• Dasus@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    You’re in denial. The anti-masturbation craze is known to have been a major motivation for pretty much all this research. It’s well documented.

    And just like, you can’t argue 100% reduction of penile cancer, when that’s just simply literally really not true. So why claim it?

    It has been widely accepted by medical historians since the 1950s that discouraging masturbation was a major reason why doctors, educationists and childcare experts sought to introduce widespread circumcision of both boys and girls in the nineteenth century, a campaign which was successful in the former case, unsuccessful in the latter–an outcome which still colours popular concepts about what constitutes genital mutilation. A result of the partial character of this victory has been a high degree of blindness on the issue: while the treatment of hysteria and masturbation in women by clitoridectomy was noticed early on (and condemned with indignation), the comparable operation on boys (amputation of the foreskin) has been either ignored or given only fleeting attention, and has rarely been regarded with the same degree of abhorrence.

    The point isn’t that anyone is directly arguing today that there’s a strong anti-masturbatory movement atm. But historically that has been the motivation, and we can quite clearly see how most of the medical research into the subject was done because someone wanted smarter arguments than fanatic anti-masturbatory moral panic.

    And these aren’t all from a lifetime ago.

    The sceptical mood and anti-puritanism of the 1960s found expression in Alex Comfort’s light-hearted but reliable survey of medical manias, The anxiety makers (1967). “curious preoccupations of the profession” he listed the crusade for continence, an obsession with constipation, hostility to drinking tea, moralistic theories of venereal disease and the campaign against self-abuse

    So yeah there’s definitely people still using the reasoning. Hopefully all the doctors who used it are all retired, but some are definitely still alive.

    • tomenzgg@midwest.social
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      9 days ago

      You’re in denial. The anti-masturbation craze is known to have been a major motivation for pretty much all this research. It’s well documented.

      Y’know, – it’s a curious thing – that might be why I’ve never once denied it, in any of my comments? But I’m interrupting the conversation you’d rather be having, again.

      The original motivation for the trend is not the current defense for the trend which is the actual thing I was pointing out (and have kept pointing out; your argument that no one is saying there is a strong antimasturbatory movement is ignoring that the comment I was responding to said it was still the motivating reason for the trend, to this day. And a lot of the medical body of research is still within the last 50 years; that paper I linked to in another comment was not an ancient study. Again, – if you actually want to address the current state of the world – you need to acknowledge it).

      But I’ll let you return to your other conversation.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        why I’ve never once denied it

        You said its not a modern reasoning. 20th century is considered to be modernity, and pretty sure there are still doctors alive who worked in the 60s. So even if you’re using “modern” in another context, there are still people who’ve been taught using that reasoning, and since most of the reasoning in the US today is contested as well, we can easily argue it’s about moral panic and conforming to societal standards more than about actual factual objective medical benefits.

        You’re still just straight up wrong about “removing all risk of penile cancer”, yet you won’t admit that.

        Sure, it significantly reduces the chances of getting penile cancer, but unless you chop of the glans, it doesn’t remove it.

        It also significantly alters the sensation in your penis and as far as American media is to be believed, makes jerking off “dry” much more difficult. Can’t imagine needing accessories for getting myself off lol. I mean, I have used accessories ofc, but I couldn’t imagine not being able to get off without them. Always having to have a bottle of lube just in case I get horny and want to rub my keratinised stem which lacks the prepuce and glans, (so that I won’t have even a tiny risk of cancer.)

        • tomenzgg@midwest.social
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          9 days ago

          You said its not a modern reasoning. 20th century is considered to be modernity, and pretty sure there are still doctors alive who worked in the 60s

          I think you misread your own quote; what you quoted was not that doctors were still using that as the recommendation in the '60s but an allusion to a book regarding (to quote) “medical manias”, The Anxiety Makers; every example from the book that your source quotes is from the 19th century: “Following Spitz and Hare, Comfort observed that punitive treatments for the vice introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century included[…]”

          we can easily argue it’s about moral panic and conforming to societal standards more than about actual factual objective medical benefits

          Except the first part would be speculative and not based upon any actual evidence; regardless the reasons parents do it, it is absurd to act like doctors and entire medical org.s are recommending…just because (even if their evidence for the recommendation is poor). My mother was a registered nurse: they have reasons they believe it should be offered within a medical setting and providing your own justifications for their motivations will not actually address why they are acting as they are; this is why – even if it agrees with our side – misinformation is bad as it paints our understanding of things on bad assumptions. Again, I would think we’d actually want to address why these decisions are greenlit rather than just feel smug that we know better but that’s, apparently, too fine-grained a distinction.

          You’re still just straight up wrong about “removing all risk of penile cancer”, yet you won’t admit that.

          Because that was never the conversation, bud; and you still think this is a discussion about the efficacy of circumcision, apparently.

          It was slight hyperbole but that’s because I don’t actually care about the details (as I said elsewhere, penile cancer is so rare as to make the former point – even if it were true – moot); the point was to refer to some of the medical information out there to draw attention to it because the original point of the conversation was that someone said the current reason for circumcision is antimasturbitory policy; which, again, is not true.

          I’m not trying to cite that information in detail because it’s only related to the main point that antimasturbitory policy is not the current defense for the practice. I’m not making an argument for circumcision; that is not the conversation.

          I’ll let you get back to the conversation you’d rather have where you describe your masturbation practices.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Nope, didn’t read it wrong at all. Purposefully left out bits to check out whether you actually even look at it.

            Because that was never the conversation

            So still just ashamed to say “I was mistaken” or “well that wasn’t entirely true, I exaggerated a bit on purpose to make my point seem better”, huh?

            It was slight hyperbole

            Hahahaha “100% reduction” was "slight hyperbole? Bwahaha.

            I’m not trying to cite that information in detail

            That’s pretty clear yeah. But you’re just wrong.

            For example, as late as 1970, a widely used textbook, Campbell’s Urology, recognized circumcision as a way to AVERT MASTURBATION. According to numerous scholars, the nineteenth century obsession with masturbation, and anxieties about male sexuality more generally, forms an important backdrop to the mainstreaming of circumcision within medicine.

            Or did I read that wrong somehow, hmm?

            Oh, right the source

            https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/circumcision

            What’s that “edu” mean in their address…? O.o

            Routine circumcision of infants got a boost in the US from pediatrician Benjamin Spock, whose popular book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1945, endorsed circumcision. Spock stated that he thought circumcision was a good idea, especially if most of a person’s peers were circumcised, because that makes a person feel socially regular. Pediatrician Sorrells explains that Spock reversed course in 1989 and became firmly opposed to circumcision, but by then his views had already left their mark. In the US, circumcision of newborn males became almost universal by the late 1960s, with rates in some parts of the country exceeding ninety percent. Hodges makes the point that by the 1990s, the majority of US doctors had never even seen a human penis with its foreskin intact. Even in textbooks, US doctors were likely to encounter images of penises where the foreskin is either absent fully or incompletely covering the glans. In fact, the only time a US doctor would see an image of a penis fully covered by a foreskin is in images that depict so-called phimosis. According to Hodges, as a result of cultural biases, many of the images of phimosis found in the US medical literature would appear normal to Europeans viewing the same images.

            • tomenzgg@midwest.social
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              9 days ago

              “well that wasn’t entirely true, I exaggerated a bit on purpose to make my point seem better”, huh?

              How would that make my point seem better? I’m not arguing for circumcision; but I guess that’s the conversation you want to have.

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                9 days ago

                Ah yes, and now skip over the entire bit where I proved you wrong, again, by providing more detailed and sourced information. Guess we’ll have to just do it again. Not a modern notion. Not something “anyone alive” would’ve used?

                For example, as late as 1970, a widely used textbook, Campbell’s Urology, recognized circumcision as a way to AVERT MASTURBATION. According to numerous scholars, the nineteenth century obsession with masturbation, and anxieties about male sexuality more generally, forms an important backdrop to the mainstreaming of circumcision within medicine.

                Or did I read that wrong somehow, hmm?

                Oh, right the source

                https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/circumcision

                What’s that “edu” mean in their address…? O.o

                Routine circumcision of infants got a boost in the US from pediatrician Benjamin Spock, whose popular book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1945, endorsed circumcision. Spock stated that he thought circumcision was a good idea, especially if most of a person’s peers were circumcised, because that makes a person feel socially regular. Pediatrician Sorrells explains that Spock reversed course in 1989 and became firmly opposed to circumcision, but by then his views had already left their mark. In the US, circumcision of newborn males became almost universal by the late 1960s, with rates in some parts of the country exceeding ninety percent. Hodges makes the point that by the 1990s, the majority of US doctors had never even seen a human penis with its foreskin intact. Even in textbooks, US doctors were likely to encounter images of penises where the foreskin is either absent fully or incompletely covering the glans. In fact, the only time a US doctor would see an image of a penis fully covered by a foreskin is in images that depict so-called phimosis. According to Hodges, as a result of cultural biases, many of the images of phimosis found in the US medical literature would appear normal to Europeans viewing the same images.