[quote author=Partygurl link=topic=14340.msg379163#msg379163 date=1314432619]
Apart for medical reasons that have been described below, I have always wondered why men get it done.
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In the US it appears that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, circumcision was touted as a cure or a preventation of masturbation in the young or ´oversexed´ ... and also presented as a clear-cut (excuse the pun) way of being cleaner and hygenic ´down there´. Two benefits for the price of one if you will ...
Perhaps physicians truly believed these reasons, perhaps they merely hit on an easy way to make a buck, as skeptics claim. In any case, performing circumcisions was not an arduous procedure and not that expensive that it became prohibitive for households with a medium income.
Soon it became the modern and American thing to do. Think of the expression ´clean-cut American boy´ which is still very current and does not really bring circumcision to mind at first ... until you ponder it for a while in a litteral sense. Then it becomes clear that it is also a form of social pressure to confirm to an ideal.
Another important impetus came from the two great military conflicts of the 20th century - the Great War and then especially WWII. For many reasons (probably in the belief that circumcized soldiers would have less genital and/or venereal infections), the US military embraced circumcision as being the way to go for its draftees. It was not mandatory to be circumcized in all the services, but in some in most certainly was. And it was a procedure that could be ordered to be performed by a (medical) officer, even against the wishes of individual soldiers.
You may perhaps have seen HBO´s series ´the Pacific´... it is based on memoirs of 3 marines. One of those, R. Leaky (hope I remember the name right) wrote his memoir ´A Helmet for My Pillow' and tells how he had to be circumcized before being allowed to volunteer for the Marine Corps. A patriotic doctor performed it free of charge (otherwise costing $100.00 at the time I believe).
All of the above are reasons why circumcision became fairly popular in the US. And once high levels of circed fathers were up and about producing off-spring, it became a somewhat natural impulse for parents to want their sons to ´be just like daddy´... namely circumcized. If it was good enough for daddy, then good enough for son.
Now the social pressure is far less intense, there is no longer a draft and military medical regulations no longer require circumcision as a mandatory procedure - though it may still be considered a manly thing to do.
There is also far less public nudity than in decades past. I used to go swimming nude at the YMCA where naturally all boys could see how they were - cut or uncut, there is less public showering after PE classes - all of which removes some of the social pressure that might otherwise be present to make the odd boys out wish to confirm to the general standard of being circumcized.
Then, perhaps wholly unrelated to all of the above, there are men who choose it for esthetic reasons, purely from a desire to look pleasing and attractive. But of this I have no experience.