4 ms·

Another mindblowing fact about USA - some tribal genital mutilation is a norm. You wouldn't believe this would be happening in a first world country at all and

Another mindblowing fact about USA - some tribal genital mutilation is a norm. You wouldn't believe this would be happening in a first world country at all and here you have it.

rootusrootus 5y ago
I believe the rate has been dropping steadily, though. I sure as hell didn't do it to my son. Not my right to make that decision for him.
- lindseymysse 5y ago
  Thank you. Even the Evangelical Christian's guy Paul said it wasn't necessary. It is about a deeply abusive culture rejecting the child's autonomy. It's roots was Egyptian Slave culture, and while I am marked as one of pharaoh's servants (or YHWH or Jesus's) I reject that position in the world. Thank you for your stand against this wicked violation of a child's autonomy.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's a particularly hellish direction for internet discussion to go, and also particularly avoidable, and we're certainly trying to avoid it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - lindseymysse 5y ago
      I think I should be allowed to talk about the pain this culture caused me.
      - dang 5y ago
        That's fine, as long as you do it within the site guidelines, which means eschewing flamebait, having curious conversation, and everything else described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Some topics are not easy to talk about in the key of curiosity, but it's still doable, if you set that intention.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I appreciate that you described a religious flamewar as hellish.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    There's a scene in Game of Thrones where the slavemaster makes a circular cut to rip off a slave's nipple. I hope people were smart enough to understand what this was a sanitized version of. Making a person a "slave to Jesus" is a total perversion though. The New Testament is very clear about that sort of thing. On this, you can challenge Evangelicals in their own language on their own ground.
- thefounder 5y ago
  You are brave and you are not alone in this world...HN is such a good breath of fresh air. It's hard for me to understand why people don't challenge the "norm" more often when they see it obviously flawed.
- mhb 5y ago
  the proportion of infant boys circumcised in the United States between 1979 and 2010 dropped from sixty-five per cent to fifty-eight, according to the C.D.C.
  - anewthrowaway 5y ago
    And there's HUGE regional variation, the practice being very rare in the southwest and very common in the northeast. I can say from personal experience, I'm in the midwest and in my entire dating career, I've only encountered two women with prior knowledge of natural men, and both of them had spent time in Europe. So if the rate is indeed dropping here, it's happening in a younger segment of the population. (Good for them!)
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I don't have a ready source, but I thought somewhere there were numbers for 2010-2020 and it was a more significant change. Like there has been a significant change in attitudes over the last 10 years.
- invalidname 5y ago
  I'm in Israel and didn't do it to my son. I was a bit nervous about that because well... Israel. He'll be ostracized for it... Then I talked with his kindergarten teacher and "warned" her about his penis so she'll be "ready". She looked at me dead in the eye and said: "This is Tel Aviv, half the boys here aren't circumcised". Lol. I guess I'm not too special.
rob_c 5y ago
I keep thinking this might keep stoking the fire of some of the antisemitism in America. I think it was Norway planned to outlaw all mutilations of minors and ended up with all middle eastern religions crying foul in unison which was scary. (All they seemed to disagree on was which child to harm) needles to say the law that was eventually passed was so watered down as to be (again imo) ineffective... The view that this practice is the norm and that it's somehow so untouchable is imo scary.
- anewthrowaway 5y ago
  However, the precedent that FGM is outlawed _despite_ religious protest, means that MGM might eventually fall too. This means that anyone wishing to preserve MGM is trying to find support for it on other grounds. Hence the litany of "health studies" supporting the practice, so it's not just a religious issue, it's a health issue! Muddy the waters with just enough doubt to keep the debate alive instead of letting it be an obviously-settled issue like FGM. The result is that, if you look at all the papers published on the topic, and sort them into two piles depending on who funded the research, and then look again and sort them into two piles depending on their conclusion, you'll find that you've performed the same sort twice.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    The health arguments simply don't fly here in Europe though. There was a practitioner of circumcision in the Netherlands who went to court this year to argue that their income was tax deductible because it served a therapeutic purpose. The judge did not agree and wiped away the argument that it prevented future complications as well. It's still legal, but it's not health care (except presumably in rare special cases like phimosis where it may be warranted if other solutions are not effective). It's only by making this a matter of religious autonomy that MGM isn't banned outright yet, because politicians are always really careful around matters that might anger religious groups. Especially right-leaning politicians or those who belong to a Christianity-based political party.
lindseymysse 5y ago
My circumcision was just the first violation of my body the Evangelical church put me through as a child -- finally culminating in my chemical balding at Billings West High School in 1998-99 after coming forward about my childhood sexual abuse in the Lutheran Church. If you read anything about modern evangelical thought the single worst thing a child could demand is their autonomy, and well, anyway, every time I look in the mirror right-wing America gets to kick me in the face again. Wicked culture, all of it.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  They're not even Christian, really, if they're still doing this horrible Abraham-and-Isaac stuff. Jesus was the blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifice. Paul makes this abundantly clear.
em500 5y ago
The WHO prevalence map of circumcision[1] is quite interesting. It's uncommon in most Europe, Middle- and South America, and Asia (except in muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and South Korea where it was apparently introduced by the Americans after WW2). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision
Freak_NL 5y ago
It's something that kind of flies under the radar, excepting some rare mention (e.g., in Sex and the City). People all over the world consume American media and glean all sorts of facts about American culture from it, but the prevalent (though declining) practice of male genital mutilation is something people outside of the US aren't generally aware of. Most people think it is something only done by some following orthodox religions. Amusingly, the signs are there in US media. Almost every masturbation joke comes with a mention (either referred to or more often simply shown) of that ubiquitous hand lotion. Hand lotion? Who needs hand lotion to masturbate? Well, men endowed with a penis (and other bearers of penii) don't normally, but apparently many do when they've been circumcised. It's often an eye opener here in the Netherlands when you explain that the cornflakes guy inspired generations to mutilate their sons.

Another mindblowing fact about USA - some tribal genital mutilation is a norm. You wouldn't believe this would be happening in a first world country at all and here you have it.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I believe the rate has been dropping steadily, though. I sure as hell didn't do it to my son. Not my right to make that decision for him.

lindseymysse 5y ago
Thank you. Even the Evangelical Christian's guy Paul said it wasn't necessary. It is about a deeply abusive culture rejecting the child's autonomy. It's roots was Egyptian Slave culture, and while I am marked as one of pharaoh's servants (or YHWH or Jesus's) I reject that position in the world. Thank you for your stand against this wicked violation of a child's autonomy.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's a particularly hellish direction for internet discussion to go, and also particularly avoidable, and we're certainly trying to avoid it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lindseymysse 5y ago
    I think I should be allowed to talk about the pain this culture caused me.
    - dang 5y ago
      That's fine, as long as you do it within the site guidelines, which means eschewing flamebait, having curious conversation, and everything else described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Some topics are not easy to talk about in the key of curiosity, but it's still doable, if you set that intention.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I appreciate that you described a religious flamewar as hellish.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  There's a scene in Game of Thrones where the slavemaster makes a circular cut to rip off a slave's nipple. I hope people were smart enough to understand what this was a sanitized version of. Making a person a "slave to Jesus" is a total perversion though. The New Testament is very clear about that sort of thing. On this, you can challenge Evangelicals in their own language on their own ground.
thefounder 5y ago
You are brave and you are not alone in this world...HN is such a good breath of fresh air. It's hard for me to understand why people don't challenge the "norm" more often when they see it obviously flawed.
mhb 5y ago
the proportion of infant boys circumcised in the United States between 1979 and 2010 dropped from sixty-five per cent to fifty-eight, according to the C.D.C.
- anewthrowaway 5y ago
  And there's HUGE regional variation, the practice being very rare in the southwest and very common in the northeast. I can say from personal experience, I'm in the midwest and in my entire dating career, I've only encountered two women with prior knowledge of natural men, and both of them had spent time in Europe. So if the rate is indeed dropping here, it's happening in a younger segment of the population. (Good for them!)
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I don't have a ready source, but I thought somewhere there were numbers for 2010-2020 and it was a more significant change. Like there has been a significant change in attitudes over the last 10 years.
invalidname 5y ago
I'm in Israel and didn't do it to my son. I was a bit nervous about that because well... Israel. He'll be ostracized for it... Then I talked with his kindergarten teacher and "warned" her about his penis so she'll be "ready". She looked at me dead in the eye and said: "This is Tel Aviv, half the boys here aren't circumcised". Lol. I guess I'm not too special.

rob_c 5y ago

I keep thinking this might keep stoking the fire of some of the antisemitism in America. I think it was Norway planned to outlaw all mutilations of minors and ended up with all middle eastern religions crying foul in unison which was scary. (All they seemed to disagree on was which child to harm) needles to say the law that was eventually passed was so watered down as to be (again imo) ineffective... The view that this practice is the norm and that it's somehow so untouchable is imo scary.

anewthrowaway 5y ago
However, the precedent that FGM is outlawed _despite_ religious protest, means that MGM might eventually fall too. This means that anyone wishing to preserve MGM is trying to find support for it on other grounds. Hence the litany of "health studies" supporting the practice, so it's not just a religious issue, it's a health issue! Muddy the waters with just enough doubt to keep the debate alive instead of letting it be an obviously-settled issue like FGM. The result is that, if you look at all the papers published on the topic, and sort them into two piles depending on who funded the research, and then look again and sort them into two piles depending on their conclusion, you'll find that you've performed the same sort twice.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  The health arguments simply don't fly here in Europe though. There was a practitioner of circumcision in the Netherlands who went to court this year to argue that their income was tax deductible because it served a therapeutic purpose. The judge did not agree and wiped away the argument that it prevented future complications as well. It's still legal, but it's not health care (except presumably in rare special cases like phimosis where it may be warranted if other solutions are not effective). It's only by making this a matter of religious autonomy that MGM isn't banned outright yet, because politicians are always really careful around matters that might anger religious groups. Especially right-leaning politicians or those who belong to a Christianity-based political party.

lindseymysse 5y ago

My circumcision was just the first violation of my body the Evangelical church put me through as a child -- finally culminating in my chemical balding at Billings West High School in 1998-99 after coming forward about my childhood sexual abuse in the Lutheran Church. If you read anything about modern evangelical thought the single worst thing a child could demand is their autonomy, and well, anyway, every time I look in the mirror right-wing America gets to kick me in the face again. Wicked culture, all of it.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
They're not even Christian, really, if they're still doing this horrible Abraham-and-Isaac stuff. Jesus was the blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifice. Paul makes this abundantly clear.

em500 5y ago

The WHO prevalence map of circumcision[1] is quite interesting. It's uncommon in most Europe, Middle- and South America, and Asia (except in muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and South Korea where it was apparently introduced by the Americans after WW2). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

Freak_NL 5y ago

It's something that kind of flies under the radar, excepting some rare mention (e.g., in Sex and the City). People all over the world consume American media and glean all sorts of facts about American culture from it, but the prevalent (though declining) practice of male genital mutilation is something people outside of the US aren't generally aware of. Most people think it is something only done by some following orthodox religions. Amusingly, the signs are there in US media. Almost every masturbation joke comes with a mention (either referred to or more often simply shown) of that ubiquitous hand lotion. Hand lotion? Who needs hand lotion to masturbate? Well, men endowed with a penis (and other bearers of penii) don't normally, but apparently many do when they've been circumcised. It's often an eye opener here in the Netherlands when you explain that the cornflakes guy inspired generations to mutilate their sons.