• tomenzgg@midwest.social
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    8 days ago

    That’s because it takes two seconds to Google due to being the most commonly used defense for circumcision: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3139859/.

    Again, I’m not arguing that’s good reasoning (especially considering that penile cancer is generally rare) but I don’t think it makes any more sense to not address the actual reasons people are doing circumcision for.

    • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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      7 days ago

      Again, I’m not arguing that’s good reasoning (especially considering that penile cancer is generally rare) but I don’t think it makes any more sense to not address the actual reasons people are doing circumcision for.

      The actual reason most people in the US do circumcision is because it’s been normalized to do (and offer unprompted, by hospitals), nothing more.

      • tomenzgg@midwest.social
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        7 days ago

        True; I guess I was providing the answer to the follow-up question of “why is it offered by hospitals, unprompted”.

        Regardless, it’s certainly not “because it reduces masturbation”.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Regardless, it’s certainly not “because it reduces masturbation”.

          Don’t pretend like antimasturbatory logic wasn’t a massive drive behind the force to set up the US as the only supposedly “developed” nation with this horrid practice.

          The concept of circumcision as a preventive, and then routine, procedure emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, though the reasons for this development remain contested. In a recent historical survey, Dunsmuir and Gordon cite prevention or cure of impotence, phimosis, sterility, priapism, masturbation, venereal disease, epilepsy, bed-wetting, night terrors, “precocious sexual unrest” and homosexuality as among the contradictory benefits urged by Victorian and Edwardian physicians in Britain and the USA, without offering any firm suggestions of their own as to the relative weight of these factors.

          https://www.cirp.org/library/history/darby4/

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              But probably not before the splitting?

              Seems like South-Korea has some things which have quite clearly come quote directly from the US.

              Like the whole loving spam thing. (The food, not the phenomenon.)

              • Horsey@lemmy.world
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                6 days ago

                100% it’s inherited from the USA during their reconstruction period after the split. Circumcision was encouraged by the US military as a way to make soldiers more efficient, and since SK never lost the threat of NK invasion, it became a cultural practice in the 50s that never ended. Today, it’s a full blown cultural norm like in the US, probably >80% of men (interestingly, neonatal circumcision is not the norm, and many men will choose for themselves later); in the US, the rate varies by region, and is overall declining outside of Michigan and the Midwest (which have growing Muslim populations, and are becoming more and more sex-negative overall).