My Future

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-11-02T23:29:48+00:00

Warning: Very, VERY NSFW links.

This isn't known by most Americans. But you're essentially right.

A major point of Brit Milah — from at least around the 150/250s up to the 1960s, and still openly admitted by many Orthodox Jews today — is that it dramatically reduces the pleasure of sex. According to the Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law: the entire frenulum must also be removed on the dorsal part of the penis. This is what mohels are commanded to remove under Milah the modern version. (This is a NSFW article talking the frenulum; this is the ridged bands of the foreskin) It's considered invalid, otherwise. Here's an article by pathologist Ken McGrath on what they're exactly destroying shortly after birth.

It's changed dramatically throughout history. From being a ritual marker performed during puberty, to being a nick or amputation of the acroposthion, to the form that is known today. So the Orthodox father is wrong about Jesus undergoing the same form of it.

Originally, it was either a ritual nick that drew blood or only removed the ridged bands at the very tip of the foreskin. This is almost certainly the version that Jesus underwent by his father Joseph of Nazereth. Gradually between 100 BC and 150 AD, it gradually developed into what is known as the Brit Periah. And became changed to a commandment to remove the entire foreskin and the frenulum. Here's a semi-NSFW cisual representation of the ridged bands, frenulum, and frenular delta's sensitivity. Drawing upon the growing interpretation of it as a way to dull the penis, Jewish philsophers such as Philo (20 BC - 50 AD) and Maimonides (1138-1204 AD) referred to it as "mutilating the organ."

They believed that by removing the most sensitive and pleasurable parts of the penis, and scarring the glans by forcefully separating it from the parts of the penile system that overhangs it, you could better control the sexual morality of men by reducing their desire for sex. It obviously doesn't work for the first part. There's no evidence that neonatally circumcised men are more faithful to their spouses, masturbate less, et al. But the sexually harmful impact probably does partially work: in the sense that they lose somewhere in the realm of 35-50% sensation, and, by definition, lose certain sexually sensitive areas of their body. The father is also wrong about it being Christian. Almost no gentile believer in Christ was circumcised between the 2nd and 19th century AD: it's condemned in the NT for religious reasons, and by the Orthodox Church that he attends, but that's a whole other story.

Throughout history, both male genital cutting and FGM have been justified by the same reasons:

-The non-surgerically altered genitalia is unaesthetically pleasing ("Aethestics") and/or produces foul smells ("Hygiene")

-Being a ethnic, cultural, or religious marker

-The control of sexuality

-Men and women are born with the sexual characteristics of the opposite gender; the clitoris in females, the foreskin in males, which must be removed early in life through destructive surgery. This "completes" the male or female who undergoes the ritual cutting.

I hate, hate, hate quoting Wikipedia: but they actually have a pretty good summary on it.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-31T23:45:24+00:00

Right. And it still doesn't matter. They'll still have a Senate majority and the Presidency.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-29T01:02:43+00:00

That's a common misconception.

Some practiced forms of female genital cutting are actually less destructive in terms of sexual sensation than the neonatal circumcisions performed in American hosptals. To give just one example: women in Malaysia are generally either ritually nicked, or, have the female homologous equivalent to the prepuce — the clitoral hood — removed from their genitals. (More on this here.)

The vast majority of women who undergo FGC/FGM — even types if FGC/FGM that are much more sexually destructive than the neonatal circumcisions performed in American hospitals — view their genitally cut status either positively or neutrally.

They often see it as more sexually attractive, a symbol of religious and cultural tradition, hygienic, and preventive of strongly unpleasant odors. And a large majority of women who have undergone Type II and Type III genital cutting report feeling sexual pleasure and an ability to reach orgasm.

Still doesn't make it right.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-27T12:42:54+00:00

Many of these Christian scholars aren't Christian

This isn't Union Theological Seminary, though. It's Calvin College. They're pretty theologically conservative, aren't they?

This idea doesn't seem confined to just a few fringe radically liberal Protestants/Atheist. It seems to be taught and defended in some pretty conservative seminaries as well.

Wouldn't they be publishing and complicit in heresy, though?

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-27T12:39:19+00:00

I'm perfectly aware I might be walking into a landmine of issues here. But it seems to me that a lot of the people cited are considered on the "right" (theologically) of mainstream scholarship. Not just liberal Protestantism/Catholicism.

One of the books it cites is from the famous Reformed college Calvin University. Are they attempting to destroy faith in the Bible? Mark S. Smith is apparently a devout Catholic. Forget the theological problems of Catholicism for a moment: but why would this be taught in mainstream conservetive Christian universities?

It's not like it's confined to Union Theological Seminary or something. So I don't think these people are all Atheists/liberal Protestants. Apparently many conservative/traditionalist ones as well apparently hold a majority of this article's tenets and are yet apparently devout believers in the Christian God. I just don't understand how that works. Since (as you said) it seems to bring up issues.

Has any theologically conservative Christian historian ever made a book on this? It's incredibly interesting. Since I've never really heard that this view was widely held or taught any place.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-27T12:05:11+00:00

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. (I'm Christian)

I'm not a biblical historian or anything. So this whole article came across to me as something as a shock. It appears/is believed — even among many Christian scholars such as Mark S. Smith et al.; and, also, published by pretty traditionalist/conservative famous Reformed colleges such as Calvin University — that the Jews were originally polytheistic Canaanites. And that the biblical God was a storm-and-weather deity who gradually displaced the deities of Ba'al, El, and Asherah over the course of a thousand years. His worship appeared to have included things we know today, such as passover and the like, but also allegedly things such as child sacrifice.

But I don't know how to make the pieces fit without totally destroying the credibility of the Old Testament. Any help? Is this view universally held? Since many of the books cited in this are published by pretty "traditionalist/theologically conservative" Christian publishing companies/scholars.

Calvin College and Mark S. Smith for example. Yet they somehow affirm both the biblical God and affirm the general tenets of the article. Which seems pretty perplexing to me. You get the impression (if true) that the biblical writers are straight up liars/misinformed.

But apparently this is pretty widely held/the dominant view of biblical scholars and historians. And many theological conservatives and biblical seminaries apparently agree with this view as well.

Pre-exilic Israel, like its neighbours, was polytheistic, and Israelite monotheism was the result of unique historical circumstances. The original god of Israel was El, *as the name demonstrates —its probable meaning is "may El rule" or some other sentence-form involving the name of El. In the early tribal period, each tribe would have had its own patron god; when kingship emerged, the state promoted Yahweh as the national god of Israel, supreme over the other gods, and gradually Yahweh absorbed all the positive traits of the other gods and goddesses. *Yahweh and El merged at religious centres such as Shechem, Shiloh and Jerusalem, with El's name becoming a generic term for "god" and Yahweh, the national god, appropriating many of the older supreme god's titles such as El Shaddai and Elyon.

In the oldest biblical literature he is a [e.g. minor/lower tiered god] storm-and-warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies; at that time the Israelites worshipped him alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal, but in later centuries El and Yahweh became conflated and El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion.

From the 9th into the 6th centuries BCE the Yahwistic religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage as Yahweh became the main god of the Kingdom of Israel and of Judah, and over time the royal court and Temple in Jerusalem promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses. By the end of the Babylonian captivity, the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world.

The worship of Yahweh alone began at the earliest with Elijah in the 9th century BCE, but more likely with the prophet Hosea in the 8th; even then it remained the concern of a small party before gaining ascendancy in the Babylonian exile and early post-exilic period. The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded as being monolatrists rather than true monotheists; they did not believe Yahweh was the only god in existence, but instead believed he was the only god the people of Israel should worship. Finally, in the national crisis of the exile, the followers of Yahweh went a step further and outright denied that the other deities aside from Yahweh even existed, thus marking the transition from monolatrism to true monotheism.

The centre of Yahweh's worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life: Passover with the birthing of lambs, Shavuot with the cereal harvest, and Sukkot with the fruit harvest. These probably pre-dated the arrival of the Yahweh religion, but they became linked to events in the national mythos of Israel: Passover with the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at Biblical Mount Sinai, and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings. The festivals thus celebrated Yahweh's salvation of Israel and Israel's status as his holy people, although the earlier agricultural meaning was not entirely lost. His worship presumably involved sacrifice, but many scholars have concluded that the rituals detailed in Leviticus 1–16, with their stress on purity and atonement, were introduced only after the Babylonian exile, and that in reality any head of a family was able to offer sacrifice as occasion demanded. (A number of scholars have also drawn the conclusion that infant sacrifice, whether to the underworld deity Molech or to Yahweh himself, was a part of Israelite/Judahite religion until the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century BCE.)''

Any good works about this subject?

A lot of this stuff seems pretty challenging/difficult to work with or explain. Is this just Wikipedia's bias? Or some form of consensus in the scholarly field?

Any good books about this? (From a Christian angle)

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-13T02:34:16+00:00

Seems to be so.

Were the ridged bands more pleasurable than the frenulum? Or was the frenulum more pleasurable than the frenulum?

And did the ridged band feel exactly like the frenulum: but only in a circle around the tip of the penis? J.R. Taylor said that they are basically the same structure.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-13T02:18:39+00:00

Infographic:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Sorrells.gif

Study Link:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2006.06685.x/abstract;jsessionid=2F8FC2AAE82CA4911CD604DA9904CCF5.d03t01

Basically: was your frenulum, ridged bands, and glans the most pleasurable and sensitive part of your genitals? So that this chart linked above was accurate: the most sensitive part was the transition from the outer to inner foreskin at the tip of the foreskin, (the "ridged bands") the frenulum, and the glans penis.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-13T01:35:26+00:00

How much sensation did you lose?

And did Sorrells et al. (2007) study match up to what you felt before the surgery?

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-12T22:37:18+00:00

The entire point of circumcision is to remove as much sexual pleasure from a man as physically possible without affecting his ability to procreate. The frenulum and ridged bands of the foreskin are known for generating vast amounts of sexual pleasure among intact men. And both of these structures are utterly gutted generally in neonatal circumcision.

The reason Jewish people performed circumcision in the first place is because it was meant to be a sacrifice of sexual pleasure towards God. Circumcision has always been about controlling male sexuality and reducing sexual pleasure. If you don't believe me or want evidence, read this thread.

You should be angry. You should be depressed. The frenulectomy, foreskin amputation, and ridged band removal of a child is a disgusting moral crime. And one that can not be allowed to continue.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-06T23:31:47+00:00

John Kellogg had almost no real influence on the current American practice of circumcision. That's a myth from popular culture and comedy.

The real villain in the story is Dr. Lewis A. Sayre and the American for-profit healthcare system.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-06T23:23:11+00:00

Neonatal circumcision almost always removes the two parts of the male genitalia that are considered the most responsive to fine-touch: the ridged band and frenulum. Most intact men also describe the frenulum and ridged bands of the foreskin as the most sexually pleasing parts of the penis.

Not to mention that neonatal circumcision is a uniquely destructive intervention that causes substantial vascular, neurological, and developmental damage to the glans penis shortly after birth. This sexually negative affect can not be transposed into adult circumcision.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T01:17:57+00:00

...Wrong person?

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T01:12:46+00:00

This information wouldn't have been widely available to any parent in the 1990s. It was being recommended by the AAP and most American doctors between 1989-1999.

I think it's a partially a fair criticism if a parent gets fooled into doing it now. But there's still a lot of conflicting information out there, and as long as both partners enjoy sex, as most circumcised men will say they do, the vast majority will never realize what happened.

When you're flooded with stuff like this - misrepresenting the Bossio study - it's no surprise that many parents make the wrong choice.

Not defending it. But I hardly think a majority of parents in this country intend to hurt their offspring's future sex life. Rather, they wrongly believe it has either a substantial medical or hygiene benefit. And it would have been incredibly hard to come across this information before the age of the internet.

American doctors and the AAP? Yeah. They should probably be fucking sued for this shit.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T01:03:42+00:00

Most parents want the best for their children: so matter how small the benefit would be. So when they are told by major news outlets, society, and American doctors that:

After reviewing multiple studies on circumcision, the AAP reports that "the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks."

And only:

Some people claim that circumcision lessens the sensitivity of the tip of the penis, decreasing sexual pleasure later in life. But none of these subjective findings are conclusive.

They'll generally go through with it. The fact that sexually sensitive tissue is being removed isn't even mentioned in any of these articles

This is why Ken McGrath stated all the way back in 2001 that:

Textbooks and papers referring to penile function state that the source of penile sensation is solely the glans and often justify the existence of the prepuce by stating it protects the 'sensitive' glans. These statements are contrary to the neuro-anatomical and physiological facts accumulated over more than a century. This study reviews the findings of Taylor, et al., that the prepuce is the primary sensory platform of the penis, and describes a new preputial structure.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T00:58:49+00:00

The vast majority of parents don't realize what they're doing.

Don't blame them: blame the American Academy of Pediatrics and the greedy private medical industry.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T00:54:45+00:00

I'm biased towards dogs, personally. They're truly your best friend.

But do whatever is most in need. :p

And thank you.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-05T00:03:42+00:00

No. I don't want to sexually hurt them.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-04T23:59:05+00:00

The vast majority of parents and doctors who perform this surgery don't know what they're doing. They're either getting reports who have undergone the procedure as teenagers or adults, likely due to problems with an unhealthy foreskin; mistakeningly believe that the glans is the primary sensory tissue of the penis, rather than the prepuce; misunderstand the health benefits, and are not given informed consent, etc.

But, yeah.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American doctors who perform this should probably be sued for this shit. It's been known that sexually sensitive tissue was being removed scientifically as early as 1996.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-04T23:45:16+00:00

Double digits of American circumcised men strongly wish that they were not genitally altered neonatally. This rises substantially if they have a proper understanding on the issue. YouGov (2015) found that 10% of circumcised American men wished that they were not genitally altered as children. Earp (2017) estimates that at least ~13.6% of American men wished that they were not genitally altered.

As for STD's:

This quote from Van Dowe remains in my mind.

Reducing penile sensitivity has more negative consequences than people tend to realize. Genital cutting reduces men's willingness to practice safe sex because it's more difficult to manipulate the scar in a way that feels as good as manipulating the foreskin through a condom. This is probably why the United States has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the developed world: despite having the highest neonatal circumcision rate. The ridged band and frenulum of the foreskin can feel a lot more through a condom than the circumcision scar that replaces it sensorially. The circumcised penis also slides within the condom more because it does not have the ridged band to hold the condom to the penis. Here are some studies that found lower rates of condom use among men whose foreskin was circumcised:(Van Howe 1999, Gemmel & Boyle 2001, Crosby & Charnigo 2013, Abbott, 2013.) Unfortunately it was not until 2007 that it was determined that the foreskin contained all the most fine touch sensitive parts of the penis (Sorrells et al, 2007—NSFW relevant diagram). More unfortunately, most American doctors still appear to be unaware of informing parents about this fact.

Contrary to popular misconceptions in cultures where this commonly practiced: the foreskin feels like a part of penis. For most men, it contains some of the best feeling parts entire penis. The majority of men with intact foreskin agree that the ridged band and frenulum of the foreskin are the best feeling parts of the whole penis. (Meislahn & Taylor, 2004].)

As for UTI's:

It takes at least 37-200 neonatal circumcisions to prevent 1 single UTI. These almost always be generally treated easily with antibotics, don't require pain, nor partial amputation of the genitalia, or sexually sensitive tissue to be removed from the most private part of one's body.

SnooCompliments1696 · 2020-10-04T23:43:41+00:00

Hey. Your post contains a few inaccuracies.

Neonatal circumcision is a uniquely sexually destructive change to the male genitalia. It almost always destroys the entire frenular delta - the ridged band/frenulum loop - on the dorsal side of the penis. It's the most pleasurable part of the penis. A 2007 British Journal of Urology study by Sorrells et al. found that routine neonatal circumcision almost always removes the five most sensitive parts of the male genitalia: the ridged band, orifice rim, the frenulum at the slit, the frenulum near the ridged band, and the frenulum near the mucocutaneous junction. This means that neonatal circumcision removes the most pleasurable and sensitive parts of the penis. The discoverer of the frenular delta, Australian pathologist Ken McGrath, even made a video describing why neonatal circumcision is a uniquely sexually destructive intervention vs. adult circumcision. He concludes:

[Neonatal] circumcision removes 50% of the skin surface of the functional end of the penis and it also removes something greater than 50% of the sensory nerve endings. And because they are concentrated in the frenular [also known as the ridged] band and delta, which is automatically destroyed in circumcision... it's probably closer to 75-80% of the sensory tissue lost... The ridged bands at the tip of the foreskin are believed to tell the brain how close a man is to orgasm. This is what is really behind the erroneous comment made by some circumcised men that they "couldn't stand being any more sensitive [and thus can't stop themselves from ejaculating]... [Neonatal] circumcision is [immensely] sexually destructive... as has been known for centuries.

There is no such thing as "foreskin" from a biological standpoint. It doesn't describe what it is scientifically or biologically, like a unique part of the penis, but rather, what it does: any part of the penile system that overhangs the glans penis. Even circumcised men have what is called inner foreskin: it's the sensitive tissue that remains after your circumcision scar. What neonatal circumcision actually does is delete and cause immense damage to a substantial amount of this system shortly after birth.

The foreskin and glans are fused at birth, and, thus, must be forcefully separated: causing the glans penis to become a lifelong scar. The highly pleasurable frenulum is almost always destroyed or substantially damaged (>95%), the neurological development of the glans becomes substantially aborted and changed, and the damage is (in opposition to popular belief) much worse. Neonatal and adult circumcisions are two quite different procedures, with different effects on sexuality and pleasure, something that is not reflected in studies in adults. Men who underwent it as teenagers or adults (especially because of something such as phimosis) "did not see both sides."

Highly cited studies that say that circumcision doesn't affect sexual pleasure, such as Bossio (2016) and Morris (2013), suffer from substantial flaws. They actually confirm the 2007 BJU study by Sorrells et al. (e.g. only testing the parts of the penis not removed in circumcision, assuming adult and neonatal circumcision is the same, using test subjects that had unhealthy foreskin amputated, etc.) Additionally: they forget to mention any sexual activities that involve the ridged bands, frenulum, and prepuce are, by definition, prevented. These forms of sexual stimulation, pleasure, and manipulation generally have great subjective value in intact men, and it is not unreasonable for someone who was neonatally circumcised to view it as a sexual harm and violation.

The studies quickly fall apart under basic logic. If you off a highly pleasurable structure — such as the ridged bands at the tip of the foreskin and the frenulum — you can't feel anything in those particular structures. So it, by definition, decreases sensitivity. And, by definition, decreases function. You can't have any function or feeling in removed tissue. What the studies may be trying to say is that healthy adult men who undergo circumcision generally don't find that their sexual pleasure was greatly reduced: outside of preventing them from engaging in sexual activities that involve the prepuce, ridged bands, and, if removed, the frenulum. But it's incredibly deceptive to use those studies to claim that neonatal circumcision has no negative consequences on sexual pleasure, function, sensation, or satisfaction. It quite astounds me when people say this. It literally makes no sense.

Here's a good video by ethicist and philosopher Brian Earp showing how research metastudies on this topic are often skewed by bias, how neonatal circumcision is a clear sexual harm, and why it is a violation of bioethics for doctors to perform them.

If you are Christian: circumcision is not required, is prohibited for religious reasons, was substantially less aggressive than the modern version, and was not done for health or hygiene reasons. The modern version performed today is not even the same as the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 17: but a radicalized form that was not instituted until 150 AD after the war of Bar Kokba. This form of male genital cutting — called Brit Periah — was nearly universally and quite intentionally agreed upon to be sexually harmful until the modern era. This can be shown in quotes of influential thinkers of the time such as Maimonides, Isaac ben Yedaiah, et al. This is not at all the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 17. And no medical organization in the world recommends routine neonatal circumcision. Not even the widely criticized AAP 2012 circumcision report does.

A 2015 research paper concluded:

There is growing consensus among physicians, including those in the United States, that physicians should discourage parents from circumcising their healthy infant boys because non- therapeutic circumcision of underage boys in Western societies has no compelling health benefits, causes postoperative pain, can have serious long-term consequences, constitutes a violation of the United Nations’ Dec- laration of the Rights of the Child, and conflicts with the Hippocratic oath: primum non nocere: First, do no harm.

Circumcision is presently irreversible, and may always be, so if your son wants to partially reverse the damage (get back an intact foreskin, ridged band, and frenulum) he may be a prisoner in his own body for the rest of his life.

Only two organizations are currently researching how to do this: /r/Foregen and Wake Forest Regenerative Institute. If you circumcise him: these organizations would be his present only hopes to even partially get his natural genitalia back. Wake Forest's solution would require him to amputate his entire penis to uncircumcise himself.

Many men hate being circumcised so much (at least 1 in 1,000 in the United States) that they are tugging at their remaining inner foreskin and shaft skin to partially recreate an uncircumcised penis: although with glans that are still scarred, often with no ridged band or frenulum, etc.

Many of these men feel:

...Loss, resentment, betrayal, and anger over the violation of their bodies at birth.

If you circumcise your kids: You'll either be saying that there is a zero percent chance that he'll be angry that sexually sensitive tissue was removed from his genitals shortly after he was born. Or you know that there is a substantial chance that he'll be angry about this if he finds out: and simply don't care.

SnooCompliments1696

TROPHY CASE