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Comment by reeealloc | Hacker News Reader

Big surprise genital mutilation at birth because god said so is a bad idea

It's funny that you mention that actually, the study mentions that they don't have many (or any?) men who were circumcised for religious reasons, they were all circumcised at a "doctor's estimate" which imo is weird language but I assume means it was for medical reasons.

Looks like they try to control for a lot of other factors, but I feel a bit weird about an article studying circumcision but not featuring those circumcised for the predominant reason that men are circumcised worldwide.

A different way to frame this would be "men who were circumcised specifically for medical reasons tend to have bad sex lives" which imo is a lot less surprising?

In some countries, non-religious "cultural" circumcision is very common (eg 75% of males in the US [0]). Relatively few cases will be for a medical reason (something like phimosis). Parents in most "secular circumcision" cultures base their circumcision decision primarily on social concerns, rather than medical concerns; the strongest predictor for the decision a couple will make is whether the father is circumcised or not[1]. So your point about religious circumcision being the most common is true worldwide (2/3 of circumcisions are for Muslim men[2]), but there are countries where this is significantly less of a factor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

[1] https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/80/2/215

[2] See page 1: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43749/97892...

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