im uncut my parnets thought it was wronge and im happy they didnt cut me people act like im a freak of nature becasue of it, thats right i told people ahahha i dont care i love my penis I LOVE MY PENIS ahah im drunk
Nice way to put it. I've actually seen little babies who LOOK as if their penis was put through a meat grinder. (Nothnig as bad as those pictures, but looked like raw hamburger.) I always make a BIG DEAL out of it, "Oh you poor little man. That must REALLY hurt. Poor baby." Not much the parents can do AFTER they've already disfigured their boy, but maybe it will make them think about it with the next man child they give birth to.
you got a point and it's a fine line.. but sometimes being just very blunt does have the impact you're looking for. Maybe at first they'll think you're rude or crazy or whatever, but it'll stick with'm.. make'm think. Did you see Kingdom of Heaven by any chance? There are two occasions (if I remember correctly) where someone gets a nice, loving speech and after which he gets hit in the face by that same person.. 'so you remember this moment'.
If I do decide to circumcise my future sons, if ANYONE makes a comment like, "Oh, that must hurt" then I would probably give him/her a swift punch to the face. You don't criticise other people's parenting decisions, ESPECIALLY if you're already a mother when you should know better. I'm sorry but that's one thing I don't tolerate. I mean, I may disagree with things such as homeschooling but I would never, ever go up to a kid and say, "Awww poor little kid. Too bad your parents won't let you get a decent education". The only exceptions for that should be abuse and if a mother is doing drugs/ drinking while pregnant (which is a form of abuse IMO). I have to deal with that kind of nitpicking and attitude in high school enough, so I would really hope people grow out of it by the time they become parents.
Well, when I am doing a Consult, and the baby is SCREAMING because his penis is infected and not healing properly, and in hot swollen pain, and the mother SHOWS me the damage, what am I supposed to say? I give SYMPATHY to the baby for his pain, explain how it is effecting his feeding problems, and then do a SWIFT referal to the Pediatrician or Family Doctor so the baby can be looked at and treated. At least 3 studies have proven that circs can effect the ability to breastfeed and even properly bottlefed in the early weeks. When a baby is screaming and not latching, and the penis looks like it was put through a meat grinder, it is PROBABALY part of the problem. I talk to babies. If a child has an infected Cord, I say the same thing. That isn't anyone's fault, and no one "feels guilty" about an infected cord. A parent would ONLY feel "guilty" or challeneged, if they doubted their decision to circ in the first place. If a baby is in pain, I am going to give that baby empathy. It DOES hurt! So when and if you become a parent, you won't allow people you have hired to help you sympathise with your baby when he or she is in PAIN? Sheesh, hon, when you HIRE a Lactation Consultant (or a Doula or a Private Duty Nurse, or see a Pediatrician or anyone else to help you out) you are hirng their expertise and the fact that they may know more about this particular issue than you do at the moment. If you were to "punch them in the face" you'd be hit with an assault charge. I've never had a client complain about SYMPATHY comments about a nasty looking circ. Unknowlegable "parenting decisions" are the reason for a good number of calls to Lactation Consultants in the first place. "Poor parenting decisions" account for at least 30% of visits to the Pediatrician, (according to a freind of mine who is a Ped) If you have an inkling of what you are doing as a parent, you call someone to help when you run into trouble. Those people are there to help you. Attacking them isn't going to get you far. If you are not in need of help, and so sure of what you are doing, then not only would you not have to call in experts at any time (including pediatricians, I would guess) but you would have NO PROBLEMS at all caring for your children, thus no need for any second opinons about what to do, because you would have NO problems at all to deal with. You bring a baby to your Ped, with a penis looking like the ones in that picture, the FIRST THING that Ped is going to say is "You poor baby, that must hurt!" It is only taken "personally" by parents who had doubts about the safety of the procedure in the first place. My doctors have given sympathy to my children when they were sick, I didn't get offended, why? Because I knew I had done nothing wrong. When my Ped basically yelled at me, for giving Sunshine (my frist baby) cereal at 5 weeks, I didn't "punch her in the face" I thought, "Hmm, maybe she knows something I don't." And after doing some additional research I realized she was right. I ASKED a professional for help. I don't punch people whom I ask to help me. If I disagree, and sometimes I do, I do it in a better manner. But cutting up a perfectly good organ, with NO medical reason behind it, is OK? My Ped and I disagree about a few of the vaccinations I have refused to give my younger children. Do I PUNCH her? No, we talk about it. I am sure, if Lennon or Sage gets the Chicken Pox or Pertussis, my Ped will give my children SYMPATHY and EMPATHY for their illness. But I won't HIT the doctor for saying so, nor will I feel personally attacked by her sympathy. I knew my decision was right, so I will take her genuine expression of sympathy (even if it probably does contain a little "I told you so." I'm a big girl, I can handle it) about my child's health in stride. Of course I also have the experience of second time clients NOT circing their second boy. (and most of my client call me if they need help with a subsequent child) Nothing like positive action to prove a point.
Circumcision study halted due to trauma [size=-2]A newborn winces in pain after a circumcision [/size]In this story: Study measured heart rate, crying pattern Topical woefully inadequate December 23, 1997 Web posted at: 11:46 p.m. EST (0446 GMT) ATLANTA (CNN) -- A new study found circumcision so traumatic that doctors ended the study early rather than subject any more babies to the operation without anesthesia. The researchers discovered that for those circumcised without anesthesia there was not only severe pain, but also an increased risk of choking and difficulty breathing. The necessity of circumcision is the subject of increasing debate , but the traditional reasons for the operations have always been prevention. Dr. Arthur Gumer of Northside Hospital in Atlanta says circumcision has been thought to provide "protection against infectious diseases later in life which would include either sexually transmitted diseases or urinary tract infections." Up to 96 percent of the babies in the United States and Canada receive no anesthesia when they are circumcised, according to a report from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. One of the reasons anesthesia is not used, the study found, is the belief that infants feel little or no pain from the procedure. It has also been argued that injecting anesthesia can be as painful as circumcision itself, and that infants don't remember the procedure, anyway. Study measured heart rate, crying pattern [size=-2]Preparation for a circumcision [/size] But there are those who find that reasoning difficult to believe, and Gumer is one of them. "To say that the baby doesn't remember it is not an adequate excuse to me," he said. "Babies experience other painful procedures and we worry about that, and we do give them anesthetics for those procedures." But the Edmonton researchers, whose study was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, studied the heart rates and crying patterns of babies during different stages of circumcision. Some babies were given an anesthetic and others were not. Topicals woefully inadequate Rabbi Ariel Asa has performed hundreds of circumcisions. When families request it, he says he puts an anesthetic on the skin, in an effort to reduce some of the pain. But he admits it's not very effective. "Due to the fact that moyels (the people who do the procedure) do it very quickly and the pain that the baby experiences is minimal, I don't think that the overall benefits are gained," he says. But the researchers found that while topical anesthetics may help initially, they are woefully inadequate during foreskin separation and incision. They concluded that if circumcision must be performed, it should be preceded by an injected anesthetic. In fact, they found the results so compelling that they took the unusual step of stopping the study before it was scheduled to end rather than subjecting any more babies to circumcision without anesthesia. Medical Correspondent Dr. Steve Salvatore and Reuters contributed to this report.
[size=+2]Questions and Answers About Circumcision[/size] The questions I had asked at Harvard and afterward about the anatomy, anthropology, biology, history, mythology, neurology, religion, psychology, and psychopathology involved in mutilating human genitals had been followed by some often disturbing but –– with hindsight –– inevitable answers. Often I wished I had never asked these questions, nor listened to nor heard their tragic answers, but I had, and for me there was no turning back to the blindness and ignorance of my earlier years in my genitally mutilating culture of origin. By a couple of years after George’s talk in Sweden I was beginning to feel frustrated in my search for right questions about circumcision. I had reached a plateau in my understanding of the causes and effects of genital mutilations, and I felt blocked from making further progress, perhaps, I thought, because I was not sharing with my unknowingly genitally mutilating home town the bad news I had discovered. I felt I was unjustifiably withholding this important information from its cluelsss inhabitants, and I sensed that I might therefore also be unconsciously withholding further important information about genital mutilations from myself. If I was hesitant to tell them what I was discovering, maybe I was hesitant to let myself know more and grow as well. I thought that perhaps I could shake things loose for myself and find more questions by making my hard-won if so far incomplete knowledge public in Tallahassee with a circumcision protest in front of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. For this impudence my brother, Ben, and I were arrested and jailed for the afternoon on December 17, 1970. That's a long story in itself. Shortly afterward, it happened as I had hoped it might. One morning waking up, I began wondering, asking myself, “What would it feel like to have my foreskin back where it belongs?”, and then imagining the answer. Suddenly it hit me that my foreskin would be warm flesh enclosing and protecting my glans penis. The foreskin seemed to me at that moment to be very much like a male vagina. And then I realized that maybe one reason the doctor circumcised my infant penis in May of 1943, and maybe a reason circumcisers on this planet for millennia before and ever since have been chopping off boys’ healthy foreskins, is that they regarded the male foreskin, perhaps usually unconsciously, as being, of all things, feminine. The gender identity anxieties and homophobia underlying circumcising had suddenly become apparent to me. I felt I had asked another right question at last, and gotten a big chunk of the answer I had been seeking ever since my Harvard days.
VOrtex posted some good things. I've seen infants cry so hard, and be in so much pain they either lose their voice and do that "silent scream" thing, or they go into a trance, almost like an altered state, from the agony, while this procedure is being done and afterward. They just lie there, with all their muscles tense, and stare into space. I wouldn't do it to my boy! (And I didn't.)
I had a class last year with a woman who had a 2 yr old son. She announced to the class that it is a "scientific fact that newborns don't feel pain, that's why it's ok to circ w/o anesthesia." I had to bite my tongue-HARD. It probably would have turned into a raging battle in the middle of accounting class!
I remember visiting my newborn nephew the day after his birth. They were changing his diaper and they had to PEEL it from his poor little penis. The wound was raw and red and just horrible! He screamed his head off but they (my idiotic pastor brother and his dopey wife) didn't seem to connect two and two at all! Poor baby Isaac. As soon as Steve and I decided to keep our baby I informed him there was no way in HELL we were doing that to our baby. He agreed heartily. About that whole cultural thing, there are African cultures that circ women. They cut off their genitals and sew them up! Are we to turn our eyes from that HORROR just because it's their culture? Ahem, NO!
Because of this general lack of awareness and communication, the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center was founded. (JCRC is a section of the Circumcision Resource Center.) We represent Jews around the world who question circumcision (bris or brit milah). Our primary intended audience is non-traditional Jews, those Jews who generally evaluate an idea not solely based on its conformance with the Torah, but also in light of its agreement with reason and experience. They believe that Jewish practice must be consistent with what they think and feel. The arguments in favor of circumcision are familiar and readily available. Previous writing on Jewish circumcision has been totally supportive of the practice. It has been rare that writing on Jewish circumcision has mentioned, let alone elaborated on, arguments against the practice. Because the reasons to question circumcision are not well known, they are the focus here. We urge visitors to seriously consider these reasons with an open mind rather than just to react to our position. Readers are encouraged to seek other sources of information and then come to their own conclusions. For a more complete and detailed discussion of questioning Jewish circumcision, see the book Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective by Ronald Goldman, Ph.D. One purpose of the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center is to make known to the Jewish community that there is a growing number of Jews who either have not circumcised their son or would choose not to circumcise a future son. It is an opportunity for Jews who take this position to declare themselves and to be counted. A confidential list of Jews who contact the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center for this purpose is maintained. The response has been substantial. We have hundreds of names representing various countries on file. It is also important to inform the general public, media sources, and professionals of the existence of Jews who do not circumcise. Dispelling the myth outside of the Jewish community that all Jews circumcise will help to support and expand the American and international circumcision debate. Another purpose of the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center is to gather and disseminate information to interested Jews about the experiences of those who choose to keep their children intact and whole. This information will add to the growing understanding and acceptance of alternatives to circumcision in the Jewish community. We raise questions about Jewish circumcision with the understanding that these questions may cause feelings ranging from mild discomfort to extreme grief or anger in some individuals. We empathize with and respect these feelings. We also acknowledge the profound place that circumcision has in Jewish tradition and practice. However, we are compelled to break the silence that supports circumcision and raise these questions out of deep caring and compassion for Jews generally and Jewish male infants in particular. Our concerns are specific to circumcision and do not extend to other Jewish practices and beliefs. We see Jews inflicting extreme unrecognized pain with this practice, and we judge that the perpetuation of this pain is far greater than the pain that comes with confronting the issues we raise. Based on our contacts with hundreds of Jews who do not circumcise in the United States and in countries around the world, there is growing support for this view. We do not underestimate the difficulty in facing these questions and doubts, but the traumatic cries (or quiet shock) of the infants have been ignored far too long. Many Jews are beginning to listen and feel the intense pain of the children and the generally denied pain of the adults that they become. We trust that the enduring Jewish values of ethics and education will lead more Jews to the realization that circumcision does not serve the best interests of the child or the community of Jews.http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/
my baby will be 5 weeks old tomorrow. we didn't get him circ'd. we thought it was stupid to essentially perform cosmetic surgery on a tiny baby. now that he's here, i can't imagine having put him through that. he's perfect like he is. we have gotten a lot of crap about it from our families, though.
