Circumcision certainly in ancient times and even largely today is a practical choice to assist with hygeine. That it became a differentiator of religious belief is quite bizarre. The implication here is that Christians are fundamantally more unhygenic than others. Why the heck would a god be in favor of such a condition?
This was in fact a major issue during the "Dark Ages." Christian Europe was an abysmally filthy place. Christians preached that immersion in water was unholy. Anyone who could swim was considered possessed, and people went their whole lives without taking a proper bath. The Romans had invented sewers but after the fall of the Empire the technology fell into disuse and sewage ran in the streets. At a time when Japanese cities paid government employees to clean the streets, a common practice in Europe was to run a herd of pigs through the city once a year to simply eat the garbage and redeposit it as pig drenn. The water was so impure that even in those unenlightened times no one dared to drink it. In fact it's been suggested that one reason for the intellectual backsliding during that era was that people were forced to drink beer and wine and were always buzzed. Although correlation does not prove causation, the Enlightenment coincided with the introduction of coffee from Ethiopia.
On a more sober note, one of the factors in the friction between Europe's Christian and Jewish communites was that the Jews seemed far less stricken by plagues. The reason of course was that the Jews regarded hygiene as a religious ritual. Apparently one could walk down the streets of the
shtetl without covering one's nose with a perfume-drenched handkerchief.
So are Christians circumcised as a general rule? I know Jews are.
I corroborate the other post that spoke to this. In my sixty-odd years of unavoidable observation, I have seen very few uncircumcised American men. Almost all of them are black, a community in which Islam is far more prevalent than in mine.
Today, the role of circumcision in health is even stronger than ever. It's been discovered that uncircumcised men are about 20 times as likely to contract HIV as circumcised men, other factors being equal. A massive circumcision campaign is now under way in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa where the AIDS epidemic is causing the greatest grief.
I have no idea whether the assertion is true that circumcision decreases a man's sensitivity to sexual pleasure. I can't think of any way to test the hypothesis. In any case, since we circumcised men seem to have no trouble enjoying sex and reaching climax, I don't see the risk of HIV as being worth whatever the slight differential in pleasure might be.
The male chauvinist pigs who coined the euphemism "female circumcision" for clitoridectomy are full of drenn. Removing a woman's clitoris takes away virtually all of the nerves that transmit sexual stimulation, if not literally all of them, and results in a loss of ability to have orgasm in virtually all victims, if not literally all of them. It is a tool of repression, turning a woman from an equal partner in sex into a sex object. It is analogous to cutting off the head of a man's penis so he will spend the rest of his life without sexual release. This surgery should be mandatory for all men who advocate and perform clitoridectomies. At the very least it would stop this blighted group of retards from reproducing.
The effect of true male circumcision on sexuality is, to date, so small as to be unmeasurable objectively, whereas it has a tremendous, measurable, beneficial effect on health. It could actually save Africa from being ravaged by AIDS.
