Hello, everyone. And welcome to this week's Naked Truth.
Trisha Hershberger here.
Before we get into this week's
extraordinarily controversial topic,
(Ha-ha, It's one of those) I want to thank
our Naked Army vloggers from last week.
That's Kavaja, Chris, Colin, Lawrence,
Prescott & Kristen, Jayms, Jenny and Richard.
Thank you guys for making your own Naked Truth vlogs
last week about weird things
that happened to your body. You can check
out their vlogs, linked in the
description below.
All right, now onto this week. This week's
topic suggestion was suggested by the
Storm of Storms,
who said, "I think I've got a good topic
but if it crosses the line I understand."
Come on, this is the Naked Truth. This is
what we live for on this show.
"Have you talked about circumcision and
whether you would want your own child to
be circumcised? After watching several
documentaries regarding it, I have yet to
see any benefit from the practice and
don't agree with it, but I wonder what
your and the rest of the Naked Army's
opinion is on the matter?"
Woo! What a tough one, and one that's
been on my mind ever since I found out
that I was having a little guy and not a
little lady. And in my house growing up, I
only ever had one sister, so it was all
ladies, so here in the States it's not
something we ever had to think about it.
Um. And I say "Here in the States" because,
I think it heavily depends on where you
live and what the norm is there. And..
at least here in the States, female
circumcision is not anywhere on the
norm spectrum, so it's not even
something we would have considered in
that household, but that being said,
I want to use this vlog to,
from an educational standpoint, kind of look at
the benefits and the risks to both male
and female circumcision, and both infant
and adult circumcision, and like when we
discuss controversial topics, as always, I
would ask that everyone try to keep an
open mind, even though I know that people
have incredibly heated opinions on this.
And I think that those, those, those
feelings are incredibly justified, but
we're all here today to learn from each
other, so please express your thoughts in
the comment
in a way that encourages open dialogue
and be respectful to each other, because
we're all here, in general, for the right
reasons and for the same reasons. Ok.
So that being said, in the United States,
I feel like, and this is why I was like,
"Oh, we're having a boy.
Oh, oh, we're having a boy." Infant male
circumcision here is a very difficult
decision to make and I feel that way
because I feel like, as a parent, you
always want to do what's best for your
child and I feel like, no matter what I
pick in this situation, it's probably
going to end up being the wrong thing
according to him later. Like there's no
way for me to predict what he's going to want.
You know, if I, if I do it then it'll
be, "How dare you have done that to me?"
And if I don't do it, it will be, "I can't believe
you didn't do that when I was a kid? Now,
maybe, I'm thinking about it as an adult."
Or you know, whatever. I'm just thinking
worst-case scenario, because I'm
terrified that I'll make the wrong decision.
So, I tried to examine it from
three different spectrums; the health
spectrum, the societal spectrum, and the
religious spectrum. So when we're talking
about the health benefits, according to
my research, everything that I can find
says that when it comes to health
benefits, the health benefits of male
circumcision is pretty widely debated.
So it's important to find sources you trust.
And any health benefits to female
circumcision, I could not find a study
that gave any benefit to female
circumcision. If any of you guys can find
it, please go ahead and link it in the
comments section below. But just looking
at the Health Statistics, I couldn't find
any benefits to that. So let's just talk
about male circumcision for a second.
Here in the United States,
the American Academy of Pediatrics or it might be
the Academy of American Pediatrics,
I always confuse them,
AAP, says that there are health benefits
and that they do outweigh the risks, but
not significantly enough for them to
mandate that all infant baby boys should
be circumcised, so they leave it up to
parental discretion. And the benefits
that they list are things like,
less chance of getting urinary tract infections,
penile cancer, contracting HIV,
lower risk of other stds in general. And again, they say
these are all great things but the
amount of benefit that there is to them has
not been proven significant enough to
say that we should do this to everyone.
And then when you're talking about male
circumcision as an adult or as a
teenager, when you're old enough to
decide for yourself, as far as just
looking at the health benefits, the
Center for Disease Control and
Prevention does recommend circumcision
in adult males. They say, the quote that
they say is, "It significantly
reduces a man's risk of contracting HIV.
And I found that the United Nations
supports it, in the case of preventing
HIV as well. They support male
circumcision, but again the UN actually
has a ban on female circumcision.
And then you'll find studies that are
against and say that there are no health
benefits to male circumcision whatsoever.
There's a lot of activist groups, like
Intact America, that say, "None of these
benefits have ever been proven, so why
are you giving this needless surgery to
an infant? Why are you even risking that?"
Some people also argue that it could
detract from the sexual pleasure that
the circumcised male could experience
later in life. And then there's other
sources, like the Mayo Clinic, that say it
could even potentially increase the
sexual pleasure, but since that's something
that's subjective, that's very hard to
measure in a study.
The NHS in the UK,
because I was trying to find a
non-activist group source to look at, the NHS
in the UK acknowledges the health
benefits. They say that they are there
but only after every other treatment
option has already been exhausted.
They're generally less in favor of it,
which makes sense because it's something
that's less common in that area. So what
I would argue to people who are making a
case for health benefits or no health
benefits is, "Please do your research. And
read a lot of different sources. And find
a source that you can trust." And especially
when people are commenting down below,
I do ask that
you try to avoid using activist groups
in one side or another and try to take a...
an organization that generally has an
objective standpoint on a lot of these
different things.
Of course that's impossible to find, but
this is what helps me the most and
that's what I tend to believe the most.
And since this is something that
obviously has been weighing on my mind a lot
that's, that's what I would love to read
in the comments. Then we have to look
at it from a societal point of view, which...
Ooo, this is when it gets really crazy.
So, in general, I feel like people
tend to argue for whatever they are as
the norm. For example, I am not a
circumcised female, so for me, I would
probably tend to knee-jerk reaction
against circumcising females, because I
think, "Well, my life's pretty awesome and
I'm normal, so why shouldn't that be
normal?" And I think that this heavily
depends on where you are from.
As I mentioned earlier, in places like
the United Kingdom or Finland, only two
to three percent of males are
circumcised, whereas here in the United
States, in my generation, eighty percent
of males were circumcised. So that's a,
that's a huge difference. However, there's
been a decline in that the United States.
As of a couple-years-ago study, I believe,
it was fifty-four percent of infant baby
males in the United States are
circumcised. So, yes, above average, but
just slightly above average, as far as
the percentile. And when it comes to
female circumcision, I actually read a
really interesting study in the Atlantic
about female circumcision, primarily in
Egypt, where about eighty percent of
teenage girls do choose to undergo this.
And the reporter in this article was
saying that she spent years living with
and studying, and a lot of these girls do
voluntarily choose it. It's not
something that's forced upon them. And
that she found that really interesting
and I certainly found that really
interesting, because we kind of always
hear about these horrible patriarchal
societies imposing this on women, but
that there were women who actively chose
to do this or teenage girls who actively
chose to do this
as a rite of passage into
becoming a woman. And that's fascinating
too, when we start talking about adult
circumcision. And again, I think that that
all boils down to where you're from and
what's considered normal where you're from.
If you feel like that's something that
you want to do or not.
No one wants to be outside the norm.
Everybody wants to be just like
everybody else, I mean, otherwise the
thought can be or the fear can be that
your risked being made fun of because you
look different.
Maybe not being as sexually attractive
as other people because you look
different. There's a lot of
psychological fears that I think come
into play there. And here in the States,
I do remember kids, when I was little,
getting made fun of because, "Your,"
you know, "Your penis looks different."
That kind of thing.
But, now that that rate has
dropped from 82 to 50 percent, if it's going to
be about half of each, then at least in
the United States, is that argument still
really valid? Or will it be half and half
some kind of everybody's normal, which
would be great. I'd love it if we didn't
make fun of people for being different.
That would be awesome, in general.
And then we have to talk about the religious
aspect to all of this. There are some
religions, namely Judaism, a lot of
Muslims are circumcised, where it's an
important part of their cultural
heritage to do this.
I personally do not
have any religious reasons to circumcise
are not circumcise.
So again, that arguments kind of out the
window for me.
So as far as my personal feelings on the
whole crazy matter, because I don't live
in an area where female circumcision is
the norm, I don't have any religious
reasons for female circumcision, and
there have been no proven health
benefits that I could find for female
circumcision, that's a no-go for me. It's
not something that I would advocate in
any way for myself or for anyone else.
When it comes to male circumcision,
I'm still very undecided.
Uh... And when Nate and I do decide,
because we're gonna have to,
I don't think that that's something that I will
announce on the Internet. I think for my
son's sake, that's a very personal family
decision. That's very private information
for him that he's probably not going to
want everybody to know about him and his
private parts, out there on the internet.
So, that's something we'll keep
yourselves. However, if we do decide
that we want to do it, I will be
insistent on using anesthesia. There used
to be studies that said that babies
don't feel pain the same way that adults do.
And that has been debunked.
So if anyone out there is considering it,
I would urge you to please check out those studies.
Numb that peep!
It makes, it makes me horrified just thinking about
poor little babies without any numbing
on their Ahhh!
And as far as male adult circumcision...
I mean according to the
Mayo Clinic, I did read that apparently
adult male circumcision is a more
complex procedure, and if it were me, and
I was thinking about, you know, "Is this
something I want to do? To make a choice
for myself for as an adult or something
I want done back in the day when I can't
remember it?" I feel like, "Yeah! Obviously I'd
choose back in the day when I can't
remember it. That sounds horrific and really scary."
But you know, I do love the idea of
waiting till you're older so you can
decide for yourself. I think that there's a
lot of merit in that as well.
So now it's debate time.
Um. So my question for you guys this week is,
"Are you for or against circumcision?
Do you think that maybe parents should
decide on circumcision? Do you think that
children should decide when they're older?
How do you feel about male versus female?"
All of these are completely valid topics
to discuss in the comments. I look
forward to hearing what you guys have to
stay on it, especially since I know that
this community is from all over the
world and is going to have a lot of
different opinions on this matter.
I do ask again, like I said before, that when
you're giving your opinion on this
matter, please try your best to help
everybody else and
educate everybody else by backing up
your opinions with sources. If YouTube
takes your comments because it has a link in it,
don't worry, I'll go back in and put it back in.
And try to cite sources that
aren't super subjectively one way or the
other. Try to cite sources that usually
are pretty fact oriented, which would be
great.
So, avoid activist sights on one side oO
the other, is what I would say. And also again,
this is a very controversial topic,
so please be nice to each other in the
comments.
Let's assume that we're all coming at
this from a place of "We want to learn
from each other," so please phrase it in a
way that's respectful and encourages
open dialogue and try not to attack the
person who's presenting the argument.
Please, just attack the argument.
So, thank you guys so much for watching and so
much for listening and, honestly,
thank you guys for helping me out.
Educate me on this matter, because it's
something that I'm still very undecided
and conflicted on. I feel like it's
the first really hard parenting decision
that I'm going to have to make, because
again, you want to do what's best for your
baby, but what if there aren't any cut
and dry facts for what's best for your baby.
Whaaaa!
I don't, I don't like that "leave it
to the parents to decide." I want you guys
to give me facts, so that I can draw
conclusions because that's how my brain works.
But anyway, have a great week everyone.
And I'll see you next week. Bye then.