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Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]
and dropping your Polish friends and their superstitions like a bad habit
I still feel that likening the removal of the foreskin to having a bad tooth removed (forget the wisdom teeth - of course I know they go for a number of reasons, not just decay) - and likening the Polish attachment to the foreskin as a 'superstition', and their 'refusal' to listen to good advice a 'bad habit' - is a very loaded way of talking about this ... and, as someone else said, it isn't just Poland - this is how Europeans generally view the subject.
I think what you are saying is that it is backwards and verging on the dangerous not to see the facts for what they are and oblige families to have this done as routine. Which is fine. That is your opinion, and it is a reasonable one. I think the issue, though, is to do with cultural practice - the business of circumcision is heavily allied to certain cultures, and has been almost forever ... see, for example, Shakespeare, where Othello talks of how he had an altercation with with 'Turk' once, and 'took by the throat / The circumcised dog, and smote him, thus ...' .
These sensitivities are probably the most interesting part of the discussion as far as the Polish angle is concerned.
My comment that I prefer the natural version is simply that - a comment. There are lots of things that it would be more sensible for me to do, but sometimes one has to express one's unfettered appreciation of something beautiful. At the risk of sharing too much, I think the operation of the foreskin is poetry in motion, and it makes me sad to think of that being interrupted. But you're right - probably much more sensible to chop it off. Actually, my brother is one of those very adults you speak of, who opted to have it removed due to problems, and is glad he did - but perhaps the important thing here is that is was his choice, as an adult. To be fair, babies and small boys aren't given the choice. Which is why in a previous comment I suggested the fairest thing might be for only 18+ men to do this, of their own free will. Hopefully they wouldn't have been excessively sexually active before this point, and given lots of women cervical cancer.
And my comment about how nice a day one can have, given our mortal limitation, wasn't sarcastic, actually. It was another pretty sad reflection. To be honest, not sure whether I'd rather have more time, and no foreskins in the world, or less time, and foreskins. It all adds up to the same in the end. We have a time limit. I guess up to us what we do within the time.
