At least 41 young men have died as a result of circumcision procedures as part of traditional initiation activities in South Africa in November and December, authorities said Tuesday.
South Africa’s Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa told local broadcasters Tuesday that 41 initiates died during this year’s summer initiation. He blamed negligence on the part of both the initiation schools, including registered ones, and parents for not adhering to safety standards and medical advice.
Hlabisa said some of the unproven advice often given to the young men is to avoid drinking water in order to heal faster.
Years ago I read that the Shang Ring is the safest circumcision method there is, & the guy who invented it was given awards.
IF you’re going to do a piercing, or circumcision ( not female “circumcision”, which is more amputation ), do it safely & properly.
Tradition from deep in the AnimalsAndTribesTime can go eat rocks, if it’s costing lives or G-D given LivingPotential.
Here’s a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_surgical_procedure#Shang_ring
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Welcome to 2026! What’s that? No, no…unfortunately genital mutilation for completely arbitrary cultural or superstitious reasons is still a thing. Sorry.
yes, but you have to understand this, because religious or cultural feelings are more important, than protection and being unharmed for some reason
This is the one thing where “the jews” is the correct answer.
Cutting of baby boy dicks is so deeply ingrained in Jewish culture that they just can’t stop, and if someone tries to they can throw the antisemitism card down and conversation over.
Even in countries with no notable Jewish or Muslim population (Nordics) it’s impossible to ban for some fucking reason. Finland can even prevent girls from being taken abroad if there’s suspicion they will get mutilated. Boys tho? Go ahead, cut/bite away, it’s fine - baby boys can’t feel pain!
You don’t even have to stop it, just do it to adults. 18yo men can decide for themselves if they want to cut off a piece of their genitalia.
Circumcision is also practiced by a large variety of non-Jewish, non-Muslim societies, especially in Africa and parts of Austronesia. And many forms of it in those cultures are far more dangerous and damaging than just snipping off a bit of foreskin: in particuar, subincision.
The same goes even more for female genital mutilation, which is practiced in some Muslim countries, despite most sects of Islam forbidding the practice. And again, it’s also practiced in a large number of non-Muslim cultures in the region too (where it probably originated).
Yea, in Africa it’s kinda weird since it’s cultural, but not religious.
None of these populations count for shit though when western countries try to ban genital mutilation
Hey, how else would one be able to repel demonesses or increase attractiveness to women?
The purpose of circumcision has been variously proposed that it began:
as a religious sacrifice; as a rite of passage marking a boy's entrance into adulthood; as a form of sympathetic magic to ensure virility or fertility; as an aid to hygiene where regular bathing was impractical; as a means of marking those of higher social status; as a means of humiliating enemies and slaves by symbolic castration; as a means of differentiating a circumcising group from their non-circumcising neighbors; as a means of discouraging masturbation or other socially proscribed sexual behaviors; as a means of increasing a man's attractiveness to women; as a demonstration of one's ability to endure pain; as a male counterpart to menstruation or the breaking of the hymen; to copy the rare natural occurrence of a missing foreskin of an important leader;[13][14] as a way to repel demonesses;[15] and/or as a display of disgust of the smegma produced by the foreskin.The argument that it’s a form of hygiene is a bullshit social-Darwinist retcon. Ritual purity has little to nothing to do with actual cleanliness.
It’s about tribal identity and a painful, humiliating initiation rite, just like many others practiced throughout the world.
And it’s utterly ineffective at repelling demonesses, unlike my penis-sheath gourd.
I’m so confused!
Have I been marked out as having higher social status and virility, or have I been symbolically castrated like a slave or enemy???
Yes? /s
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This happened in 2025, though.
OH, did we abolish the practice immediately after by enacting laws against it?
I must have missed that.
There is little to no medical advantages to genital mutilation for men nor women, that isn’t solved with good hygiene practices.
Its an archaic practice that needs to be eradicated globally when it isn’t strictly medically necessary or done to consenting adults.
See also: ritual dietary laws like the pork taboo. The Philistines ate pork. There’s no evidence that they were less healthy or had shorter lifespans than their neighbors. The ecological arguments are similarly fact-free-- no contemporary sources say even one word about it. And the Chinese, from ancient times, had dietary laws regarding pork: basically, don’t eat it raw or you’ll get sick. That was actually adaptive, but religious rituals often are not. They’re more about in-group conformity and social control-- oppression to serve the ruling elite. The idea that all those arbitrary laws were for your own good is a brainless Just So story that originated in Victorian Panglossian pseudoscience.
100%
I have no problem with circumcision being a facet of a fundamentalist faith practice, but making the decision for an infant is just admitting that, if you didn’t force people into it, it would be much less popular.
If you want people to cut the tips of their dicks off, it had damn well better be voluntary.
Mel is probably the only mohel who could convince adult me to “snip da tip!”
Died from…WHAT???
Dehydration, it seems.
Probably massive infection brought about by improper wound care. It’s an open hole in the skin that literally gets pissed on, and it’s right around the corner from the fudge factory in a part of the world where sanitation and hygiene are not exactly up to snuff.
It wasn’t snu-snu.
Hm, the last thread on this article went off the rails because of one person supporting genital mutilation. Let’s see how this one does
That’ll teach 'em to stop using chainsaws.
