Re: Is male circumcision a weapon in the sperm wars?
dlowan wrote:
You're thinking of just cutting the foreskin......there is far more damaging stuff that gets done...also, in the age of no antibiotics, death from infection after cutting babies and adolescent boys and girls must have been terrible. Female genital mutilation often is done in a way that encourages terrible infections for the rest of the girls' life.
You are correct that I am talking about just cutting the foreskin. I don't know enough about many of the other rituals that occur to speak to them and I'm leaving female circumcision out of it entirely - I don't see how it can possibly be applied to "sperm wars". The array of rituals (on men) is diverse enough that I would think that there would have to be multiple reasons for them. I don't see a single "sperm wars" scenario answer to cover all of them.
Quote:I really don't buy the hygiene argument...I think that's a post fact rationalisation from the modern west, used to make people who have been/want to circumcise their kids for non-rational reasons (usually tradition and wanting the willy to look like dad's sort of stuff) feel okay. The whole intact penis/higher risk of female cervical cancer is so recently known (and mootish) that there is no way it can have been a factor.
Whether you buy it or not there is a host of medical evidence that say it's true. As far as cervical cancer and such - of course it couldn't have been a factor. I wasn't speaking to that at all. No one would have known what cervical cancer was a few thousand years ago to even have attempted to make any link to male circumcision.
In modern western societies uncircumcised men are 3 times more likely to get skin inflamation and 10 times more likely to get urinary tract infections. I don't see how those numbers could have been any lower centuries ago. Those are direct effects that the men themselves would have been aware of and the source would be fairly apparent without having the need for any medical expertise.
Quote:Of course I am aware that there is no proof this theory is correct, but, IF you accept evolutionary psychology, it makes the best sense I have heard so far.
One of the reasons I often dismiss evolutionary physcology theories is that they tend to devise very complex theories and ignore much simpler ones that result in the same conclusions. It is very hard to determine when one of these researcher's is actually doing something useful or just looking for ways to obtain more grants. Yes, his theory is a
possible answer. It is a much more complex answer than necessary IMO.