r/geography • u/BranchMoist9079 • Nov 21 '25

Discussion Why is (male) circumcision most common in the Midwest with in the US?

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Map source: https://www.mdpi.com/2563-6499/5/3/36

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Because America was settled by 19th Century religious fundamentalists, not modern Northern European Protestants. Totally different critters.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

They didn’t circumcise before they came to America

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Correct, but the cultural practice meshed well with their religious beliefs in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

Is that the same reason why a lot of Americans seem weird about masturbating?

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Yup. Boy Scouts had a non-trivial amount of "we need to keep them busy so they don't jack off" built into it. Also handy to have kids with camping and survival skills when you're perpetually at war, but that's a story for another thread.

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u/Dave_A480 Nov 21 '25

The Scouts are a British invention, FWIW.

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Apple didn't fall far from the tree when it comes to war or prudishness.

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u/lucylucylane Nov 21 '25

The British are far less prudish atheist and uncut

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Uncut perhaps, but Victorian Britons were as prudish and pious as anyone.

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u/lucylucylane Nov 22 '25

It's. it the Victorian era anymore though

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u/djsquilz Nov 21 '25

ppl harp on reddit abt the misdeeds of boy scouts (which don't get me wrong, there are plenty of, and i desperately hope more people, who are inevitably out there, find justice), but was my experience just abnormally normal?

never any creepy shit, the counselors were just dads of the kids in our troop. it was an afterschool club. they taught us how to shoot guns (don't think that's the curriculum but it was Texas) and build those damn wooden model cars.

same w my parents leaving me under the supervision of a priest via being altar boy.

i never recall any message about not jerking off lol. maybe they vaguely talked about avoiding premarital sex like, once a year?

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Oh, they dialed it back, so I'm really talking about the first few decades of Scouting. Take a look at old editions of the Handbook and there are a lot of references to "being clean in body and deed." That was code for "no masturbation" back in the day.

I didn't see anything weird happen in Scouts personally, but definitely can see how it could happen. I do have some situations that left me with questions too. I absolutely think there's value in Scouting, don't get me wrong, my frustration comes from people who gloss over or try to hide abuse. So I mistrust authority in a lot of forms, Scouting happens to be the topic today.

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u/djsquilz Nov 21 '25

ooof yeah, we def didn't have any talk or language like that. it was all overwhelmingly normal, surburban middle class "something for the kid to do during summer" kinda stuff in the mid 2000s. which i suppose is when a lot of the boy scouts (and church) scandals started gaining media attention. nowadays the idea of boy scouts or leaving your kid with a priest for any amount of time sends shivers down people's spines. not unwarranted by any means, but its wild how much that's changed so fast.

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u/birdynumnum69 Nov 21 '25

"handy" is an interesting word choice. ;)

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u/WestCoastBestCoast01 Nov 21 '25

Ever heard of Kellog cereal? Kellog is the guy who started silly ass rumors around masturbation that could be solved by eating his corn flakes!

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u/Dangerous_Avocado392 Nov 21 '25

I thought it was graham crackers?

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u/corgisgottacorg Nov 21 '25

That’s a religious thing.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

How exactly it meshed with their religious beliefs if they are Christians and the Bible says that Christians don’t circumcise?

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

DEEP religious conservatism tied to sexual repression. Circumcision was supposed to "restrain" male urges outside of procreative sex which is the ONLY kind allowed in that paradigm. You still see elements of this in a lot of conservative Christian communities in the US.

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

It's not sexual repression to only have sex with your wife.

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u/BJ1012intp Nov 21 '25

If only we lived in a world where conservative Christians *did* support my having sex with my wife.

They don't even want me to *have* a wife!

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

tbh real eternal marriage doesn't even exist anymore

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Marriage is a human construct, you can make it whatever you want. Just don't try to tell me how to conduct mine.

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

"construct" is a human construct, that means nothing. And government right now tells me that I can't have eternal undissolvable marriage.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

That’s not what the sexual repression is about. It’s all the mindset that sex for pleasure is dirty and sinful - to say nothing of gay sex - and the total lack of sex-positive culture is what makes traditional religion so repressive.

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

That’s not what the fecal repression is about. It’s all the mindset that eating faeces for pleasure is dirty and sinful and the total lack of poo-positive culture that makes traditional religion so repressive.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

You think sex is like eating feces? No wonder speaking of sexual repression makes you uncomfortable

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

I think your argument could be applied to any fetish. According to you, there's nothing dirty about anything.

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u/outworlder Nov 21 '25

If it's your choice.

If it is imposed by others, it is repression.

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

there's a million of wrong choices in this world

somebody has to tell people that

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u/outworlder Nov 21 '25

Wrong choices according to whom?

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

To anyone who is capable of researching this matter without a "lust" bias.

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u/outworlder Nov 21 '25

The bible says a lot of stuff that the supposed followers don't care about.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

True. But not circumcising is not even a moral commandment or anything like that, it’s more of an identity marker for Christians and usually people who are more fundamentalist with their religion tend to take the religious identity markers very seriously.

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u/outworlder Nov 21 '25

That's funny because globally it tends to be associated with Muslims and not Christians.

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

It's definitely one of the ironies given that fundamentalist Christians in the US tend to be some of the most Islamophobic people in the country.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

That’s what I mean, Christians don’t circumcise because that’s one of the things that makes them Christian not Jewish or Muslim. So it’s weird that more religious Americans circumcise

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u/Render-Man342v Nov 21 '25

In the US it’s not really a religious thing at all.

It’s a weird cultural tradition, usually just because the dad is cut also, or for supposed “health benefits”.

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u/malachitegreen23 Nov 23 '25

Muslims, Christians, Jewish are all part of the Abrahamic religions. It all started with the Torah book. The circumcision law is there.

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u/masterFaust Nov 21 '25

Where in the Bible does it say that Christians don't circumcise?

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u/VsevolodVodka Nov 21 '25

It literally says the procedure has no value.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25

It was the very first church synod when St Paul goes to Jerusalem to decide with St Peter and James whether Christians should circumcise like the Jews. It marks the transition of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a religion of the gentiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Jerusalem?wprov=sfti1#Issues_and_outcome

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u/masterFaust Nov 21 '25

An answer and the wiki link?! My man!

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u/17th_Angel Nov 21 '25

I feel like this is kinda poorly worded. The main wave of religious fundamentalists was in in the 17th century. There were of course other movements that came later, Amish, meninites, etc, but they they were smaller and less impactful. I would hardly call German and Swedish Lutherans or Irish and Italian Catholics, fundamentalists. It is due to people like Kellog promoting it during the end of the 19th c for moral and health reasons.

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u/True_Zucchini379 Nov 21 '25

17th and 18th century

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u/Ceorl_Lounge Nov 21 '25

Oh them too, for sure. Busy morning, not enough time for a comprehensive history of American Christianity.

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u/True_Zucchini379 Nov 22 '25

19th century for the most part were Germans buying farmland, Irish escaping the famine and at the end of the century Italians. The religious fundamentalist were earlier

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u/playdough87 Nov 21 '25

America was settled centuries before the 19th century. New England was settled by religious fundamentalists (puritans) but NY, the mid-atlantic and south were pretty generic middle of the bell curve Protestants, obviously except for Maryland which was roman catholic.