It’s just another sign of how this horrific genital mutilation is still considered routine, and in some cases still celebrated—do they have to trivialize it further by turning it into a GADGET???

Maybe they can make the female version, too, and see how cute people think it is.

I don’t even HAVE a penis, and I’m wincing.

Maybe they can make the female version, too, and see how cute people think it is.

At least there’s a law against using the female version of such a gadget for its intented purpose. But if it’s not good for the goose,...

How much weed did these guys have to smoke before coming up with this one?  Looks like a vego-matic!  Can you imagine a 13 yr. old unwrapping this ‘gift’ on his birthday? *thanks mom, excuse me I have to go down to the basement and finish my bom… er ‘science project’ now.*

Spocko is proud to say that he’s 100% unmutilated and he’s gonna stay that way!
Machine or not!

Aren’t you happy that I chose a jewish doctor back then?

I’d like to go on record and point out the aesthetic beauty a sculpted tool usually has. While circumcision may seem barbaric as a practice, I didn’t mind it and it does generally tend to pretty-up the things a bit. I guess I’m saying circumcised ones are a cut above the natural versions.
Sure, my preference is showing and I can live with that. One more person here thinking I’m weird isn’t gonna kill me.

All I can say is Why?
Why did they make it
Why did Les link to it
and more importantly

Why did I follow the link and feel my testies crawl back up into my oh… throat?

Owwie!

If one of my kids had been boys, I’d have written “TOUCH THIS AND YOU DIE” and a downward pointing arrow on the newborn’s tummy. Even remembering that sometimes boys are circumcised against the parent’s express wishes makes my blood boil.

I pity the males that will never know the joys of a foreskin - which is precisely the reason why that barbaric practice started in the US.

Remember that sci-fi movie Saturn 3 where this evil guy and this scientist chick are on some science station around Saturn and the guy has a scary 8-foot-tall robot that works for him?  The chick gets something in her eye and he coerces her to stand there while the scary robot plucks it out with a sharp tweezer in a rattlesnake-quick strike.  He says to her: “Stand very still!”

Not sure which is scarier.

Now castration.  That would be the ‘Christian’ thing to do.  Not this wimpy circumcision.  I mean Christ said:
[Quote]There are eunuchs born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.[/Quote]
Why be nitpicky?  God will take care of you. Right? 

Is there really a market for this product?  What type of parent would subject his child to this instead of taking him to a doctor where the procedure can be performed safely?

Ok, I’m still pretty much a noob when it come to posting here at SEB and I don’t know how to do the nifty blue quote box so I shall simply used old fashioned quotation marks.

“Is there really a market for this product?  What type of parent would subject his child to this instead of taking him to a doctor where the procedure can be performed safely? “

Actually, during my quick skim of the SmartKlamp (why does the name feature the word clamp and nothing about cutting? That seem wierd to anybody else?) I saw in the “Where to get?” section this:

“The SmartKlamp® is solely sold to hospitals, clinics and doctors, and may be applied by medical professionals only.
Please check out with your doctor.”

That would mean the device is not for home use and that only trained people can use it.

This kind of reminds me of an amusing exchange I had with my sister a while back when we were in the grocery store looking at brisket.  I asked “would it be better to use trimmed or untrimmed?” Her response “depends on what you’re using it for…”

As a european who is neither muslim nor jewish the question arises:
Why, why, why chop it at all?
Is it so that puritanical parents don’t have to teach their sons to clean their (the sons!) dicks properly? Is it to make masturbation more difficult?
I mean its clear why ye olde cults do it. Its to designate a young man as adult mimicking the way nature shows a young woman as adult by bleeding from the genitals.But what is the reason in a modern, civilized and possibly secular environment?
Fittingly enough, my captcha is ‘school’,so somebody please tell me so I can learn something!

At one point in time it was believed that circumcision was preferable from a health standpoint. A view that has since been discredited, but still holds sway with a lot of modern-day physicians. I believe that was the reasoning behind my mother’s decision to have it performed on me at the time of my birth. Not having had a foreskin since shortly after my birth I’ve never really missed it, but I will admit that the first time I saw an unshorn member it gave me quite a shock. I wasn’t sure if there was something wrong with me or the other guy.

Captcha = ‘reaction’

It’s an ancient blood rite, as Golix says, that came about just because boys were jealous of girls who got to have the babies (and they bled, so the boys wanted to as well, and they had their gods bleed just to fill out the party).  Since then, “enlightened” societies have tried to find other reasons to justify it, including preventing masturbation in the Victorian era, and “health reasons” in our oh-so-modern US.  Yeah, I’ll bet I’d have fewer problems keeping my Georgia O’Keeffes clean too, if my labia were cut off.  And my eyeballs might look nicer without eyelids.

Brock, when you say “you didn’t mind” being circumsized, do you actually remember it?  Or are you just assuming you didn’t because your parents say you didn’t cry when it was done?  (Babies often withdraw into deep shock when it happens, which is confused with falling asleep out of complacence.)  I only know one person who had to be circumsized as a teenager for real medical reasons, and as I recall from his story, it was no picnic, even if it was done more humanely than it often is for babies (i.e. with anaesthesia).

Golix, I’m with you.

In (Victorian?) England, circumcision was openly pushed as a means to prevent boys from masturbating (yeah, right) and I believe this motivation carried over into the US. Any spurious medical claims were invented after the fact to justify a profitable and unnecessary surgery that in the US kills about 30 infant boys a year due to complications. Did you ever notice that as soon as a medical claim is debunked, circumcision is supposed to cure yet another disease? It’s possible to make an argument that performing a circumcision violates every single tenet of the Hippocratic Oath.

What really, Really, REALLY upsets me that in the US, infant boys were routinely circumcised without asking for parental consent - i.e. without informing parents at all.

It’s easy enough to find anti-circumcision web sites with more (admittedly biased) background; replete with an extremely disturbing video of the actual procedure.

Okay, I’ll calm down and get off my soapbox.

Yeah, I’ll bet I’d have fewer problems keeping my Georgia O’Keeffes clean too, if my labia were cut off.  And my eyeballs might look nicer without eyelids.

Cleanliness does not follow from externalizing an internal organ.

Must. Get. Off. Soapbox.

Thanks Folks!
On the one hand it’s nice to be seemingly right,
yet on the other hand the knowledge that millions of infant are being routinely mutilated doesn’t add to my sense of well-being at all!
elwedriddsche thanks for the hint about the sites,but I think I give those a miss, considering that I’ve spent the last few hours carefully teasing my testicles back out of my body cavity. And that was after just looking at the gadget!

“probably”

Of course some snipping technology is better than others!

Yes, I meant that I don’t remember it, GeekMom, and was being a little facetious. But I do think some of you are making a little too much of the societal norm to circumcise. To be honest, some babies are born with a tight foreskin that will not retract over the head, therefore it turns out to be a health and hygiene issue for them. Plus, American societal expectations can be cruel to an uncircumcised individual.

If it’s true that an average of thirty babies die per year in the US due to complications from circumcision, I wouldn’t mind seeing some links to this information.

When all is said and done, it’s probably best to leave the decision of whether or not to be cut up to the individual, but let’s try to be open minded about the pros and cons. I know from experience, and don’t mean to sound whorish, that uncut members tend to be less fresh smelling sometimes. Since we are a country of clean fanatics, those who are uncut are expected to be more attentive in this regard. Bacteria can thrive in this environment as well.

I have to admit that my preference has a lot to do with visual and hygienic appeal, and no one should be evaluated through these criteria alone. All I really can say, and feel good about, is keep it clean, and for Jebus sake, use a damn condom when the situation calls for one!

Just a note:  newborn foreskins are not SUPPOSED to retract from the head; it takes a few years before they gradually become retractable.  But I agree with you that once it IS retractable, there’s an opportunity for the Wrong Sort of Bacteria to creep in, and at that point it’s important to keep it clean.  But there’s no arguing aesthetic preferences—chacun a son gout.  (To make things a little less crude )

(Yow! are we being an educational family site yet?)

(“how”)

I can still remember my mom scrubbin the hell out of Spocko Jr. Youch!

Here’s some more fun links…

Each day, more than 3,400 baby boys are circumcised in hospitals across the United States. Though the majority of these operations are performed without incident, between 2 and 10 percent of circumcisions result in complications such as excessive bleeding, infection, or even death.

In what seems a bizarre twist, some botched circumcisions have been corrected by surgically altering the remaining tissue into female genitalia.

Death by Circumcision

Take this quiz, and find out whether you believe the myths that far too many doctors believe, or whether you are an informed layperson or a foreskin-friendly physician who knows and understands the scientific facts about circumcision.

The Circumcision Quiz

Care of the uncircumcised boy is quite easy. ``Leave it alone’’ is good advice. External washing and rinsing on a daily basis is all that is required.

Newborns: Care of the Uncircumcised Penis

The gliding mechanism is Nature’s intended mechanism of intercourse. As such, it contributes greatly to sexual pleasure. Also, since more of the loose skin of the penis remains inside the vagina, the woman’s natural lubrication is not drawn out to evaporate to a great extent, which makes sex easier without using artificial lubricants.

Mechanics of Intercourse

OK I’m getting carried away now!

Spocko, that last link.  (Working on time machine…)

Doh!  Not sure how glaringly obvious editing mistakes happen.  I mean, Spocko, that last link was incredibly informative and interesting (Working on time machine…)

I never knew so much about the ol’ tallywhacker!

(“under”)