Circumcision is genital mutilation

Article here. Excerpt:

'The practice of circumcision has been so normalized in our society that we forget that the above statement is factually sound: we are allowing the systematic mutilation of the genitals of almost half of our population. If this is true, then why does America circumcise over 80% of its penis-slinging population while other developed countries, including those in western Europe and East Asia only circumcise approximately 20% of males?

America’s high circumcision rate is generally attributed to hysteria surrounding the practice. John Harvey Kellogg (maker of Kellogg’s cornflakes), who believed it would prevent boys from masturbating, succeeded in popularizing it in the early 20th century. Doctors in this era also believed it helped prevent syphilis, which has since been disproven, according to the National Institutes of Health. Because of this misinformed belief, circumcision became compulsory in the military during both world wars. Once such a high proportion of the population was circumcised, fathers would generally have their infants circumcised simply because they had been circumcised as well, causing a steady circumcision rate throughout the 1900s.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends snipping every infant that has a penis to snip; their claim is that it helps mitigate the transmission certain STDs. They claim that HPV — which has already been vaccinated against — is among the diseases in which transmission is slightly decreased among circumcised people. Genital herpes is another disease purported to be affected, but it’s already infecting an estimated 1 in 6 Americans, meaning a mild decrease in transmission rate wouldn’t have much of a demonstrable benefit for the American population. Lastly, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the most harmful disease with a transmission rate that is slightly reduced by circumcision. However, this only applies to vaginal intercourse — so, even according to the CDC, this doesn’t even remotely affect the 78% of new HIV cases in America attributed to men who have sex with men. Ultimately, the claim that circumcising the entirety of the penis-having population will have a significant reduction in STD transmission doesn’t appear to be very plausible.'