Naked News (08-25-09)
- Study shows a broken heart may actually increase your risk of heart disease…but only in women. Just in case you thought the playing field was starting to get too even.
- Public health officials consider mandatory recommending routine circumcision — yes, here in the U.S. — to lower H.I.V. risk.
- The blogosphere’s skank war is over! The identity of once-anonymous “Skanks in NYC” blogger is revealed…and it’s a woman.
Dana, mea culpa, you’re totally right. We’ve fixed our hyperbolic error — thanks for pointing it out so gently!
I heard that having a vagina increases HIV infection risk in women.
I’m a big fan of your site, but come on, ladies, you’re wearing your bias on your sleeve this time. Nowhere in that entire article was any kind of “mandatory” circumcision proposed. With the current hysteria going on about “death panels,” etc., I have a really low threshold lately for hyperbole and paranoia.
On the other hand, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my very few hang-ups about sex is an uncircumcised penis; I think it’s one of the most unattractive things I’ve ever seen in my life and am quite certain I would never be able to go down on a guy with a foreskin. I really don’t get this anti-circumcision mania going on now, and I’m feeling lucky that I was born early enough to have only a 20 percent chance of ever facing this dilemma head-on (so to speak).
I think it would be a better idea for public health officials to spend their time working on universal condom use rather than universal circumcision.
When I first saw the studies about circumcision to protect against HIV transmission, one argument I made was that, given the small effect size, you’d need a vaccination-style campaign of compulsory circumcision to see any real benefit in terms of slowing the spread of HIV.
I didn’t think they’d actually do it.
I’m not one of those guys who call circumcision “male genital mutilation”, but it seems so weird to institute a public health policy around such a small benefit, when the government is all but banned from even mentioning condoms, which are hugely more effective at preventing HIV transmission. So here’s an idea. Instead of making circumcision mandatory, why not just force insurance companies to cover condom purchases?
Oh, right. We won’t do that because we’re a country of sexual prudes with a slavish devotion to Bronze Age mythology and cultural custons.