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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Numbers I've seen show that the risk of UTI in uncircumcised infants is 10× that of circumcised infants. The numbers drop to 6× in childhood and 4× in adulthood. The infant number is what they're most worried about, though, since infants can't exactly communicate symptoms easily and untreated UTIs at that age can cause kidney damage and all sorts of other problems. I'm not that motivated on either side of things, but I'm irritated with the activists out there who act like circumcision is mutilation akin to sexual anesthesia. There are clear benefits, and whether those benefits outweigh the disadvantages is something to take into consideration, but the disadvantages are often overstated.

I know for my mother the risk of severe complications from the surgery (very rare approx 2-6/1000) was decisive in deciding against it.

Don't women get a lot more UTIs than men? I don't think it is as big a deal as many do, I know tons of people both circumcised and not, it hasn't impacted anyone's life that much. The ultra online people crazy about it are often damaged in a lot of other ways, and this is an easy thing to fixate on. Very Freudian really. You should see some of the crazy Propecia related ED forums, the insane corners of the internet are insane. But anti snip part of your peen off people are not in line with anti-vaxxers. The gripe they have is legit medically speaking, humans don't need to have their foreskin removed.