An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. – English proverb
Last December I reported that an HIV patient had been cured in Berlin via stem cell transplant, and on September 29th Spanish researchers announced a possible vaccine:
Spanish scientists at the National Biotech Centre in Madrid say a new vaccine could reduce HIV to a “minor chronic infection”…90% of participants given the MVA-B vaccine showed an immune response to the virus and 85% kept the immunity a year later. According to a press release from The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC):
The success of this vaccine, CSIC’s patent, is based on the capability of a human’s immune system to learn how to react over time against virus particles and infected cells. “MVA-B vaccine has proven to be as powerful as any other vaccine currently being studied, or even more,” says Mariano Esteban, head researcher. MVA-B is an attenuated virus, which has already been used in the past to eradicate smallpox, and also as a model in the research of many other vaccines. The “B” stands for the HIV subtype it is meant to work against, the most common in Europe.
Once injected, the vaccine teaches the…immune system to track down and fight off the virus. “It is like showing a picture of the HIV so that it is able to recognize it if it sees it again in the future,” Esteban says…[adding] “If this genetic cocktail passes Phase II and Phase III future clinic trials, and makes it into production, in the future HIV could be compared to herpes virus nowadays.”
This is fantastic news, though I have to wonder if prudish American parents, eager to cut off their children’s noses to spite their faces, will refuse to allow them this vaccine as many have refused the one for venereal warts? Wrongheaded opposition to that one is so widespread the California legislature felt it necessary to enact a law allowing teenagers to get the vaccine (and any future vaccines for STDs, including HIV) without the knowledge of parents who would rather their daughters die than have sex; of course, there is widespread outcry over the law from people who think it should be OK to deny one’s teenage children access to health care.
California is also the state in which a city (San Francisco) with a large gay population recently saw a (defeated) effort to ban infant circumcision, despite the fact that we’ve known for five years now that it reduces the chance of HIV infection by 60% (future attempts at circumcision bans have since been outlawed by the California legislature). In Europe, the practice is now being encouraged as one of the most cost-effective means of stopping the spread of the disease, as detailed in the second part of our lead story:
In other HIV news, a group of European economists says adult male circumcision is not the most cost-effective solution for stopping the disease and resources should be directed towards other options like finding an HIV vaccine, infant male circumcision, removing the risk of infection from blood transfusions, and stopping mother-to-child transmission of the virus…Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told a group meeting at Georgetown University, “We need to spend money on things we know work,” and added, “Making blood transfusions safe costs almost nothing, but we’re not doing it.”
That this fact is virtually ignored on this side of the pond should come as no surprise; the United States in general and California in particular are well-known for their inverted priorities and arse-backward “solutions”, spending tremendous sums of money and enormous effort on problems that barely exist (such as “human trafficking” and domestic terrorism) while ignoring threats to thousands or even millions of people. One ongoing example from California is another HIV-related issue, the condom porn controversy, the absurdity of which was highlighted in my column of one year ago today. Unfortunately, Americans as a group are mired in religious thinking, even when they’re not religious; they tend to unquestioningly accept whatever pronouncements are made by those they view as “authorities” (whether religious, political, cultural or simply famous), and never let little things like facts change their minds.
Was it Bill Hicks that said that they’ll be “fuckin’ in the streets” when HIV is cured?
It’s great news – well, unless you’re part of the blue balled/antisex league.
Presumably, the same way they were “fuckin’ in the streets” for all of human history before the appearance of HIV. 😐
We didn’t celebrate in the streets every day before World War II, but we did the day the war ended.
Obviously, “fuckin’ in the streets” is hyperbole, but I do think an AIDS cure could spark a new sexual revolution.
Maggie, what do you make of the arguments that infant circumcision is an issue of consent? That parents are sacrificing a child’s future sexual pleasure for safety/aestheics, etc. without their consent? Was it your experience that circumcised men experience significantly less pleasure than uncircumcised men? I’m always reminded that circumcision took off in this country as a supposed cure for masturbation.
The notion that circumcised men experience less pleasure is bullshit; it is not supported by the experiences of men who were circumcised in adulthood. Also, circumcised men are less likely to experience physical pain during intercourse or trouble keeping an erection.
Furthermore, every methodologically sound study which has ever been done shows that in every culture, women who have been exposed to both prefer circumcised. Anti-circumcision activists claim that it’s cultural, but it is not; the vast majority of women who report that they prefer uncircumcised also report that they’ve never had sex with a circumcised man, and what’s even more interesting is that those who report preferring uncircumcised also strongly tend to report that they dislike performing fellatio.
The anti-circumcision movement grew out of the gay community; apparently many gay men are the opposite of women in that they are fascinated by foreskins. Whatever. I think most guys would prefer to be more sexually attractive to women, even if there was a 2% difference in sensitivity during masturbation.
Maggie,
Your arrogance on this issue is astounding. You’re not a man and you have a lot of audacity to try to speaks for one. Regardless of what studies say, men should have choice when it comes to their bodies. And also, 1 out of every 100 circumcisions is botched. I’d suggest you read up on the ensuing “sexual reassignment surgery” that ruined lives in such cases. One of the worst chapters in US medical history. Had 1 out of 100 clits been destroyed, you damn well bet the practice would have been banned for females.
My body, my choice does not just go for women. You’re talking about something you don’t know here — and beyond that, something you have not the authority or knowledge to speak on.
A lot of respected doctors who don’t want to just make a buck on childbirth are calling for the ending of circs because it’s unnecessary — and unnecessarily cruel. This goes beyond the gay community.
Men’s bodies should not be mutilated to suit women’s. Who *cares* what women want when it comes to men’s penises? Maybe you cared so much when men though, you mutilated your own breasts with implants, but that was your CHOICE. Similarly, male babies should get a CHOICE.
And if people don’t want AIDS, I’d suggest using protection, not chopping off body parts. This blog is being taken out of my favorites and I’m not going to read it anymore. Go back to talking about being a hooker or something you know something — MY BODY is not your choice.
Arrogant know-nothing.
Goodbye, and good riddance to you. Hypersensitivity isn’t a virtue.
Agree. And that is why radical circumcision, as performed by Nathalie van Amsterdam, should be the norm. Full removal of the inner foreskin, nothing less.
A bit over the top there dude.
Removing a foreskin is nothing like removing a clitoris. It’s only skin – so it’s a bit hyperbole to drag the little lady in the boat into this.
Circumcision isn’t cruel – no one even remembers it. I don’t remember it.
One out of a hundred are botched? Who’s doing them? What qualifies as “botched”? If it’s fixable is still counted as botched?
And as far as knowledge and authority to speak on this subject – I’d think Maggie was infinitely more qualified than you or I to talk about this.
Just because you have one – doesn’t mean you know everything about this subject – especially when speaking authoritatively would require a lot of knowledge about other men’s parts that I doubt you have. I don’t have that kind of knowledge.
The anti-circumcision movement, like feminism, requires belief in its tenets which aren’t supported by facts. I’ve run into a few activists for the cause before, and they seem to believe that they were robbed of the chance to achieve some imaginary level of sexual ecstasy that they could’ve had with it. I’m not saying it’s wrong to oppose infant circumcision on philosophical grounds; what I’m saying is that most people with whom I’ve interacted about the subject behave a lot like Broken Arrows did there, which is in turn a lot like neofeminists. They fly into a rage and ignore facts, thus demonstrating it’s a personal issue for them rather than a philosophical one.
I think that this is the instance he was referring to.
In book form.
http://www.amazon.com/As-Nature-Made-Him-Raised/dp/0060192119
From Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Also from Wikipedia; the Doctor that inflicted this monstrosity on him for the sake of his sexual reconstruction theories. (And to cover up a botched circumcision.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
Now I am circumcised but I doubt I would have any of my sons circumcised because of the possible complications unless there was a specific medical reason for it.
Cost / Benefit Analysis from a Medical perspective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_analysis_of_circumcision#Costs_and_benefits
There are several hypotheses to explain why infant circumcision was accepted in the United States about the year 1900. The germ theory of disease elicited an image of the human body as a conveyance for many dangerous germs, making the public “germ phobic” and suspicious of dirt and bodily secretions. The penis became “dirty” by association with its function, and from this premise circumcision was seen as preventative medicine to be practised universally.[181] In the view of many practitioners at the time, circumcision was a method of treating and preventing masturbation.[181] Aggleton wrote that John Harvey Kellogg viewed male circumcision in this way, and further “advocated an unashamedly punitive approach.”[182] Circumcision was also said to protect against syphilis,[183] phimosis, paraphimosis, balanitis, and “excessive venery”* (which was believed to produce paralysis).[181] Gollaher states that physicians advocating circumcision in the late nineteenth century expected public scepticism, and refined their arguments to overcome it.[181]
It looks to me, given the time and the involvement of John Harvey Kellog, that at least some aspects of non-religious advocacy of male circumcision arose out of the social purity movement of the late 19th century.
Although Kellog is best known for his “Kellog’s Corn Flakes (which led to a life-long feud with his younger brother who founded the Kellogs company), he was an anti-sex advocate of the first order. From Wikipedia:
“Warfare with passion”
He warned that many types of sexual activity, including many “excesses” that couples could be guilty of within marriage, were against nature, and therefore, extremely unhealthy. He drew on the warnings of William Acton and expressed support for the work of Anthony Comstock. He appears to have followed his own advice; it has been suggested he worked on Plain Facts during his honeymoon.[19]
He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; this was an orthodox view during his lifetime, especially the earlier part. Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources’ claims such as “neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism,” credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke. Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of masturbation-related deaths “such a victim literally dies by his own hand,” among other condemnations. He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but the moral health of individuals as well. Kellogg also believed the practice of “solitary-vice” caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility; “dimness of vision” was only briefly mentioned.
Drastic measures
Kellogg worked on the rehabilitation of masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation and applying phenol (carbolic acid) to a young woman’s clitoris. In his Plain Facts for Old and Young,[7] he wrote
“ A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. ”
and
“ In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. ”
He also recommended, to prevent children from this “solitary vice”, bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskin shut and electrical shock.[7]
In his Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease, for nymphomania, he recommended
“ Cool sitz baths; the cool enema; a spare diet; the application of blisters and other irritants to the sensitive parts of the sexual organs, the removal of the clitoris and nymphae…
It looks fairly conclusive to me that Kellog, while only part of the rise of “non-religious” male circumcision as a practice in the USA, was motivated by his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs and therefore a part of the social purity movement.
*Venery can refer to the following:
The practice or sport of hunting game animals, or the wild animals so hunted.
The practice or pursuit of sexual pleasure, or the indulgence of sexual desire.
I discussed the Reimer case in my column of July 18th. But despite Kellogg’s belief, there’s absolutely zero evidence that circumcision discourages masturbation in boys, considering 100% of them do it whether they’re circumcised or not.
Maggie,
I wasn’t saying Kellog was right about circumcision discouraging masturbation. (If he was, then I was definitely an outlier!) I was saying, that like many of the socio-sexual hangups in America, this also originated in the social purity movement of the late 19th century. It wasn’t exclusively a product of christian morality; there was a great motivation to try and cast everything in a scientific light at the time, including justifications for christian morality. Scientific socialism that the Fabian Society advocated or Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism* are other examples of this trend.
And like those enthusiasms the social purity movement led to brutal treatment of individuals by the state or other authoritative actors. Anytime the collective is placed above the individual, these excesses are inevitable whether the collective goal is social purity, racial homogeneity, economic leveling or sexual conformity.
Really? Pouring a blistering agent on a woman’s clitoris? Inflicting a wound to discourage masturbation? Placing an internally spiked cage around a teenage boy’s penis to prevent nocturnal engorgement?
Any one of these, one would think, would raise warning flags of the “what the hell are we doing this for” variety. But then again one would think that medical professionals would think twice about letting syphilis go to termination in a human subject just so you can see how it progresses.
This is why respect for individual rights is the touchstone of civilization. If you don’t have autonomous, freely associating individuals then you will eventually get to Hobbes “War of all against all” and degenerate into a “society” where man’s life is short, nasty and brutish.
I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here, Maggie. But this is why Jefferson “declared eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Because those tyrannies keep cropping up and their advocates then inflict tyranny over the bodies of those that don’t conform with them.
I’ll have to go take a look-see at your article on Reimer.
*Arguably, Spencer’s idea probably should have been called Social Lamarckianism and IIRC his reputation as a Social Darwinist was made by a hostile book written well after his death.
Sigh. I was hoping not to provoke a holy war with the anti-circumcision guys. This just seems to be one of those issues.
Just to clarify one of the points he made: 1 out of 100 circs being “botched”. The complication rate might be that high but it includes incomplete circs and other minor complications. It’s *very* rare that a penis is “destroyed” and even rarer among Mohels, who specialize in this. (I would have a mohel, not a pediatrician do any son of mine.)
As it happens, I worked in a medical practice that had a line in circumcising adult Jews who had immigrated from countries where the practice was outlawed. We never got a complaint or a lawsuit.
It’s not your fault, Mike; I refuse to walk on eggshells to avoid offending the easily-offended, nor should my readers have to do so.
I realize that I didn’t quite answer one of your questions, though; some pros dislike seeing uncircumcised men, or will insist on cover from square one. Most uncircumcised men I saw reacted exactly like the circumcised ones, except for a small minority who had problems like painful erections or a thick foreskin which wouldn’t retract and made it harder for him to orgasm (rather than easier).
I had no idea there were countries where circumcision was illegal. Why aren’t there people up in arms about the religious persecution?
Well I have been circumcised my whole life – and if sex felt any better than it does now for me – I would literally be a “minute man”.
My only son … he’s circumcised too. Now, that was kind of a funny thing – as I wasn’t really set on having that done to him. However, it was 1988, in San Diego, CA – and I was in that “Lamaz” (however the hell you spell it) – natural child birth class with my wife. The teacher talked about circumcision and the decision to do it or not.
Fully 90 percent of the women in that class said they “preferred” men who are circumcised. I kind of took this as scientific proof that I should have it done to my son.
Years later I realized – that all the husbands were in the room with those women who said they preferred circumcised – and I realized that they probably just said they preferred it because their husband was circumcised and – well you know how smart women are … they know better than to say … “No, I like ’em natural – oh … sorry hun … yours is JUST right though!”
I will tell you that – in the military – I spent more than a few nights in wet foxholes and other literal shitholes around the world – and being cut really helped me to avoid some serious infections that my “natural” bro’s weren’t always so lucky to escape. I’m reminded of one guy that had to keep Calamine Lotion (the pink stuff) on his “gear” after it got infected. Funny as hell – his “equipment” turned the color of pepto-bismol! LOL.
My Dad was circumcised as an adult, when he was in the army. I’m told that it was done after he contracted an infection, but I’ve never been told what kind it was.
As far as I’m aware, he never complained of any loss of sensation.
My personal experience reflects that of your dad, Orni.
Thanks to a skin infection (the medics weren’t specific about what that was, so I am guessing it was not a notifiable STI, more like staph or somesuch) I needed a circumcision, as the foreskin had become swollen, painful and non-retractable (ugh, very ikky).
After the healing was done, I was relieved to discover that there was no difference that I noticed in orgasmic intensity.
However, as there was some fusion around the base of the glans and the frenulum (where a significant number of the sensory nerves are clustered)
arousal was a slower and more hit and miss process (Like, alas, wearing a super-thick condom; this is where the underlying male objection to those arises from, I suspect).
I’d stipulate, from my experience, that a guy with a properly performed clean circumcision experiences greater sensation, since the glans is exposed to direct contact during PIV in *both* directions of movement.
In a “cut” guy, also, it’s much easier to clean the penis reliably; as easy as washing your fingers. In truth, i’ve not quite understood that idea that the everted genitalia (both sexes) are “dirty”. It’s certainly the case that hygiene is not difficult, nor needs to involve lingering artifical scents, either.
Pop me in the tub for a cleaning rubdown, please 😉
Hey, a couple of other things Maggie …
First – on “Foreskinman” … when that comic came out it was heavily criticized for it’s anti-semitic depiction of rabbi’s … and it was also noted that it was probably more than just a little coincidence that the “hero” of the comic was a blonde haired, blue eyed Aryan superman.
Also – I don’t think you mentioned Rick Perry’s attempt to get Texas girls vaccinated for HPV. The most “enlightening” thing for me was to listen to some of the arguments against vaccinating these girls. Many parents said the vaccine would make kids “more promiscuous”. What?!
It’s almost as if these parents wanted the threat of cervical cancer hanging over their teenage daughters heads – just to deter them from having sex.
You may enjoy this parody comic in which the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing (who happens to be Jewish) beats the crap out of the neurotic “hero” who’s obsessed with other people’s weenies.
Perry was mentioned in the October 2nd column.
Not “almost as if.” That’s exactly it. For all that these folks talk about the importance of parenting and faith in producing a moral child and a moral adult, they also believe utterly that their precious, well-raised, Sunday-school-attending little angel will be fucking every boy in town (and licking half the girls) if she isn’t terrified of cancer, AIDS, being called a slut, pregnancy, shaming her parents, eternal damnation, and being an old maid. Fear, and fear alone, produces moral behavior.
It’s a hell of a way to live a life, but there you go.
In all the Scandinavian countries, hardly anyone is circumcised and female to male HIV transmission is very, very rare. It might even be non-existent – because of untruthful patient histories. Africa is a very different place, in all sorts of ways.
Young girls could have their labias surgically trimmed back and reshaped to remove unnecessary folds. If the doctors were in a good mood and not in a hurry, anesthesia might be given.
I bet more guys would go down on them and in some conditions have fewer local infections.
“This is fantastic news, though I have to wonder if prudish American parents, eager to cut off their children’s noses to spite their faces, will refuse to allow them this vaccine as many have refused the one for venereal warts? Wrongheaded opposition to that one is so widespread the California legislature felt it necessary to enact a law allowing teenagers to get the vaccine (and any future vaccines for STDs, including HIV) without the knowledge of parents who would rather their daughters die than have sex; of course, there is widespread outcry over the law from people who think it should be OK to deny one’s teenage children access to health care.”
Where to begin…
The problem isn’t benighted parents, at least in the US. I would say that, in general, most US parents would crawl through 5 miles of broken glass to provide for, protect, and feed their kids.
The problem is government interposing itself as a surrogate between the kids and the parents, which has been going on since the 1970’s. Isn’t this type of government interference what you have been railing about, re sex workers? Why is it ok for govt to interfere with parents but not sex workers? The government knows better than the parents, who birthed, is raising and lives with the kids? Really? Sorry, I don’t agree.
How is it “interference” to allow someone the right to protect herself? That’s less interference, not more. Government interference would be a law stating that a young person who wanted to protect herself from disease could not do so without parental consent.
If a 14-year-old walks into a store and buys food, clothes, condoms or aspirins, do we require parental consent for that as well? Clearly you don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager, or you would recall that most teens would rather risk disease than tell their parents they’re sexually active. Furthermore, because of statutory rape laws, that’s a sensible precaution; there are thousands of young men on “sex offender” registries today because girls stupidly trusted their parents with information about whom they were having sex with.
You are making my argument for me. Before HIV, there was syphilis, another, at the time, incurable disease. How did parents keep their kids from catching _that_ (and there were no analogous government proposals then)? Shame is a good motivator for proper behavior.
If I walked into a store as a minor and bought condoms, my parents would have been called by the pharmacist. And I grew up in a really permissive home. Government interference would have stopped the pharmacist from calling my parents. My parents were the guardians of me, not the government. Your definition of government interference doesn’t square with what is actually proposed or extant.
No. Teenagers are not infants; they should have some rights separate and distinct from their parents’ wishes. A teenager should have the right to seek preventative healthcare; for the state to inform the parents if she attempted to do so would have the effect of denying her that choice.
I disagree.
How is the government more capable of raising me as a child than my parents? And how are you more capable of raising me as a child, via the government, than my parents. My parents were in front of me every day. The government, not so much.
My children, until they are able to care for themselves without me, are _my_ responsibility. They don’t have rights until they are at the age of majority. If you don’t like the way I raise my kids, you can lump it. Or, would you rather I just drop my kids at your door and say “You raise them!” since you say they should have rights distinct from my wishes? Likely not. But you sure wanna tell me how to raise them, regardless.
I don’t want to tell you anything, but the fact is that teenagers are NOT children. They DO have legal rights separate from their parents right now, among them the right to consent to sex at the age of consent (which is usually under 18). It is YOU who want the government to interfere by telling them they can’t protect their own health. Teenagers have sex, whether parents like it or not, and it’s foolish in the extreme to say that because they do so they should be forced to contract a potentially-fatal illness on principle.
An unemancipated 14 year old isn’t allowed to make medical decisions for herself. She’s unlikely to have paid acute enough awareness of her medical history to know if there are contraindications for vaccination, and can lack the mature self-awareness to be guard for reactions.
Most adults don’t keep track of medical history either.
Your argument and those of Mignon seem to be based in principle; mine is based in pragmatism. Neither you nor anyone else can watch your kids 24 hours a day, and when they decide they’re going to have sex they will do so. Making it possible for them to protect themselves (from disease or pregnancy) keeps the foolish decision of a moment from becoming a lifetime hardship or even a death sentence. That’s all.
The principle is a pretty old one. This change empowers busybodies and profiteers, not 14 year olds. A less heavy handed regulation would encourage GPs, who will often be aware of any special issues, to discuss the vaccination with parents and 7th graders (who are also getting Pertussis boosters). Once the topic is on the table it is easy to say yes.
The sex workers that Maggie champions are adults and therefore victimized by government treating them in a paternalist fashion. (Abusive paternalist fashion, nonetheless.) Her point here is that the state does have a legitimate interest in protecting the rights of children where curtailing those rights can do unrecoverable harm.
For instance, vegan parents have a right to adhere to the diet of their choosing even if it is demonstrated to be deleterious. They do not have the right to impose a deleterious diet on their minor children.
Adult Christian Scientists have the right to eschew medical treatment in accord with the dictates of their conscience. They do not have the right to forbid access to medical treatment for their minor children in life threatening instances. In terminal cases of course, the question is murkier.
I don’t speak for Maggie (or write for her either) but I think that her point is that parental rights do not include making decisions for their children that are medically deleterious. For instance, an adult woman can decide to risk eclampsia rather than abort a fetus (for religious reasons) or risk having a premature baby. She can’t force her minor daughter to do the same.
If an adult woman, for whatever reason, wants to surgically reconstruct her external genitalia, that’s between her and her doctor. If she forces a female circumcision on her minor daughter, then it’s a crime. Even if it is done for religious purposes.
Nope. Either people are responsible for their actions or they’re not. Saying the government should get involved with how people raise their kids, even if those people are eschewing medical treatment for those kids, is saying people are not responsible and need to be led. Stupid behavior _should_ hurt. There would be less of it.
There are, and were, already laws on the books to deal with child neglect. What you and Maggie are advocating is pre-emptive law. That is a slippery slope to totalinarianism.
Granting more rights is not and cannot be a move toward totalitarianism. You seem to believe that the vaccines will be mandatory; they won’t. All the law says is that teens can seek healthcare on their own without being blocked by either state or parents.
Rights in this country aren’t granted. They are inalienable. What the law is doing is interposing government between the parent and his child. That is a socialist tenet.
I am not trying to get banned on your blog. But arguing for _more_ government intervention is _not_ arguing for more rights.
You won’t get banned on my blog just because we disagree. However, I am arguing for LESS government interference, not more. You want the government to be your snitch and tell you if your kid takes sexual precautions; I say government does not have that right.
How is this law _less_ government interference? It is interposing itself between the kids and the parents. I am arguing that the government has no place there. You are arguing for more government by advocating for this law.
NO. You are arguing that authority figures have the right to deny teenagers a sensible precaution based on an arbitrary legal status called “minority”. You are arguing that the government has the right to snitch on kids. I say it has NO such right.
I apologize again, because I have not been clear.
This law prohibits parents’ notification that their child was inoculated by some doctor, by the _government’s use of force_ against that doctor. The government is standing between me and the care of my child. If that doctor injected my child with botulinin toxin, should I, as a parent be notified? Yes? Ok, but not notified if it is a vaccine against some sexually transmitted disease? This is what you are advocating. And before you protest, this is a principle. It applies even if what was injected was just saline solution. Parent should be notified regardless. The government has no place here.
Regarding this law, and others like it, It is either _I_ am the parent of my kids or the _government_ is. You are arguing that the government is the parent of my kids. I believe we will have to disagree.
The government can barely do the things it is bound by constitution to do. This law was passed on fear-mongering. Most parents, as I have said before, will move heaven and earth to provide for their kids. This law was passed by demonizing the rare exceptions.
No. It is not the function of a doctor to “notify” anybody; it is his function to heal or give preventative care. The only reason a doctor would “notify” anyone of that is if he were compelled by law to do so. Lack of notification is the norm, therefore a law saying a doctor cannot be compelled to notify is the government refusing to enter the situation. It’s not “standing between” anyone. The problem is, you WANT the government to stand between your daughter and her freely-chosen health care, and it’s refusing to do so.
And I ask again, until she is age-of-majority, am _I_ the parent or is the govt the parent? You are assuming I don’t have my child’s best interest in mind. I have been arguing that the government has no place in this at all, whether compelling reporting or blocking reporting.
So, if the doctor giving the vaccine decides, of his own volition, without government compelling him to, to let me know that he gave my child that vaccine, you are ok with that?
No, I’m not; there’s this thing called “doctor-patient confidentiality”. It is not the job of ANYONE to spy on a minor’s activities for the parents; it is the parents’ job to foster the kind of understanding with their kids that spying won’t be necessary. Because I tell you this three times: If a parent seeks informants to spy on his kids, the relationship with those kids is already irreparably damaged.
Mignon 510,
So, if I’m reading you correctly regarding my teenage pregnancy and eclampsia example, you are either;
a. describing the continuation of the pregnancy as child abuse and therefore subject to state sanction or,
b. describing the pregnancy as “stupid behavior” which should hurt so that there be less of it.
You are aware that eclampsia is fatal? Would your calculus change if she had been raped?
You aren’t reading me correctly.
I am not sure how you extrapolated pregnancy as “child abuse” from any argument I have posted so far. I haven’t posted much, so maybe you can point to what I have said that made you think that?
Rape isn’t germane to this subject, I don’t think. Nor is eclampsia. This is about the government proscribing notification of parents about actions taken upon their kids. Would you be ok if the government injected HIV-laden blood into your kids without notifying you? No? Then why would you be ok with the government injecting your kids with _anything_ without notifying you?
You offered me two choices in your response to my various scenarios of adults acting stupidly on their own behalf versus adults acting stupidly on behalf of their children.
1. Saying the government should get involved with how people raise their kids, even if those people are eschewing medical treatment for those kids, is saying people are not responsible and need to be led. Stupid behavior _should_ hurt. There would be less of it.
2. There are, and were, already laws on the books to deal with child neglect.
So, it appears to me that you’ve proposed a binary solution set in regard to my example below:
I don’t speak for Maggie (or write for her either) but I think that her point is that parental rights do not include making decisions for their children that are medically deleterious. For instance, an adult woman can decide to risk eclampsia rather than abort a fetus (for religious reasons) or risk having a premature baby. She can’t force her minor daughter to do the same.
Either, per case #1, this is an instance of stupidity that should hurt so that there be less of it…
or, per case #2, this is an instance of child neglect that is therefore open to action by the state.
The point I was making is that there is a legitimate function of the state regarding the rights of children when parents act against the child’s interest. Children do have rights, they are just held in abeyance until their majority. This doesn’t say that parents have carte blanche in their treatment of their children; they must act in the child’s best interest to the extent possible toward the end of creating a full individual rights exercising adult.
You’ve already admitted that child neglect is outside of rightful parental behavior. I’m interested in where you draw the line between rightful parental behavior and rightful government action to protect the child. That’s what my examples were trying to delineate by outlining a rough continuum from death by starving to death by lack of medical intervention to (merely) serious bodily harm inflicted by the parent. And in which direction your line points.
I really don’t wish to get involved in a big fight here, but could I respectfully say that it appears to me that you are letting your emotions get in the way, because it looks to me like you are missing an important part of Maggie’s and your own arguments.
You use the example of the Government injecting kids with HIV to illustrate the error of Government injecting kids with anything without notifying the parents. But Maggie is NOT advocating any kind of Government injection here.
She is simply proposing that teenagers should be able, OF THEIR OWN VOLITION, to get medical treatments they feel are essential. There is no government involvement here of any kind. I’m sure Maggie’s preference would probably be for private doctors, but even if the injections are administered by a Government programme, it would still, in this case, work the same way as a private transaction, since there is no force involved.
What you are proposing is that the Government step in and REQUIRE medical providers to notify the parents and then ENFORCE the parents’ wishes, even when they conflict with those of the patient’s. In other words, you are insisting that the Government enforce the parents’ rules on their behalf.
While this is a legitimate position to take, and a great many people would agree with you, you CANNOT say that she is asking Government to impose itself between parents and children. Rather, what she is asking is that the Government stay out of the matter. YOU are the one asking that the Government take sides in the matter.
Precisely! By refusing to allow teens to have the vaccine, the government is not remaining neutral but is in fact interfering on behalf of the parents. This law is a limitation of the government’s power to intervene in an individual’s life. The fact that said individual is a minor seems to confuse some people due to the widespread propaganda of the last few decades that an adolescent is a “child”, but that notion is not only absurd, it is contradicted by the law itself. We don’t allow “children” to drive, consent to sex or do several other things teenagers are legally entitled to do at various ages. The one logical flaw I can see in the California law is that it weirdly sets the age of allowing self-determination for sexual precautions to a very different age than that of sexual consent, but that is a flaw in the consent law for setting the bar much too high and thereby creating criminals out of people engaging in natural and wholly predictable behavior.
No, you are not reading my argument correctly either. The government is _preventing_ parental notification. I am arguing that the government has no place here; I don’t want the government involved at all. Either I am the parent of my children or the government is.
Until that child has left my care, he is my responsibility. I can be sued by any Tom, Dick or Harry for the actions of my child until he has left my care. So, I am responsible in that area. But the government prevents my notification of my child being injected with x [x = anything]? Nope, I disagree.
Who said anything about the government injecting your child with anything?
“Stupid behavior should hurt.”
Generally, I’m in agreement with this. However I usually add the caveat that stupid behavior should hurt the one indulging in it. Not innocent third parties.
What you are saying is that the person indulging in stupid behavior – the parent – should be “hurt” by the bad things that happen to their children – the ones they are “eschewing medical treatment” on behalf of…
I think that it is bad policy to allow children to be fatally hurt in order to teach their parents a lesson. Especially when those parents are more likely to pass it off as “God’s Will” rather than learn from the experience.
To characterize my disagreement with you as allowing children to be fatally hurt to teach their parents a lesson is faulty, at best. You aren’t reading my argument correctly, which means I have not been clear enough.
Stupid behavior _does_ sometimes hurt innocent third parties. That is why there were laws in place to indemnify.
However, if you try to put laws in place to _prevent_ bad things from happening, and you get totalinarianism every time. And it doesn’t make it more noble to say, “It’s to save the children.” You only have to read history to see that.
Lastly, why don’t you ask yourself, why does there have to be a law for this now? If it was such a good idea, how come some semblance of that law didn’t get proposed when the polio vaccine came out?
Because it wasn’t necessary; nobody denied their kids the polio vaccine to discourage them from having sex.
But discouraging sex between kids isn’t what _this_ law is about. The law is directly circumventing the parents, _assuming_ they are bad actors, and allegedly to prevent bad actions by them. That law is painting _all_ parents, even good parents, with the bad parent paint-brush.
The bad parents are a small percentage of all parents; that is why the bad parents make the evening news. This law is just another slip down the slope of regulating morality. We all know where that goes…
It’s not circumventing anything; it simply says that medical professionals do not have the right to snitch on kids when they take measures to prevent sexually transmitted disease. I’m sure most kids will still rely on their parents’ judgment, but this way parents can’t stop their kids from being sensible.
I agree that save the children arguments are usually a precursor to government over reach.
Most parents, as you point out, will generally do the right thing by their offspring – the polio vaccine being a clear example of that.
But when it comes to sexual behavior, some parents have as much trouble with the idea that their children are sexually active as some children have with the idea that their parents had to have had sex at least once in their lives. And so rational, child-interested behavior comes a distant second to issues of denial or morality.
Children have rights, held in abeyance until majority. But the reality of the matter is that as they approach that majority, the effective exercise of those rights should become more and more unconstrained by parental involvement toward the end that when their majority is attained, they are actually capable of exercising that autonomy. So it is right that they should have a say in medical treatments that have long term implications for their health. To say otherwise is to grant the parent an inalienable right to their children rather than one conditioned on the best interest of the child as a future autonomous and rights-exercising entity itself.
And it is also right that the parent constrain the child from fatal or irreversible missteps. As their autonomy approaches, this constraint should lessen. What I see Maggie arguing is that these vaccinations provide a clear health benefit for the protection of the child. And for parents to exercise constraint against them is against the interest of the child.
No, what is ultimately being argued is whether _I_ am the parent of _my_ kids or the government is.
I, as the parent, am responsible for my kids. Don’t believe me? Nowadays, I can be sued if their actions cause harm to another; there are plenty of news articles showing that. But the government, by passing this law, can prohibit _my_ notification when some doctor injects x [x=anything] into my kids? That is wrong. And if you don’t understand why that is wrong, I am done arguing with you on this subject.
In regard to the idea that removing government restraint from the rightful actions of individuals will lead to totalitarian regimes, I can do no better than quote Justice John Marshall Harlan II as I did in a comment to yesterday’s column.
“the full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This ‘liberty’ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints.“
Again, you misread my comments. Rights are not granted by government. They are inalienable. Government restraint of _rightful_ actions by citizens is totalinarianism.
That’s why Justice Harlan wrote his dissent the way he did. He’s not arguing that government grants rights. He’s arguing that a “rational continuum of rights” exists and that constraining liberty to “a series of isolated points” is a violation of those preexisting rights by government.
Rights are not inalienable, that was a pretty concept dreampt up by tratiors justifying their treason because they got pissy that the empire expected them to help pay for the fucking war that was just fought on their behalf, in their back yard. Ironically the tea companies having a better grasp of politica then the crown and the british governemnt were going to eat the cost themselves in order to keep busines going.
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” I suppose
“Rights” are a product of culture, as is government. The reason you have, today, the right not to be assulted is because the governemtn is standing by waiting to bludgeon people over the head. 10,000 years ago you would have had no such right.
A few things,
1. A study out of Africa also found female circumcision reduced the likelihood of HIV infection
2. Female circumcision, even the most ‘harmless'(and I hate to use that word but I cant think of anything more on point) version where a prick of a pin draws a small amount of blood is illegal in the US on the grounds that it is abusive and a violation of the infants/child’s human rights
3. Something like 12% of all women get breast cancer. According to most studied only 30something million people worldwide have HIV/Aids. In a world of 7 billion that is less than one half of one percent, drop men from consideration and you wind up with les than one quarter of one percent <0.25% vs. 12%
The reason I bring up breast cancer is that no one who wanted to keep their job would ever dare suggest double mastectomies for female infants even though they are nearly 50 times as likely to get cancer
4. The size of the penis fully developed is not readily evident based on the size of the penis at birth. That being the case how can you make an accurate judgment on how much to snip? Keep in mind the difference between a medical and a traditional Jewish religious circumcision is profound, a lot less is cut off by a mohel than a doctor
5. Adults who get circumcised, more often then not, do it for medical and not cosmetic reasons. As such they make what most would consider a biased self selective sample for such surveys. I've yet to see a comprehensive study (or any for that matter) based solely on the observation of and the remarks of men who as adults has the procedure done only for cosmetic reasons
6. As an elective surgical procedure with no immediate or even short term benefits I think it should be a matter of consent. We don’t perform infant appendectomies or tonsillectomies as a form of preventative medicine – why is male circumcision viewed in any differently?
7. Complications are more common then people think. Too much or too little skin is cut of and the penis will bow, or the parts of the foreskin can reattach thru clotting and you wind up with a skin bridge.
8. Money. There is a lot of money in infant foreskins, its kept alive and the hormones and chemicals produced are used to make all sorts of beauty products, its used to grow new skin for skin grafts – and none of the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit go to the family or the individual from which it came
Finally
9. Arguments dismissive of the procedure – I'll only do the couple I saw here and not all of the ones I have seen
a) I don’t remember the pain – irrelevant, the hormonal changes are evident days afterwards, given that hormones are one of the many tools used to program our brains the fact that you cannot remember the incident does not mean that it had no effect on you. Also if not remembering were grounds for dismissing an incident we wouldn’t prosecute people who use drugs to rape
b) Its just a bit of skin – OK then, use a potato peeler on the skin of one of your fingers and get back to us on whether or not it hurt. Yes, the foreskin is designed to separate form the penis, but not for several years, and not at the end of a knife scraping it off of the penis which it is fused to.
The term “female circumcision” is asinine. The clitoris is analogous to the penis, not the foreskin. The closest female equivalent to the foreskin is the clitoral hood, and even that’s not a true analog because removing it would have basically the opposite effect of what foreskin cultists claim circumcision does. If, however, trimming the clitoral hood in infancy had health benefits and somehow made women more attractive to men without affecting sexual pleasure in any way, you can bet I’d have my daughter’s hood trimmed.
Comparisons between the foreskin and the tits are even more asinine for reasons which should be obvious to anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of mammalian biology, or any baby who’s ever nursed.
I wasn’t comparing them as equally viable body parts I was comparing them in relation as disease vectors, 12% of women will get breast cancer, less than 0.25% will get HIV worldwide.
A better case could be made for making the Vatican shut the hell up about condoms then endorsing circumcision.
For all the long term health benefits projected after sexual activity begins you must weigh all the immediate and short term heath risks. And if women continue to clamor for cut men guys would be willing to do it as teenagers and young adults if they thought it would get them some. And as physically mature(ing) people they would be better able to understand the risks inherent in any medical procure, better able to deal with physical pain, and as the occupant of their body they should be the ones to make such a decision providing it is not a medical necessity which crops up when their around 10 or so
Maggie, I have great respect for your wisdom. But my ???? detector exploded when I read your comment about trimming your daughters clitoral hood. The current zeitgeist is so soaked in “female empowerment” and
accept me for who I am” ie fat, lazy etc. It would probably be deemed a Federal Crime to even discuss such a procedure these days.
You are one serious outlier.
Most people these days are about 1000 times more accepting of cutting off little boy parts that little girl parts and that strikes me as very wrong. At least you are consistent.
That is a complement, I guess.
There’s no valid reason for trimming the clitoral hood, but if there were and it didn’t have any bad side effects, I’d be all for it.
All too often, “accept me for who I am” is just a cover for being a loser. In a civil society we all need to tolerate each other’s differences, but in a free society we all need to be responsible for the consequences of our actions. In other words, if a woman wants to be fat, lazy and obnoxious and make no effort to look nice or develop a pleasant personality, that’s her right to make those choices. But I have the right to laugh at her when she starts whining that she has no friends and men don’t like her. Only a fool wastes her breath complaining about the world not being fair; I could have spent the rest of my life in a pity-party because I was a flat-chested, broke, abandoned, sterile rape victim with serious health problems, but I didn’t. And that’s why I don’t have much patience for intelligent, usually-successful grown men in the wealthiest country in the world whining that a piece of skin with no important function was removed from their pee-pees when they were too young to know the difference.
A reminder: the only relevance that circs have with HIV transmission is female to male. Guys have to get it first from a woman to ever give it to another. In any true first world environment, this hardly ever happens whether circed or not. You could circumcise every guy in Iceland and Sweden and nothing would change about HIV. Except the local Islamicists would be pleased. Something to think about here.
There may also be a relevance for the insertive partner in anal sex (which of course could mean male to male), although the evidence of greater risk for uncircumcised men in such encounters is less clear than in the case of vaginal sex.
I have to say that I still think it should be a matter of individual choice. If I had a son, I would make sure he was aware of the evidence so that he could make an informed decision, but I don’t think it would be right of me to make that decision for him.
My take on it is that we make a lot of decisions for infants, many of which are irreversible. If it’s OK to deny babies the risk of extended nursing (Americans nearly always quit after six months or less) or to deny them the benefits of nursing entirely, why isn’t it OK to make this simple health decision for them? That’s my issue with the foreskin fanatics; they pretend that foreskin removal has major deleterious effects, when the evidence is that its only effects are positive, just as the effects of extended nursing are wholly positive.
I don’t think that’s really a logical comparison, Maggie. Parents have to make the decision about breastfeeding because a child of breastfeeding age isn’t capable of making that decision him/herself. If circumcision could only be carried out in childhood, you might have a point, but that’s not the case. Just because there are some decisions that parents can’t avoid making for their children doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t allow the child to make those decisions that they can make, for themselves, when they’re old enough to make a rational choice.
I agree that people shouldn’t get worked up about it though. On either side.
Adult circumcision is much more expensive and prone to complications than infant circumcision, though, as the European report points out.
That’s a fair point, but I suspect it’s still easier than restoring a foreskin once it’s gone.
Without taking a stance on either side of the issue, I’m simply going to have to disagree that leaving the choice with the child is a viable one. First, do you trust the average 14 year old to correctly evaluate the various health claims?
More importantly however, the surgery itself is much more of an issue for adults. I know this because I’ve looked into it for myself. It means several days off work and 6-8 weeks of no sexual activity. And since I don’t have any pressing medical need to get it done, it counts as a cosmetic procedure and therefore isn’t covered by insurance. So we’re looking at a $700 surgeon’s fee plus a few thousand for the operating room/facilities/etc.
In practice, deciding not to circumcise is almost as permanent as deciding to circumcise. For added fun, google “foreskin restoration”.
The decision doesn’t have to be made at 14! As for the cost of the adult procedures, that’s an argument for a health care system that recognises the value of prevention, not an argument for imposing the procedure on children who may grow up to wish they hadn’t had it done.
14 was just a random number I picked – the point being that for maximum benefit, the procedure should be performed before sexual debut.
Regardless of insurance coverage, it’s still 10x more expensive to perform on an adult, which could be a pretty big burden on our healthcare system. Furthermore the increased risk of complications and increased downtime after the operation makes it hard to compare the two.
I accept that there’s greater cost and complications. But I still don’t think that justifies taking away someone’s right to make that decision for themselves. We’ll probably have to agree to disagree on this 🙂
How is it more complicated to preform it on an adult or a teenager then an infant?
Whouldnt the fact that an adult or a teenager is capable of speech indicate that such complications are mentioned as soon as they are notticed?
By that logic simmilar complications in inant circumcisions would pass unnoticed as the infant is not only incapable of verbalising the problem, but also lack the muscle control to notice any problem to begin with
This sentence:
“Wrongheaded opposition to that one is so widespread the California legislature felt it necessary to enact a law allowing teenagers to get the vaccine (and any future vaccines for STDs, including HIV) without the knowledge of parents who would rather their daughters die than have sex;”
…has completely changed my life. I am quoting it liberally everywheres.
Thank you, sugar; after the stress of this comment column, I needed that. 🙂
Wow, Maggie. You stirred up a hornets nest on this one. 🙂
Personally, I wish that I had not been circumcised. My reason for feeling this way is that I think they cut too much skin off of me. I am one of those guys that has a large difference in penis size between flaccid and erect. When erect, the skin I have left is stretched to the point of being painful and sometimes the skin tears a bit and I bleed. If I had not been circumcised, The skin would have been just about right and my erect penis would have looked just like anybody else’s penis that had been circumcised.
My son is not circumcised for precisely this reason.
Perhaps a sort of partial circumcision where they didn’t remove so much skin would have been the best of both worlds. The doctors need to realise that not everyone’s penis is the same. Maybe the doctors should ask a few questions of the father before running all male infants through the same process.
I dont think asking the dad how long his dick gets is the answer. According to a particularly disturbing (to me atleast) drunken conversation on sex between my mother and her siblings I overheard my dad is about 5 inches. I’m a little over 9 and have the same problem as you in regards to the occasional tear.
Y’all can’t go talking about foreskin…I swear it riles dudes up worse than ANYTHING else.
Religion, politics…nothing compares to the foreskin. Proof positive all we really care about is how good if feels to cum.
Ladies talking about our penises gets us very upset. Unless of course the talk is all complimentary…and even then we feel kinda secondary to our own cocks.
We’re delicate flowers, Maggie. And when one speaks of preening…it makes us very nervous.
I meant pruning, not preening. Although preening makes some dudes nervous as well. Razors and shit near our favorite spaces and all.
I’ll keep that in mind in the future, Kaiju. 😉
How many circumcised men have actually consented to their circumcision?
How many healthy intact men would actually choose to get themselves circumcised?
Let’s wait until they’re all adults and then see what happens.
I was circumcised in infancy. I have sex and I enjoy it, and I’m damned good at masturbation. The whole argument seems to me to be blown out of proportion. There may well be good arguments for or against circumcision, but that it will prevent masturbation or that sex isn’t good without a foreskin are not serious arguments.
Well, at least this gives me an excuse to talk about My Balls. Early in the series the lesser devil Elyse casts a spell which causes the hero, Kotah, to become circumcised. She believes that this will make it harder for him to resist sexual temptation. Kotah states that two out of three men in Japan are circumcised.
Now, that’s a manga. Whoever wrote it could be all wrong about the effects of circumcision.
And since that isn’t all you wrote about this time around: The sooner we have an AIDS vaccine the better.
My cousin’s friend chose to get circumcised at age 15 to make personal hygiene easier, and he said circumcision made no difference at all in sensation.
I still think males should be able to make their own choice about whether to be circumcised; the fact that the vast majority of uncircumcised adult men choose not to get circumcised indicates that the pros of having a foreskin outweigh the cons.
The San Francisco attempted ballot measure to outlaw circumcision of males under 18 happened in San Francisco for a reason; gay male culture fetishizes uncircumcised penises.
3000 years of Jewish history demonstrates that circumcision doesn’t hinder the ability to reproduce, at the very least.
More good news, this time about Hepatitis C:
Hepatitis C vaccine: Oxford researchers’ trial ‘promising’
Circumcision was advocated during World War I as a preventative against syphilis — it didn’t work.
The evidence that it’s useful against HIV is contradictory; it’s “not proven”.
Circumcision was advocated as an anti-masturbatory procedure — it didn’t work, but the operation caught on, particularly in the US — after all, there is a fee involved.
And neonatal circumcision means the infant can’t give consent.
Circumcision may reduce the incidences of certain diseases and infections, but so will a good cleaning. I still do not see why the procedure is deemed necessary when good hygiene will as much good as mutilating the penis. Oh wait–there is no profit in teaching a boy to clean himself. How much are circumcisions these days? How many hundreds of dollars does it cost? Who really benefits?
Wow me again commenting on a nearly decade old post even after I decided I absolutely wouldn’t coz there’s no point.
It might just be my insider perspective, but what surprises me is that hardly anyone made the connection between gay opposition to infant circumcision & the AIDS crisis. Anal sex has a much higher risk of HIV infection than any other kind of sexual contact. The rectum is naturally receptive to a host of digestive bacteria & so it doesn’t actively purge viruses that get in there quite often. That’s why so many diseases can & do spread through fecal matter. The presence of literal shit is the reason gay men have to balance their food intake, enemas & sex so carefully. Add to that complications like anal bleeding that frequently occur from causes as minor as not enough lube, too much force, or simply getting stressed & clenching down too hard (no, it’s not because it’s “too big” though many guys would like to believe that; that hole isn’t made for entry in the first place). Comparatively, the risks for transmission of HIV are much lower for vaginal sex unless she’s circumcised & thus has more exposed flesh that doesn’t self-lubricate or is more at risk for tearing (circumcised women often report periods, sex, & childbirth being painful & also bleed much more, more often; there’s simply not enough flesh that needs to be there). The female genital orifices are also subject to monthly chemical cleaning so viruses can only survive in the periphery such as in genital warts, rashes, UTIs, etc. The rectum does not purge itself chemically even if harmful microorganisms are detected. I remember being dewormed once as a child with a fistful of turmeric powder up my ass, that area is sensitive as hell. In such conditions, uncut gay men are at lower risk for HIV infection as well as transmission because the foreskin reduces contact & is also regularly cleaned out of necessity.
These Intact Advocates aren’t against infantile circumcision because they’re anti-semites or because they’re highly concerned about consent. They don’t care whether women prefer cut or uncut, or the false possibility of heightened pleasure even.
It’s because there will eventually be enough uncut gay men who can have raw sex while being at less risk for HIV. Add to that a ban on religious exceptions, and there’s also rich uncut Jews who can be shagged without worrying about HIV as much. The comics don’t feature Islamic circumcision because the gays in California hardly ever get with gay Muslims. I don’t think they even thought about it. Fear-fuelled propaganda hardly ever does its research properly. It’s all about how many strange hot guys they can fuck on one night stands without condoms (we all know what a pain those are considered to be) & still avoid high risks of getting or passing on HIV. Cut off your children’s foreskins if you’re absolutely sure they’re straight & they won’t care as much.
Also, uncut dicks can be played with in many more ways. They make a variety of kinky oral stuff an option. Cue, the high male susceptibility to visual sexual stimuli. But that’s a minor motivation.