#it's much more practical and hygienic to remove it thats all! it's not a CULTURAL DISTASTE for a NATURAL BODY PART!

[fauvester]

hc that cardassians do have tails but that they're docked or removed at birth (like circumcision tbh) and the practice sort of fell by the wayside post-Dominion. garashir adoptees with the eldest sans tail and the baby sporting a long luxurious 5th appendage

[goat-yells-at-everything]

Actually you're wrong about circumcision. Besides the fact that it does help men keep their penis cleaner (because, let's be honest, no man ever has good enough hygiene to sport the old turtle neck.) it is proven that men who have it gone have a reduced risk of things like HIV. Also, the foreskin is utterly useless. The ONLY thing it's good for is if you lose your eyelids in a freak accident they can use it to make you new eyelids. That's IT.

Circumcision does NOT prevent stds. [source]

Circumcision is actually MORE likely to cause infection due to the glans being exposed with no barrier. Circumcision is also EXTREMELY detrimental to infant boys. (warning graphic) The tissue is literally ripped off of and cut off at the base of an infants penis causing an open wound all around a very sensitive organ that is now contained inside a diaper with fecal matter and urine. When the skin is allowed to retract naturally, sometime between 3 years and puberty, it is easy to instruct boys to rinse it off during normal bathing. [source]

Claiming men cant clean themselves is extremely misinformed.

Now for some ACTUAL facts. C:

Circumcision has been practiced around the ancient world for millions of years and has rarely been done for good reasons.

It was a common practice in ALL cultures to circumcise captured slaves as a form of humiliation. This has been noted in almost every African tribe, most Native American tribes, and most indigenous Asian tribes.

On rare occasions it was done to emulate a rare condition where a ruler was born without his own foreskin, but, again, this was VERY rare.

Later in history some African tribes began to use it as a rite of passage for boys AND GIRLS. This practice is still done on both boys and girls and is often the cause of DEATH in young children either from infection or blood loss due to inadequate health services.

It wasn’t until the rise of Judaism when Circumcision was even associated with sex. Jewish leaders claimed that removing the foreskin was affective in stoping young boys and men from masturbating. Masturbation is considered a sin in Judeo Christian religions. Considering that Circumcision causes a loss of sensation, ya, it was technically true. Did not make it right.

The myths behind Circumcision being “cleaner” dates back to 20BC from a Jewish author named Philo of Alexandria. Among his claims of hygiene that have since been proven false many times (despite continued parroting), he also claimed the foreskin kept semen from reaching a womans egg. He also demanded that Circumcision be performed as early as possible so men would have no choice in the matter.

[source]

And before anyone starts calling me anti Semitic AGAIN, Beyond the Bris is an ever growing community of Jewish practicing people who are against circumcision. [x]

As for more modern western procedures?

Circumcision is done on NEWBORNS with very little pain relief and while the infant is AWAKE. The infant is strapped down onto a board, cutely given the name Circumstraints.

They are only given a local anesthetic (and sometimes not even given that!) which there are few actual studies done to tell the effectiveness of local anesthetic in newborns. The infant often screams through the entire procedure. Sometimes they pass out from the stress. After the procedure, as noted above, the open wound that is the entire glans of the tip of the penis is then put inside a diaper which is, by its nature, moist and filled with bacterium.

Opioid pain relievers are RARELY prescribed for infants in general because of the risk they pose on development. It is even more rarely given after a circumcision as its considered a normal procedure that does not need post procedure pain relief. However, studies show that thats not the case. A sharp rise in the hormone cortisol has been noted in infants during circumcision. This has shown to have a serious affect on the developing brain. Men who were circumcised as infants are often more sensitive to pain stimuli later in life. It has also been linked to higher instances of increased anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, and attention problems. Many infants also display symptoms of PTSD post circumcision making it clear this is not something they just “forget and get over” as many like to claim. Even men who show no detrimental symptoms later in life are likely to find they displayed symptoms of PTSD as an infant. [source]

Circumcision is a purely cosmetic procedure that should NOT be done on newborn infants.

If an older boy or man wishes to have the procedure that is their right. It is MUCH LESS INVASIVE post puberty and is done with more pain management and often general anesthesia.

[indomitablekushite]

In Ancient Egypt makeup and fragrances were used daily in peoples lives makeup, scented oils, and perfumes were part of their hygiene and were used as early as 10,000 BCE by both, men and women. The practice of pubic hair removal goes back to the start of civilization. Egyptians believed a smooth and hairless body was the standard of beauty. Soon every upper class Egyptian wo/man made sure there was no hair on the body with some exception of her head, but most had wigs. It is said from 4,000 to 3,000 BC, women removed body hair with home-grown depilatory creams made from a bizarre combination of such questionable ingredients as arsenic and quicklime. Copper razors appeared around 3,000 BC in both India and Egypt. I say "Its said" because white people sometime dont read history right. I say this because they thought they was white so the mind was thinging how would a white peson do this and thast how they understood the facts which has made the read the facts wrong.. The Greeks adopted the ideal of smoothness, capturing it over and again in their sculpture. Ancient Greek sculptures of women are universally clean-shaven, whereas the sculptures of men have pubic hair. The Greeks believed that a smooth, hairless body exemplified youth and beauty. In "Sexual Life in Ancient Greece" by Hans Licht, the author describes how the Greeks disapproved of women with pubic hair and considered it ugly. It was considered a sign of class distinction and subsequently all upper-class women practiced pubic hair removal, as did many women of the lesser classes. Young girls began removing it as soon as the first hair appeared. They used tweezers, which they called the "volsella" as well as a kind of depilatory cream called the "philotrum" or "dropax" which was sometimes made with bryonia and foreshadowed modern depilatory creams. Waxing with resin or pitch was also used to depilate. Furthermore, the practice of pubic hair removal wasn't unique to Rome - it was practiced in even the most remote parts of the empire. Julius Caesar (101-44 BC) writes that, "The Britons shave every part of their body except their head and upper lip." Islam also has a long history of pubic hair removal. According to the Sunnah, every adult Muslim, as a part of keeping his/her body clean, should remove the hair from his pubic area and armpits. The hair may be removed through any method that one feels comfortable with. Moors like 2 think the spread of Islam brought the practice to India, Northern Africa, and 2 other vast areas of the world under Muslim influence. But we know thats not true but dont tell them, now you should know where they got it from what do you think they got all that knowledge herding goats in the desert? Never forget their cultural thieves also then and now. In 1520, Bassano de Zra wrote that "The Turks consider it sinful when a woman lets the hair on her private parts grow. As soon as a woman feels the hair is growing, she hurries to the public bath to have it removed or remove it herself." The public baths all had special rooms where the ladies could get rid of their hair. Even today, the hamams (public baths) still have special rooms for the ladies to depilate. The returning Crusaders (1096-1270) brought the practice back to Europe. In many European castles built between 1200 and 1600 AD, a special room was constructed where the ladies of the court could gather to shave. During the Renaissance, the practice of pubic hair removal flourished. Sixteenth and seventeenth century artists portrayed women as having little or no pubic hair. The work of Rubens, whose models typified the ideal in feminine beauty at the time, most dramatically reveals this. Dont know what happend during the "Dark Age" but during the reign of Catherine de Medici (1547-1589) who was then queen of France and something of a religious zealot. She forbade her ladies in waiting to remove their pubic hair any longer; however, it was still widely practiced until the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and the smothering prudishness of the "Victorian Era." Even then, it remained popular in private, especially for the ruling classes. There is some photographic evidence ranging from the time of the Civil War to the "blue movies" of the 1920s and 30s that shows that the amount of pubic hair during that time varied from full to none. Even though repressed by the outward morality of the era, it appears pubic shaving never disappeared but instead more appropriately went underground. After colonialism the Western world dictates: Underarms American women had no need to shave their underarms before about 1915 – after all, who ever saw them? Even the word “underarm” was considered scandalous, what with it being so near certain other interesting body parts. Then came the sleeveless dress. An ad in the fashion mag Harper’s Bazaar decreed that to wear it (and certainly to wear it while participating in “Modern Dancing”), women would need to first see to “the removal of objectionable hair.” They didn’t need much convincing, and by the early ’20s, hairy underarms were so last decade, at least in America. Legs The ’20s fashion was risqué on the bottom half, too, but most women of the era didn’t seem to feel the need to shave their legs, and when hemlines dropped again in the ’30s, the point became moot. The ’40s, however, brought even shorter skirts, sheerer stockings, and the rise of leggy pin-ups such as Betty Grable. “The removal of objectionable hair” suddenly applied to a lot more surface area. Naughty Bits Was it porn actresses who started this one? GIs concerned about disease? The Brazilians? Nah. For hundreds of years, the bikini wax has been a common practice among a group more often associated with extreme modesty: Muslim women. In much of the Middle East and North Africa, brides-to-be remove all their body hair before the wedding night. Yes, all of it. Frequently, they stick with the aesthetic after marriage – and some men do likewise.