From: David N. Barnett 

On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 18:47:30 -0700, "Jeff Shultz"  wrote:

>Actually I was circumsized because my mom considered the foreskin to be a
>collector of dirt and difficult to clean. Plus probably a fair amount of the
>Christian heritage (feelings on that have changed rather radically over the
>last few years).

Oh, I'm not saying that anyone alive today was cut to prevent masturbation,
that's just the 19th century origin of circumcision for gentiles.  The
practice persists because of habit, and because the hospital makes an extra
couple of hundred bucks on the procedure, plus they sell the cut skins. 
Also, families have their sons cut "to look like Dad."  No man
wants to admit to himself that he's been mutillated, so the curse is passed
on to another generation.

The female genitalia present MUCH more of a hygene challenge than does a
foreskin.  There's a real double standard going on here.

Parents and health care professionals need to be re-educated on this
subject, because the foreskin is not a particularly difficult body part to
keep clean and healthy, and it's chockablock full of sensitive nerve
endings that are lost forever when it's amputated.  We're slowly winning
the battle, though, because routine infant male genital mutillation is down
from over 95% of male births in the USA in the
'60s and '70s to about 60% today.

--dnb

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5