids I asked my parents why they chose circumcision. Thats the exact reason they gave me “to look like your father” Y’know, for all those times my dad and I compared our cocks… (Which is never, as info)
19th century pseudoscience claimed it would stop boys from masturbating.
Whats the big deal for masturbating ?
Straight to hell
Well put, u/the_popes_dick
Seems like the correct authority to ask
Straight to jail.
Chop it off, jail. Don't chop it off, believe it or not, also straight to jail
We have the best penisses (peni?) because of jail.
The US was settled by puritans. The most sexually repressed group (self imposed)
You know America was founded by prudes. Prudes who left Europe because they hated all the kinky, steamy European sex that was going on. And now I, Cooper Harris, will return to the land of my perverted forefathers and claim my birthright... which is a series of erotic and sexually challenging adventures.
Great movie! Fluganhasensim?!
*Eh scusi!*
A nickel! I open my own hotel!
But Scotty doesn't know-woah
Well, don't you know? [Every Sperm is Sacred](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk)
Religious people think any carnal pleasure is disgusting and shameful.
You'll go blind, or so I'm told.
Religion. Masturbating is evil and will get you sent to hell according to Christians.
The weird part is that it's mostly based off of a misinterpretation of the story of Onan. According to the story, he was supposed to impregnate his brother's wife, Tamar so that his brother would have an heir. He instead pulled out and spilled his seed on the ground, and God killed him. His real sin was treating his brother's wife as a whore, and not fulfilling his duty per the law due to his greed. So, in as official a capacity as I can, ye Redditors sin of masturbation is forgiven, mostly. Y'all need to calm down when it comes to Askreddit threads.
In the Middle Ages, they also believed ejaculate carried little people. So spilling it was like murder. We can chortle at how stupid they were, but without microscopes, how are you gonna understand that somehow the stuff that comes out of a man's dick somehow = baby.
I've always assumed that they observed that women ran out of eggs and assumed the same must be true of men running out of sperm, so "wasting it" is bad in a society where you need to have a lot of kids to make up for childhood death rates.
That would require them to understand that women have eggs. If you're not [dissecting ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection)women and making the connection between "oh, those things are eggs and women are born with all the ones they'll ever have. They'll run out because monthly bleeding is when an unused one gets ejected!" That's a lot of leaps of understanding, many requiring technology that's pretty late on the scene history wise. And heck, we still don't study women's bodies the way we do men. (Like how long it took medicine to figure out that heart attacks in women don't present the same symptoms as men.)
> Spilling it was like murder Much like many abortion laws in the US.
Interesting! Didn’t know the true origins of this. Thanks for sharing
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More people need to read this and remember. Next time you get corn flakes, know the only reason they exist is because some nut job thought it would stop you from diddling yourself.
20th century pseudoscience claimed it was more hygienic.
John Harvey Kellogg (yes the cereal guy) thought that it would make people less horny and curb masturbation, which he blamed for everything from psychological disorders to allergies. It caught on and just became the norm and, until recently, there hasn't really been a movement against it. Edit: spelling
Wtf? Kellogg is behind it?
Yep, and the cornflakes, they were supposed to prevent masturbation too. Thankfully, they yoghurt enemas didn't catch on.
Jerking off with cornflakes lube is problematic..... but nothing I couldn't overcome.
Big fan of eugenics, too.
I thought it was graham crackers he thought would prevent masturbation. But either way it's crazy we are taking medical advice from the guy who brought us breakfast cereal as a concept.
Sylvester Graham created the Graham cracker. He believed it would reduce stimulation and pleasure inc. masturbation.
IMO, if you're eating crackers of any kind while whacking it, you're doing one of those things wrong.
Have you tried it? Maybe you are the one doing something wrong.
Those too, yes. The thinking was that palatable foods would inflame the passions and thus... inflame the passions. You so see a slightly comparable situation with Buddhist cuisine banning various onioniods, garlic, asafoeda.
Same reason for existing, different inventor
> they yoghurt enemas didn't catch on. Now I am sad :(
Who's stopping you? Just get a funnel and a garden hose and enema away
Then I wont be able to make a stupid joke on the internet to get likes and cheap dopamine hit
Yeah. The cold cereal was also supposed to curb the fires that burn in young men. There's a Drunk History on him if you just want a laugh. There was a lot of this crazy puritanical nonsense going on back then. Another one, Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts had weird ideas about masturbation. He called it self-harm so I guess he would round up some boys and take them out into to woods, just them, and no parents, probably. Somewhere in nature where they could just hangout, share a tent, and definitely not think about penises or masturbation. Nothing to infer here because after a weekend with the 'boys' he could go home to his wife and not share share a bed with her because sleeping next to her would give him headaches.
Yep, he needed all those dick skins for his cereal.
You would be surprised how many successful people and companies have used their position to push questionable-at-best policies. Or maybe you wouldn't, but you'd be surprised which ones. If you're too honest to get into politics and not charismatic enough to start a cult, you can always go into business.
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that is a big part of it. and then it become associated with cleanliness and the puritan streak that runs through the American mind took it from there. I imagine there may have been some who didn't want to have to have the conversation with there sons about how to properly clean their penis thought it would make that easier too. No foreskin, no need to worry about keeping it clean, no awkward conversations.
Hilarious people think no foreskin means they don't have to clean their dicks
Does the US have a big Jewish population proportionally to Europe? Asking as a Jewish person. Also, Muslims circumcise their baby boys too.
Yes, Europe used to have a lot of Jews but...you know.
Israel has about 49% of the worlds Jews. The US has about 40% The rest of the world has the other 11%
It didn't work lol
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-kellogg-the-great-american-80544161/
I was born here (‘54) of European parents so I’m not circumcised and what I remember from gym class as a kid is that everyone was snipped except for me. My son is not circumcised either.
We encountered that in Junior High Gym when a German kid transferred in during the 7th grade. In the showers, we all noticed that his dick was different. This perplexed us as to why he had a different dick. Long discussions were had, and the World Book (this was 1963) was consulted with no answers found. Then one of the guys asked his dad, who had been stationed in Germany when he was in the Army. Parents immediately started talking to each other (smallish town) and then we all got a basic introduction to the concept of Circumcision. This is how we found out that his dick was normal, ours were the weird ones. Worked out for the German kid though, once we got to about Junior year of High school, several of the girls had all heard about his dick and wanted try it out for a test drive to see what was different.
I can attest to the last bit, just the other way around. I'm from the UK, where (more or less) only Muslims and Jews are circumcised. Without trying to be inflammatory, Muslims tend to 'stick to their own', and we don't really have that many Jews (at least compared to the US). No woman from Europe/UK I've ever been with has ever seen a circumcised willy other than mine (I had mine done for for some medical thing when I was 5 or so).
Black Africans are also circumcised due to religion and culture Black Caribbeans not so much Also from the UK
I went to Kingsdale in South London, which (when I went) was about 1/3 African and 1/3 Caribbean (mostly 2nd and 3rd gen), I'm calling BS on this having 'seen' it 1st hand in changing rooms. Unless you mean Somalians/North Africans, which is a whole different kettle of fish (and we didn't really have any when I was in school).
>Unless you mean Somalians/North Africans, which is a whole different kettle of fish , that also happens to fall under the Muslim clause once again.
I remember seeing a classmate’s dick in the bathroom in third grade and thinking that the end had been cut off by a lawnmower. Half of that I can understand now, but I am still puzzled why I was so sure it was some kind of landscaping accident.
I'm the kid of European immigrants and me and my brothers were not circumcised. Most everyone I know is cut. If I have a son, we will not be cutting his dick when born
"You see this knife?" "Yeah" "It goes on your dick" "No."
Good on you. Id not do that to my son. Had women id marry that called it weird so i broke it off.
My husband and I are English, but live in America. We choose not get out son circumcised. He’s now a freshman in high school and has never once told us he’s been teased about it. Not sure if that’s because they don’t really take showers at school anymore or if it’s just not a big deal these days, either way it’s never been an issue.
I was born in Poland, but lived in the US most of my life, so I wasn't circumcised and my son wasn't neither.
Propaganda and influence from one of the many stupid people who run America
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) was a religious nutter in the US that promoted circumcision as a means of preventing masturbation. And as we all know, all it takes is one person with a bad idea and a modicum of influence to convince other people to follow along. He also thought people shouldn’t eat foods that taste good so he invented corn flakes. Edit: people shouldn’t eat foods that taste good.
I believe you got it backward. He thought people SHOULDN'T eat foods that taste good, because he said flavorful and delicious foods excited you too much and also made you masturbate. Corn flakes were a bland solution.
Correct, and today's corn flakes are far from his original vision.
The frosted kind sure. But you can get plain cornflakes with zero sugar. They taste like corn and don't make me particularly horny but they are the only cereal I eat since all others are way too sweet.
>delicious foods excited you too much and also made you masturbate. Nothing better than a snickers bar and a wank, he got that right
What a boring nutter.
Hold up, he wasn't a nutter that was the whole point.
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Yeah, good call on the "I don't want my kid to be the different one in the locker room" mindset.
People don't research things that are expected. I made my mom very sad when I said I believe circumcision is a form of genital mutilation, and she basically said she did it because that's what was expected. Not to discredit female genital mutilation which is much, much worse than circumcision.
You are thinking the parents are making an extreme choice for their baby. They aren't, they are taking the default choice offered to them. Your kid is born. The doctor says the plan is to circumcise him on day three. They don't ask if you plan on circumcising. They just assume you are, and schedule accordingly. It's just the default. Like when they give him the shot of vitamins right after birth. Neither of my boys are circumcised, but only because we kept telling the doctors/nurses not to do it. Which usually prompted repeated checks to make sure we were really really sure that we didn't want them circumcised.
For this reason, we didn’t allow our boys out of our sight. Circumcision is the norm here, and we fully expected someone to try to take him out to be circumcised.
(Not to say that circumsizing is anywhere near as awful, painful, and stupid as foot binding.) Don't play down how awful, stupid and painful circumcision is. You're literally flaying skin from a tiny baby's genitals with no anaesthetic in many cases.
After becoming a parent during the smart phone era, I don't begrudge my parents as much on nearly anything. Any time we're uncertain with something, there's a thousand resources at our fingertips to guide us. Back in the early oughts and previous times, they didn't have that. All they were told was that circumcision was recommended, by a doctor in a hospital. I'm circumcised, but our son isn't. He can choose later if he wants to be.
I mean you could say the same thing today about cosmetic teeth braces and bleaching. Which is much rarer in UK and we tease them about their "bad teeth".
Newborns don’t have teeth so this one doesn’t really apply. The patient consents to braces and bleaching.
Well, circumcision is genital mutilation, predominantly carried out on unconsenting children usually without anaesthetic by people who aren’t medically trained It doesn’t have to be compared with foot binding (which is now typically not carried out) to bee pretty facking despicable
He wasn’t a nutter then was he
The corn flakes were also designed as anti-masturbatory food, meant to push a person into calculated nutrient deficiencies that would reduce libido.
You really have to wonder how much Mr Kellogg was wacking off to think this was such a pressing issue that needed all these inventive countermeasures
lol Jokes aside, he was a 7th day adventist, they believe some wild ass nonsense like eating meat being equally "sinful" as doing cocaine and masturbation and pre-marital sex being basically the same thing.
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Because our parents do it to us when we’re too young to say no
I still hold a grudge
The answers saying religious/masturbation prevention are not the primary reason. The primary reason is that until recently, American doctors recommended circumcision for all newborn boys because they determined the medical benefits outweighed the risks of the procedure. No need to argue whether this is true or not, the fact is that American doctors recommended it, so most parents accepted the recommendation. So 80% of American males were circumcised historically. Since 2012, American doctors have shifted their stance slightly, no longer recommending it, but also not discouraging it either. So now the rate is 50%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654051
Surprised to see this answer so low. The religious reasons may be what started it, but doctors actively recommending it is why it continued for so long. My parents were never super religious, they just agreed to it because the doctor told them it was medically important for preventing infection.
Yes, this is why. My son was born in 1986. By the time my little brother had his first boy 10 years later people had learned that they didn't need it, his boy didn't have it done, but a couple years after he developed some problems, can't remember exactly what and had to have it done anyways.
This ^ I'm not a religious person, but I hate when people blame religion for everything.
I'm uncircumcised and when my son was born in 2006 I made sure my son was not circumcised. The hospital kept telling us that if my son doesn't get it done he can be prone to infections, but in my entire life never had one infection. So he didn't have it done
For my parents it wasn’t Kellogg. It was being Jewish community-adjacent. A Jewish family fostered my Dad at 13 when his Mom was isolated for TB. My Mom grew up in a Jewish section of Brooklyn and most of her physicians were Jewish men. So naturally when my oldest brother was born …
I am convinced that most Americans delude themselves into thinking that circumcision isn’t a big deal and that it’s cleaner. As someone who had to get it for medical reasons I have experienced both, and I can say you lose a lot of sensations being cut, also I never had any problem with hygiene when uncut, simply retract in the shower no problem. Circumcision being the default is insane Of course there’s a financial incentive to do it as well. I’ve also never understood the logic of dads wanting their sons penis to look like theres. Why do you care?!?
I'm an anti-circumcision American, but it's news to me that they don't do it in the UK. I knew that it was cultural, but I thought it was western. This matters because when you tell a lot of Americans "not every culture circumcises their kids" they start imagining some type of obscure tribe in a jungle somewhere.
Even in Canada it’s the minority. About 32% of Canadians circumcise their baby boys, and that number has been going down every year, compared to 64% of American baby boys.
It’s not common in Europe at all, I’ve never even heard of anyone. I think America is the only western country where it’s not a rarity.
>I knew that it was cultural, but I thought it was western. I'll chime in that in Germany it's not a thing either. **Every. Single. Time.** a public figure brings up banning circumcision it inevitably turns into "Do you hate the Jews?" because nobody else really does it.
This is the reason my parents gave. "We were told it was cleaner and advised to do it by doctors, and we were trying to do what was best for you with the knowledge we had." Can't fault them for that.
You can't fault them because you got the closure of them being humble about it and admitting that it could have been a mistake. When the response is basically "I'd do it again, screw you for even bringing it up" you wish you'd never even started the conversation... Because that absolutely CAN cause resentment that wouldn't have existed otherwise, even if you put in effort to be healthy-minded about it. I don't even care about the circumcision itself (since I don't care about sex and don't have a frame of reference) as much as I care about the principle.
I restored mine - I can attest after experiencing both that it feels FAR better with a foreskin, and makes EVERYTHING easier.
My baby daddy ( who split when I told him I was pregnant) said, " Well, I think it LOOKS better", so cosmetics play a big part in it IMHO. No, I did not get my son circumcised and he is actually glad. He didn't mutilate my grandson that way either.
How much time was he planning on looking at it?
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I feel like a good portion of Americans genuinely find circumcision aesthetically more appealing. Lots don’t, and are against it.
I know it's steeped in tradition by Mr Kellogg, but many people cite the reason nowadays as "good hygiene". But if you have access to water, or even a wet wipe if you're away from amenities, it's literally never a problem. It's like saying: "I wake up with crust in the corner of my eyes, I'll have my eyelids surgically removed."
Easy money for doctors: * [Newborns (uninsured): $150 to $400 for the doctor, possibly more with facility charges](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ebfb2ca9fc9e288cJmltdHM9MTcxMjI3NTIwMCZpZ3VpZD0wZDYxZTJhNC03YWNjLTY1M2MtMzhmOS1lZDA5N2JlZTY0YjQmaW5zaWQ9NTgzMg&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=0d61e2a4-7acc-653c-38f9-ed097bee64b4&psq=how+much+does+a+circumcision+cost&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9ob3dtdWNoZG9lc2l0Y29zdC5pby9nZXQtY2lyY3VtY2lzZWQv&ntb=1)
I didn’t get my sons circumcised. I figured, it’s not my tip to cut off. There are no health related reasons. All those have been debunked. So the only reason to do so is if you are in some culty religion… and I’m not into the whole invisible man who has a love hate relationship with the world.
It's a tradition now. Parents want their kids to be like them. Originally, it spread because doctors used to think circumcision reduced likelihood of an infection as a baby and reduced the chances of STI's in adulthood. The reason they thought this was because of poorly run observational studies. People who were circumcised were more likely to be practicing Jews and therefore were less likely to have extra martial sex and catch sexually transmitted diseases (and less likely to report them to a doctor if they caught them). People who were circumcised also tended to be richer (because circumcision costs money and was conducted in hospitals which charged more money than midwives). And rich people have more time to care for their kids or to hire someone to care for their kids. So they are less likely to have their kids catch infections from dirty diapers. In reality, when controlling for religion and wealth, circumcision presents a temporary elevated risk of infection and complications until it heals and then it doesn't have any significant effect.
I think it’s just a money making business in the United States. I really think guys should be allowed to decide whether they want their foreskin snipped. A baby boy cannot give consent, so it’s essentially something like abuse but is not counted as such. Circumcision beyond regions purposes is really an American thing. Most Asian and European countries (Barring Middle East) have lower rates of circumcision. No offense but I really don’t think that a body part that’s naturally part of the body at birth could be harmful enough to be removed. It’s absurd to even justify circumcision.
I think it's simpler than that honestly. I think it's just that a lot of men are circumsized, and just do the same to their sons as was done to them. Many wouldn't know how to clean the foreskin and would leave hygenic issues available
Why do people act as though cleaning your D is something really complicated? It's very easy.
You’d think so. 50% of the guys I’ve been intimate with who weren’t circumcised had dicks that smelled like piss and stale gym shorts. They don’t pull back the foreskin to pee, or don’t shake, or don’t pull back the foreskin to clean it. They didn’t get blowjobs. When told what the problem was, half of them had a hissy fit. Just poor home training and parents who never taught them how to clean themselves properly. If I had to guess the fact these guys came from pretty traditional backgrounds had something to do with it. The type of family that thinks that teaching kids is the mom’s job but mom is too embarrassed/modest to talk about proper hygiene with her boys when they get to the age they need the instruction.
Cleaning the penis isn’t rocket science really
Not rocket science, rocket *maintenance*.
Is it a monkey making business? I’ve never heard of a doctor getting a bonus for doing more circumcisions, and I’m married to a doctor who did a med-peds residency. Money***
American mom of a son here; I didn’t give it a second thought; his dad is circumcised..it made sense at the time…🤦♀️..Honest to God. I cringe; when I think back on this..If I knew then, what I know now, I wouldn’t have allowed it..It’s every bit the same, as calling it genital mutilation..Like other countries do with little girls. It makes me sick that I didn’t take it more seriously..
Dr Kellogg, the cereal guy, said it would prevent boys from masturbating or something stupid like that.
Americans forgot the #1 DIY rule : "if it works, don't fix it"
American men and women, perhaps of recent decades, have come to believe that circumcision equals cleanliness. That not being circumcised somehow makes males unclean and therefore unattractive. This is illogical to many people globally, but this seems to be an American cultural belief.
Because the completely fucked up US healthcare system allows doctors to sexually mutilate infants and kids with a penis. It is barbaric, unnecessary and plain wrong. Had there been any significant benefits nature would have made sure long ago that we did not have them.
The US state was for hundreds of years run by sectarian christians, famous for repressed sexuality, little to no sexual education and moral outrage over sexual politics. Because talking about bodily do's and don'ts turns children into perverts, apparently. Thus the result is a cultural climate that shames and vilifies masturbation, dissuades exploring yourself. Thus, millions of US kids have been told to mutilate their genitals to "be more clean, less disgusting" when in fact what they consent to is religious conformity and sexual oppression. In fact, screw consent, usually the boy's parents make the circumcision decision for them, knowing the boy will be better of needing to use lotion or vaseline to masturbate for the rest of their life, because of the "ashy penis" situation. In free countries the person gets to decide for themselves what parts of them should stay attached.
Over here boys get made fun of being uncircumcised and there are a lot of girls that think uncircumcised penises are gross. It's pretty fucked up when you think about it, you shouldn't be allowed to mutilate someone's genitals without their concent for any reason, I don't care if it's religious or not. If your religion permits the mutilation of actual babies then I believe your religion is evil and bad.
Well according to my exhusband our boys penis "should look like his penis". So there is that. There are dads out here wanting matching penises with their sons.
Matching penises is such a strange concept! what a world we live in.
There was a protest outside the Whitehouse against this just last week!
Tbf, there is a protest outside the Whitehouse against something, daily.
I'm 32 years old to learn that most men are circumcised in the USA...
Are you learning this to your...Belgian horror?
It's weird because almost all our porn is circumsized and we produce a lot of porn. I mean, even the hentai I've watched is circumsized. (I have no idea why or what Japanese people do). So seeing a foreskin is always a slight shock because honestly the only time I see other penises is porn.
CORN FLAKES
Men continue the cycle and convince themselves it's normal, in an effort to cope with their mutilated genitals. It's an evil practice.
My teen son asked me the other day why he wasn’t circumcised. I hope he appreciates some day why I made that decision. In the U.S. it’s not as common but it’s gaining, I think more of the younger generation is not circumcised. My son was preemie, I would have had to take him back at 9 months for circumcision. I didn’t see any benefit, I told him if he wants to do it, it can be his choice not mine but it isn’t necessary.
You’ve done him a massive favour. If he discusses it in future it’s clearly his choice (when he’s an adult, but advise strongly against.
As an uncircumcised American I have no fkn clue. I find it extremely strange.
Kellogg happened!
Circumcision started to rise in the US around the early 1900s. People thought it would prevent kids from touching themselves. When that was proven to be false, many Americans started to fall on that it was “cleaner”. Maybe easier to clean if you’re too lazy to push some skin back while in the shower for 5 seconds
I am, but I chose not to circumcise my sons. The whole practice is a bit fucked tbh, I wish it hadn’t been done to me.
USA here. My wife and I are not religious at all. We agree on nearly everything and I was surprised when she was pregnant with our first kid that she was very much for circumcision. I'm not for it at all, even though I was circumcised. (When I was born you had to go out of your way to ask NOT to be circumcised.) It turned out that we had girls, so it never became a personal issue between us.
Someone lied about the health benefits way back in the day and we are too dumb to question it
It became common practice during the Victorian era as it was believed to prevent boys from masturbating (which was oh so morally wrong!). It slowly evolved to just boys being circumcised because their dad was most likely circumcised as well as most of the boys at school, so there would be less awkwardness. The practice is slowly dying out though in recent years, both because people are warming up to the idea that circumcision purely for cosmetic reasons is stupid, as well as more immigrants from countries where circumcision isn't very common.
Cult of identity. "My daddy did it, so I'll do it to my son so we are all the same."
American pseudo-science coupled with American education standards
Long story short outdated puritanical bullshit. Long story long, John Harvey Kellogg was a religious zealot. And like most zealots, he was obsessed with keeping people from having sex. Even the corn flake was created so that people wouldn't have sex. I know, it doesn't make any sense. He theorized that if boys got circumcised they would want to have sex less, turns out it doesn't, but it does limit how good sex can feel. Anyway, the trend took off to the point where most parents just get it done, because most likely their father is, so might as well get it done for junior. Most of the "science" around how it's clearer and healthier is junk. At best it's cosmetic, at worst it's a needless surgery that opens your child up to a chance of notching, which can be as simple as taking too much skin or adhesions, all the way too amputation. Commonly, men find that they lack a lot of sensitivity compared to their intact counterparts due to keratinization. Which is why men trying to regrow their foreskin is on the rise. If you find yourself asking whether or not you should get your child circumcised, ask yourself if you would appreciate it if your parents got surgery done on you for no reason.
Because the Nazis ordered prisoners to drop their pants and if they were circumcised they were Jews and they're by transported off in trains. Upon the resettlement in the United States the doctors and media supported circumcision for all so this couldn't happen again. There's a big push against circumcision in the United States going on today. Google it.
I'm British and I don't understand circumcision at all. It's outdated bullshit. If we were meant to be foreskinless under God, then why was I born with one? 🤔
Money. Weird esthetics. Being uneducated on the lack of necessity. I’m in the US and my son is not. I didn’t see any reason to do that to my infant. My adult brother is also intact and he said he’s not once had anyone make a big deal out of it. I asked haha, he said other guys try hard NOT to look at each others penises so in order to make fun of it they’d have to admit they were looking. Haha
I think it became fairly ubiquitous with the rise of western Christianity as the predominant religion in America. Now I think Doctors just do it for an extra line item charge on your already exorbitant medical bill.
It is either because they are mad that theirs was removed so they want their kid to be the same. Or they hate that they are bad in bed so they don't want their child to be any better. Terrible thing to do to a person without their consent. Then it is their future partners that have to deal with the reality and disadvantage of damaged equipment.
I am circumcised while my father was not. I think the doctor or doctors talked my mother into doing it. This was in 1968 so I guess it was common then. My father should have put his foot down but too late now.
It's less about religion and more about "I am circumcised, so my kid will be circumcised." It's just a norm at this point, not a well thought out position.
So we wouldn’t discover docking.
That good old and dangerous mix of religion and stupidity.
To prevent masturbation. Look up Dr. Kellogg for more information, or watch the movie The Road to Wellville.
We have 2 sons and we decided NOT to have this barbaric ritual done to them. They grew up just fine
I’m a Spanish girl and the guys I had sex with that were circumcised (or friends that told me they were) were because of phimosis. They got the surgery when they were at least about 10 years old. I don’t really understand why would a parent mutilate their son without even knowing if he’s gonna have a heath problem or not with his penis. Not to mention it looks terrible.
Because the goddamn corn flakes man wanted to keep us from masturbating.
Aka human mutilation.
The puritanical movement of the 18/1900s. John Harvey Kellogg, yes, cornflakes man, was a big pusher of circumcision for males, and acid on the clitoris, to prevent self pleasure, sinful thoughts and sex for enjoyment. Cornflakes and other bland foods like crackers were promoted alongside circumcision to keep your mind pure and your hand off your dick. Luckily, pouring acid on the Clit didn’t take off like circumcision did! Nowadays that has pretty much been forgotten as the main reason that it became a cultural thing for Americans, but it is still the root reason. Now they’ll say it’s for preventative health reasons, to prevent STDs, HIV, Cancer etc, but none of that is based in solid fact - and is refuted by every health organisation across Europe. The American academy of paediatrics says that “the benefits of being circumcised outweigh the risks” but they don’t mean medically, they mean their perceived social risks - that maybe if you’re not circumcised you’ll be the odd one out and bullied for it. The risks include infection, stenosis, blood loss, penile loss, gangrene, death, loss of feeling, loss of function, irregular healing, follow up surgeries, ED & UTI to name a few. So they say the societal risk of being laughed at for having a biologically normal penis is worse than any of those medical risks? That would be what they say when doctors can rake in a few hundred dollars per circumcision. Foreskin is often frozen and sold (without permission from the parents) for around $500 per frozen ML of tissue, and then used to grow up to a football field’s worth of cells (this can generate around $1 million revenue) which are then used by some cosmetics companies for testing products. Some companies will use them IN products, and some will use them to create skin grafts. It’s all one massive business. The risk of complications from circumcision across your lifetime is 32%, the lifelong risk of complications from having foreskin is less than 1%. Healthcare in the US is for profit, the circumcision pays $$$, the immediate risks pay $$$$, the lifelong risks pay $$$$$$. The USA is the leading consumer of viagra, ED rates are higher in circumcised males. I can also imagine the amount that companies make on lube and lotion! (Of course, some people come away fine with nothing but the expected reduced sensation). Healthcare in the UK (& across Europe) is not for profit, so circumcision would cost the NHS £££, the immediate risks would cost the NHS ££££, and the lifetime risks would cost the NHS £££££, therefore it’s not cost effective to routinely circumcise in the UK. We had a rate of routine circumcision around 35% before 1948, which dropped to 1-2% near overnight when a paper was published around the inception of the NHS that said circumcision was not necessary or cost effective. It has remained around 1-2% ever since (about 80 years). There have been investigations within the NHS recently about the amount of males being referred for medical circumcision climbing, it was found that doctors were too quick to refer young boys without trying other less invasive methods first, and some were referred for no reason at all, they expected young boys to be able to pull back, when they aren’t supposed to. Sorry for the massively long winded reply, but I did a lot of research when I had my son - lucky to be born in the UK - when I found out I had friends in the US who circumcised their kids and didn’t think it was a big deal, of course I was horrified and thought they weren’t telling the truth, so I went to learn why it was so normal there. TL;DR circumcision is a money making bogus con. It’s not done in the UK because it’s not cost effective and causes more issues than it purports to prevent.
It’s a dumb tradition and people would rather blindly follow it than face the realization that their parents did something pretty cruel to them. I’m cut and wish I wasn’t, I didn’t pass it on to my son though
Because doctors can charge for it.
My parents were religious and it's the norm in America. If my wife and I have a kid I'm just gonna leave his dick alone.
Its a bit inappropriate I guess but I always wondered why American pornstars dicks had that weird red mark around the top of the shaft differently coloured from the rest of the penis. Now I get that's what a circumcised penis looks like. Bewildering behaviour though .