Why pro-circumcision research is pseudoscience
This article was my response to a comment on Quora that attempted to justify circumcision by stating that it eliminates a hygienic burden and prevents the possibility that foreskin can become infected.
That’s my point. You need to do normal hygiene that requires negligible effort so you amputate the part? Just use some soap and water while you bathe! That’s been working even before indoor plumbing was regularly available for most people worldwide. If you are taking such extreme actions to avoid such a minor responsibility of natural human life, then you are being excessively lazy and it’s probably affecting other parts of your life.
Flossing my teeth requires more effort than maintaining my dick, and it’s probably more important too. A problem like you mention is entirely imagined by people who don’t understand the situation. I’m going to be real with you: my foreskin has been inflamed with probably what you would call an infection maybe two or three times in my life (currently 33yo) that I can remember. Why? Idk.
Once when I was out hitchhiking, masturbated, and went on an arduous hike the next day after I had been sleeping in the dirt, on the street, and other random places for some time. The solution? A little bit of soap and water with some careful cleaning (5 minutes tops), and the next day it was back to normal like it never even happened. It didn’t even hurt. This may sound strange to you, but it actually felt unusually good when rubbing against my pants, like satisfying an itch does.
Also, and please refrain from judging me personally, I bathe even less now and still masturbate regularly, and it’s never an issue. Why those things happen is often because other factors are involved. All I have to do to stay mostly clean so that there isn’t any smegma or odor (which isn’t unpleasant or extreme because even if it’s there it’s contained under the foreskin) is wipe myself with a clean paper towel after I am done. It’s seriously not a big deal. I would probably do the same thing even if I didn’t have foreskin.
If you are engaging in sexual intercourse of any kind, you should bathe first no matter what kind of genitalia you have, as well as after because of the kind of thing that is happening biologically with bodily fluids from other immune systems than your own. That’s one of the reasons why ritual bathing before a marriage was a cultural tradition in most places. Now that bathing is a household commodity in most nations, that’s just expected and it’s no longer a formal community ritual that includes all the good stuff that was hard to come by for most people, like special fragranced soap or a big kettle that can heat bath water.
If people are more likely to get stds, like some research claims, it still isn’t a good reason because there is internal medicine that can cure the related stds and measures that can reliably prevent them. If nothing else, advocating abstinence is a better choice than circumcising people without their cognizant consent. In regard to cognizant consent, infant circumcision is unjust for the same line of reasoning that explains why someone can be released from a contractual agreement if they signed it while drunk or otherwise impaired by drugs, especially if the other party knew that and took advantage of the situation.
Btw, the std claim is pseudoscience because the population sample of their research (any study that claims that) isn’t sufficient to make a general claim about humanity, especially not without a full examination of their daily behaviors, choice of partners, and other factors that could affect that statistic, including cultural, economic, and demographic ones. Who people have sex with and why is a very complicated subject.
I’m not saying circumcision itself is what is shameful or wrong, but the way it is most often done and the misconceptions about it are shameful. That physical violence, even if you minimize it, which to me is hard to do because it seems nightmarishly horrible and I’m sure I would feel that way if I was still a newborn infant, does more harm to the psyche of an individual than what it claims to prevent from happening to the body. That’s why I’m saying pro-circumcision research is unscientific; it arrives at an unsubstantiated and illogical conclusion.
Additional comment because I sensed some uneasiness about the topic of smegma: What? The presence of smegma? So what? Your nose has boogers too. Are you ashamed that sometimes after you take a big, nasty shit that doesn’t pinch properly, you probably still have some shit residue around your asshole somewhere, even after going through way more toilet paper than usual? Yeah, it’s gross and you don’t want people to notice so you probably clean yourself instinctually, but that’s no reason to put a plastic hose up your ass whenever you go number two so your poop never touches your sphincter, which is considerably less extreme than removing a body part.