This is the best example of man hating Feminism I have ever encountered. Pure misandry. Let's slice off some of her, or her daughters genitals and see what she has to say.

Can you imagine if your mother spoke of you with such callous disdain? She is reveling in her indifference.

Thanks yet again Alternet.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Non-surgical foreskin restoration is not painful. It's easy, but it takes time.

It's very worthwhile. I'm shocked every day at how much better intimacy is with slinky slack skin.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

What message does circumcision send to a baby boy? It was always performed without anesthetic, and even now, anesthetic use is only slowly gaining acceptance. Anesthetic or not, circumcision sends the message to baby boys: “You are not safe. Your feelings don’t matter. The people closest to you don’t have your best interests at heart. Remember that they initiated what is being done to you. Remember this if they tell you that they love you. The pain you feel isn't necessary—people close to you chose to have you hurt. Welcome to the world, baby boy.”
The sense of loneliness, of abandonment, that no one will protect them, that their best interests will constantly and inevitably be subsumed to someone else’s (anyone else’s) agenda that boys come to feel, thus starts for some boys when they are days old.
For generations, parents have avoided taking time to teach their sons good personal hygiene including how to clean their genitals, especially under their foreskins. Instead of teaching their sons, many adults have instead availed themselves of circumcision as a quick, painless (for them) solution. Boys’ hands will become dirty in their lifetimes, too. Shall we cut them off now pre-emptively, and avoid “all that time-consuming hand washing trouble later?”
It wasn’t that long ago that circumcision was prescribed as a medically advised method to combat the “scourge” of masturbation. Other than religious superstition, parental laziness and squeamishness about their children’s avid pursuit of bodily pleasure, a history of harming sons in this way, parental refusal to examine admit to that history, and pressure from the medical establishment grubbing for every last bit of possible profit, there is no possible justification for circumcision. Circumcision is abuse.
Where are the warriors standing to defend the intact genitalia of baby boys? Why have most fathers avoided their responsibility to do so? Is it because it would logically be fathers who should teach their sons penile hygiene? But, most fathers have chosen to avoid this task either shunting it off to the mother or agreeing to circumcision to avoid the issue. Fathers’ refusal to teach their sons penile cleanliness blocks fathers once again from taking the important step to make an emotional connection with their sons as they help protect and heal another male.
Circumcision is the first of many painful initiation rites that boys are compelled to suffer. Boys’ innocence is sacrificed in a bloody, empty gesture. Offer-up your SUV’s for your Lord or sacrifice your cell phones to Wotan or your Internet porn sites to any televangelist, not your baby sons’ sense of trust and safety. Parents’ subsequent instruction to kids that their bodies are sacred or are theirs and no one else’s will sit as ashes in the parents’ correctly ashamed mouths.
Genital mutilation of girls and women: While much media attention recently (finally) has focused on this problem, their focus has been exclusively on Africa. Why only Africa? Female genital excision was practiced in prisons and asylums in the U.S. until the early 1950’s. The excuses? Female genital excision was indicated in cases of girls and women who masturbated or who were “sexually-active.” Sometimes, “sexually-active” referred to one partner of whom the parents or guardians didn’t approve.
The phrase “female circumcision” is a misnomer that attempts to soften and euphemize this violence against females by normalizing the less extreme, though distinctly abusive, treatment of males. This is no defense for either abuse. The degree of cutting in female circumcision is anatomically much more extensive. The male equivalent of clitorectomy would be the amputation of most of the penis. The male equivalent of infibulation would be removal of all the penis, its roots of soft tissue, and part of the scrotal skin.
Joe Weinberg

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Bonnie, please let go the angst and the feeble ("snippety snip") humour. Step back a moment, take a Martian perspective.

You land on earth and find humans seem pretty nice people. Most of them believe in peace and human rights and freedom, and kindness to animals. And about a quarter of them hold down a male child and cut the most sensitive part of his penis off.

[rewinding noise] THEY WHAT? (And not just Jews, but, in descending order, Muslims, US Americans, Filipinos, South Koreans, tribal Africans, (Jews,) Eastern Polynesians and Australian Aboriginals. The rest of the English-speaking world used to do it, but gave it up.)

And they do it for literally hundreds of reasons, mainly crackpot. Clearly, something else is going on. Here's one attempt to make sense of it. Our green friends would shake their tentacles in despair at our folly.

What's a non-practising Jew to do? Here are contact details for celebrants of non-cutting Jewish naming ceremonies. Shalom!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Uncut by birth, got cut at 18 because I was confused that cut penises looked better.

I have tried to live without regret and I swore when I got circumcised, I would never regret it.

I now live with that regret. I am reminded of this regret every time I am intimate with a partner.

With my foreskin went a wonderful degree of sensuality and sensitivity that I will never get back and never knew I would miss until it was gone. I had a whole lot of experience with a foreskin before I was cut and a whole lot of experience without one after I was cut.

I am in a very good position to speak on the subject clearly since I have experienced both sides of the issue for long periods of time.

I want to scream when I hear parents making the choice to mutilate their child for cleanliness, aesthetics or misplaced notions of health. With a few necessary medical exceptions, this is barbarity and it is mutilating your son in the most intimate of ways.

My penis was always clean, happy and wonderful. Now part of it, a truly wonderful part of it is gone and restoration will not bring it back.

Stop butchering your children and STOP making this choice for them!

It should be illegal to do this to children. If they want to do so later on their journey through this life, when they are adults for whatever reason, religious or otherwise, let them. No one should mutilate children at an age especially when they can not consent to it.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

In the absence of a medical emergency, circumcision should require the consent of the grown up and well-informed person whose foreskin is at stake.

While male circumcision isn't as bad as the more gruesome forms of female genital cutting, it still is bad and similar to some forms of female genital cutting, and it is widespread and happening in our midst. I hope you will do your part in saving children from needless genital mutilations. But first you need to know why. A lot of people who like being natural would mind having their natural states altered in permanent ways without their well informed consent. Check CIRP for information. Especially the information about the anatomy of the penis, and the mechanics of intercourse. Circumstitions.com is a useful resource made available by intactivists.

Some have worked on a bill, MGMBill.org. Female genital cuttings are already against the law. To some extent people probably dealt with the (non-rare) worst case examples of female genital cutting more as a women's "rights" issue rather than a child protection or child's "rights" issue. But even if the law makers knew of the child's "rights" issues related to a male human child's genital cutting, they may not be willing to challenge religious, cultural and political opposition to any law that tries to forbid all (non-critical) genital cutting of children.

Sincrerely,
Aouie

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I'm australian and uncut and I have never understood the argument for circumcision - sorry, but having bits of yourself cut off doesn't sound quite right to me.

The argument that circumcision is better hygienically is a false one. Following that logic, one could say that everyone should shave their heads - hair is unhygienic, it gets greasy and people get dandruff, so why not remove it all? And hey what about your feet.. dirty toes, athlete's foot and all that, surely it would be more hygienic to lop them off?

My point is, hygiene is only an issue if you're an idiot who doesn't know how to take basic care of yourself. And as for your sex life, I can't say whether circumcision would make it better or worse.. but I have a sneaking suspicion that like most things, the unmodified version is better.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Problem of whether to have a baby boy circumcised? Artificial. Every human being has the right to make his or her own life decisions and a boy needs to be at least 18 before being able to decide on circumcision, or baptism, or anything else that identifies him as "belonging" top this or that subgroup. Dawkins was right when he wrote that to deprive children of access - at the wishes of the child at all times - to any form of religion or anti-religion going was child abuse. So also is any other act of locking a human being in to a group chosen by parents or cultural "elders" of any stripe. One correspondent here said he was circumcised at 18 and later regretted it. But at least it was his decision, not foisted on him by social engineers.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I'm not Jewish, but I was circumcised as most American baby boys were in the late fifties. It's been a total non-issue for me throughout my life. I don't feel like a "victim", and I'm quite happy with the appearance and performance of my penis.

It wasn't until the last few years or so that I even heard about the anti-circ movement. I have to admit it pretty much baffles me, as I do not see my life as having been diminished for the simple fact of being circumcised.

I rolled my eyes when reading about the man who said that his circumcision was the "most traumatic event of his life". Give me an effing break. I can understand a man perhaps wishing that he'd been left uncut, but I don't get all the hand-wringing and claims of continued "suffering".

And the idea of men forming a group to piss and moan about what victims they are because they were circumcised decades before, when there are people who go to bed hungry every night, people truly suffering and dying in cancer and AIDS wards, and a host of other examples of true suffering, just leaves me speechless. The idea of foreskin restoration leaves me similarly speechless.

Of course, disliking circumcision is a perfectly valid opinion. But for oneself, it's over and done with, and I see little benefit in embracing the notion of perpetual victimhood. Rather, a more positive way to express one's opinion would be to leave one's own sons uncut and to provide information for those future parents who are undecided about this issue, then leave them to make their own decision.

I blogged about this a few years ago and ended up having to write a second entry because of the heated responses. To read these entries click here

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

when i learned i would be giving birth to a son, this issue became one of real importance to me. i read all i could find, discussed it with anyone who would talk about it, thought long and hard (haha). from the first, it made no sense to me to subject my son to a painful and questionable practice with no discernible justification aside from the cleanliness issue. when he was old enough to begin his own cleansing rituals, i taught him how to retract his foreskin and make sure he was clean underneath. what i cannot understand is how any mother could not feel a sense of horror when confronted with this decision! what? you want to do WHAT to my baby boy? get out!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Giving a blowjob to a circumsized cock is a better experience than a natural cock. Taste alone should dictate the decision (as well as hygiene, STDs).

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Giving your thing for the One God, or rather having it done for you.
The history is that the social evolution of the
Ego involved identification with spirits and deities, since how long?
But the Hebrews had this new sense of identity a new kind of tribe with a single God which simplified many matters, cleared the mind of many things and superstitions and justified conquests, even if they were synthesized after the fact.
I had it done for my sons because it seemed hygenic, and cleanliness was an issue. But
life in those days was beset with traumas ranging scarlet fever to being beaten for belonging to the wrong religion or ethnic group
and veterans sitting on sidewalks begging.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

When I was carrying my son 28 years ago, his (Jewish) father and I had to decide what to do about circumcision. My gut told me it was a horrible thing, yet I wanted to make an informed decision. To learn more, in those pre-internet days, I turned to the Encyclopedia Brittanica and finally found the information I was seeking under the title "Ritual Mutilation."

Needless to say, our son remains a "whole" person. Male genital mutilation is every bit as horrifying as female genital mutilation and should be considered felony child abuse.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"doctors now believe that infants as young as eight days old do feel pain"

What? Just now? How obtuse does one have to be to not believe infants as young as one day old can feel pain?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Endogeny/Exogeny have their levels of generality, beginning with the individual and then the family and then society and then the species. Circumcisions carry a profound history and more holistically than only related to sex and sexual relations. It has brutally physical dimensions as well as deeply symbolic ones. And, of course, the practice is not exclusive to Jews, those familiar with similar practices in other social aggregations testify.

It seems to me the question has much more and deeper significance than reduction to sexual relations alone. After all, many Gated Communities are "a circumcision" of another, more symbolic, kind, as well as other forms of meeting the thoroughly human dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion which over time have developed into higher and higher complexity in all of our social relations. All religions in their rituals, ceremonies and preferred asceticisms will practice Cutting and Marking, brutally on the flesh or symbolically in "the soul" or "spirit".

As humans are all drawn closer and closer together in more fluid and dynamic relations with one another, all these questions rise again in all their various dimensions. Include or exclude? Fixed or permeable boundaries? Many more, many more. Does not Feminism itself, as all "isms", have a circumcision of sorts to contend with in respect to relations with non- and anti- Feminists? It seems a matter of developing and advancing consciousness and HUMAN relations.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

... if male genital mutilation was responsible for all the sexual dysfunction western society goes through. The idea that the small child is left with weeks of unending pain in their genital region must create lasting psychological damage. This is just one more example of our hippocracy as we judge other cultures.
Would we be 'dead from the waist down' or in such desperate need for Viagra if we stopped this insanity?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

...that the Jews are to blame for all this trauma and patriarchy since they brought circumcision to every land where they live.

Anti-Semitic, much?

Hitler was uncircumcised, so I guess that means he and his fellow Nazis were OK and psychologically balanced, and did not have issues with women, right?

Let's not forget recent studies, gong back over 10 years in the New York Times, that show that all things being equal, a circumcised penis prevents HIV transmission better that an uncircumcised penis.

Ms. Zylbergold is being hoodwinked by a group of men who are co-opting feminist victimization rhetoric.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Reading all these comments, I can only roll my eyes. What a bunch of uneducated, provincial, untraveled, superstitious morons!

Personally, I never gave much thought to having been circumcised. It was only when I was thrown into the world, did I appreciate what my parents had done for me.

Let’s put religion aside, as that is just superstition: Not reasoning with facts.

When I was drafted into the Army, thrown into a barracks of backward, unschooled, fools, did I realize, first-hand, the importance of the circumcision practice. The daily routine of latrine activity was traumatic, to see all the slimy, dripping, ugly, nauseating, discolored, swinging dicks.

A) Circumcision is a cultural practice in all-modern educated societies.

B) Appearance: much more pleasing.

C) Sexual: Much more gratifying as 1. Coitus is prolonged. 2. Orgasm is heightened. 3. Lubrication is simplified. 4.Clean up is easier. 5. There is less possibility of infection. 6. No foreskin to catch and hold mucus. 7. It is just healthier, more appealing, cleaner and hygienic.

D) Medical. Without a doubt, a circumcised penis is much less likely to get infected.
Hygiene is easier, even if infected.

E) Ever get your foreskin caught in a zipper?

F) Ask any women which they prefer.

G) Ask any educated, worldly, man, which they prefer.

H) Lastly, research the subject.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"doctors now believe that infants as young as eight days old do feel pain"

The author implies that doctors who performed circumcisions simply didn't realize the babies whose bodies they were cutting into without anesthesia could feel it. That one takes the prize for the biggest load of crap I've seen coming down the pike since the Bosnian sniper fire story.

Have you ever heard a baby boy being circumcised? I have. It would be impossible for anyone who has heard the level and intensity of those shrieks to believe that no pain is being felt.

The truth is that doctors have always known that infants as young as eight days old feel pain. They've known that babies younger than that do, too. It's not that they didn't know. What the author of this article is trying so hard to mask is that doctors (and the parents who authorized the procedure) simply didn't CARE. They rationalized it away by claiming, not that babies feel no pain, but rather, that they don't carry the memory of the pain with them for very long. They get over it. It's the first step on the path to learning to take things like a man.

New research is casting serious doubt on the belief that the memory of the pain of circumcision disappears after a few seconds. Moreover, even without that research, what sense did that argument make in the first place? Is the rule that it is okay to hurt a person so long as the pain isn't remembered for very long? So a man should be able to beat up a woman all he wants if she has a poor memory?

Why is the author of this article trying so hard to conceal the fact that doctors and parents who engage in the practice of mutilating boys' genitals simply DO NOT CARE that they are inflicting intense pain on boys?

That, I believe, is a question only the author of this article and her sisters can answer.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

As a mother who highly regrets having circumcised two of her four sons, I suggest the writer have a son before taking potshots about such a serious subject.

There is absolutely nothing funny about mutilating babies. I am mortified that I blindly did it "because it was done." I would give anything to reverse it. My sons, of course, dont know the difference and hopefully will never realize what I stole from them. I have apologized to them and my other two sons have thanked me for sparing them.

Ms. Zylbergold needs to write about what she knows, not muse ignorantly about that which she cannot know.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]