Circumcision- Is it a Liberal or a Conservative thing?

[Deleted]

Hint: in many cases it isn't voluntary...

[Malarky]

Ummm..pretty sure that it isn't political at all. 

I'd be interested in knowing how you linked the two concepts.

[Deleted]

Globally, I think it is cultural.  For many, it is religious.

In the U.S. it seems to be standard practice even for those who do not have religious obligations.  I've heard a lot of soon-to-be-dads make comments along the lines of "I don't want my son to be the weird one in gym class"

It seems like not taking action would be the more conservative practice, but in the U.S. circumcision is conforming to the social norm.  While I don't think the circumcision decision is a political one for any parent, the parents that I know who choose not to circumcise their sons tend to be liberal in other aspects of their lives.

[Deleted]

 According to:
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

 France reports a 17% circumcision rate... in the USA it's much more prevalent.
 But circumcision is MOST prevalent in... Muslim nations.

[Miss Tequila]

I'm not overly religious but i would have circumcised if we had a son. Actually, I would have let my husband decide and he wanted his son circumcised. We had girls so it was never an issue

[chiver78]

May 19, 2013 19:03:42 GMT -5 @patiencetried said:

Hint: in many cases it isn't voluntary...

in the majority of cases, it isn't voluntary. most males are circumcised as infants or young children. any females that are "circumcised" - as female genital mutilation is referred to in some places - are most certainly done under duress to girls old enough to know it's not right.

[Deleted]

 The practice of circumcision originated millennia ago... long before the development of Germ Theory of medicine... whoever dreamed up the procedure probably wasn't motivated by "Health" reasons.
 
 

[mmhmm]

I'm going to move this thread to Current Events.  There is no political connection and no market connection.

mmhmm, Administrator

[billisonboard]

May 19, 2013 21:12:16 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

I'm going to move this thread to Current Events.  There is no political connection and no market connection.

mmhmm, Administrator

How is it a current event?

[mmhmm]

I pretty sure, billis, there are circumstances currently being performed.

Actually, this is just the place created to put things that really don't relate to politics and the markets, but don't have another place to be.

[Peace Of Mind]

Circumcision- Is it a Liberal or a Conservative thing?

I thought it was a penis thing and is usually a current event for many baby boys.  

[djAdvocate]

conservative.  it is a traditional thing.  liberals have no use for traditions. 

[billisonboard]

May 19, 2013 23:31:57 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

...

Actually, this is just the place created to put things that really don't relate to politics and the markets, but don't have another place to be.

I thought it was created so that Scottish_Lassie couldn't complain about things from P&M being dumped into Everything Else.

[mmhmm]

ROFL!  Well, I must admit, billis, SL's frustration was certainly a part of the equation.

[mmhmm]

To answer the OP, in my experience you're more likely to see a liberally-oriented couple make the decision against circumcision than a conservative couple.  It's become rather a tradition in this country, as has been mentioned, and conservatives are more likely to cling to tradition than liberals.  That said, education is key.  When the pros and cons are well explained it's easier for the new parents to make the right decision for their family.

[zibazinski]

I thought it was a hygiene thing. 

[mmhmm]

May 20, 2013 9:46:47 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

I thought it was a hygiene thing. 

It used to be, zibazinski.  Now, we have the ability to keep ourselves clean.  When circumcisions began, that wasn't the case.  There's no need, from a hygiene standpoint, to circumcise today.

[Spellbound454]

We don't even think about it in the UK...not unless a doctor tells the parents otherwise.
The incidence has risen through the immigrant population.

[Deleted]

It is both a liberal and conservative thing, as most liberals would like the circumcise conservatives using a rusty razor and a doctor with Parkinson's, and vice veras.

[kgb18]

I thought it was a hygiene thing.

Me, too. I'm rather liberal. DH is rather conservative. We did some research and agreed that circumcision was the best decision.

Now, we have the ability to keep ourselves clean.  When circumcisions began, that wasn't the case.  There's no need, from a hygiene standpoint, to circumcise today.

But many studies show that's not necessarily true. STD rates for certain STDs are lower if a man is circumcised (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802256715541879.html). And there are other infections that are lowered www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/27/159955340/pediatricians-decide-boys-are-better-off-circumcised-than-not).

And just to add an anecdote, my brother's friend recently got circumcised at the age of 30 because he had continual problems with general infections in that area. The doctor told him the only way to stop them was to get circumcised.

[Deleted]

 A deceased uncle of mine had an experience that is now family legend.
 He hadn't been circumcized (born in the 1920s), and he developed chronic infection issues after becoming diabetic... at the ripe old age of 52. His doctor said that he had to get snipped or his inflammation might never heal completely.
The procedure was done in the doctor's office, and the patient recuperated at home. He had scheduled his procedure to co-incide with his July vacation week.
 The next day, it was very hot and humid, in the upper-nineties. There was a knock on his door, and when he answered the door he discovered his voluptuous twenty-something-year-old neighbor, just back from college, soaking wet. She had been washing her car, wearing a skin-tight halter top, bra-less (it was the late 70s) and her skimpiest Daisy-Duke cut-off shorts. She asked him if he had any old towels or rags she could use to apply some wax to her car.
 He apologized and said no, he didn't, before closing the door... and doubling over in agony.
 Dammit, there were stitches in there.

 Anyhow, he hadn't been circumcized at birth because his parents were "old-fashioned" (and Conservative) immigrants from Lithuania, and Roman Catholic. As a rule, people generally didn't circumcize infants where they came from... unless they were Jewish infants. While he was born in the USA, he had been born at home, delivered by a mid-wife... like in the Old Country. To his generation circumcision was still considered "new-fangled" and unnecessary.

By the time my generation came along (the "Baby-boomer" generation) all my cousins and I were all born in hospitals, delivered by physicians, and all the males were circumcized... because our mothers took the "progressive" (liberal?) Medical advice of their doctors instead of doing as their ancestors had done (the "conservative" path). 
 

[Sum Dum Gai]

But many studies show that's not necessarily true. STD rates for certain STDs are lower if a man is circumcised (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802256715541879.html). And there are other infections that are lowered www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/27/159955340/pediatricians-decide-boys-are-better-off-circumcised-than-not).

But the rate of infection and complications from the circumcision surgery itself are completely eliminated in the uncircumcised population.  It's a pretty routine surgery, and the rate of complications is low (1.5% for newborns when performed by trained medical personnel), with most of those complications being bleeding, infection at the incision site, or the removal of too much or too little foreskin.  Significant acute complications happen rarely, around 1 in 500 newborns in the US.  Catastrophic complications are sufficiently rare enough that they are reported on a case by case basis, but the mortality rate is 1 in 500,000 neonatal circumcision procedures in the US.  There are millions of boys born in the US every year, most of them are circumcised, so several otherwise perfectly healthy new babies die in the US every year because our society has decided that foreskins are weird looking.

[Spellbound454]

By the time my generation came along (the "Baby-boomer" generation) all my cousins and I were all born in hospitals, delivered by physicians, and all the males were circumcized... because our mothers took the "progressive" (liberal?) Medical advice of their doctors instead of doing as their ancestors had done (the "conservative" path).

I would have thought it was the other way around.

Weird?...so what... it not for other people to decide what is and isn't weird.
If you are chopping bits off and there is no good medical reason.....(and there isn't because your medical councils no longer recommend it as routine)
You have to wonder why.

[zibazinski]

I think now its more than health related. I know of no one that isn't but a lot of my friends say they wouldn't have relations with a man who wasn't, so there must be some issue with how it looks? This topic actually came up and some of my friends, old like me, of course, shuddered at the thought of sex with someone who wasn't circumcised. DS was simply done at the hospital, I don't even recall being asked. When DD was born the pendulum has swung the other way. I was glad she was a girl so I didn't have to deal with it. 

[Deleted]

Interesting dealbreaker.  Which date would you bring that up on?  Or would you wait until you get a good look at the situation?

[zibazinski]

I'm not sure. I know I brought up an issue I had with DF before we became intimate. Something that would perhaps startle him same as that would startle me. I think if anything is out of the ordinary, it's a good idea to mention it if the situation arises.

[Robert not Bobby]

LOL

I think female and/or male genital mutilation is a regional and cultural thing (with the exception of Jews and Muslims who historically lived in the dusty desert and did it for reasons of cleanliness, and bizarre religious reasons…we have showers now folks…take one every day, it will do you good).

No one in Europe or any other civilized country subjects their sons to that kind of unnecessary trauma, and life altering procedure. Men who have been mutilated that way, don’t have nearly half the sensitivity and pleasure. 

Leave the body in tact…nature has made you a certain way after millions of years of trial and error and evolution, for a reason. 

Oh, BTW, are small penises and flabby labbia majora’s a liberal or conservative thing? Is a small mind, a liberal or conservative thing? 

Was god taking a coffee break when he made conservatives in such a way that they would end up being a joke to the rest of thinking people in the world, or was he so high and distracted when he made liberals that the fools all end up believing we can make the world a better place, if we work together and stop pointing fingers…six of one, half dozen of the other. 

Good thing I don’t believe in god or mutilation.  

[zibazinski]

I seriously doubt it causes any lasting trauma to a baby to be circumcised. I bottle fed both my kids. Supposedly that means I'm a bad mom and they aren't attached to me and vice versa. Hey, they don't remember being bottle fed, either, so I guess they aren't too damaged by it.

[Value Buy]

As a youngster, all I remember is, when my newborn brothers (I was the oldest boy) came home from the hospital my mom had an ample supply of Vaseline to apply to the tender part the first week.
Ouch

[Deleted]

Something was cut off ?  I thought it was supposed to be that way.  All the other kids in the high school gym shower were the same.  ( My actual response upon circumcision info discovery)  Traumatic ?  Hardly, how about non-issue, forgotten 5 minutes later.