Even in Africa, there are six countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they’ve been circumcised: Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Rwanda, the HIV rate is 3.5% among circumcised men, but only 2.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn’t happen. We now have people calling circumcision a “vaccine” or “invisible condom”, and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.

The one study into male-to-female transmission showed a 54% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised btw.

ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost lives, not save them.

I regret that my part about the government being unable to enforce people to take care of their kids overshadowed the thrust of my argument. I was hasty in that I really,really wanted to throw that Rothbard passage in there. I should have just stuck with the negative versus positive rights argument. Anyway, glad you liked the article other than that part.

As for “extra skin” – that goes to show you how socialized I am towards circumcision. I still view an uncircumcised penis as having something extra rather than a circumcised one lacking something.

My chief complaint is the use of “extra skin” to describe the foreskin. Nobody has – or ever had – extra skin. I was circumcised at birth but I want ALL of the normal natural penile slack nature painstakingly evolved for me over the past 65 million years.

And I’m doing something about it. Through non-surgical foreskin restoration I’m painlessly expanding the remaining skin so it can act like a foreskin. It now protects my glans and the adjacent mucosa from the drying and abrasive effects of air, bedding, and clothing, so those parts are more supple and pleasure-receptive. The new skin affords an exquisite frictionless rolling/gliding action during manipulation and intercourse which is pretty hard to describe – especically to cut men – but let’s just call it luxurious. My wife and I both love it. Oral sex is a whole new art form with the slack to play with, and the slinky shaft skin gives a sensation – as it bends 180 degrees rolling over at the end – that I just can’t describe with words – any more than I could explain “purple” to someone blind since birth.

While the sensations from intimacy are much improved, foreskin restoration will not regenerate the lost specialized pleasure-receptive nerve endings, and that is enough to be royally pissed off at my parents about, but restored foreskin FEELS REALLY GOOD, and that allows me to sit at the Thanksgiving dining table without knifing anyone. If I could teleport back to the moment my genitals were attacked I would certainly gleefully seize that knife and plunge it through the butcher’s eye, to the back of his brain. A guy can dream.

You can see photographic comparisons at http://www.circumstitions.com/comparison.html (NSFW, obviously)

Not to sound gay, but does an erect uncircumcised penis look that much different from an erect circumcised one, or is the difference much more pronounced when flacid. Just curious.

The uncut ones are longer. =)

Chuck: “The most important reason to leave the foreskin intact: sex is more enjoyable for men and women when the man is uncircumcised.” True, but the most important reason is that it’s HIS penis.

(I won’t buy the “babies are free agents” line. Free, but utterly helpless. If you neglect them and they suffer or die, that’s all your doing and none of theirs. Childhood, like pregnancy, is not a state but a process, a process of gradually handing over someone’s rights to them, at a rate that is more and more negotiable as they are more and more able to exercise them.)

no, that was v good

the spiritual/moral principles of the prophets in 3000 b.c. are NO different, in essence, than the principles advanced by god’s servants today

and they’ll remain that way forever

righteousness is always righteousness

jesus didnt overthrow god’s old testament law, he fulfilled it and simplified it, and trimmed off the bullshit the priestly classes had added w/o authorization, for their own purposes — but the masculine principles underlying each age dont change, they apply in concert with what human beings are able to grasp and manage as the planet’s physical and cultural environments develop, and as the species gets closer to god

god’s laws are simple and few, and he reserves judgment to himself

human’s laws are complex and endless, and humans appropriate judgment to themselves (and in real practice, the collective feminine eventually and ineluctably becomes judge)

the devil’s in the details — the more complex and relativistic the system, the more tyrannous, satanic, and biased towards the feminine

It is like a whole shop full of radios, all tuned to different stations and playing at full blast now…

This was one of the features of religion that created a civilization: it created one unified voice amongst a group of people. In other words, Cultural Hegemony.

There is a difference between cultures/religions that follow the “feminine principle” and the “masculine principle,” however.

Totalitarians salivate at turning a society into one that follows the feminine principle, because a feminine society is one that is ruled by “relative truth.” The truth can change, and be whatever feels right for the moment. This is great for tyranical forms of government, because they often contradict themselves and do whatever they feel is right, right now. Just like women.

A society that adheres to the masculine principle is not so easy to manipulate for ill purposes, because, um… it adheres to principles! Ones that never changes! In other words, a masculine society is one that acknowledges Absolute Truth as more important than Relative Truth. This is also the basis of Patriarchal Religion – there is an Absolute Truth: The Word of God becomes Absolute Truth. It never changes, even though the world about it does change.

This is also the basis of hierarchy that the US Founding Fathers followed when they designed America. They followed the ideology of John Locke (who founded his ideology upon the Bible itself), who combined both deductive and inductive reasoning, but placed them upon the ladder of importance in the proper order:

1: God’s Law
2: Natural Law
3: Civil Law

A civil law that goes against a natural law is a false principle, and a natural law that goes against God’s Law (Absolute Truth – even if we don’t know what that Truth is) is also a false principle.

This is a defining characteristic of a society based upon the masculine principle: 2 + 2 = 4. It will still be four in a year, it will be four in 100 years, and it will be four in 10,000 years. There are absolute principles which we can follow.

Hitler, Lenin, Marx, Comte, New Agers, Feminists, Totalitarians etc. all recommend a society based upon the feminine principle – based upon feeeeeeeeeeeeeyulllllllings. If it “feels better” that 2 + 2 = 5 today, then, that is the right answer today! The “ladder” goes something like this:

1 – Relative Truth
2 – Relative Truth
3 – Relative Truth

But, come back tomorrow, and maybe it’ll change!

This is the big danger of “Rule by Science” – because what they mean is rule by the Social Sciences. Sciences that are founded in quick sand, where principles and definitions are forever subject to change.

A dictator’s paradise!

Under the masculine principle, “Rule by Science” can also work, I believe – along the same lines as Craig Read’s idea of condensing the Bible.

A feature of the masculine principle is, well, that it has principles… it grounds itself in Absolute Truth. Once we know 2 + 2 = 4 (Natural Law), we understand that our civil laws must also follow this maxim, unless Absolute Truth (God’s Law, or unforseen Truth) shows up and trumps the Natural Law – basically, changing our understanding of the universe around us – think gravity, or discovering the world was round.

I believe mathematics could be used to found and anchor moral values, which is also “rule by science” – but hard science. For example, we could likely come up with a mathematic formula illustrating just how many single mothers a society could sustain before it parasitically began to drain the society into oblivion… and once that mathematical “point” has been created, it becomes pretty morally obvious that society must ensure, one way or another, that we stay on the survivability side of that point. Rule by science – but, science based in Absolute Truth – like Math, or the Laws of Physics – something that doesn’t matter how people “feel” about it, that takes precedence over feeling.

Lol!

Ramble, ramble, ramble… blah, blah, blah… yaddah, yaddah, yadday….

“hardly anyone listens to even what I have to say.”

I always listen to you.

” I’m not sure people are able to control their moral compass enough to survive without religion – which is why there has never been a civilization that did not have a form of religion.”

It is going to be very difficult to foist any religion on to people nowadays because the powers-that-be cannot control the information reaching the public.

However, there remains a glimmer of hope.

It might turn out that so many millions of men arrive at the same solution to their problems, that the force that they exert is sufficiently powerful to become religion-like.

Here is an interesting article, in relation to Christianity, that holds some of the same viewpoints as your own:

http://craigread.com/displayArticle.aspx?contentID=597&subgroupID=17

Basically, Mr. Read points out how there are certain basic facets of the Bible that are neccessary for our civilization, as well as the basis for Capitalism and private property arising from the Bible.

Tossing Christianity aside willy nilly, without thinking ahead of how to replace the mechanical function it provides to society, would be a disaster. It is only the cornerstone upon which Western Civilization has leaned upon for a few thousand of years… it just might be important in maintaining Western Civilization, which could explain why Cultural Marxists targeted it with as much gusto as they did men & the patriarchy.

Craig Read is not a Christian, and believes the Bible could be rewritten into a extremely shortened version of moral values that wouls still sustain a civilization.

I agree with him… but would people listen to such a system without the power/threat of religion behind it?

I mean, as far as I can see, where-ever I go, I am pretty much the most brilliant human specimen around, and yet hardly anyone listens to even what I have to say. Why should these moral values work without the psychological crutch of them being hidden in a religion? I’m not sure people are able to control their moral compass enough to survive without religion – which is why there has never been a civilization that did not have a form of religion.