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Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Well, yeah. I mean, take a step back and forget about religious justifications and appeals to some nebulous 'tradition' for a moment. If I ran around and took a scalpel to the genitals of baby boys without a valid medical reason, I'd hopefully swiftly find myself locked up for a long, long time.
It’s genital mutilation. It’s been done for religious reasons, cultural reasons, social reasons, for slavery reasons, and more.
But cutting up babies’ genitals for any reason except medical intervention for relevant pathologies is genital mutilation.
I've had it done to me. It's only helped me.
Having not experienced otherwise, how would you know?
How could you know either way?
I don't know how it feels to never have my hair cut. It's only cultural to get one's hair cut regularly; but most people do as they feel it helps them look and feel better.
Sounds like it was medically necessary then which they're saying is ok.
And thus you have a deep psychological need to defend the barbaric practice.
Well, of course, that's crazy behaviour.
But if you did it in a religious ritualistic ceremony and sucked the blood off the tip of the babies dicks afterwards, well that wouldn't be weird now, would it.
You could even call it "Metzitzah B'peh" and it would happen so regularly and kids would get herpetic infections from the mohel's so often ([sometimes even dying]) (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-dies-herpes-virus-ritual-circumcision-nyc-orthodox/story?id=15888618) that the New York Health department would have to issue warnings about it, and it would still not be weird, even when the families of the babies affected would refuse to name the mohel's to allow the health dept to investigate and have them banned from performing the practice on future babies.
But there is a medical reason! It's to make masturbation bothersome. It would really upset the humors you know.
Didn't work on me.
Have you had your humors tested by your barber?
This is like telling people who get wisdom teeth extractions have been mutilated.
Naw. We're okay.
I don't think that's a valid comparison. For people who need wisdom teeth extractions, leaving them in can end up painful and for some even leave them with unable to fully close their mouths to chew.
Nothing bad is going to happen if you leave a babies penis alone.
I had braces growing up and my wisdoms were growing in at an angle. They would have crowded my teeth and cause pain if I didn't remove them.
So you want to rip them out of babies? Gotcha
You can't
Of course you can, it's just stupid. It was a retorical question.
Here's what baby teeth look like, the wisdom teeth are all alone on the outskirts:
Does removal actually prevent teen growing during the time when the rest of your adult teeth grow? I really wasn't sure that they were special in this fashion
If you want to go the teeth route, removing the molars or canines is a better comparison. There are medical reasons why this might be necessary, but to rip out a baby's teeth that have yet to grow in with a pair of pliers for ritualistic reasons is not the same thing at all.
Circumcision destroys nerve endings and can cause permanent scarring, potentially dramatically reducing the ability to feel sensations. The head of the penis is also a mucus membrane and the foreskin is meant to both keep it moist and protect it from damage. Have you ever had dry eyes or the inside of your nose dry out? Imagine cutting off the outside of your nostrils or part of your eyelids so that it was like that all the time.
If somebody wants to have it done, that's fine. That's their choice to make, just like getting a tattoo or piercings is. But forcing it on somebody without it being strictly necessary for medical reasons is cruel. It can be very traumatic. If it wasn't, "foreskin restoration" - the act of using clamps, pulleys, and rubber bands to stretch the skin of the penis out into a fake foreskin - wouldn't be a thing.
I still have an impacted wisdom tooth, and it's okay. Everybody should keep theirs.