The ear piercing thing isn’t really comparable to this. The holes will close if not used. You don’t grow back a foreskin if you don’t keep cutting it. That said, I absolutely think you should wait until the person who owns the body parts in question can say whether or not they want it done. There is a difference in medically needed surgery and cosmetic surgery. Circumcision is cosmetic surgery.
The purpose of circumcision in America was to stop masturbation in men. They believed it caused “Masturbatory Insanity”. Linking it to things like epilepsy. There is a marked loss of sensitivity with the loss of foreskin.
Source The shaft and glans are comparatively numb compared to the foreskin. The most sensitive part of a cut genital is the scar, where there are remnants of the foreskin.
On average circumcision kills around 117 boys in the US alone. This is more than accidental suffocation and car accidents combined. That isn’t botched circumcisions either, most of them were performed “correctly”. The deaths came from blood loss or infections. In a newborn the loss of 6oz(177ml) blood is fatal.
Circumcision has zero tangible benefits. Every single supposed benefit is either a lie, negligible, or are at greater risk from the circumcision than what it will reduce the risk of. In brief:
Phimosis: Not diagnosable until puberty. Circumcision should be the last emergency option to treat. More commonly treated with stretching and steroid creams.
STIs: The reduction in transference is negligible overall. The studies used to push this idea have well-documented flaws in both methodology and interpretation.
Penile Cancer: The absolute rarest form of cancer in men. There will be about 2320 new cases of it diagnosed this year. Circumcision may prevent about 1 new case per 900 circumcisions. Most cases of penile cancer are related to HPV. Getting your teen vaccinated against HPV will do more to prevent this than circumcision might do.
Hygiene: You do not need to retract the foreskin of a newborn to clean it. It cannot be retracted without doing serious damage to the infant. The foreskin is fused to the glans at birth and will be until puberty. Until then it’s like wiping off a boneless finger.
UTIs: Overall risk of UTI in boys is about 2%. The risk reduction is 1%. That isn’t cutting it in half, that’s a 1% fewer total UTIs. 1 in 50 boys will get a UTI, Circ will prevent maybe 1 in 500 boys getting a UTI.
Normally I would link to images on other sites showing examples, but given the current environment on Tumblr, I’ll have to trust you to google them, be warned you will see very graphic images.
Botched circumcisions take a wide array forms. Many of which won’t be detectable until puberty.
Adhesions: where skin from the shaft bridges to the glans.
Painful Erections: happen when too much skin is removed, this is often accompanied by tearing and bleeding.
Hairy Shaft: happens when too much skin is removed and scrotal skin is pulled up the shaft.
Buried Penis: where the penis is buried in tissue surrounding it despite being normal length.
Severed Glans: the accidental removal of the entire glans.
Severed Penis: the accidental removal of some or all of the penis.
There is actually a large and growing market for devices to “restore” foreskins. The functionality can be returned, the skin glide, dekeratinization of the glans, etc. But the sensitivity will never be restored because the nerve endings do not grow back. You can find several communities of men who are restoring.
Sorry, this is a huge info dump. It may meander a bit, but I’m quite tired. Feel free to ask questions.
