Circumcision

When I and other skeptics say that circumcision is an unnecessary barbaric ritual supporters of circumcision tell me, "it is good for the boy, it reduces his risks of getting STDs". That response is full of failure for many reasons.

The first obvious question is, "does it really reduce the risk of STD's?". I do not know. Let us assume it does for the sake for argument.

Boys are not supposed to be having sex without condoms (unless it is with someone they can entirely trust). So it is useless whether one is circumcised or not. As long as a condom is worn, it should be alright. We certainly do not want boys to be having unprotected sex with a circumcised penis. What we want is boys to be having protected sex, once it is protected it does not matter if the penis is circumcised or not.

Here is another problem with that argument. Modifying the body should only be done in the case that it is necessary. For example, pulling out dead teeth, or performing an operation to save a life. Body modification should be avoided if the body is healthy. A boy with a normal penis is just as healthy as a boy with a circumcised penis. So there is no point whatsoever to perform an unnecessary operation. Saying that "it reduces the risk of STDs" is a silly argument, because you might just as well cut off the entire penis and claim that "this eliminates STDs by one-hundred percent".

Defenders of circumcision forget that circumcision started out as a religious act and still do this date continues as a religious act. We can be positive that that ancients from 3000 years ago did not worry about STDs, they had something else on their mind. When one says "circumcision reduces STDs" he diverts the attention from the real reason why circumcision is practiced. The real reason why circumcision is preformed is because Judaism (and other religions) hates sex, so they want to harm the act of sex as must as possible. Since the penis is the symbol of sex, Judaism cuts around this penis to symbolize that people should abstain from sexual enjoyment. This is the real argument behind circumcision, it has nothing to do with "reducing the risk of STDs". If one drops the whole "reducing the risk of STDs" argument because it is disingenuous then one is left with an ancient barbaric ritual to limit boys in having sex for enjoyment. This is why skeptics see circumcision as a barbaric ritual.

Finally, remember how circumcision used to be preformed and how it is preformed today. The chasidim are in line with the more traditional manner of circumcision. The way they do it is that there is a moel (the one who circumcises the boy) who performs (as Christopher Hitchens calls it) the genital mutilation without any modern equipment. After performing this, he puts his mouth on the bloody penis to take in the blood into his mouth. Let me repeat that for you again in case you did not pay attention: the moel preforms oral sex on the baby by sucking on his bloody penis! This is what circumcision has made people do, it has made normal people do barbaric things only because they believed that this is what God wants them to do. Modern day circumcision from the non-chasidim is very different from how circumcision was preformed in the past. Not to mention how many boys died from this historically unsafe procedure.

That is all I have to say on circumcision. I do also want to point to an interesting phenomenon. I make the statement that, what "morality" really means to the masses is simply what is social consensus and tradition. Circumcision illustrates the point very well. Imagine we lived in a world were there was no such thing as circumcision whatsoever. Then someone came along and said, "my religion is for the Rabbis to cut penises of boys and suck on their bloody penis". The whole world would be shocked. The world would call it "barbarity". However, in our world not so many call it that, because it is social consensus not to think of circumcision as something worthy of respect.