This personal documentary follows journalist/filmmaker Michael Schaap as he interviews his own mother, circumcisers, politicians, Jews and Muslims, a restored British man, and some American activists.
The full documentary in a little bit higher quality is also available here: http://vimeo.com/10468813
Carefully consider these reasons as whether or not to do this:
1. For the dads: Your son will never look like you in every way. Boys rarely see their fathers penises past a young age, and no matter what, grown mens penises look very different in size and hair content from their baby boys. Daddy, that because I am argument is a pretty poor one. Your mother made the decision to circumcise you in a culture very different from ours. Would you also have your wife not breastfeed if your mother did not?
2. Locker room fears: if 40% of boys are now left intact (and more in some places), your son wont look much different than others in the locker room. And anyhow, why would boys be checking each other out in the first place?! I should think that the one poking fun would be the guy with the real problem!
3. The cleanliness thing. A boy is not dirty who bathes regularly. Given a little soap and water, he should stay clean. Incidentally, this dirty thing is the same argument used by proponents for female circumcision.
4. Would you cut off your daughter daughter's clitoral hood(term for the biologically same body part as foreskin except on a female obviously)? What if you were in a culture, like areas or Indonesia for example where the widespread beliefs are that clitoral hoods are ugly, unhealthy and make one's genitalia less attractive to the opposite sex, then would you do it? It astounds me how we harshly condemn them for cutting off the exact same body part of our children that we cut off, with the only difference being the gender of the baby.
5. Self-determination. It is not your body. This is a huge reason to leave your son intact. It is his body, and he should be allowed to choose whether to have surgery on his most private parts. If you choose now not to circumcise, he can always make a different choice later in life. Not so if you slice.
6. Its cosmetic surgery. Would we get him rhinoplasty, too? And it is not just cosmetic surgery but also a big money maker for cosmetic companies because some hospitals instead of throwing out the freshly cut off foreskin, actually sell it to biomedical companies to be used in research and in the manufacture of high end anti-wrinkle creams. They actually do this, without ever informing the parents. Sadly, I am not kidding.
7. Trauma. Id say being born was a pretty hardcore experience, wouldnt you? At least from the mamas end, its hard work. I can only imagine how rough it is for that little guy to work to get out! And how do we give him the big congratulations? By cutting off a healthy part of his body! Good job, young chapNow, you wont be needing this anymore. And he never even got a chance to try it out and see if he would have liked having it.
8. On the supposed increased risk for urinary tract infections: UTIs are rare in boys, much less common than for girls. Recent studies suggest there is no difference in the amount for circumcised boys than for intact boys.
9. On the supposed increased risk for STDs: Some of the studies suggesting that the risk for HIV is lessened by circumcision are flawed, in that they concentrate on populations in Africa, where HIV rates are much higher than Western countries. A 2007 study offers that it is the percentage of female sex workers in the female population, not the incidence of male circumcision, that determines the level of HIV infection. As an alternative to cosmetic surgery, I suggest you teach your son to respect his body, choose partner(s) wisely, and always use protection.
10. And another medical reason to circumcise: phimosis, or a foreskin that wont retract. The foreskin gradually becomes retractable between infancy and 18 years of age. For most kids its in the first few years. Its nothing we should either rush or worry about. In fact, only 1 percent of males over 18 still have an unretracted foreskin, and then it can be easily treated with a topical steroid cream. The risks of this happening, however, are small, because stimulation of the foreskin during adolescence helps this happen naturally. (And thats something that no adolescent boy minds doing!)
11. Have you heard it decreases the risk of penile cancer? Yeah, I got that one a bunch, too. My argument was this: breast cancer in females is much more prevalent than the risk of penile cancer for males. So tell me, when your daughter begins to develop breasts, will you cut those breast buds offjust in case? Or what about the appendix, should we automatically remove everyone's appendix, when the vast majority of people live perfectly just fine with theirs?
If you found any flaws in my reasoning, please let me know.
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41:20Jewish Orthodox Bris held in Hebrew with Englis...by golantube1,488 views
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