Mom, why did you circumcise me?

This documentary was made by journalist/filmmaker Michael Schaap. See his latest works by visiting his site: http://www.newdocfilm.com/michaelschaap/video.html

This documentary is originally 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?

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[TheChallenger2011]

Comparing cutting of hair and fingernails to circumcision. Ridiculous.

Hair and fingernails are dead cell structures, foreskin or prepuce is healthy living cellular tissue.

Huge difference. 

[sabby123456789]

My father is a strong advocate of circumcision. As a result, I am suffering my foreskin being amputated at birth. He claims that it should be done because it reduces the chance of infections.

Despite advocating it so much, he refuses to circumcise himself because, "it is too painful", and says that it's okay for it to be done on babies because, "they will not remember it".

What a coward.

[ShmeePadge]

Great documentary. I still cant believe that parents actually pay money to have part of their child's perfectly healthy body mutilated! Its so ridiculous, horrifying, and sad.

[calabiyou]

@joefriendly adding the earlobes to the hearing of the core of the self-other network, the stimulation of the self reMind, by cutting off the earlobe of the developing intact self we can reterritoralise the post-hermanutic (m)otherness of the otherness: THEREFORE we MUST cut off other peoples' dicks

[TDOTEMPIRE]

@TheChallenger2011 very good point, i never thought of it as comparing dead cell structures!

[indigothecat]

I think the public is just generally uninformed about circumcision of males. They want to believe it has a purpose outside of making the doctor more money, that it has a health benefit (and in some cases, a religious benefit), but the truth is that it doesn't. Also, the foreskin is not a vestigial structure... it DOES serve a PURPOSE on the human male body. (And indirectly to the female body.)

[RSpker000]

@RSpker000 *has been changed a lot

[RSpker000]

@TheChallenger2011 Agreed.

-Muslim.

[RSpker000]

I'm a muslim but i'm against circumcision. The quran is supposed to be our only holy book and the example of abraham means having the sheer faith he had. The Hadith is not credible because it as changed a lot and isn't reliable and authentic.

[endofscene]

@TheChallenger2011 And hair and nails grow back. Foreskin doesn't. Foreskin has nerves and blood vessels. Hair and nails don't.

Ironically, however, a denuded glans can develop a layer of dead skin cells made of keratin - the same stuff of which hair and nails are made.

[thebPaIsNtKaYrdXD]

God gave us foreskin with meaning , but not to cut it

[offwithurhead]

Maybe we should all chop our hands off. That way we wouldn't catch germs on them so that's cleaner. We could of course simply wash them instead but that's so much work.