General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Studies showing "benefits of circumcision" highly flawed [View all]JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)This thread is about the scientific frauds being perpetuated to encourage male genital mutilation for ostensibly medical reasons. This manner of public fraud should be exposed, especially when it is so often given uncritical and celebratory coverage in the corporate media.
In this country, male genital mutilation is a religious issue only for a minority of those who choose to remove the foreskins of infant children. For the majority who are subjected to mutilation, it occurs because of a medical, not a religious, tradition. That is also of public interest.
I believe in the human rights of individuals to decide whether they want to have half of their penile skin removed. The defenders of the far more horrible female genital mutilation that is illegal in this country and rightly abhorred in our secular culture also claim that it is a religious issue, and sometimes even trot out claims of cleanliness and hygiene.
Although people in the US for the most part do this irreversible physical damage to their male children without even feeling strongly about it, or thinking anything about it, but simply because a doctor recommends it and they trust doctors, the historic roots of all forms of genital mutilatin are in authoritarian social control and ideologies that seek to suppress sexual pleasure.