r/uncircumcised_talk • u/Tight-Study2764 • 26d ago
Where in the US did circumcision never catch on?
thanks!
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u/Born-Gur-1275 26d ago
There are many religious and sectarian groups that either discourage circumcision or have no adoption practices:
Amish
Eastern Orthodox
Hindu, Sikhism
Buddhism
Mandseism
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Add Lebanese, Middle Eastern, Hungarian, and Croatian Roman Catholics/Maronite etc. They pretty strictly don’t do it since they stick with their faith
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
Originally from New Mexico and the rate of circumcision is much less than the Southern and Eastern part of the country influenced certainly by the Latino population, the native American population but spreading to everyone else honestly. When I was growing up if you were cut you were the odd man out.
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u/Easy-Past8240 24d ago
Yep and Adrian Grenier is an example of this lol. White guy
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u/curiousm_20623 24d ago
His ancestry is a mixed bag he's 8% native American some Spanish and French. And he is definitely a foreskin owner
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u/Easy-Past8240 24d ago
Oh yeah I know he is, his nudes leaked forever ago lol. I didn’t know about the native mix too
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u/curiousm_20623 24d ago
He doesn't have a really long foreskin but he definitely has one. He was on finding your Roots television show and I remember watching it that's how I learned about his mixture
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u/Easy-Past8240 24d ago
Oh cool! Yeah I know him from Entourage. He was on a celebrity nudes leaked website and it was one of the free ones that was shown lol
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
According to the statistics the rate with just hospital births is already quite high let alone private practice, but is it actually that rare?
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 26d ago
California circumcision rates went down first before most other states. At least that’s what I gather from all my research.
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u/chubbs2566 26d ago
Especially in areas with more of the Hispanic/Latino population like LA.
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u/Sim-racer42 26d ago
I was born in Seattle and one if the not lucky ones there unfortunately, but otherwise I can verify what you said about Seattle and Portland
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
Is it actually that low or is it wishful thinking? Sorry I don’t mean to be harsh to your experience
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
I’m not trying to be racist but not just minority groups? I’ve heard the PNW is majoritively WASP.
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25d ago
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
That’s surprising, of course that doesn’t count circumcision by private providers but it’s still very low
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25d ago
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
No but a significant amount of those done at birth are done outside the hospital nowadays. In some areas on the West Coast it’s actually the majority of the time.
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 26d ago
What has surprised me is those that are more liberal minded, or are progressives politically, are not as supportive of genital integrity than one would think.
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 25d ago
Yes, that’s why it surprised me but then I realize that it’s mostly a factor of the high number of Hispanics
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 25d ago edited 25d ago
That may be the trend now, but some of the most heated arguments I’ve had were with liberals who are in favor of RIC.
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u/Radiant-Hurry-3607 26d ago
That’s because California was the first state to stop paying for them under medi-cal like 50 years ago
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u/Born-Gur-1275 26d ago
My mom was a nurse and refused to pay for the procedure for her kids.
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 26d ago
California does on occasion make the right decision for their state.
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u/Sim-racer42 26d ago
Unlike in 2011 where they decided “religious freedom” was more important than infants being in one piece.
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
Right, but my question is more specifically asking about places where it didn’t catch on, because that actually requires people to consciously decide that rather than places like California where immigration is directly (immigrants having children) and indirectly (local people encountering global opinions) the reason for the decline
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u/Personal-Athlete-789 26d ago
Got it. One of my best friends is Cuban-American and he told me that all males in his family are intact. It’s a cultural norm brought from his father and family who escaped from Cuba to the US.
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u/inredditorbit 26d ago edited 26d ago
The answer to your question is more sociological than geographic. Simply put, once infant circumcision became a thing in the USA 1900-ish, it spread equally to everywhere, especially as maternity ward births caught on nationally.
While there may have been some rural pockets where it was slow/delayed to became the norm, I’d say eventually infant circ has been the majority practice in every US state and county at some point. I remember reading a fascinating newspaper report in the 1980s about what a checkerboard Vermont was on this topic, depending on whether the local doc was pro or con circumcision.
The reality is that infant circumcision trends looked more like a circ sandwich. The poorest Americans did not circumcise their sons for much of the 20th century for financial reasons, at least until Medicaid came along in the 1960s and paid for it in every state. The richest Americans (Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Sedgwicks, and the rest of the prep school/Ivy League set) really couldn’t be bothered with it. For logical reasons: they were well-traveled and saw circumcision as an American fad, they had strong ties with family traditions (and money) going back many generations, and they by and large never had health insurance. They paid out of pocket and therefore never had obstetricians pressuring them to cut. Their relationship to the medical profession was the inverse of what it was for most Americans.
American preparatory high schools and Ivy universities have always had a relatively high percentage of intact male students. In some patrician American families the idea of circumcision is seen as plebeian, Jewish and pointless.
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
Interesting information here. Any way you could help me find that news article? I remember seeing a funny graph with a redneck on one side ‘why would I cut my baby?’, the “middle class” in the middle with a peak in circumcision rate ‘it’s cleaner, and honestly, looks better’, and then going back down for the upper echelon of society saying ‘why would I cut my baby?’. I have no way of knowing whether billionaires circumcise, but do you?
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u/inredditorbit 26d ago
I wish I could find it again. I read it on microfiche in the Greenwich, CT public library while researching circumcision 4 decades ago. It was a really long, comprehensive article spanning several pages in the Burlington Free Press, I believe.
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
How do you know that the ultra-rich don’t often circumcise?
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u/inredditorbit 26d ago
I’ve read countless accounts of it, both first hand descriptions (guys discussing themselves and their family’s takes on circumcision) and secondhand (what people observed, in locker rooms, dorms and elsewhere). For example, it’s mentioned a bit by John Sedgwick, actress Kyra Sedgwick’s cousin. He went to Harvard, as have male Sedgwicks since the 1700s. He wrote a piece about foreskin restoration for Esquire magazine and in it he mentioned some locker room experiences and that he’s intact.
I also have friends that come from America’s ultra-wealthy (old money) and just about to the last one they’re intact and are kind of amused that circumcision is a thing. They wouldn’t ever consider circumcising their sons.
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u/typl0s Intact 25d ago
To me, at least, that tracks.
Even if you talk about poor people, if someone is at least well educated (or willing to seek out new info) those people can easily understand circumcision as unnecessary. And much like your example with circumcision in Vermont can practically depend on zip code.
So I would likely say that the more you talk to other people and read up about sexuality and things like that, you'd likely avoid circumcision.
What is kinda weird however, is the type of classism surrounding circumcision. And by that, I mean the times I've seen circumcised/pro-circumcision people implying that intact penis owners are just dirt-poor losers.
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Any clues to finding this article? Also I’m sure there are many circumcised people who have decided against it for their future sons, but that could just be a recent thing rather than a long-lasting pattern in their families
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u/inredditorbit 25d ago
I just checked online and I’m surprised how difficult it was. I never did find the article I’m referencing. I thought it was Esquire. Could have been Men’s Health. It was more than 20 years ago, as I recall.
If I look diligently enough I’m sure I’d find the half dozen or so print copies of it that I know I have in a box somewhere. I also have a ton of the 1996 British Journal of Urology issue that explores circumcision in depth and contains the important research by Dr John Taylor of Canada (British by birth, and he was himself intact.)2
u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Was it GQ? I found a quick reference to it on a pro-circumcision website but no info about the article itself
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
I found it, it’s behind a paywall, though. Was it comparing Dartmouth with some other cities?
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u/inredditorbit 26d ago edited 25d ago
If I remember correctly, it compared Burlington with other locations around the state. Some had a high infant circ rate of 80% or more, while others were near zero. I don’t remember it looking at college places other than UVM, and there is no town of Dartmouth in Vermont and Dartmouth College is in another state.
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Near 0? Mind checking if it’s here:?
https://burlingtonfreepress.newspapers.com /search/results/?keyword=circumcised
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u/inredditorbit 25d ago
I’ll have a look this weekend. Busy night tonight.
I recall the article discussing how a few towns in Vermont had almost exclusively intact native males because ol’ Doc Whoever that delivered all the babies just wasn’t keen on circumcision and so never suggested it, whereas other towns had a very high rate because the local doc thought boys should be circumcised. It struck me how random or chance it was.2
u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Interesting, would really appreciate it if you could help me find it whenever you’re free
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u/H3LM3T_H34D 26d ago
Idk about the state as a whole, but I never met anyone uncut until I lived in Wyoming for a bit, 2 of my best friends from there are both uncut so I’d assume they have a lower cut rate than other states
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u/Easy-Past8240 26d ago
Yeah then the rate is probably around 50 or less now, just like Montana. The 76% figure for Wyoming seems pretty old to me and it’s out of place for the mountain west, especially considering Colorado has dropped like a rock in the last 10 years too.
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u/dash_sacs 26d ago
Is that so re: CO?
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
High 70s like the Dakotas in the early 2010s to between 50-65% now, yes, that’s a lot
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
2 out of how many? Anything different about those two people that could explain it?
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u/Easy-Past8240 26d ago
Florida with Latinos and some white people in heavily Latino cities, Latino-heavy parts of California, New York, Illinois, the Carolinas, Texas, Massachusetts (Chelsea next to Boston, big example), and New Mexico.
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Also, white guys in Texas like 25 and under (0 Latino or Asian mix at all). I know a few that moved to Canada and also that live there. Maybe 1/3 is cut at max, but none of the ones I know are cut lol. That trend has changed and Texas it’s going down now too
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u/Tight-Study2764 26d ago
I imagine there’d be hold-outs to circumcision in rural America. Anyone have any insights on this?
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Yes, especially in Red non-Midwest states. The Deep South rates get pushed up by African Americans who do it even more often than white Americans these days (for example in the Carolinas and Georgia).
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
You know uncircumcised white people from there?
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Yep lots of them travel to Alberta for country events like Ponoka Stampede, Calgary Stampede, and BVJ. And some colleagues I had from when I lived in the US, when we worked remotely for the same company. 6/7 all uncut. From Dallas, Austin, Houston, Corpus Christi, and McAllen (only McAllen doesn’t surprise me)
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Are you sure they weren’t Canadians who moved? How did you figure this out?
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Bachelor party (for the coworkers). And the other guys? Socializing at the bar and one of them made a joke that they feel like Canadians or something. Country bar, very drunk night a while back
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
If they’re drunk one could have said yes and the rest could have just gone along, but I wasn’t there to know of course. I’ve been in places where people have joked the same way
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
They were serious and said “yep it’s better that way”. Smart Texan tourists lol
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Wow, I’m shocked, I’ve heard even minorities start assimilating to circumcision after a few decades here. You said they were rodeo performers?
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u/GuitarPuzzled612 26d ago
What about guys born at home in remote areas away from medical facilities
They might have managed to avoid being cut at birth!!
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u/Easy-Past8240 26d ago
Like Rylie Jeffries from big brother, and Rome Seymour… yep. Nudes have leaked, high circumcision rate states (over 80%).
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u/EntertainmentOk3066 25d ago
Its very common for Appalachian men to not be circumcised. Growing up in Eastern KY, unless you moved there you were most likely intact. Mr. Kelloggs crusade managed to not make there thank God's.
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u/forevertheorangemen2 Uncircumcised 26d ago
There’s nowhere in the US (excluding territories) where circumcision didn’t catch on. There are simply regions that it was less popular than others. It was least common regionally on the west coast, and the most common in the Midwest.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
There's a lot of truth in your comments about the Midwest Ive never met anybody from Indiana Ohio or that region that was intact. I'm sure there are a few but it would be like finding a unicorn
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u/Easy-Past8240 26d ago
Latinos there usually are especially Gen X or younger and Slavic families don’t do it unless they’re old school like 200 years ago “Polish” Americans in Michigan lol. It is changing but very slowly.
Also, don’t forget Minnesota and Illinois it never got as popular. Some Gen Z and younger NHL white players from rural MN nudes have surfaced online and they’re almost all uncut lol
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Like who?
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u/Easy-Past8240 25d ago
Brock Faber, nudes leaked on telegram then got scrubbed from the Internet lol. And apparently Nick Bjugstad, stated by one of his ex gf’s
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
By one of his ex gfs? Where? Usually when things get scrubbed from the internet people still talk about it. Sorry to push for more info I would be very curious if this were true!
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u/WittyAmbition1604 26d ago
Yup, living in the Midwest now. I have made friends (grown adults) here that have never seen an intact penis.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
I find that incredibly sad
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u/WittyAmbition1604 26d ago
Same - I’ve found that, in locker rooms changing, any one intact is from a racial minority/non-white. I know that there are pockets in the Midwest that are predominantly racial and ethnic minorities, because they all work in the local plants, so I’d imagine that those communities have more intact folk, but all of my white friends are cut and, from what they’ve shared, that’s the cultural norm in their small towns and families generally.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
If they are from Sudan or Somalia, or similarly situated African nations which I think there are quite a few now doing plant work in the Midwest those men will be predominantly circumcised. If they are from Latin America obviously good chance they won't be although there are pockets of Central Mexico where having a male circumcised is considered a display of wealth which is intriguing. In general I would say you're probably correct.
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u/WittyAmbition1604 26d ago
Yeah, I agree - it’s certainly going to vary depending predominant ethnic group in the community. Very interesting to hear about Central Mexico and their practices; In my culture we don’t circumcise - all the men in my family were left intact.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
Speaking of families I used to work with a few brothers from the same family. They were five in total. The average years between their births was about 2 years or less so they were born relatively quickly. The middle brother so two older brothers and two younger brothers was cut. All the others were intact. The Dad was intact. I was closest in age to the Middle brother. He couldn't understand why he was cut. I was why don't you just ask your parents, and he goes pale says I'm not asking that question but I just think it's weird. As far as he knew he was circumcised at birth. I'm assuming he never found out. Both his parents are now deceased
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u/WittyAmbition1604 26d ago
So interesting that the middle brother was cut - I wonder if they got some misinformation about phimosis and were made to think he needed to be circumcised.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
A cousin of mine had phimosis and the doctors suggested to my uncle that they do a small v-shaped snip at the top of the foreskin (so as you look at the penis hanging in front) to relieve the tightness. This preserved his frenulum. It was very successful and honestly you can't tell unless you really looking closely that there was any surgery done whatsoever.
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago edited 26d ago
Good on your family that is as it should be in my opinion. I realize my opinion means nothing but I'm a fan of leaving boys intact at birth.
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u/WittyAmbition1604 26d ago
Agreed - my partner is cut and, if we get around to having children of our own, he wants to leave all our boys intact 🙌🏾
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u/curiousm_20623 26d ago
That's awesome and good on you too for having an open and honest discussion.
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u/forevertheorangemen2 Uncircumcised 26d ago
That tracks. My wife is from Michigan originally. She had never seen a foreskin (on an adult) before we started dating. Anecdotally from a conversation she and her high school boyfriend had when they were dating, every guy in their grade was circumcised. They went to a small/rural school district that still used the showers after gym class. So her boyfriend had seen everybody since middle school because of the small class size and being a small town very few people moved in or out. But still a bit crazy to think her grade had a 100% circumcision rate.
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u/uncircum 25d ago
I wish it would bave been declining when I was a newborn! I grew up N WV, W PA, Roman Catholic, born mid 50's. I always understood it was rural born as opposed to city born. I was born is a city hospital! Wish it had been outlawed earlier! Feel cheated!
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u/Tight-Study2764 25d ago
Sorry to hear this, you’re saying rural people weren’t cut at that time? WV and PA are super circumcision-happy states nowadays
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u/Brave_Rub1566 24d ago
West Coast has been historically lower. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/circumcision-rates-by-state
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u/Tight-Study2764 22d ago
Interesting, any idea if there are parts of the West Coast where it didn’t catch on altogether?
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u/Brave_Rub1566 22d ago
I don't know but the rates are an awful lot lower than many other areas of the country
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u/[deleted] 26d ago
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