lets add a little information:
"the practice lies at the heart of the nation's struggle between traditionalism and modernity" is the average line u read about the topic. and i think u should struggle
...
Witness the way in which circumcision has been rationalised in Jewish culture. The original covenant with Jehovah, who tells Abraham in Genesis 17 that this penile snip is how he shall define his descendants as chosen by God, is later explained and defended in all sorts of other ways in rabbinical literature. Perhaps the need to do this is driven by the lack of any real biblical sense of why Jehovah should choose this particular, rather bizarre way of marking his chosen people. In any case, circumcision is not peculiar to Judaism; it is practised by Muslims, for instance, despite the lack of any mention of circumcision in the Koran. Its anthropological origins are mysterious, though it may have something to do with the Hebrew "captivity" in ancient Egypt, which provides the oldest known example of the practice.
In the 12th century, the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides argued that circumcision was intended to "bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question ... The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision." Yet his follower Isaac ben Yedaiah confused matters, seeing circumcision as a way to increase male sexual pleasure and speed up the sex act: the circumcised man, he writes, "will find himself performing his task quickly, emitting his seed as soon as he inserts the crown", thus discouraging too much female interest in sex - and we all know how fatal it is to get women into a lustful state. Free feminine sexuality is even more threatening to the social fabric than the retention of foreskins.
The absurdity of such arguments is highlighted by the masturbation scare of the late 1800s and early 1900s, which encouraged routine circumcision in the United States (still performed on about 80% to 90% of male children there). In 1903 Dr Mary R Melenby wrote that masturbation "lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis and heart disease. It weakens the memory, makes a boy careless, negligent and listless. It even makes many lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide."
Circumcision was proffered as the ideal remedy. The leading health freak and inventor of cornflakes, John Harvey Kellogg, argued that "a remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."
It is not a long way from this to female "circumcision" - that is, genital mutilation. Still practised in many parts of Africa, including Egypt, it is seen as a way to control woman. Few Western commentators defend it, yet there is no consensus about the mutilation of male children in the West.
As medical arguments around hygiene and disease control offer conflicting evidence, such practices are still defended in the name of tradition. For instance, circumcision is seen as an essential part of Jewish identity, just as it is often seen as crucial to certain African identities. But cultural traditions, to have any meaning, must be espoused and renewed by their practitioners within a changing social context.
An example for the interrogation of tradition in Africa is the way Jewish circumcision is being questioned today: some argue it is inconsistent with the Torah's prohibitions on bodily marking or scarring. And it was questioned during the Hellenistic period (fourth century BC onward) and in the German reform movement of the 1840s. In any case, the transition from partial (milah ) to full (periah) circumcision took place in the Hellenistic era, driven by rabbis trying to counter the deracination of diasporic Jews. Yet, as one writer put it in the Jewish Spectator: "The biggest threat to Jewish survival is a**imilation. There is no evidence that circumcision prevents or slows it."
In the same way, and particularly in a country like South Africa - still caught between modernity and the demands of ethnic identity - the debate around such cultural traditions should be opened."
in germany, there is 3 things that make u a man, and its a development:
u have to plant a tree
u have to make a baby
u have to build a house
and i think that makes a lot more sense ....
the ritual is surely painfull, yet as an old skater i know pain isnt always the worst to go through. i surely wouldnt wanna do it, but i wouldn't hold u back from doin it if u intend it solely on your own decision, BUT ....
. make sure to see a medical doc before and let him tell u the risks and how u can recognize infections at an early stage. make sure to bail out and go to a doc if anything goes wrong.
. i think u should cheat a little and get some pain killers from the doc before. also try to get some tissues with alcohol or some desinfectant product.
. make sure to get a sterile knife fot that!!! this is one of the big issues! have one with u, have one for a friend that also makes sure it will be done the safest way.
if u want to follow your traditions, then do it and try to push people around u to make a step forward and build some modern conciousness for this ritual and do it in a reasonable way.
neithertheless, i think going through all this trouble makes u more of a man than the circumcision itself ... i like the idea of preserving cultural traditions, but there is a lot of old weird religious traditions that just dont make any sense to me anymore ...[/quote]
