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Not being circumcised meaningfully increases the odds of transmitting and contracting certain diseases, by around 50%ish (though reduces some, interestingly enough) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907642/] and increases the risk of UTIs significantly (by about 75%, albeit still not super common). [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6119846/]

Consider a world without antibiotics, and a UTI can become life threatening. Most STDs would be similarly restrictive to reproductive potential, as men are much less at risk than women, and many women would be taking quite a gamble having sex with someone known to have an STD.

Even today, PID can cause sterility in women and is not uncommon.

>Consider a world without antibiotics

In a world without antibiotics I’d rather not want anyone getting within 10 feet of my son’s penis with an unsterilized blade, thank you. Not to mention the whole “direct oral suctioning” tradition of some religious groups [1], which sounds like a recipe for spreading herpes and other goodies.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/safe-bris...

Considering in that world said child, with or without circumcising, often only had 50:50 odds of making it to adult hood, but if they were an adult, these things would matter?

You’d likely have others overrule you.

Such is society, or something.

Risk of death or permanent tissue damage due to poor medical practice long before a boy had any chance to reproduce isn't necessarily less significant than possible moderate transmission risk reduction for sexually transmitted diseases later in life [if they flouted strong social conventions against extra-marital sex]. Traditional societies hadn't figured out that cleaning tools between procedures reduced infections immediately afterwards obviously didn't know about the links between circumcisions and mildly reduced risk of certain rare ailments decades later.

You'd likely have others overrule you regardless, but the same applied when it came to unambiguously harmful quasi-medical procedures like FGM blood-letting.

If circumcision as a tradition gave cultures an evolutionary advantage due to medical benefit you'd expect that it would've spread farther, yet we see basically 1 small insular group and another much more recent, semi insular group adopt it. The vast majority of men on this earth are uncircumcised.

Foot binding probably led to reduced STD tranission as well, due to women being unable to leave the house and become sexually active (which was part of the reason for it), I don't think medical benefit is a good defense of violating a human beingst agency and bodily autonomy.

There are other cultures that have other circumcision traditions that are much more brutal, I don't see any arguments for their medical benefit, and I think this argument about medical benefit is a rationalization for defense of a cultural tradition after the fact.

Yeah, the Cool Penis Club.
Mushrooms > anteaters.
Probably increases male aggression as well.