For context, I’m circumcised and expecting a son and my wife and I are torn about the circ. We’re American so from a cultural standpoint circumcision is the default choice. Thing is, there’s no real benefit besides practicing a religion we don’t believe in, and I’m uncomfortable about cutting the tip of my son’s dick off.
On the other side, I’ve met a guy who was bullied in high school so bad for it he got a circ as an adult. Apparently crazy painful recovery. I’ve also talked to women who are generally grossed out by uncircumcised men. I don’t want to make him feel like something’s wrong with him his whole life because I was uncomfortable with the idea.
From a moral standpoint I’m against it, but from a social and cultural standpoint I feel like I should do it? It’s a crappy situation. If there’s any uncircumcised American men who want to talk about their penis I’m all ears.
Edit: I really appreciate everyone’s responses I never expected to hear from so many people. With the decision hinging on social and cultural norms it’s been really helpful to be able to take the temperature like this. I obviously need to talk to my wife, but given the overwhelming support of dick hats I don’t thing we’re going to do it. Thanks, lemmings!
Fuck. No.
I am grateful every single goddamn day that my mum took a stand against my dad’s very Catholic parents when it came to circumcising me. She wasn’t able to with my older brother, in part because of how wrecked she was from a 48hr+ labour. With him it was also “oh he’ll feel weird if he doesn’t match his father though” which, just, ooft 🙄
Did they know that outside of America, Catholics do not expect that, I thought it was a Jewish thing.
Well, in Australia they do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I feel like this would happen as well to folks that are circumcised often enough of like “there was something wrong with me so they had to cut a bit off” I dunno… I think that most of this idea of grossness comes from this weird idea that it’s inherently unclean. But it takes literally five seconds to pull back the foreskin and rinse it in the shower.
Also, not for nothing but if you have an intersex child with genital variation, doctor’s use the excuse of doing a circumcision to perform even worse forms of genital mutilation, like peenectomy and then vulvoplasty (the surgeries trans women get). They’ll hand your child back to you and go “oops, we mucked up, they’re actually a girl” without ever getting your consent. About 1.7% of babies are born with visible intersex traits by the way (the rate of intersex people is much higher but those conditions are usually found in puberty or later).
It’s kinda hard to bully someone for matching the vast majority. Circ rates would have to come way down before it would be submerging to be bullied over.
Of course, there are regional differences. I just looked and in the Midwest the circ rate is about 75% which is way lower than I’d have expected based on personal observation. (OTOH , I’m older and the majority of penises I’ve seen were 30-40 years ago) YMMV.
National rates have declined to just under 50% according to John Hopkins, which suggests many fewer circs are performed outside of the Midwest.
At any rate, I think bullying folks for being cut is a ways off yet.
Sorry, I quoted the whole paragraph but I was speaking to the “something’s wrong with him” part.