Are you circumcised? Have you had your son(s) circumcised? Do you believe that circumcision carries health benefits? Do you believe it should be done for religious reasons?

Or, do you think that the human male penis evolved with a foreskin for a reason, and that it should only be cut off if there's a medical reason to do so (such as phimosis, which is when the foreskin is too tight to be retracted)? less

Other: I'm a circumcised guy and I'm neither super excited to be circumcised nor bathing in a pool of my own tears over it. That said, I totally recognize that the historical "medical reasons" for circumcision are generally BS and I've heard about the potential downsides (none of which I've experienced personally, thankfully--at least not yet), so were I to have a male kid, I almost certainly wouldn't have it done to him.

I do find it interesting that people (myself partially included) sometimes get all up in arms about parents making this decision on behalf of their child when we seem to be pretty much okay with abrogating children's autonomy (or delegating it to parents, if you want to be nicer) in just about every other situation. That's true even where those parental decisions cause permanent effects just as noticeable (if not more so) as those associated with circumcision. From nutrition to education, parents make choices every day that leave lasting marks on their children without the children's consent; even when those decisions have on-balance negative effects, the social response rarely seems to be as strong as what I've seen in response to circumcision lately. Perhaps it's the increased visibility of direct physical alteration or the cringe factor involved in the idea of cutting off part of the penis...That's not to say that the reaction here is inappropriate--I'm totally open to the possibility that this really is a severe issue that we should be up in arms about--but it IS interesting that we (generally) don't react nearly as strongly to all of the other harmful abrogations of children's autonomy that happen under the name of parental rights. less