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Home » Gender News, News Map, Sub-Saharan Africa

Circumcision Quandries in Zambia

Submitted by on February 9, 2012 – 3:01 am 10 Comments |  
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Public health officials have been urging circumcision on men in sub-Saharan Africa, arguing that the universal application of the practice could prevent two million HIV cases a year. A recent study in Zambia, however, shows that roughly a quarter of newly circumcised men resume sexual activities before they have fully healed, facilitating the spread of the virus. As a result, health experts fear that the spread of circumcision in the region could actually increase HIV infection rates.

 

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  • http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/ Maju

    The massive circumcission campaign is nothing but a Judeo-Evangelical-Muslim propaganda circus in favor of the Yahvistic dogma of male symbolic castration: circumcision does not pose any effective barrier against HIV spread, specially considering that it mostly goes from man to woman (or more precisely from penis to orifice, whether this is vagina or anus or even mouth is less important, in the direction of fluids), so the condition of the penis is less important as such. 

    The only reasons for circumcission are making masturbation more difficult and enforcing an Oedipus complex within a Patriarchal system that must be fought against and hopefully abolished altogether.

    Condoms work, Judeo-Christian-Muslim juju does not.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-T-Wilson/682045086 James T. Wilson

      My gosh, Maju, I’m used to reading nationalist rants on this blog, but religious ones seem to be blessedly rare.

      • http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/ Maju

        Religious? Anti-religious if anything. Religious is trying to impose that ugly mutilation on children and men worldwide with the most idiotic of pretexts. Circumcission is not at all different from female castration, at least in the less severe degrees, and the only reason is to force children to psychologically and to some degree physically submit their bodies and desires to the pseudo-ascetic anti-natural dogma of their parents and the brainwashing medicine-men (priests, rabbis, imams…) that rule all them.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-T-Wilson/682045086 James T. Wilson

          The anti-religious zealot has as assuredly surrendered to his dogmatic preconceptions as the religious.  If you think every physician who performs a circumcision is somehow in the pay of the Vatican (or his local imam, rabbi, etc.), you will need to do a great deal more to convince me than compare a circumcision to a clitoridectomy.

          • http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/ Maju

            Physicians are often religious but, regardless, they do mostly as they are told. If it becomes dogma to circumcise, as happens among Anglosaxons (and no other Western culture), they assimilate it and rationalize the why. But the true pseudo-scientific why behind such abhorrent practice is no doubt religious zealotry and sexual repression.

            I briefly discussed this matter in my own blog months ago, as California moved to outlaw circumcision of minors, and everybody in the comments section agreed with the practice being awful and damaging to a man’s (or a boy’s) dignity and a normal sexual life. Even a conservative Turkish Muslim did.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-T-Wilson/682045086 James T. Wilson

            The readers of even this august blog are hardly a random sample, being a particularly self-selecting group–using agreements among the commenters on a blog is a nice example of confirmation bias.  As to determining the decision-making process of physicians, you have access to a great deal more mental telepathy than I have.

            As for “dignity and a normal sexual life,” it is purely anecdotal, but I have never noticed the lack of a foreskin impeding either in my case.  If it impeded sexual function, I would think there would be a lot fewer Jews and Muslims in the world.  If it impeded dignity, I would have thought Jews would have given in to assimilation long ago.  The connection to sexual repression, in any case, I would have to have explained to me.  Is there some evidence that we circumcised are less given to prurient thoughts?  My gosh, if I were any more given to prurient thoughts, I would not be able to function at all.

          • http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/ Maju

            So… can you masturbate normally, James? Because sexuality, as you probably know (unless you live in a monastery of sorts) is much more than just coitus, and certainly a lot more than mere reproduction, which can be done with an electroshock and a syringe, as they often do with cattle and such.

            Circumcision’s main goal is to suppress or at least limit self-pleasure, forcing the young man to become trapped in the matrimonial economy that is so important for Patriarchal dictatorship.

            Your mere association of sexuality with reproduction is so pathetic that reveals your religious moralist bias even if you want to hide it under a varnish of rationalism.

            Whatever the case the operation is pointless (all these studies on AIDS, so darling of the Bible waving fanatics, only detect a trivial tendency and not any effective protection). So if there is zero medical reason (with the occasional rare exception, after all Mother Nature is wiser than you wish) it should not be performed as a routine medical procedure anywhere. Much less on minors.

          • http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

            Dear Maju and James,

            It appears that this exchange has degenerated into a personal discussion of your own sexual equipment and private sex lives. I doubt our readers can learn anything useful from this. If you’d like to continue your intimate exchange, please take it to a private email forum. All further comments in this vein will be erased.

            Thank you.

          • http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/ Maju

            Asya: you can’t discuss circumcision without discussing sexuality. It’s all about controlling sex.

            And if I’m gonna get censored for speaking out the truth in this matter, then you lose a reader.

  • http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

    According to a study by Mills et al. (2008), “using circumcision as a means to reduce HIV infection would, on a
    national level, require consistently safe sexual practices to maintain
    the protective benefit”, so circumcision by itself isn’t enough. I think this new study from Zambia highlights that. But it does serve as a contributing factor so its beneficial effect shouldn’t be discounted either.

    Mills E, Cooper C, Anema A, Guyatt G
    (July 2008). “Male circumcision for the prevention of heterosexually
    acquired HIV infection: a meta-analysis of randomized trials involving
    11,050 men”. HIV Medicine 9 (6): 332–5.

    And on a similar note, have you followed the San Francisco circumcision ban controversy?