"If we have been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the
bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth... It's
simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been
taken." --Carl Sagan
To easily find relevant information, you may want to use the page search function (Press Ctrl F in most browsers). For easier linking, clicking any title will take you to that piece's own page. For easier browsing, each piece is also included on this page. Please feel free to link to or repost anywhere(forum, blog, your own site etc) any of the writings listed on this page. I only ask that if you repost a piece, that you include the original author's name if given.
Contents:
Selling Circumcision in America America's Forgotten History of Female Circumcision
Baby Foreskins for Sale Protecting Our Sons[with wife]
What are the Effects of Circumcision? Reasons to Circumcise Addressed The 'Heart' of the Issue The Psychology of Cutting Others Have You Been Indoctrinated? Circumcision as Ritual Initiation Is Routine Infant Circumcision Phallusy? Why We Should Put Down the Knife Considering Consensual(ie Adult) Circumcision?
Humanist Perspective on Neonatal Circumcision
Involuntary Ritual Amputation Among the Nacirema People
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Selling Circumcision in America By David Chamberlain Ph.D
Circumcision originated at least 6,000 years ago as a tribal and religious identity symbol in African and Semitic cultures. The ballooning of the practice in 20th century America, however, was the work of pediatricians and obstetricians who gave it new status as a "medical" procedure. Circumcision received a big lift from a nationally prominent physician, John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan (later a founder of the famous cereal company) who was obsessed with the evils of sex in general and masturbation in particular; he saw the painful ritual of circumcision as a discouragement. Kellogg's book, Plain Facts for Old and Young (1877) urged parents to have their boys circumcised without anesthesia--because the pain would have a "salutary effect upon the mind." Before long, the book was as common as his corn flakes in American homes.
Expressing a sharply opposing view, psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause (1991) finds circumcision one of the numerous acts of genital mutilation and violence perpetrated on infants and children in virtually every culture since the earliest times. Because it involves sexual mutilation in the family circle, DeMause claims it falls into the category of "incest" and should be seen as "an adult perversion." Other modern critics have labeled it a "betrayal of the innocent" and a "breech of trust" (Grimes, 1978; Janov, 1983). Anesthesiologist John Scanlon (1985) simply calls it "barbarism." Nevertheless, a century ago, under medical leadership, circum- cision swept through the male population. Medical circumcision became a uniquely American phenomenon. About 80% of the world's population never adopted the practice: This includes most of Europe, and populous countries like Japan, China, and Russia. Researcher Edward Wallerstein (1995) refers to circumcision as an American medical "enigma." A urologist estimates that 90% of American males currently living were initiated into life in this violent way. Significantly, for men, circumcision is where sex and violence first meet. Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller (1983) sees in this kind of cruelty the roots of social violence. Another physician of the day (Clifford 1893) enumerated the alleged dangers of the intact foreskin. These included penile irritation, interference with urination, nocturnal incontinence, hernia or prolapse of the rectum (from a tight foreskin!), syphilis, cancer, hysteria, epilepsy, chorea, erotic stimulation, and masterbation. This was the flimsy basis for selling circumcision to America--although none of it turned out to be true. In modern times, dire warnings are still dressed in medical language pointing to the normal foreskin as the source of sexual diseases, cancer, urinary infections, and even AIDS. Yet circumcision neither causes nor cures any of these conditions. The medical compulsion to perform the operation--usually without anesthesia--continues this long legacy of pain as many physicians are still turning a deaf ear to rational arguments from within their own profession (e.g. Grimes, 1978; Wallerstein 1985; Winberg et al. 1989; and Ritter 1992). The American record is unique. Meanwhile, as the trade flourishes, a humane trend is clearly visible in journal publications. Numerous articles have reported empirical measures of stress during circumcision, and compare procedures and anesthetics for pain (e.g., Kirya and Werthmann 1978; Yeoman, Cooke and Hain, 1983; Pelosi and Apuzzio, 1985; Masciello, 1990). In this professional literature, one can see a growing empathy for infants, full acceptance of their pain, serious doubts about performing circumcisions, and strong recommendations for anesthetics which effectively reduce pain (Williamson and Williamson 1983; Holve et al. 1983; Dixon et al. 1984; Stang et al. 1988; and Rabinowitz and Hulbert 1995). Perhaps this is a harbinger of what is to come, and a sign that the century of denial may be ending. A mix of cultural forces blur the future. In exploring the extent of physician influence on parental choice for circumcision, one study showed that when the doctor was opposed to circumcision, the rate fell to 20%, but when he was in favor, the rate was 100% (Patel 1966). In contrast, when four pediatricians in Baltimore did an educational experiment with pregnant mothers (Herrera et al. 1982), they were surprised at the results. While half had been taught the medical "risks and benefits" of circumcision and half received no information, virtually all the mothers opted for circumcision. The doctors concluded that deep cultural and traditional issues were working against a change in attitude in their group. Surveys examining parental motives for requesting circumcision have revealed these forces at work. Parents typically care about "appearances," yield to pressure from relatives to continue circumcising, and believe the propaganda about medical "benefits." They hold a variety of false notions that circumcision is mandated by hospitals, by public health law, or is required for admission into the Armed Forces (Patel 1966; Grimes 1978). And parents are not warned that their infants will endure severe pain and be robbed of a functional part of their sexual anatomy for life! In the United States, while circumcision has fallen below 60% it still touches the lives of over one million baby boys each year. ~*~
Mom, Baseball, Apple Pie and Circumcision by Donald Morgan The nonreligious circumcision (NRC) of American males is as American as mom, baseball, and apple pie. In fact, it is a uniquely American custom which is not duplicated in any other country in the world. While the vast majority of American males are circumcised, the vast majority of the world's males are not. The practice here, for example, contrasts sharply with that of the Scandinavian countries where NRC is not, and never has been, routinely practiced and where it is estimated that less than 5% of all males are circumcised. The current rate of NRC in the United States is now about 70%, down from its peak in the late 1960s when about 95% of all newborn males who were born in hospitals were circumcised. In some regions, notably the Midwest and the Northeast, the NRC rate remains at almost 90%. In others, notably California, it is considerably less. Still, NRC remains the norm in most areas of the country. This is especially true in the case of white, middle-class America. Few Americans likely realize that NRC was originally promoted in this country in the last half of the 19th century in an attempt to curb masturbation and the countless ills and dire consequences that were thought to be associated with it. Here is one of the many examples which could be cited reflecting the then current wisdom regarding masturbation: In all cases which male children are suffering nerve tension, confirmed derangement of the digestive organs, restlessness, irritability, and other disturbances of the nervous system, even to chorea, convulsions, and paralysis, or where through nerve waste the nutritive facilities of the general system are below par and structural diseases are occurring, circumcision should be considered as among the lines of treatment to be pursued. [Charles E. Fisher, M.D., A Handbook on the Diseases of Children ...., Chicago: Medical Century Co., 1895, p. 875]
In fact, there was hardly an illness or disease that could not
be, and was not, attributed to masturbation. In addition to
those previously mentioned, the list included insanity,
blindness, epilepsy, convulsions, tuberculosis--you name it.
Often, a drastic circumcision performed without anaesthesia was
the preferred "treatment." Dr. Kellogg, founder of the corn flake company bearing his name, had this to say: A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision.... The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering anaesthetic, as the pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. [John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., Plain Facts for Young and Old, Burlington, Iowa: F. Segner & Co., 1888, p. 295] It began to be noticed, of course, that circumcision did not always prevent or cure masturbation and that masturbation did not cause the numerous illnesses and dire consequences that had been attributed to it. Other medical justification was then found for continuing the practice of NRC. It was alleged, for example, that it made personal hygiene easier, precluded the need for circumcision at a later age, prevented cancer of the penis, lowered the risk of cervical cancer in one's partners, lowered the risk of prostate cancer, lowered the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), etc. The latest alleged benefits are a reduction in urinary tract infections (UTIs) in infant boys and HIV infections in adult men. The list of alleged benefits has grown so long that the mere presence of a foreskin would seem to be a major health hazard--a ticking time bomb about to destroy its owner and any female that might be unfortunate enough to come into contact with him. Because of this, it has not always been easy for an intact male to remain that way. Circumcision was and is often recommended by well-meaning physicians, certain that they are doing their patients a favor. Beginning in the 1970s, the prevailing medical wisdom regarding circumcision began to be questioned on a number of fronts. Many of the alleged medical benefits proved to be completely bogus. Most of the others turned out to be so negligible as to be offset by the disadvantages and risks. In 1971, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced its position that the routine circumcision of newborn males is medically unwarranted. This position was slightly modified in 1989 to reflect the fact that there are potential benefits as well as inherent risks, although the previously stated position that the routine circumcision of newborn males is medically unwarranted remained unchanged. Nevertheless, the practice of routine NRC was so firmly entrenched in American culture that the AAP's position had only a small impact on NRC rates. Many Americans continued to believe that there were significant health benefits. In addition, new justification based on psychological and cultural considerations was offered and is often used today in support of the continued practice of NRC. Many parents, for example, feel that it is important for a son to match dad, brothers, cousins, and/or peers. They fear that a boy may be teased and/or feel "different" if he is not circumcised. Many feel that it is simply more "aesthetic" to be circumcised. Many parents are also convinced that--even if there are no good reasons in favor of NRC--there are certainly no good reasons not to do it. Parents and physicians alike tend to see circumcision as a trivial operation with few if any contraindications. Unfortunately, most parents, and even many physicians, are unaware of either the frequency or seriousness of complications that are associated with circumcision. A recent study states that the realistic complication rate is about 5%. Considering that more than 1,300,000 boys a year undergo this procedure in the U.S., this means that every year 65,000 will suffer some sort of complication, and some of those complications will be serious. Circumcision complications and accidents do not often receive widespread publicity. Many times, nothing at all is reported in the media. For example, here in our own backyard just a few months ago, a La Conner infant (the son of the brother of a friend of the author's daughter) developed a severe infection as a complication of a "routine" circumcision on the fourth day of his life. This resulted in the loss of all the skin between the lower abdomen and upper thighs, inclusive. This unfortunate child has already undergone several surgeries with many more to come. Extensive pig-skin grafting will be done. There is little chance that he will ever achieve normal sexual function. This, by the way, is not the worst outcome that has been reported in the medical literature. Loss of a portion of or all of the penis--and even death--are not unheard of. Though such unfortunate consequences are quite rare, the potential for harm as a consequence of circumcision cannot be easily dismissed. Even when a circumcision is "normal," there is a loss involved. A recent study indicates that a typical circumcision removes tissue that not only plays an important part in the erogenous sensitivity of the male but is, in fact, more sensitive than that which is left. The prepuce provides a large and important platform for several nerves and nerve endings.... The glans, by contrast, is insensitive to light touch, heat, cold, and, as far as the authors are aware, to pin prick. Le Gros Clark noted that the glans penis is one of the few areas on the body that enjoys nothing beyond primitive sensory modalities. [The Prepuce, Specialized Mucosa of the Penis, and Its Loss to Circumcision, British Journal of Urology, February 1996, pp 291-5] Another consideration is the matter of pain. Although it was long believed that infants do not really feel pain, there are now a number of studies which prove otherwise. Newborn infant responses to pain are similar to but greater than those in adult subjects. [Pain and its Effects in the Human Neonate and Fetus, New England Journal of Medicine, November 19, 1987, pp 1321-1329] Many adults who have been present at a neonatal circumcision, typically performed without anaesthesia, have been so horrified at the obvious pain felt by the child that this alone has been enough to cause them to decide against NRC for their own son(s). There are a number of reasons, however, that neonatal circumcisions are usually performed without anaesthesia. There are still a number of physicians who insist that infants do not feel pain. Worse, it has recently been determined that the injection of local anesthesia into free tissue can cause serious and permanent vascular and nerve damage. And general anaesthesia is simply too risky to use in the case of neonates. In addition to all of these more obvious problems, there is also a human rights issue involved. Human rights activists feel strongly that every child has the right to an intact body. They believe that it is wrong for parents to seek, or physicians to engage in, genital surgery on children in the absence of a clear medical need. To remove normal, healthy, functional, erogenous tissue, from an infant or child who has not given informed consent is seen as a violation of the basic tenets of medical ethics. In February 1995, the AAP Committee on Bioethics released a statement on informed consent. The Committee stated that medical interventions should only be undertaken in situations of clear and immediate medical necessity, such as disease, trauma, or deformity. The Committee suggested that nonessential treatments which could be deferred without substantial risk should be postponed until the individual's consent can be obtained. The Committee's statement regarding unnecessary surgical procedures in the case of unconsenting minors seems to conflict with the AAP's position that routine, neonatal circumcision, though not medically justified, is a valid elective procedure that can be performed by its physician members in response to the simple, stated, aesthetic preference of parents. The human rights issue in regard to circumcision will be thoroughly explored at the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations which will be held in August, in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide will be presented. And, for the first time ever, the practice of routine circumcision in the United States will be specifically targeted. Humanitarians everywhere decry female genital mutilation, and rightly so. It is time to do the same with regard to the practice of unnecessary genital surgery on infants and boys.[This article was published in the June 1996 issue of Sound Views, monthly newsletter of the Humanists of North Puget Sound, La Conner, WA]
~*~
Onanism: Victorian America's Enemy by Ornella Moscucci Unease about masturbation began, as is well known, in the early eighteenth century, when a book appeared entitled Onania; or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (1707-1717) appeared anonymously in Holland and met with great success. By the middle of the century Tissot's famous treatise, On Onania: or a Treatise upon the Disorders Produced by Masturbation (1760), had given a scientific veneer to the new anxiety about the "solitary vice." Drawing on ideas about the wastage of bodily energy, Tissot argued that physical illness resulted from loss of semen, leading to general debility, consumption, deterioration of eyesight, disturbance of the nervous system, and so on. From 1800 onwards, the evils of masturbation were widely discussed in medical and moralistic texts; although attitudes to the practice were not monolithic, much was made of its physically and mentally deterious effects (see Hall; Hare; Engelhardt; Comfort). In essence, masturbation was less a vice than an antisocial activity, an egotistic enjoyment of pleasures that were the proper domain of heterosexual intercourse. (Lacqueur, Making Sex 227-30). Polluting and debilitating for the individual, it had a destabilizing effect on society, as it prevented healthy sexual desire from fulfilling socially desirable ends--marriage and procreation, which was the foundation of the social order. Belief in the horrors of masturbation was shared by doctors and patients. As Lesley Hall has shown for the later period (the 1920s), a large component of men's "hidden anxieties" related to the sense of disgust and self-loathing induced by masturbation: "folly," "mistake," "disease," were the words employed by men writing to Marie Stopes, the birth control pioneer, when they described their "addiction" to the pernicious habit of self-abuse. Such fears were easily exploited by a variety of groups with interests ranging from the religious to the commercial. Quacks were particularly active in the "treatment" of masturbation: posters, leaflets, handbills, and "anatomical museums" illustrating the dreadful consequences of onanism were widely used as marketing strategies, much to the concern of the medical profession, which was anxious to establish its own claims to the treatment of masturbation. In a letter to Lancet for 1857, for example, an anonymous doctor railed against the "spermatorrhoea imposture" that lay behind the peddling of contraptions such as the "American remedy" recommended as an infallible cure for masturbation. Retailing at two guineas apiece, the device consisted of a metal ring "with a screw passing through one of its sides, and projecting, into the center," which was to be applied to the part affected" at bed-time ("M.D."). Doctors on the whole favored less heroic means of stopping the habit. Strengthening the sufferer's moral and physical tone was the first line of defense; adjuvants included the avoidance of sexually arousing amusements, and temptations such as lolling in bed in the morning. Sometimes sexual intercourse was prescribed (with prostitutes if necessary) in order to redirect desire toward more constructive heterosexual ends (see, e.g., Cantlie, "Spermatorrhoea," "Masturbation", Copeland; "Quack advertisements" 124-26;159-60; 224-25). Occasionally, however, the severity of the case required a more robust approach. The application of caustics to the urethra was recommended in the mid-Victorian period in order to remedy the consequences of chronic masturbation, such as spermatorrhoea and impotence; vasectomy and castration were also practiced, although such radical therapies appear to have been more popular in the United States than in England. In 1870, the use of blisters was recommended by Lancet as a means of "keeping up slight soreness of the body of the organ...sufficient to render erection painful" ("Quack advertisements" 224). Interest in circumcision as a treatment for masturbation began to emerge in the 1850s. As the medical discourse on sexual hygiene gathered momentum, attention was focused on uncleanliness as a cause of masturbatory activity. The English physician James Copland, one of the first to advocate circumcision in the Anglo-Saxon world, claimed that masturbation was essentially an attempt to relieve, by friction, the "local irritations" caused by smegmatic accumulations under the prepuce. He recommended circumcision as a means of maintaining genital cleanliness, adding that the great physical resilience of the Jewish people was due to the observance of this "salutary rite" (III, 442; 445). By the end of the nineteenth century, the medical pleas for circumcision had become more insistent. The American physician Remondino, author of the best selling History of Circumcision, pitied the "unlucky and unhappy wearer of a prepuce": this "tight-constricted, glans-deforming, onanism-producing, cancer-generating" appendage, he claimed was an "unknown, undiscovered, and therefore unexplored region for some thousands of years," until the medical profession, venturing at last into this "Darkest Africa," had revealed the malign influence it exercised on its unwary victims (255-56) Parents could not make a "better paying investment" for their sons than circumcision: it was like a "substantial and well secured life-annuity," making for greater capacity for labor, a longer life, less nervousness, and fewer doctors' bills (186). Physicians such as Remondino had little difficulty in persuading their middle-class readers, who already appreciated the importance of hygiene and moral restraint: it was the observance of regular habits that ostensibly set the middle classes apart from the debauched aristocracy and the degenerate working classes, legitimating middle class claims to cultural hegemony. By the early twentieth century, circumcision had become common among the upper and professional classes in Britain and America. In the 1930s, the earliest period for which statistics are available, two-thirds of public-school boys were circumcised as compared to one-tenth of working class boys; the British royal family employed a Jewish mohel for the purpose as late as the end of 1948. By virtue of its association with filth and sexual excess, the prepuce had become a marker of inferior social status: already by the end of the 1890s an equation was being made in America between being "uncircumcised" and being "uncivilized." As Ronald Hyam has noted, circumcision was central to the late-Victorian re-definition of manliness in terms of sexual restraint and "cleanness." As the purity campaign gathered momentum in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the meaning of manliness shifted from the ideals of moral strenuousness and integrity to a cult of athleticism and robust virility. The offensive on male lust and the double standard of sexual morality presented masculinity as a never-ending battle requiring watchfulness and supervision: muscular Christianity was the goal, attainable through strict mental and physical discipline. Widely believed to dampen sexual desire, circumcision was seen positively as a means of promoting both the chastity and the physical health of the custodians of the empire ("Hygienic value," 271). The emphasis on sexual hygiene no doubt explains why a Jewish ritual like circumcision was adopted by the British ruling elite, notwithstanding the antisemitism of much Victorian culture: at a time of profound concern about the physical decline of British manhood, the resilience of the Jews in the face of adversity and persecution was held up as proof that sexual hygiene was the mainspring of a nations vigor. While George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) opposed the sustaining values of Jewish culture to the shallow conventions of contemporary Victorian society, doctors and politicians noted with envy the longevity and sturdiness of the Jews, testifying to the rarity of venereal disease, tuberculosis, and cancer of the penis in Jewish communities, as well as to the low levels of infant mortality, illegitimacy, and criminality. Over and over again, commentators attributed the physical and moral superiority of the Jews to the religious rituals and prescriptions observed in their culture (Remondino 161-82). In an influential article published in the Contemporary Review for 1903, Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, one the chief contributors to the turn-of-the-century physical deterioration debate, singled out childrearing practices as a factor contributing to the health and longevity of the Jews; although he did not recommend "stereotyped copying" of the Jews, he conceded that the rest of the nation had much to learn from them (Davin 16). The fact that circumcision had biblical sanction probably facilitated the spread of the practice in Christian Britain and America. The language of purity mobilized religious discourse, emphasizing the intimate connection between physical and moral health: circumcision showed that the divine law had scientific validation (Mort 109-12). WORKS CITED Cantlie, James. "Spermatorrhaea" A Dictionary of Medicine: Including General Pathology, General Therapeutics, Hygiene, and the Diseases Peculiar to Women and Children. Ed. R. Quain. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1882, II:144-50. Comfort, Alex. The Anxiety Makers: Some Curious Preoccupations of the Medical Profession. London: Nelson, 1967. Copland, James, "Pollutions," A Dictionary of Practical Medicine. 3 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1858. III: 441-48. Davin, Anne. "Imperialism and motherhood." History Workshop 5 (1978):9-66. Englehardt, Tristam. "The Disease of Masturbation: Values and the Concept of Disease." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 48 (1974):234-248. Hall, Lesley A. "Forbidden by God, Despised by Men: Masturbation, Medical Warnings, Moral Panic and Manhood in Great Britain, 1850-1950." Forbidden History: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe. Ed. J. C. Font. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 293-316. Hare, E.H. "Masturbatory Insanity: The History of an Idea." The Journal of Mental Science 108 (1962). Hyam, Ronald. Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992, 293-316. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. "M.D." "The Spermatorrhoea Imposture." Lancet 1 (1867): 25. Mort, Frank. Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1830. London and New York: Routledge, 1987. "Quack advertisements." Lancet 2 (1870): 72; 89-90; 124-26; 159-60; 224-25. Remondino, P.C. History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, 1900. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ornella Moscucci took her first degree in sociology at Bristol University and received a Ph.D on the history of British gynecology from the University of Oxford. Between 1987 and 1989 she worked on the history of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and subsequently held a post as Research Fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. Her research has focused on the history of gender, and on the development of obstetrics and gynecology since 1800. Dr. Moscucci is the author of The Science of Woman: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800-1929, and of "Hermaphroditism and Sex Difference: The Construction of Gender in Victorian England" in Benjamin, Science and Sensibility. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Citation: Moscucci O. Clitoridectomy, Circumcision, and the Politics of Sexual Pleasure. In: Eds: Andrew H. Miller and James Eli Adams. Sexualities in Victorian Britain. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1996: 63-65 (ISBN 0-253-33066-1). ~*~
America's Forgotten History of Female Circumcision In the USA, while involuntary female circumcision never became routine
like involuntary male circumcision became, it was promoted and done by some of the same doctors who were doing it to boys.
Clitoridectomy: Nineteenth Century Answer for Masturbation The following six excerpt quotes are from actual American medical journals:
"...that the girl who becomes irritable, disagreeable and hysterical
may become charming, interesting and possessed of all feminine graces
when her prepuce[clitoral hood] is forcibly peeled away from the glans
of the clitoris, and we have made a distinct step forward in
civilization..." [Is evolution trying to do away with the
clitoris? Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists Vol. 5, 1892, pp. 288-302]
“I for one have circumcised as many girls as boys, and always with happy results.”
[Circumcision of Girls. Journal of Orificial Surgery, Vol. 7, July 1898, pp. 31-33]
"Many neuroses and even psychoses have their origin in pathological conditions of the hood of the clitoris."
[Circumcision in the Female: Its Necessity and How to Perform It.
American Journal of Clinical Medicine, Vol. 22, No. 6, June 1915, pp.
520-523]
"Circumcision will relieve one of the greatest causes of masturbation" [Why not circumcise the girl as well as the boy? Texas State Journal of Medicine, Vol. 14, May 1918, pp. 17-19]
"The same reasons that apply for the circumcision of males are generally valid when considered for the female." [Circumcision of the Female. General Practioner, Vol. 18 No. 3, September 1958, pp. 98-99]
"If the husband is unusually awkward or difficult to educate, one
should at times make the clitoris easier to find[by amputating the
clitoral hood]." [Female Circumcision: Indications and a New Technique General Practioner, Vol. 20, No. 3, September 1959, pp. 115-120] * Here are three personal experiences:
Where is my clitoral hood? ”The other day I had one of many debates that I have with a particular man in my life. This debate is on how he tried to defend his newborn circumcision and his reasons why all boys should be circumcised. His final argument when he realized none of the standard careworn and overused ones were working?
"You are a woman without a penis so you really have no right to weigh in on this circumcision debate anyway."
It was then that I knew it was time to step forward and to stop hiding. I am thirty years old. I am white, not Middle Eastern or from Sudan or Malaysia or of the Muslim faith. My father is Irish Catholic. My mother is a Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism when she married my father. Both of my brothers are circumcised and my mother is adamant in her defense of their circumcision. I step out of the shower and I stand in front of the mirror and I look like your average European American, pale skin, red hair, green eyes. I am not your average woman though. I am circumcised.
I am a white American, non-Muslim woman who was circumcised as a toddler by the same pediatrician that circumcised my brothers and at the same hospital at which I was born. I have no clitoral hood and only a V shaped scar and the tiniest bit of inner labia they were kind enough to leave behind. I always knew something was different. I have a half sister seven years my senior and she had a normal looking vagina. Mine always looked wrong to me but I never said anything because after all, every woman is unique and different.
I also have this vague and disturbing memory from when I was two and the most uncomfortable sexual feeling even at a young age around male doctors. When I married young to my now ex-husband on our honeymoon he said, "I have never seen a vagina like yours! It is amazingly perfect, too perfect, like something is missing." That too perfect vagina was most certainly missing something, and would cause me serious sexual issues that I chalked up to a sexual assault at the age of eighteen. If only I had know that it had been assaulted by a knife long before that perhaps I could have come to terms much sooner. It was only as I was nearing my late twenties, had been divorced and had other sexual partners all of which commented in some way or another on the difference of my vagina, that I had an uncontrollable urge to dig deeper. Then at a well woman check up with my now favorite Ob/Gyn he told me or rather asked me why I was a circumcised female. He felt awful when he realized that I did not know and he had assumed I had consented to vaginal cosmetic surgery. As an aside I am happy to report that because of my experience and continued dialogue with him he is now against MGM (Male Genital Mutilation) a practice he used to support. After months of demanding, digging, and putting my foot down I obtained the records from my birth that told me nothing but did lead me to my childhood pediatrician. Those records revealed the ghastly truth of a two-year-old girl circumcised at her mother's request. In sadness I confronted my mother and was adamantly told that she had always done what was best for her children and had no regrets but did not want to speak of it. I made an appointment to speak to the now retired physician only to have him move away before I could speak with him. I am still searching for him. I know he was an old friend of my parents who also did my brothers' bris. Surely he will know why my mother would request such a thing for her daughter. My father remains largely silent on the issue. "You know your mother," is the only answer I receive from him. When my son was born I was young, I had familial and societal pressure. But I did NOT allow him to be assaulted with a knife . As a mother all that was in me cried out to truly research and know that genital mutilation is not okay. And now I know that not only as a mother but also as a survivor of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) every instinct told me not to allow him to be cut. I will speak out against MGM because just like those innocent baby boys my prepuce has been removed. Can I orgasm? Yes I can. Within about sixty seconds of sexual contact I orgasm. Sounds good right? WRONG. After I orgasm I experience oversensitive raw pain for the duration of the sexual contact. There is no hood to protect my clitoris. I may very well be the only woman out there who is looking for a partner who is a "one minute wonder" to spend the rest of my life with. Even now, years later, clothing, undergarments, contact... all of these irritate my overexposed clitoris. I also have to deal with the fact that if I choose to have a new sexual partner I will deal with the inevitable comments and questions which leave me feeling unattractive and just plain wrong down there. So I say: I DO have a right to speak out against MGM and I will continue to do so. I know the continued frustration and all that is missing due to being circumcised and no baby, boy or girl, should ever have to live with this choice being forced upon him or her.”
~V. Burns
*
Healing the Trauma of American Female Genital Mutilation I am a white, anglo-saxon, protestant woman who was circumcised in the USA in the 1950’s. Some women advocate routine infant circumcision for males while decrying FGM in Africa. I cannot advocate cutting anyone, ever, for any reason. What follows is my story. Thank you for reading it with an open heart. As far as I can tell, I have scars on my labia set at 90 degree angles where flesh obviously met metal, and a “V”-shaped scar where a clitoris used to be. An expert on female genital anatomy told me I was also missing my clitoral hood. My parents are both dead so I can’t ask them for details, but I have pieced events together and it seems to make sense that I was cut in two stages: the labia when I was one year old, and the clitoris and hood when I was six. I didn’t find out about it until I was over 50 years of age, so I lived in a bit of hell for many, many years. My early photos show that I was the happiest of children — until I was in the first grade (see the photos on my website). Then a cloud came over me and after that time photos were full of anger, resentment and rejection. I lived that way for decades. I wanted to be dead. I rejected everyone and everything. I ran away or pushed away everyone who tried to love me… and I had no idea why. I was miserable and thought it was “normal”. I couldn’t understand how people could be happy and love each other. I had few friends. Although I usually had a boyfriend, I was always was exceedingly lonely. I am grateful that I did not turn to alcohol or drugs. A brush I’d had with an angelic voice when I was a little girl let me know suicide was not an option. Eventually, I learned all I could about healing. But nothing seemed to help me out of my own empty anger and grief. No one could understand me, including myself. And then — a miracle! — I was wondering why most “men” were so different from most women and I realized that most of the men in the United States had been traumatized, when they were just babies, by circumcision. How cruel!. I was shocked, appalled, aghast. Due to my crisis counseling work, I knew that such a terrifying event could ruin an entire life. I felt quite safe around the people I met who were clear about not cutting children and I began to work with them to prevent circumcision. After I’d been involved for a couple of years, through a series of interesting “coincidences,” I discovered that I too had been circumcised. I had lost my clitoris, clitoral hood and labia. All of a sudden, my life made perfect sense. Knowing that I had been traumatized made sense of my feelings and behavior. A year or so ago, I met a wonderful therapist who was safe enough that I could allow myself to think about my childhood and piece together the memories. Healing the trauma came fairly quickly after that. After 50 miserable years, my little black cloud evaporated. I look in the mirror now and I see the happy smile I’d lost at age six. I am happy, at last, to be alive. I found that I was always good at handling emergencies, so I specialized in dealing with people in trauma… at a crisis center and in private practice as a hypnotherapisst. This gave me a good background for dealing with my own situation when I discovered I’d been mutilated. My entire life was hell before I found out I’d been cut, so when I found out, a lot of bad old feelings actually went away.. So I am hoping that healing can begin for many of my sisters and brothers who are still unaware that they were traumatized as children. Until they know the horror of it, and until they release the fear and terror around it, they might just be wondering why they kick the dog, throw the cat against the wall, yell at the wife, beat the kids, hate the boss, and frantically accumulate wealth to the detriment of their own integrity. I hope this blog and my book will plant seeds of hope for your healng and/or compassion for the overwhelming number of people—both men and women—who have had this awful thing happen to them. I am hoping to find out, by way of a book I wrote (and this blog), how many American women in the United States have been subjected to female genital mutilation. I suspect there are far more than we would ever imagine. I hope, if you were cut, you will get in touch with me. I am sorry it happened to you, and we can support each other in the process of healing the mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds… maybe we can ever figure out, like men have, how to restore our bodies to their original function. If you would like, you can read more about my book here: http://rapeofinnocence.com/2010/12/17/fgm-circumcision-in-the-usa/. I hope you will enjoy it and it will be of value to you. * Missing Pieces of Myself I am a 57 year old, white, Canadian, Anglo-Saxon woman of Irish/English decent, non-religious but deeply spiritual. My story is still in the rough stages. It has only been a matter of weeks since I became aware that I am missing a couple of genital “pieces”. The new awareness has certainly answered many questions for me, and explained a lot about who I am. I was flipping through a book when I came across a picture of two fingers holding onto a clitoris. Impossible! They were describing the head of the clitoris as a wee button. No way! I got out a mirror and studied myself ever so carefully. I have done self explorations before, and pictures in books never looked like me. My conclusion was always that there was something wrong with the pictures! Not this time. I got onto the web, and studied as many pictures as I could find. I couldn’t find one that looked like me. I called my youngest sister. She was adamant that there was a tangible something in the clitoral region, known as the clitoris. You could touch it. It felt good to touch. Interesting. I called a childhood friend with whom I still talk regularly. She agreed with my sister. I called my other sister—two years younger. She would have nothing to do with any self-exploration, she wasn’t interested, sex had always been painful, could we change the subject, please. I have reason to believe she too endured a “cut.” Anyway, further research on the net turned up a procedure called a clitoridectomy.From my research I determined that this procedure was quite common in the 1800’s, less common in the early 1900’s, yet still being conducted in North America into the mid-fifties, was covered by Blue Cross until mid ’70’s, and not completely banned in the U.S. until 1996. Although the tone of this paragraph sounds all whitewashed and devoid of emotion, my whole being was coming apart as I dredged up this data. I was beginning to open the door to a truth which I had somehow managed to bury just under the surface of my consciousness. Flashbacks began. I remembered, as a child of 3 or 4, having “something” I could hold on to down there. Being of insatiable curiosity, I questioned my mother about it—as I did for just about everything that entered my line of vision. She was a staunch Roman Catholic of the extreme variety, hung up on sex and particularly masturbation. Somehow she managed to turn my question around to understand that somehow I was upset, disturbed and did not want this thing I was giving my attention to. She could make me “nice and pretty” and in this manner she solicited my agreement. I recall nothing of the actual procedure, but I have had flashbacks of events after the procedure. I recall sitting on the toilet seat and my mother tending the area, and telling me I was “nice and pretty” now. The “tending” happened over numerous occasions. At the point I was having the above flashbacks, there was still a place in me which wanted to believe I was making all of this up. However, I had another friend who I had shared my concerns with. She had been sexually abused, and as part of her healing process, she had attended a women’s workshop, where they did shared self-exploration as part of getting to know and love their bodies. So she had seen many clitoris’s and felt that perhaps mine was simply small enough that somehow I just couldn’t find it. We arranged a show and tell. She couldn’t find it either! It seems that the “head” of the clitoris is missing. The rest is still in place. She noticed something else. Part of the clitoral hood was missing! There is no scar tissue, no discolouration …nice and pretty! That same night, as I was in the place between waking and sleeping, I experienced the most intense pain in the genital area. I could actually feel the places …which are not there! Because this experience was not a fleeting thing, taking nearly a half hour to subside, it left no question that my suspicions were true. I had yet another flashback about trying to tell my mother how much it hurt, and how it hurt to pee. It hurt for the longest time. I remembered confusion, connected to pain, connected to my mother. My mother always used corporal punishment to discipline us and she began her disciplining as soon as we could crawl. I associated pain and my mother with being a bad girl. I believe I spent the rest of her life trying desperately to please her, so that I would never endure this pain again. Then I married her clone and spent 31 years of marriage following the same pattern. Now that the pain has resurfaced, it feels like it has always been there. Anytime I want to direct my attention to that area I can feel the places …which are not there! When I am very tired the pain returns like a nagging headache. I am amazed at the degree of denial I had to exert in order to block the pain and the memory. Something I do remember vividly is that when I reached puberty, my mother took me to the doctor without any notice or explanation where I was subjected to a visual genital exam. There I was at 12 or 13 years of age, on the examining table, fully displayed for the doctor and my mother. who were at the end of the table, discussing and pointing at my genitals. This was so totally unexpected, I was so embarrassed and humiliated, that all I could hear of their conversation was Charlie Brown’s Blah! Blah! Blah! As we were leaving the doctor’s office I asked her why I had the examination, and she told me it was “none of my business!” I can only conclude that for whatever reason related to puberty there was a need to check up on their handiwork. I have always been a deep thinker with an insatiable curiosity. So I have noticed a number of things about myself which I could attribute to this early childhood trauma. For instance, I have always noticed myself not being fully present in the moment. Whenever the going gets rough, I get going, right into some sort of comatose-like, dissociative state where I am not fully present, not fully alive. Could this be a learned behaviour from a childhood trauma? Although I am 57 years old, there is a little girl in me who has never grown up, who is “unsure” of herself, who is easily frightened, who second guesses absolutely everything I do and say. I have done enough personal growth work that I can actually “feel” her. She is ever longing for parental love and approval. So sensitive, always needing reassurance. Years ago, a mentor once said to me how she gave me credit for all my accomplishments, but was very aware of a part of me which was still so childlike. She asked if I could explain it. I knew what she was talking about, but pretended I didn’t because I couldn’t explain it and was embarrassed by it. Can I explain it now? Is it arrested development as a result of childhood trauma? Will I be able to get a handle on it now? It has definitely stood between me and fully coming into my own as an adult. And sexually speaking? Sometimes one will never know, what one never knew. I wasn’t a tomboy, but I didn’t go through the girly-girly phase either. I had no longing to dress up, make up and strut my stuff. I didn’t understand flirting. I didn’t understand the chemistry thing that happens between teens when their hormones are raging. My ex-husband picked me out of a group of girls I was with, and decided that very night that I would be his wife. I was flattered beyond words that some guy would actually pin point me in this way. I was 21, and there had only been one casual boyfriend in my entire young life. I was in love with love, and we were married a year later. In my limited opinion, he was a highly sexual man. The little girl in me wanted to be everything he wanted me to be. Perhaps that is where the real problem was! Psychologically perhaps, I just never grew up enough to be a sexually mature woman. Like I said, perhaps I will never know, what I never knew. * Here are some videos giving an overview and three personal experiences: ~*~
Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights
By: Lisa Donaldson
Genital mutilation, both male and female, has been present in society since ancient times. Today it is present throughout the world, with some forms being readily accepted into educated western societies. While cases of female genital mutilation spark public outcries, it is interesting to note that male circumcision does not, despite involving hurting innocent minors, having negative repercussions on the child and, in most cases, providing no medical benefits. In fact there are very few cases where genital mutilation is performed for medical reasons, which contradicts the doctors oath, thus making doctors who perform circumcisions and the like, hypocrites. This, and the fact that it directly contradicts parts of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the basis of many people’s protests about the practice. Mutilation is defined as being “Disfigurement or injury by removal or destruction of any conspicuous or essential part of the body” (Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 26th Edition, 1995). This definition includes male circumcision, as many practitioners believe the foreskin is an essential part of the male genitalia. Medical science has recently rediscovered that the prepuce is the principal location of erogenous sensation in the human male and that removal of this prepuce substantially reduces the sensitivity of the area (History of Circumcision, page 1). Only in rare occurrences where the foreskin does not naturally retract is circumcision a medically based surgical procedure (Price, 1996). Some side effects of circumcision include intense pain, death due to haemorrhaging or infection and loss of sexual pleasure. The pain experienced by babies during circumcision has been described as among the most painful procedures performed in neonatal medicine and of a level which would not be tolerated by older patients. There have been more fatalities linked to circumcision than there have been for penile cancer, which it was once believed that circumcision cured (Price, 1996). In the case of female genital mutilation, there is no evidence to suggest it might be medically beneficial in any way, and can cause serious medical problems and even death due to complications directly resulting from the procedure (Abdallah, 1982; Dareer, 1982). The possible side effects of female genital mutilation are numerous. They include urine retention, haemorrhaging, infection, pain, menstrual complications, infertility, loss of sexual pleasure or inability to perform sexual intercourse, death and psychological disturbances. In some cases, babies have been seriously harmed during prolonged labour, due to circumcision, resulting in brain damage or death of the child (Abdallah, 1982). Genital mutilation is usually performed as either a religious ritual or to gain acceptance within the society. While the UN Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the freedom to practice their religion, many people object when the rituals involved in practicing a religion involve hurting another human being, especially a minor. Mere assertion that ritual circumcision is seen as a religious duty is equally valueless in discharging the burden of proof: it may provide a reason but it does not provide a justification, or in other words it may explain but does not excuse. Price, 1996, page 4 While everyone has the freedom to practice their religion, in the case of doctors and members of society (ie midwives etc) performing genital mutilation on children, several rights as listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights are denied. One example is Article 5, which states that “No one shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” (United Nations, 1998). These are also rights, which are broken according to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In fact, part 2 of Article 2 states that “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, or family members.” Not only that, but it also contradicts another body of international law and standards: Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Bearing in mind that the practice of genital mutilation breaks at least three international documents listing the rights of every human being, one is forced to ask why medical practitioners still perform male circumcisions. By doing so, they risk labelling themselves as hypocrites for going against one of the fundamental elements of their oath, which they take before becoming doctors. Price quoted it in his research paper on circumcision and renamed it the Hippocratic Oath: The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgement, and not for their hurt or for any wrong…. Whatsoever house I enter, there will I go for the benefit of the sick, refraining from all wrongdoing or corruption. This was labelled as hippocratic as circumcision is not a medically beneficial procedure in most cases. One also has to wonder why so little action is being taken on this matter throughout the world, and why the practice has remained so widespread. In America 60% of newborn males in 1996 were circumcised and 10% in Australia (History of Circumcision, page 3). Female circumcision rates are well above 70% in some African countries, including Sudan (Dareer, 1982). While laws may have been passed preventing circumcision and female genital mutilation in some areas, inadequate law enforcement has rendered the legislation irrelevant and useless (Dareer, 1982). Clearly this is an issue which needs to be globally addressed and enforced in order to protect our children. With the facts stated here, it is my belief that genital mutilation, both male and female, is very much and issue which again needs to be addressed on a global scale, as it was in 1989 with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every day this issue goes unaddressed more children are violated and scarred for the rest of their lives, and their rights, as set out in the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on the Rights of the Children are violated. It is also my belief that circumcision should be a procedure performed for medical reasons only, unless the person undergoing the operation is legally old enough to decide for himself. It then releases doctors from performing a procedure that goes against their ethics, thus freeing them from the stigma of being labelled hypocrites. Genital mutilation is a matter for global consideration as it is a global problem. Bibliography Abdallah R. H. D., 1982, Sisters in Affliction, Zed Press, LondonDareer A., 1982, Woman, Why Do You Weep, Zed Press, London
Female Genital Mutilation Network, 1999, The Basics
Forward USA, 1999, Female Genital Mutilation
History of Circumcision
Price C., 1996, Male Circumcision: A Legal Affront [Online, accessed 9 Nov 1999]
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/price-uklc/ Shanahan J., 1997, Australian Circumcision Rates http://www.cirp.org/library/statistics/Australia UNICEF and the Medicalization of Female Genital Mutilation, 1999 United Nations, 1998, Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~*~ By Harriet Washington
When Fauziya Kasinga, 19, of Togo sought U.S. asylum to escape female circumcision, it was impossible not to sympathize with her plight. No one should live in fear of having parts of her genitals sliced off against her will. Yet I was uncomfortable with the ethnocentric tone of those who criticized female circumcision in Africa as "a twisted entry into adulthood." They seemed to forget that nearly 60 percent of the newborn boys in the United States undergo a similar ritual. K. Anthony Appiah, professor of African-American Studies and philosophy at Harvard, agrees that notions of cultural superiority may be at work but says that-acknowledging that doesn't necessarily imply support for other cultures' traditions. "...I think you can agree that there is ethnocentrism there while still thinking [female] circumcision is a bad idea." Atlantic Monthly magazine smugly described female circumcision as "the sort of problem that until now Americans have never had to confront, " which must surely be news to the thousands of men in the burgeoning U.S. movement against male circumcision. Bills barring female circumcision on U.S. soil and barring trade with African countries that allow it have been presented, and African women are portrayed as helpless victims on whom barbaric violations are perpetrated. But one observer tells how women in northern Sudan successfully opposed men's attempt to change their type of female circumcision to a less severe form. "People complain about the practice without asking women themselves the obvious questions such as `What does it feel like?'" Appiah points out. "Also, the arguments against female circumcision focus on sexuality rather than medical problems such as infections and infertility. In many of these cultures, the focus on orgasms strikes people as overdone." Ifeyinwa Iweriebor, formerly of Black Women in Publishing Inc., sums it up: "The language and tone of the outcry in most cases reflect a total lack of respect for the culture of other peoples." News stories refer to "female genital mutilation," a judgmental term that lumps together many different types of female circumcision. For example, in clitoridectomy, the clitoris is nicked; in excision, the clitoris and labia majora are cut off; in infibulation, the labia majora are cut off and the sides are stitched together, leaving a small opening for urination. Before the wedding night the woman's genitals have to be cut open. "Infibulation is really horrendous. But in the politicization of female circumcision, all operations are reduced to that," says Corrine Kratz, of the Institute of African Studies at Emory University. She says that the Okiek women in Kenya with whom she has worked and lived "are not circumcised until after they reach sexual maturity and are often in a position to compare pre-and post-circumcised sex." Yet circumcised women "speak of sex with relish." Some women insist that female circumcision enhances sexuality. Muslims, Christians and Jews in 28 African countries practice female circumcision, and it was performed in Andean, Australian, Bedouin, Malaysian, Indonesian and ancient Roman cultures, says Asha Samad Matias, director of Women's Studies at the City College of New York. Twenty percent of the world's males are circumcised -- the prospect appalls many of the rest. There are no medical reasons for male circumcision, and although removing an infant's foreskin is much less radical than infibulation, critics decry a loss of sexual sensitivity and the risks of infection, mutilation of the penis and even death. They also are concerned about an early association of pain with sexuality. But we in the U.S. tend to associate male circumcision with normality, sexual presentability and cleanliness -- exactly the reasons offered by some defenders of female circumcision. How can we cast aspersions on their cultural rituals without questioning our own bloody rites? An old adage about stones and glass houses comes to mind.
An FGM researcher compares MGM cultural justifications:
Human Genital Mutilation Classification Chart:
Female Circumcision and Male Circumcision, Is There A Difference?:
Common Denominators between Male & Female "Circumcision":
Underlying Justifications in the US and Africa:
Side-by-side Comparison of official AAP positions:
Contrast and compare FGM and MGM:
America's Forgotten History of Female Circumcision: ~*~
Culture, Gender and Child Genital Cutting Female genital cutting or circumcision (FC) is a cultural practice that
is widely disputed around the world. More controversially, it is
referred to as FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). It is practiced mostly
in Muslim African countries and has been banned by law in many
countries around the world. (Dietrich) FC was also common in Victorian
England (Henslin 275). FC can involve any alteration of the labia or
clitoris in carrying degrees ranging from a ritual pinprick of the
clitoris to removal of the clitoral hood (or prepuce) to full
infibulations involving the removal of all external genitalia and the
suturing of the vagina (Dietrich). American society and the societies
of other industrialized nations generally find FGM barbaric and strive
to eliminate this heinous act.
In the US, the alteration of a female’s genitals to any degree without her consent is illegal and punishable by jail time and a fine (US Federal Law 18.1.7.116). However, male circumcision (MC), more controversially termed MGM (Male Genital Mutilation), is legal and accepted, even though it involves the alteration of the genitalia, specifically the removal of the male foreskin (or prepuce). Doctors or rabbis perform male circumcisions in America. Contrary to popular belief, FC is also often performed by a doctor or religious figure, but the recent intolerance of female cutting has brought about more family or home cuttings (Hayford). The non-consensual removal of the prepuce is illegal for females, yet legal and accepted in the US for males. Some people may think that the two practices are performed for different reasons, making male circumcision justifiable and female circumcision unjustifiable. However, the social and cultural ideas surrounding female circumcision in countries that practice it bear striking resemblance to those surrounding male circumcision in the U.S. "Circumcised parts are cleaner and more attractive" This is a common way of thinking in regards to both male and female circumcisions in the US and Africa. Eric K. Silverman notes in an article that a common rationale for FC is that "Uncircumcised female genitals are unclean and impure." (421).This is congruent with America’s general view of uncircumcised men. There is a stigma surrounding the foreskin, and many believe it to be dirty or a carrier of disease. As a result, many infant boys are routinely circumcised for assumed reasons of cleanliness. Routine MC is the most common surgery in America, and only 10% are done for religious purposes (Watterstien, 126). Many Americans consider it a preventative surgery as they are convinced that their child will have problems with their foreskin and need to be circumcised as an adult. However, less than 1% of intact men require a circumcision for medical purposes as adults ("Summary"). Studies on the history of MC and FC also show that both practices were implemented in several different cultures to mark a child or adolescent with femininity or masculinity. The removal of the clitoris marks the removal of female parts that can represent or correlate to male genitalia. The suturing of the vagina feminizes the womb and is believed to retain the freshness of the woman to be pure for her husband and for child-bearing (Lightfoot-Kline). In males, the removal of the foreskin also marked the shedding of all things feminine on the male body, the separation from the womb and from the mother, and showed masculinity in the remaining scar. The exposed glans is considered a symbol of manhood (Silverman). In FC nations, women often feel adamantly about having their infant girls operated on. They feel that if the girl is left natural, she will suffer for life because no man will want her as her external genital tissue is considered unfeminine (Hayford). They also feel that the tradition should be continued, and if the mother has been circumcised, so should the daughter (Fourcroy). American parents feel strongly about having their infant boys operated on, for similar reasons. They feel that he will suffer in finding a mate and desire the boy’s genitals to resemble his father’s. Both cultures cite tradition as reasons to perpetuate ancient rites. The society involvement on both sides is tremendous, since it is believed in both cultures that the non-circumcised individual will have social hardship with the opposite sex due to their intact genitals. Both cultures also believe that the surgery is relatively painless and that their children will not remember the procedure. In a comparison chart composed by Hanny Lightfoot Kline, the view on clitori..omy is "She loses only a little piece of the clitoris, just the part that protrudes. The girl does not miss it. She can still feel, after all. There is hardly any pain." The comparison chart also displays the American view on routine infant circumcision: "It’s only a little piece of skin. The baby does not feel any pain because his nervous system is not developed yet."("Comparison") The chart also displays views on cleanliness in both societies Circumcision as a means of control Sometimes the practice of MC is downplayed when compared to FC since a common view is that FC is used as a means of male control over women. It ensures that a woman is a virgin when she marries, and clitori..omy reduces sexual pleasure (Henslin, 275) This was thought to increase a woman’s faithfulness to her family and keep her mind clear of "unnecessary" things, such as personal pleasure. While these reasons may have initiated the practice, FC in some societies has become so common that the initial purpose is only a memory. The practice perpetuates because it is "normal" and socially accepted. For example, 97 per cent of women in Egypt are circumcised (Henslin, 274). This may seem outrageous, but consider that 60% of American males are circumcised as well (Grossfeld). While this number has dropped from its early-70’s percentage of 95 (Grossfeld), it is still high considering the world circumcision rate is only 15% (Watterstein). We rarely associate MC with control over boys, but the history of routine circumcision in the US shows otherwise. Circumcision was virtually unheard of among non-Jewish Americans until the late 1800’s. A popular and respected doctor of the time, John Harvey Kellogg, wrote an article about the rising problem of sexual deviancy and masturbation. In this article, he wrote: "A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author had found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement." (Kellogg 295) In the 1970’s, a urological textbook called Campbell’s Urology recommends circumcision as a means to control masturbation. (Darby) Other popular beliefs in America in the 1800’s were that foreskin caused degenerative disease, reflex neurosis, and that the ejaculation of sperm was a life-threatening disease. To prevent these conditions, doctors readily performed circumcision with no anesthesia. There is much evidence that MC became popular in the US as a means of sexual control. (Darby)These theories and beliefs about the therapeutic effects of circumcision have long since been disproved by science and laughed at by modern Americans. Yet the practice continues, even though female genital alteration has been not only forgotten, but made illegal in the US. Medical Benefits and Risks While it is difficult to impossible to find medical benefits of FC, a quick search of the internet will give you several benefits of MC. There have been suggestions that FC, like MC, reduces urinary tract infections in the first year of life. But the AAP specifically states that data regarding the benefits of infant MC are not strong enough to recommend the procedure as a routine surgery. (Rose) Many state Medicaid programs and insurance companies have even removed routine MC from the list of procedures covered; making it an elective, cosmetic procedure ("Summary").However, unlike FC, MC is still legal in the US. FC nations believe that the clitoris and unsutured vagina can cause everything from impotence in their men to poisoned breast milk. American journalists have also uncovered many "health risks" to having a foreskin, such as causing cervical cancer in their women. (Lightfoot-Kline).Many people also believe that there is a huge risk for penile cancer to intact men, and that both penile and cervical cancers spontaneously arise simply from the presence of foreskin. Yet the routine circumcision of infants is still not recommended by any medical organization in the world because there is not enough evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks for both surgeries are almost identical. Besides the obvious loss of healthy tissue, risks for FC include shock, bleeding, infection, infertility, and death. (Henslin 274). Risks for MC (besides loss of healthy tissue) include shock, bleeding, infection, penile necrosis (complete death of the tissue of the entire penis, making it non-functional), and death (Milos, Macris, 92s). Placing FC and MC Side by Side Ask any American what he or she thinks of FC and the answer
will most likely be that it is disgusting or barbaric. For most of us,
everything we know about the practice is what the media shows us. This
is interesting, because for most of us, the only things we really know
about MC is what the media shows us. We don’t consider that our reasons
for perpetuating MC are almost identical to those that perpetuate FC.
After all, we are a "civilized nation", and we would never do anything
as disgusting as FC. The fact is that both practices are violations of
human rights, whether done religiously or culturally. The US prides
itself on religious freedom and bodily freedom, yet we routinely
infringe on the religious and bodily rights of our male children. How
can we fight for the bodily freedoms of women and girls in FC nations
if we continue to exert our idea of normalcy on our own boys without
their consent? While there are new studies being published almost daily regarding HIV studies and circumcision, cancer and circumcision, infection and circumcision, none of these studies hold enough weight to change the recommendations of the AAP, the AMA, and the WHO. None of these major medical groups implement a policy of prescribing preventative circumcision. Yet small risks such as urinary tract infection and penile cancer are blown up and made the center of the debate. The fact is that circumcision reduces the risk of UTI in the first year of life, but the odds are still very small. The risk of UTI for an intact child is 1 in 100, while the risk for a circumcised child is 1 in 1000. Baby girls have an even higher risk of UTI because of the placement of the urethra, but rather than circumcise them, doctors prescribe antibiotics (Summary). Why the dualism? Why can we not recognize our primitive traditions and eradicate them as we are attempting to eradicate the primitive traditions of other cultures? If we can’t take a step back and realize that our own practices are just as bad as the ones we condemn, how can we consider ourselves a civilized society? Recent movements against MC are met with hostility and stubborn clutching on to tradition, much like movements and legislation against FC is met by the people who traditionally and religiously practice it. There really are only two solutions to this problem. Americans have been thrown into their beliefs about MC by it’s evolution in society. We forget or ignore the outrageous reasons it became popular, and perpetuate the practice for the same reasons FC continues in Africa and Indonesia. Much like we attempt to educate these nations on the truths to FC, we need to make an active effort to do the same in our own country regarding MC. Until we do that, we have no place judging and placing our patriarchal hand over the beliefs and practices of other societies. It is very much the "pot calling the kettle black" kind of situation. So if what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, to continue the cliché’s. The only ways to display our civility and an attitude of monism and consistency in regards to genital cutting are to either ban MC or legalize FC. If we are to frown upon FC, logic, reason, and the history of both practices dictate we should hold that frown upon MC as well. Learn more by visiting these links:
An FGM researcher compares MGM cultural justifications:
Human Genital Mutilation Classification Chart:
Female Circumcision and Male Circumcision, Is There A Difference?:
Common Denominators between Male & Female "Circumcision":
Underlying Justifications in the US and Africa:
Side-by-side Comparison of official AAP positions:
Contrast and compare FGM and MGM: Bibliography Darby, Robert (2003). The masturbation taboo and the rise of routine male circumcision: A review of the historiography. Journal of Social History, 36(3), 737. Retrieved March 1. 2008 from Platinum Full Text Periodicals database. (Document ID 376493961) Dietrich, H.L. (2003). " FGC Around the World". Retrieved March 1, 2008 from FGM Network:http://www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/world.php Fourcroy, Jean L (1999). Female Circumcision. American Family Physician, 60(2) 657-8 Retrieved March 1, 2008, from Platinum Full Text Periodicals Database. (Document ID: 44110387) Grossfeld, Stan. "Controversy over Circumcision Heightened in US After Report" The Boston Globe. 25 July, 1999 (A1). Hayford, Sarah R (2005). Conformity and Change: Community Effects on Female Genital Cutting in Kenya. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 46(2), 21-40. Retrieved March 2, 2008, from Platinum Full Text Periodicals database. (Document ID: 858901361). Henslin, James M. Essentials of Sociology, A Down-To Earth Approach. 7th Edition Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. (274-75). Kellogg, John Harvey, MD. "Treatment for Self-Abuse and it’s Effects". Plain Fact for Old and Young. Burlington, Iowa, Segner and Co, 1888. (295) Lightfoot-Kline, Hanny (2003). Similarities in Attitudes and Misconceptions toward Infant Male Circumcision in North America and Ritual Female Genital Mutilation in Africa. The Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project. Retrieved March 1, 2008 from FGM network: http://www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/mgmfgm.html Milos, Marilyn, and Macris, Donna. "Circumcision: A Medical or a Human Rights Issue? Journal of Nurse-Midwifery. 27 (1992): 87s-96s Rose, Verna L (1999). AAP updates its recommendations on circumcision. American Family Physician, 59(10), 2918-2923, Retrieved February 28 from Platinum Full Text Periodicals database. (Document ID: 41839893) Silverman, Erik K (2004). Anthropology and Circumcision. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 419-445. Retrieved February 25 from Platinum Full Text Periodical Database. (Document ID : 749595851). "Summary of General Circumcision Information". Circumcision Resource Center. Date Unknown. Retrieved March1, 2008 from Watterstein, Edward. "Circumcision: The Uniquely American Enigma". Urologic Clinics of North America . 12 (1985) 123-132. Circumcsion Reference Library, Dec 2005. Retrieved Feb. 23, 2008 from http://www.cirp.org/library/general/wallerstein ~*~
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
By Harper Jean Tobin Last December, South African newspapers reported that the nation's Human Rights Commission was considering legislation to regulate "corrective" surgery on intersex children. Pediatricians and adults who had had such surgeries told the Commission that, while intended to make intersex children cosmetically "normal," are irreversible and may not be in the best interests of children. (The South African Justice Department was also considering amending civil rights legislation to include intersexuality in the statutory definition of "sex." While intersexuality -- any of a variety of conditions where children are born with mixed sex characteristics -- is not usually associated with serious physical health risks, beginning in the 1950s some doctors began to view intersex births as a "social and medical emergency." They presumed that such children would be mocked by peers, rejected by parents, plagued by identity problems, and unable to have a normal sex life. Their solution was to surgically alter infants' genitals to make them appear like "normal" boys or girls -- usually girls. This treatment model that infants' gender identities are a "blank slate," and they could therefore be assigned to whatever sex was most surgically convenient. This treatment model has come under increasing attack from doctors, social scientists and an emergent intersex rights movement as lacking meaningful empirical support. Reports at a recent conference of the American Association For The Advancement Of Science outlined mounting evidence that gender identity is unalterable from birth. Thus, some intersex people have grown up intensely unhappy with their assigned sex, and as adults undergone gender transition. "Corrective" genital surgery has often been performed on young children in an atmosphere of urgency and secrecy, with parents presented with no other real options but to consent to the surgery and to conceal if from their child. Performing this kind of surgery on small children may limit or destroy sexual function and sensation in adult life. While some intersex people are sterile from birth, these treatments can destroy reproductive capacity for others. The repeated operations often required may result in medical complications and have dubious aesthetic results. Sociologist Sharon Preve's recent study Intersex and Identity suggests that despite the intent to bestow "normality," treating intersexuality as a dangerous, pathological secret can leave children feeling suspcious and freakish. Even before attracting official attention in Capetown, this issue came before the Colombian Constitutional Court in 1999. In short, the Court held that parents could not consent to cosmetic genital surgeries for children over five years of age, and applied a heightened informed consent standard parents of children under five. Basing these holdings on an implied constitutional right to define one's own gender identity, the Court called for dialogue among doctors and society, "to open a space to these people, who until now have been silenced." In the US, there is now a vigorous debate among doctors, activists and legal scholars about intersex surgeries. Some have called for a complete moratorium on such surgeries before individuals can consent for themselves. And there has been considerable speculation as to the legal implications: Will today's surgical candidates be tomorrow's plaintiffs? While we define medical negligence by the standard of professional consensus, here it is appears that that consensus is breaking down, rendering a definition of malpractice difficult at best. The question also arises whether parents should be able to consent for their children in these cases, when they may be reluctant to consider their child's future sexual and reproductive interests. There are indications that many parents have not been fully informed as to the risks or uncertainties involved. Should these operations be subject to the same heightened judicial scrutiny as involuntary sterilization of mentally impaired children? A recent article by Kate Haas in the American Journal of Law and Medicine suggested that, when performed in a publicly-owned hospital, these operations could implicate Fourteenth Amendment rights. The right to bodily in integrity is the most clearly relevant, but the right to reproductive choice can also be involved. Inasmuch as sex assignment determines whom one can marry, the right to marry is also implicated. Haas even suggested that some operations could fall under the 1996 Criminalization of Female Genital Mutilation Act, which makes it a crime to circumcise or excise any part of the labia or clitoris of a minor unless it is necessary to the minor's health. In contrast to the well-established evidence of the benefits (and sometimes the life-saving value) of reassignment surgery for many transsexuals, there is little if any evidence that surgery for intersex children is medically necessary. In that light, these procedures could even be considered medical experiments conducted on unconsenting children in violation of the international Nuremburg Code. But this truly is all speculation: there appears to be no recorded US case law on these matters. Inevitably, there will be. Our law, which to date has not recognized the existence of intersexuality, must in time address these issues. Hopefully, it will "open a space" for intersex people in our society as well. Intersexuals Fight Back: The Tyranny of the Aesthetic - Surgical Violations: First Do No Harm: A mainstream news article calls for an end non-consential surgical intervention: Sex Police: Making the Cut: Learn about the academic fraud at the heart of Doctor's rationalizations: An academic analysis of the current situation to date: Intersex Society of North America: ~*~
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
by Phallusy Have you ever wondered what happens to all of those foreskins after circumcision? Would you be surprised if I told you that hospitals have been selling discarded foreskins to private bio-research laboraties and pharmaceutical companies? You will be even more surprised when I tell you exactly where that precious, densely innervated tissue ends up! Human foreskin is in great demand and equals multi-million dollar profits for bio-medical research and pharmaceutical companies. Why? Human flesh is a required raw research material for bio-medical companies in order to create many medical products from growing new tissue to use as skin grafts for burn patients, to creating new eyelids and used in the production of insulin. Foreskin is an ideal tissue because the young flesh grows better, is likely to be free of disease, and is a consistently and readily available resource. Human foreskin also contains all of the things that we lose as we age, growth factors, amino acids, proteins, collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid, and there is an endless stream of companies ready to capitalize on that fact. It has become the active secret ingredient in many face creams as well as used for collagen for those lovely plump kissers you see on many models and actors. That's right, the next time you see that youthful glow and ample pout, you'll know that baby penis made it all possible. The key ingredient in SkinMedica's 'fountain of youth' anti-wrinkle cream, which is called TNS recovery complex, has been highly touted by Oprah and many other celebrities. I bet. On a mothering.com discussion, it was asked, "If the cream was made from the bi-product of baby Afro-American clitoral skin, would Oprah still be promoting it?" I doubt it. When asked of the smell, Barbara Blair says, "It's disgusting. It's got a sour smell to it that makes you want to gag, but you get used to it." Now that you know the motive behind the cutting of your
children's foreskin, it is important for you to know what's at stake.
Circumcision removes about 50% of the skin of the penis, with that, he
loses length and circumference and the mechanical action of being able
to 'slide' in and out of itself, a highly pleasurable function for a
man and his partner. It also removes the frenar ridged band which is
the primary erogenous zone of the male body along with meissner's
corpuscles and branches of the dorsal nerve, 20,000 fine-touch
receptors and specialized erotogenic nerve endings. Rich with sexually
responsive tissue, loss of this reduces the fullness and intensity of
sexual response. The circumcised male also loses part of his
immunological system and function in the soft mucosa which produces
plasma cells, these cells secrete immunoglobulin antibodies as well as
antibacterial and antiviral proteins, including the pathogen killing
enzyme lysozyme. Langerhans cells, a special immunological set of cells
that are a front line of defense against disease and has recently been
shown to produce langerin, which actually kills HIV, is also, you
guessed it, lost. The lost list includes but is not limited to:
frenulum, dartos fascia, lymphatic vessels, estrogen receptors,
apocrine glands, sebaceous glands, natural glans coloration, blood
vessels, and sometimes even the entire penis. According to norm.org, circumcision performed during infancy disrupts the bonding process between child and mother. There are indications that the innate sense of trust in intimate human contact is inhibited or lost. It can also have significant adverse effects on neurological development. Additionally, an infant's self-confidence and hardiness is diminished by forcing the newborn victim into a defensive psychological state of "learned helplessness" or "acquired passivity" to cope with the excruciating pain which he can neither fight nor flee. The trauma of this early pain lowers a circumcised boy's pain threshold below that of intact boys and girls. Too often, some boys even lose their lives as a result of circumcision... it only takes a small amount of blood lost in such a tiny body to send the newborn in shock. Recently, a boy died from heart attack and loss of oxygen he experienced during the procedure. So what do YOU get out of this? Big pharma gets big profits, the child gets tortured in an unimaginable way, stripping him of the best part of his body, and YOU actually PAY for it! Whether you think you do or not, if you pay taxes, you are paying for circumcisions! What? Yes, you heard me right, you or your insurance company pay the doctor (if not directly, you will end up paying indirectly!) to strap down newborn baby boys while their foreskin is brutally ripped away from the glans and sliced off, with little or no effective pain relief, then the foreskins are sold for the production of miracle wrinkle creams and collagen injections that earn BILLIONS of dollars in profit each year. And that poor baby, well, he TOTALLY gets shafted, er... shall I say, DE-shafted, in this deal... all that profit on his loss and he doesn't even get so much as a trust fund for college or a way to pay for a surgical restoration. He doesn't even get a SAY! Heck, even the models and actors make money out of this deal... that fresh, ageless skin and juicy lips help earn them an extra killing out of the additional ten years of work. (If it is true that it takes 10 years off!) Circumcision is big business, when considering that a SINGLE foreskin can bring in $100,000 in profit, there is no question about why circumcisions are still being performed in America despite the fact that no major medical association in the world recommends it. As Paul M. Fliess MD states in the Case Against Circumcision, "Parents should be wary of anyone who tries to retract their child's foreskin, and especially wary of anyone who wants to cut it off." IF YOU ARE NOT ENRAGED, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!!
Face Cream's secret ingredient:
Harvesting Foreskins for commercial use:
Human Foreskins are Big Business for Cosmetics:
"Dr. Wexler told us the factors are engineered from human foreskin!"
Abstract of a research paper on using foreskins
Where do all the foreskins go?
Foreskins for Sale:
Near the bottom of the page - "Injectable collagen derived from newborn foreskin":
Buy your own culture of Epidermal keratinocytes derived from neonatal foreskins:
This commercial biomedical company sells foreskin-derived cell cultures(Search for Foreskin): * Here are some additional companies that use infant foreskin(compiled by Joseph Lewis on Times Live NZ http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2011/08/10/interest-in-circumcision-more-than-foreskin-deep) Organogenesis -- Organogensis, 2001 Annual Report (Delaware: Organogenesis, 2001), p.8. Dermagraft-TC ~*~
By Suzanne Cook When you make the choice not to circumcise your newborn son, you are giving him the opportunity to grow up with his God-given sexuality. Unfortunately, many American boys are not given this right because their parents are misinformed into believing circumcision is necessary for health, cleanliness or social reasons. Some parents will honestly admit that they personally prefer a circumcised penis and subject their normal and healthy newborn baby to surgery to have his penis altered to suit their own tastes. Some have their own hang-ups in regards to an intact penis such as the way it looks or the fear that they might actually have to teach their sons how to retract and clean his own penis. Circumcision has become a culturally accepted and sometimes expected surgery for newborn boys here in America but the tides are changing. Parents in the new generation are realizing that what they have been told about circumcision was based on myths. They realize that their sons are supposed to have foreskins and more and more babies every day are being left intact. Raising an intact son can be an interesting experience in our circumcising society. Parents of circumcised sons don't realize how different their sons are from their intact peers. I've heard parents joke about how their sons pee across the room...or in the parents face! I've since learned that this seems to be related only to circumcised boys and my theory is that the foreskin helps channel the flow of urine downward, the way it is normally supposed to go, rather than straight out like a circumcised boy. Also, with the foreskin removed, the urethral opening tends to narrow slightly and this also contributes to a "squirt gun" type flow of urine in circumcised boys. I've also noticed that many parents of intact boys do without the "splatter guard" that can be attached to many potties for potty "training". This is also related to the above statement about the squirting effect of circumcised boys. One common myth of an intact boy is that a parent must retract and clean under his foreskin then teach their son how to do it when he is old enough (and make sure he does it). This is a very bad myth and a potentially harmful one! Boys are born with their foreskins firmly attached to the glans (head) of their penis, similar to how our fingernails are attached to our fingers. The newborn foreskin does not and should not ever be retracted!! Erections, growth and normal curiosity help dissolve the connecting tissue (synechia) and the foreskin will naturally separate from the glans and become retractable on its own. Care of Intact Boys NEVER attempt to retract your son's foreskin and NEVER allow anyone else to retract it, including medical professionals. Forced retraction can cause pain and bleeding as the foreskin is literally torn from the glans. The foreskin will then heal back to the glans and scar tissue can develop. A condition called "acquired phimosis" is caused from forced retraction. With acquired phimosis, the foreskin will have difficulty retracting or will not retract at all. This does not mean that a circumcision will be necessary. There are non-surgical alternatives to help the foreskin retract including steroid creams and manual stretching. If your son becomes a victim of forced retraction, leave his penis alone to heal and report the offended to the proper agency so another intact boy is not harmed. My son Clayton The proper care of an intact child is to simply leave it alone. An intact boy's penis is self-cleaning during infancy and childhood. Nothing gets under the foreskin that isn't supposed to be there and it gets "flushed out" through urination. When taking a bath, you merely need to clean the outside of his penis with plain water. Avoid baby powder on both baby boys and baby girls since it can irritate their genitals. If your son's foreskin becomes retractable on it's own, just leave it alone. If you find that it has retracted and the glans is exposed (from rubbing on a diaper or playing nude), gently pull the foreskin back over the glans and leave it alone. Some boys with "short" foreskins become retractable before boys with longer foreskins. This is perfectly normal. There is no set age when a foreskin is supposed to retract, though most will become retractable by adolescence. You will probably not know when your son's foreskin becomes retractable because he will be at an age when he is caring for his own body and such personal questions are usually off limits to Mom and Dad. Some parents worry that their son will be teased because he is not circumcised like some other boys. There will always be differences among children and always something to tease another about. If it's not the look of his penis, it will be the color of his hair, his freckles, the size of his ears, his name... you name it. If boys are in a locker room situation where they are nude, most will not make comments about another's penis because to make such comments means he had to look at it...and many boys do not want to admit that they were looking at another boy's penis (that could cause some other kind of teasing all together). Girls are equally at risk for teasing when it comes to breast size. If your daughter has small breasts and is teased about it, should you pay for breast enlargement surgery so she will "fit in" with her peers? No, of course not. To consider genital surgery for your son to make him fit in is equally absurd. The situation today is that your son will be amongst intact and circumcised boys alike. By explaining circumcision to your son, he will be better prepared if he ever faces a situation with other boys when questions about his penis arise. It would not be polite to teach your son to tease circumcised boys since they had no choice in the matter of whether they were circumcised or not. Many circumcised boys don't realize that something was cut off their penis when they were born. Most parents of circumcised boys do not discuss this issue with their sons. I know I would much rather explain to my sons why they are not circumcised than why I had something cut off their penis when they were born. I don't think it's healthy either to teach your intact sons that they are better than boys who are circumcised. While it may be true that they have the advantage of having their whole penis, circumcised boys are a victim of unnecessary surgery perpetrated upon them when they were a vulnerable baby. It would be unfair and cruel to hold this against them. It's not their fault they are circumcised. If anything, we should teach our sons to have compassion for their circumcised counterparts. Circumcised fathers tend to circumcise their own sons out of ignorance and anger about their own circumcision. Children seem to accept and understand issues sometimes better than adults so it's important that circumcised boys realize that what happened to them does not have to happen to their own sons, once they become fathers. Many circumcised fathers today are raising intact sons. The excuse to circumcise a boy because his father is circumcised is incredibly lame and narcissistic. Whether both father and son are circumcised or intact, there will be many differences merely because of age (size, hair). There is also no one look of a circumcised penis and no one look of an intact penis. Everyone is created differently and no two circumcisions look exactly alike. The only similarity a circumcised father and a circumcised son will have is the fact that they both underwent painful unnecessary genital surgery as babies and both are missing their foreskins as a result. Fathers and sons don't stand around comparing penises! If they do, then they have more issues than circumcision to deal with!! If a father is circumcised and his son is left intact, a simple explanation about when his father was born, circumcision was thought to be necessary for health reasons but now that they know it's not, they didn't want to put their newborn son through surgery. Some parents will also add that the surgery is painful and they know their son needs his foreskin. Those are some of the reasons parents give to their intact sons to explain why they are not circumcised and their father is (if the issue ever comes up to begin with). Raising an intact son has also inspired circumcised fathers to begin foreskin restoration to reverse some of the damage that their own neonatal circumcision caused. Men who have done this report vastly improved results, both physically and emotionally. If you are the parent of a circumcised son, you may have feelings of guilt and regret. You were not informed when you made the decision to circumcise your son but now you know better. Now it's time to heal. Apologize to your son and help educate those around you so other parents will know the facts before any harm comes to their son. If you are expecting a baby, make sure your midwife, doctor and nurses at the hospital you are going to give birth in know that you do not want your son circumcised. Carefully read any papers you are asked to sign and clearly mark on the paper that you don't want your son circumcised. Submit a birth plan to your doctor and the hospital and be sure to verbally remind them at the time of delivery. It would be wise to arrange for someone to be present to advocate for you if you cannot and to make sure the baby is not "accidentally" circumcised, especially in larger hospitals where "assembly line" circumcisions occur and circumcision is considered routine for all boys. Room-in with your baby if possible. If your baby must be taken to the nursery, make sure someone who knows about circumcision accompanies him. Accidents do happen and it would be unfortunate for it to happen to your son. Be sure to remind everyone not to retract his foreskin as well. If you are the parent of an intact son, congratulations! Whether you realize it or not, you have spared your son from the pain and trauma of the circumcision surgery and post-surgical healing period and have allowed him to enjoy his body the way it was intended to be. ~*~ Comparison Chart of Common Issues/Concerns by Glenn Epps
~*~
The Foreskin: What does it do? Contrary to some common misconceptions, the prepuce (foreskin) is not just a double fold of “skin” covering the glans penis. The foreskin is an organ of touch, an anatomically unique structure with its own complex vascular and neural systems and separate attachments to its parts and to the penis. Skin is for containment, attached to the tissue beneath and cannot move independently. The foreskin is the separate and distinct tissues fore (before) the skin of the penile shaft. The following description of the foreskin is that of the flaccid (non-erect) penis as the structural dynamics of the foreskin changes dramatically as the penis proceeds through tumescence to erection. The foreskin consists of the outer foreskin, an extension of the shaft skin from the back of the sulcus to the foreskin opening, not attached nor part of any other structure which makes the underside of the outer foreskin unique from any other skin found on the body, turns beneath itself at the mucocutaneous juncture where the inner foreskin begins. The inner foreskin mucosa begins at the mucocutaneous junction and is specialized and separate tissue which continues from this junction, traveling between the outer foreskin and the glans, attaching to the penis at the back of the sulcus beneath the end of the shaft skin and beginning of the outer foreskin at the top of the penis (about 10mm to 25mm, 3/8 to 1 inch, behind the back of the glans). The inner foreskin continues toward the glans at the sides and transitions into the frenulum toward the bottom.
The Frenulum The frenulum is the structure traveling down the inner foreskin and connects the inner foreskin to the penis between the hemispheres of the glans below the meatus (urethral opening) at the bottom of the glans and toward the sides and proceeding down the midline of the shaft. Many of the tactile nerve endings of the penis are found in the frenulum. This is similar to the glottal frenulum attaching the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. The ridged bands (small corrugations of tissue, like mountain “ridges”) are behind the mucocutaneous juncture and when the foreskin is retracted appear behind the attachment at the sulcus. This area also contains many of the tactile nerve endings of the foreskin’s neural system. The foreskin’s neural system contains hundreds of feet of nerves and thousands of tactile nerve endings, most of which are concentrated in the frenulum and frenar bands. Tactile nerves are sensuous nerves sensitive to pleasant sensations and almost all present in the penis are found within the foreskin. Comparatively, the nerve endings found in the glans are Free Nerve Endings, or nociceptive nerve endings, which are sensitive to cold, pain and unpleasant sensations. The foreskin’s vascular system is also quite complex. The blood is supplied by the frenar artery and small and larger veins are present throughout the foreskin and travel down the top of the penis. The abrupt ending of penile veins where they were crushed around the circumference of the penis just behind the area cut off can be seen on a circumcised penis. The tissue and blood vessels over the glans on the top must also be crushed prior to the dorsal cut to prevent hemorrhage and if a circumcision is to be allowed, special care must be taken to thoroughly crush the frenar artery as hemorrhage is very difficult to control. Some of the function of the foreskin may be fairly obvious after this short narrative on the anatomy, but there is much more to learn about the functional foreskin in the next part.
Physical and Sexual Functions At birth the infant boy’s foreskin is almost always fused to his glans as his penis is not fully developed and one function of the foreskin is to keep feces and other foreign substances from the meatal opening and the urinary tract of the infant and toddler. That is why the only care for the intact penis is to leave it alone, completely alone. No doctor, nurse, parent or any other care provider should ever investigate, probe or examine his foreskin, especially any forced retraction which will tear foreskin from glans. The undisturbed glans and inner foreskin mucosa is uncontaminated and any such trespasses may introduce that which the foreskin is designed to keep out. His foreskin will naturally separate from his glans and he should be the only one to touch or retract it. When it separates, he will know and he will be retracting his own foreskin. No other person should interfere with this natural process. His foreskin, on average, will represent about 60% to 80% of his penile coverage for additional reasons. The vascular system of his foreskin protects his glans from cold. As the temperature drops his foreskin will curl toward his glans, thickening and assuring warmth. The near surface nerve endings in his glans are very concentrated, similar to the female’s glans clitoris, until his glans greatly expand at maturity when these nerve endings are more sparse, disbursed over a greater area. The foreskin protects the nerve endings from abrasive action of friction on clothing and without this protection about 75% of these near surface nerve endings will be destroyed by adolescence. In addition, the very delicate covering of the glans must be protected as it is only about two cells thick and without the foreskin must grow nerveless skin for protection, thirty to forty cells thick. This callousness is called keratanization. Of great importance is the fact that the boy’s longer foreskin of infancy and childhood is there for his penis to grow into during the explosive penile growth during puberty. The adult foreskin will be proportionately less than the childhood foreskin, but will still average 40% to 50% of penile coverage which is needed for natural erection – for an unlimited, unencumbered and moveable penis. The child’s foreskin will naturally separate and retract at different ages and the size of the foreskin is as varied as penis sizes. Some boys are born with a foreskin which is not fused to his glans, some are born with a foreskin that does not cover all of his glans, but these are uncommon. About 60% will separate by age 3 and 80% by age 6. The remaining will separate between 6 and teen years. This is normal, natural, is not phimosis and there should be no intervention with this natural process. All boys and girls are different and on different physical time tables. Physical maturation of the genitalia may begin by age 9 in one boy and another not until age 16. Because the average age of this process begins at age 12 there is no cause for worry or concern if sexual maturation begins a couple of years earlier or later. Such are the individualized variations of foreskin separation. For the pubescent and adolescent boy a visual as well as physical change will occur. He will notice that his foreskin no longer extends as far in front of his glans nor has the tube-like appearance of his childhood years. His penis grows proportionately larger than his foreskin during this short time span. This is the moment in his life when the marriage of the physical and sexual occur. It is the onset of a voracious appetite for sexual knowledge, interest, investigation and exploration. The natural penis with the sensuous, moveable foreskin is of vital importance from this time onward. Masturbation must be addressed as the dynamics of the foreskin during this virtually universal practice is very important. Puberty is the time the boy learns about his own feelings, sexuality and explores the workings of his penis. He will find which foreskin motions, the stretching and relaxing of his frenulum, rolling back and forth over his glans and friction in different areas feel best to him. He is a sexual apprentice learning about himself prior to sharing himself with the opposite sex and new learning experiences. Many young men enter relationships with little knowledge about their own sexuality causing these relationships to suffer. Parents should be able to talk to their sons at this time about masturbation. The intact boy should have real education about his penis and foreskin. He should be informed that it is best to masturbate with his foreskin going back and forth entirely over his glans as this will serve as a dilator should his foreskin be a bit snug. During later intercourse the foreskin of most men will remain behind their glans as most will have very little coverage or a bare glans when erect. But almost all boys begin to masturbate before penile growth and penile maturity so the penis has relatively more foreskin at this time than the later years. At what age does masturbation begin? Again, a large variation from age 8 to 16, most beginning by age 12 (average 11.5 years). Only pulling his foreskin forward and always over his glans when pleasuring himself may result in a rather snug opening. It is also important that the boy distinguish and separate different feelings from different parts of his penis at this time and the reason will be explained in the next section. Of profound importance is the fact that this communication will protect the boy from feelings of shame or guilt associated with sexual self pleasuring and the door will be open from that time onward for honest and open dialogue between the boy and his parents. Sex is natural, his sexuality normal, and his penis is as normal and natural as any other part of his body and should be treated as such. The sexually active intact male will experience separate and very
distinct sensations during intercourse. Most men, however, have not
thought to distinguish these unique sensations and their brains have
been wired to receive but one impulse, a false perception of pleasure
from a singular source. The next section will describe the workings of the intact penis during intercourse and the separation of the sensations that will add
to the male’s sensuousness many times over.
The Foreskin During Intercourse ~*~
By Geoffrey B. Anatomy The penis has a number of structures that you should know. The head of the penis is called the glans. The foreskin is also called the prepuce. It is attached under the pee hole or meatus by a y-shaped piece of skin called the fraenulum or frenulum. The frenulum is similar in structure to the one under the tongue and has an important sexual function. The fraenular band is the tight bit at the foreskin opening that is being stretched in this case. Phimosis Phimosis may be mild or severe. Some men can retract their foreskin easily when their penis is flaccid (soft) but experience difficulty when erect. In others the opening is so tight that they can only see a tiny bit of their glans when they pull back on their foreskin. Why Bother to Stretch Although some men manage to live with phimosis there are some disadvantages to having a non-retractable foreskin. Firstly it is hard to clean and may smell. The body produces a white substance called smegma that collects under the foreskin and in the folds of female genitalia. Smegma usually does no harm but it is susceptible to infections that can cause pain and/or odours. Secondly having sex with the foreskin forward reduces sexual sensations. Thirdly many men with tight foreskins complain that sex without a condom is painful as the foreskin may be forced back during sex. Betamethasone You can ask your doctor to prescribe Betamethasone 1% ointment. A tiny amount of this ointment can be applied to the tight part of the foreskin. It will speed up the stretching process but won’t do anything on its own, without stretching. Stretching will still work without the ointment, just more slowly. Stretching Technique One If the foreskin is very tight the simplest method is to pull back on the skin (easiest with an erection) so that the opening feels tight without real pain. Hold that for a few minutes and repeat a few times. Do this a couple of times a day. Soaking in a warm bath will make the skin easier to stretch. If the opening becomes sore, or develops splits, stop and let things heal up. Going at it too fast will only slow things down in the end. Once the opening is big enough to just fit over the rim of the glans when erect the foreskin is at risk of getting stuck behind it. If this happens paraphimosis may develop. Stretching technique two avoids this risk. Paraphimosis Paraphimosis occurs when the foreskin gets stuck behind the glans of an erect penis, trapping the blood that causes the erection in the glans and causing swelling of the foreskin itself. If the foreskin becomes stuck squeeze the head of the penis firmly to force the blood out and try and ease the foreskin forward. If after many tries you still can’t do this see a doctor or ER fast. This is uncommon but you should be warned. Stretching Technique Two You can either grab each side of the foreskin opening (with the foreskin forward) and gently pull on each side of the opening or, even better, insert the ends of two fingers, even the little fingers and pull them gently apart. Stretch the opening in this way until it feels uncomfortably stretched but not actually painful. Hold and repeat as for method one. Once again this is best done after soaking in a warm bath. Sensitivity As you stretch and are able to expose more of the glans you may find that it is very sensitive or even painful to touch. You will find it less painful the more you expose and use it and gradually the over-sensitivity will lessen. A gentle way to start touching the head is by using the shower spray. Also use lube when touching the head directly. Smegma Build-Up As you stretch and are able to expose more of the head you may discover a build up of smegma. This may even contain hard lumps that are hard to remove. Soften them with a light vegetable oil or a non-scented, oily cream such as sorbolene or vitamin E cream. The smegma and softening agent can then be removed with a mild non-scented soap followed by a thorough rinse with plain water. A number of applications over a period of time may be necessary before the build up is cleaned away. Once it is then simple rinsing with plain water every day is enough to keep most penises clean and fresh. Some men can use soap daily but others find it upsets the natural balance and can actually cause infections or irritation. Tight Fraenulum Sometimes the cause of difficulty in retracting the foreskin is not a tight foreskin opening but a short fraenulum (frenulum), also known as fraenulum breve. This can also be stretched though it is sometimes more difficult to do this. You can grab the underside of the foreskin opening and pull out away from your body until you feel the fraenulum stretching. Or if your foreskin opening is large enough you can pull back on the foreskin until you feel the fraenulum stretching. Hold and repeat as in the foreskin opening stretching methods. If the fraenulum can’t be stretched then an alternative to circumcision is a frenuloplasty. It is a simple operation that does not remove any tissue but fixes the problem with minimal healing time. Keep At It Keep stretching for a while once you get to the diameter of foreskin opening you want. If you stop too soon it is possible for things to tighten up again. So just keep doing the exercises for a week or two after everything is loose enough to work properly. ~*~ By Glenn Epps
Please note that the conditions outlined in The Intact Handbook (TM) also apply to the circumcised penis. This further illuminates that circumcision, in most cases as a prophylactic or preventative measure, is not a proper method of dealing with conditions of the penis. Lack of information and misinformation abounds respecting the anatomy, function and treatment of the structures of the male penis. At the slightest sign of "trouble" or "problem" with a males foreskin the suggested treatment is often circumcision. Circumcision is an invasive form of treatment and most radical. The Intact Handbook is here to help. If you have a foreskin related problem you'll likely find information that will allow you to avoid circumcision. As we all become more cognizant of the structure, function and purpose of the complete structure of the male penile anatomy it is important that we make available various forms of treatment that preserve the integrity of these important structures. Circumcision should be seen as a last resort, and truly, almost all foreskin related problems DO NOT require circumcision--alternative treatment methods exist. It is these alternative treatment methods that should become the primary focus for treating various problems that a male may experience. This methodology for treatment is not new. This methodology is employed with respect to almost all medical conditions and problems. It would be misleading to suggest that the intact penis does not befall to certain medical conditions--this is true of the circumcised penis as well. All parts of the body, whether one is male or female has the potential for befalling to various aliments or problems. It is generally accepted and expected that treatments will be conservative and that surgery is relied upon only as a last resort or where no choice exists. This principle should strongly be adhered to when we are talking about the genitals--male or female--every male and female is entitled to the benefits afforded by such structures lest there being some compelling reason that requires and necessitates surgical intervention. More and more doctors are familiarizing themselves with proper treatment methods for conditions of the penis/foreskin--if your doctor has not--perhaps you can provide him with information or seek a doctor that is up-to-date with current medical treatment methods. The sections of The Intact Handbook provides some basic information related to some of the more common conditions and problems of the foreskin and also those conditions that have more commonly in the past resulted in treatment by way of radical surgical intervention, namely circumcision. Attempts have been made, throughout The Intact Handbook, to use wording that is not too technical, medically or otherwise. However, there is a need to use various medical terms and terminology. Definitions to common medical terms used are provided below the Sections. Sections: Phimosis and/or Tight Foreskin Restricted Foreskin Movement General Irritation and Infection Reddened and/or Irritated Foreskin Redness/Swelling of the Glans Inflammation of the Glans
Phimosis and/or Tight Foreskin:
General Irritation and Infection:
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
New Father Josh's View of Circumcision By JoshHow it all began...Finding out that you're going to be a parent is an exciting, yet surreal, moment. But, if you've got a boy on the way, one of the decisions you'll need to make is whether his penis will circumcised or not. This is the decision that my fianceé left to me last year when we found out the sex. Anna was indifferent about it, and I just assumed our boy would be circumcised, mostly because I am myself. We also live in the United States (New Jersey to be particular) and it just seemed like something everybody does. It wasn't until we met with the paediatrician one day and he brought the topic up. He said, somewhat bluntly, that "the Paediatrics Academy doesn't recommend this procedure. From a medical standpoint its not really beneficial, and from an ethical standpoint... well that depends on your point of view." Driving home, this got me thinking (while Anna concerned herself more with boy names and bedroom wallpaper designs). Her opinion was that I'm the one with the penis, so I should decide what happens in that department. So, I went on the internet, and did some homework. What happened next shocked me. It soon became clear that circumcision was no longer something everyone "just did". I started from the very beginning — doing a Google search for circumcision returned over six million results. At that point, I decided I would need a beer. So, armed with a 4-pack of Bud and a curiosity as to why there are 6,000,000 webpages about it, I got stuck in. Next, I realized how hotly debated circumcision actually is. I found it very difficult to find resources that were impartial. Most seemed to be either very "pro" or very "anti", and a lot of people have very strong opinions for their side of the fence, some even resorting to flat out abuse of the opposition. Oh by the way, for the purposes of this blog, I will often refer to circumcised penises as "cut" and uncircumcised ones as "intact". This seemed like what each battalion preferred calling their respective units, and also I am the laziest person I know, so typing out the long versions every other sentence will soon get tiresome. When I was eventually able to find some objective resources, I quickly learned a lot. See, I thought that if we didn't have baby Joseph (so he turned out to be named) circumcised, we'd have to intricately wash under his foreskin after every diaper change to prevent all sorts of nasty diseases. Not so. In fact it seemed like more care and attention would be required if we had him cut! I also learned that the foreskin plays an important role in protecting the penis head, and that I could actually be missing out on some sexual sensation being cut. I think this is disputable, and almost impossible to prove. To outline what follows: I've split my blog up into 4 sections. In the first, I'll share what I know of the actual thing that us Americans like to cut off: the foreskin itself. Next, I'll talk about how America is actually the only country that cuts foreskins off for non-religious reasons!
Thirdly, I will dedicate a whole section to the potential protections circumcision has to offer, as well as its potential risks.
And finally, the decision that I made for little Joe, as I smoked a thousand cigarettes while Anna pressed through labor for what seemed like an eternity, way back in the April of '08...
What is the foreskin there for?"Its just a ghastly flap of extra skin." That may be how you've heard a male foreskin described. But allow me to shed some light on what the foreskin really is. Well, firstly, its not "extra". All guys are born with it, so that immediately begs the question, "if we were born with it, it must be there for a reason?" Well it is. Foreskin comprises four-fifths of penile skin, and is full of specialized nerve receptors. These receptors play a role in sexualfunctions (as I will soon explain) and the way that it acts as a 'sheath' over the head (or 'glans' to be scientific) means that itprotects it too. Understanding how the foreskin plays a role in sex is something of a vague science. So lets start with masturbation. Don't frown; we all do it, and your son will do it too, especially when he starts 'growing up'! Doctors actually first started circumcising boys to STOP them from masturbating, because once-upon-a-time they thought it was harmful. The way the foreskin can be glided back and forth over the glans and shaft makes masturbation easier and, arguably, more enjoyable. Without the need for artificial lubrication, it seems as though boys can discover self-pleasure from a youunger age if they are intact. In sex it is believed that this gliding action is what most stimulates the orgasmic elements of the penis. It also makes for smoother movement between the partners, and creates a pressure that enables enhanced pleasure for both. Don't get me wrong. Circumcised men can still lead normal and very enjoyable sex lives. I do. But the prospect that it could be better if I had a foreskin certainly makes me wonder... While not masturbating or having sex, the foreskin sits in its usual forward position, protecting the glans. This protection keeps the glans soft and sensitive. Cut the foreskin off, and thousands of nerve endings are removed and the glans becomes tough and dry, in a process called keratinization. So you see, the foreskin does serve a purpose. Several important ones, in fact. Who in the world circumcises...As far as I can see, there are three main reasons why a boy would be circumcised: In terms of reason 1, the mainstream religions that require their males to be circumcised are Judaism and Islam. Therefore, all Jewish and Muslim men are 'cut'. Furthermore, this means that the majority of men in the Middle East are circumcised. Sometimes, a boy may have a medical condition where a circumcision is required. The most common such condition appears to be phimosis, where the foreskin cannot be pulled back. Cultural reasons... Now I want to make something clear: To conclude this section, I can summarise by telling you that on the global scale, approximately 80% of males are 'intact'. Now let’s get down to business…Circumcision has some pros, but are they sufficient enough to warrant cutting your son's foreskin off?
It would be unfair, impartial and futile for me to deny that circumcision carries some benefits. The extent of these benefits however, are not as great as I once thought. Especially in a country like mine where hot water runs out of our taps, and people can purchase condoms from their local store. Let's explore the apparent advantages, one by one: STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection)
UTI (Urinary Tract Infections)
Penile cancer
Cervical cancer
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)
To sum up, I concluded that the advantages of circumcision are minimal and insignificant, and that if a man cleans his foreskin area regularly and properly, and sensibly uses contraception, then he is no more at risk of any health problem. I also read the testimonies of 'intact' men who actually decided to get cut as adults. So if men can easily undergo circumcision as adults without a traumatic experience, then why not let our babies make the decision for themselves when they're old enough? This would bring me onto the ethical issues of circumcising baby boys, but like our ped said to us, that depends on your point of view. So, what happened to our little Joe?Researching circumcision was an absorbing experience for me. So absorbing in fact, that six months later I decided to write all about my findings, and now I have posted them here online. So, what did Anna and I decide to do for Joseph? You know, in spite of concluding circumcision is unnecessary, I still had to come to terms with the idea of my son being "different" than me. It wasn't that I wasn't sure how to teach him how to take care for his equipment if we didn't circumcise, since there are several websites out there with advice for parents on how to care for both 'cut' and 'intact' boys. I guess I just didn't want Joe to be worried that he's different from me, or his friends. The fact that more and more boys aren't being cut nowadays helped us realize he shouldn't have any horror stories with teasing in locker rooms. Then, something clicked. I figured Joe wouldn't be like me anyway. His would be tiny and bald, mine would be big and hairy. So what about being cut or not? And I never really paid much attention to my dad's penis anyway! One day I'll explain all this to him. I'll explain that my foreskin was cut off because back then they thought it was harmful to keep it on. But in the 21st-century, its completely fine to keep a boy's penis intact, so long as you're willing to teach him to take care of it when he's older. Joe turns 1 this spring, and he's not had any problems with his foreskin. ~*~
By Alan David Doane
Would you let doctors cut off part of your child's penis for no real reason at all? In 1995, my wife and I discovered (by accident, courtesy of a sloppy ultrasound technician) that we were going to have a boy. It was our second pregnancy, and we were asked fairly early on if we wanted him circumcised. I had long been vaguely annoyed that I had been circumcised without my consent as an infant, and had long since come to the conclusion that there is no real reason for this procedure. I am not of the opinion that males are born "defective" and need to be "fixed" before they can live their lives as males. It took some months of convincing my wife about this; despite the fact that she was not born with a penis, she bought into all the rote arguments made in favour of the procedure. I showed her enough scientific evidence that it is unnecessary, even cruel, and she and I eventually agreed that our son would live his life intact, with all the parts his DNA instructed his growing, unborn body to have. Convincing my wife was easy; the real arguing didn't happen until late in her pregnancy, when we were asked to come in to the doctor's office specifically to discuss the issue of circumcision. We were taken into a quiet office and a middle-aged woman sat down...I don't remember now if she was a nurse or physician's assistant, but she asked us to tell her what we wanted to do regarding my son's foreskin. We told the woman that we were not going to have him circumcised. Looking very discomfited and somewhat condescending, she asked us to explain our obviously ridiculous decision. Assuming as the parents we were allowed to make this sort of decision, I somewhat flippantly told her that "I don't believe boys are born with things that need to be snipped off of them." At that point, the brow-beating began. The argument (and I am certain this was a standardized meeting that occurred with all parents negligent and degenerate enough to make the sort of decision Lora and I did) basically boiled down to three points: 1. "He won't 'look like you.'" 2. "He may need to have a circumcision as an adult." 3. "He'll have to learn to clean his foreskin."
My responses to those grave concerns: 1. I don't want him "looking at my penis." I frankly don't want anyone looking at my penis. Even me. 2. What are the odds? I made her look it up. 7 out of 100, she informed us. "So there's a 93 percent chance that if we don't cut off part of my son's penis, he'll grow up happy and healthy?" She had no convincing rebuttal to that argument. 3. This one really pissed me off. My response: "He'll have to learn to clean his ass, too; should we cut that off too, while we're at it?" My wife was not amused. Call me a prick (many have), but I didn't find any of these three arguments particularly compelling. One of my main points all along had been that Americans generally find it laughable and horrifying that there are African tribes that circumcise baby girls, and yet think it is normal, in fact necessary, to do the same thing to boys. To me it is all symptomatic of the post-intelligent, Planet of the Apes-style culture we live in. The vast majority of sheep-like Americans follow the mystical rituals laid down by our "Fore (skin) fathers" eons ago, without ever really questioning whether anything we're doing in the name of Jeezus or Cleanliness in fact is desirable, ethical or even just not laughable. My son turns 12 later this year. His intact foreskin has never
once been a problem for him, and I have successfully managed to not
have him see my penis once in all those years. Snip-happy doctors
aside, I think we both prefer it that way. ~*~
By Jed Diamond (excerpt from The Warriors Journey Home) I began to gather information for this chapter; I would regularly break into tears for no apparent reason. Gradually, the tears bean to form themselves into unspoken, long-hidden questions which bubbled to the surface. What is it like for an infant boy-a boy born perfect, whole and complete-to have part of his body removed? What is the effect of having a large person, most often man, spread the baby's little legs and cut away the end of his penis? Could the trauma of this event have anything to do with men's later feelings of shame about their bodies, their concern about the size of their penis, their anguish over sexual performance, their frozen feelings, or the male ability-which is really a liability-to ignore pain?These questions are unavoidably personal. How had circumcision affected me? Was my own sexual confusion and anger related to this event? What had I really done to my son when I had him circumcised with so little inquiry? Would I be stirring up old wounds if I looked more deeply? Would people ridicule me if I talked and wrote about circumcision as an important men's issue? Despite my fears, I decided to move ahead. Surely, I thought, with all the focus on men these days, there must be a lot of discussion on circumcision in the literature on men. Just because I had avoided this issue, surely others must be talking about it. As a writer, I have accumulated a fairly good-sized collection of books on men. I was sure I would find a lot of information right here. Out of the 58 books I had on my shelf which were specifically focused on men, only 8 mentioned circumcision at all. Of those, 5 of the references were so brief that I had trouble finding them when I looked up the page number. In only 3 of the books was circumcision discussed in any depth, and from none of my books did I feel I had gotten a clear understanding of the effects of circumcision on men's psyches and men's lives. In Search of the truth about circumcision. What I learned in the months since I began asking questions has shocked and upset me. The foreskin, I learned, was not some useless appendage that could be discarded without harm. Actually, the foreskin provides protection for the glans, and is abundantly supplied with nerve endings. These afford unique sensual stimulation. During masturbation and intercourse, the foreskin stimulates the glans and acts as a natural gliding mechanism which provides a great deal of pleasure. Like the clitoris, the glans is naturally an internal organ and should be treated as such. The reasons usually given for circumcising baby boys-the intact penis is difficult to keep clean; circumcision prevents future medical problems, such as urinary tract infections, venereal disease, penile and prostate cancer, and cervical cancer in partners, are based on faulty medical data. Jews have traditionally circumcised their infant boys in fulfilment of a covenant with God. The original practice involved a symbolic removal of the tip of the foreskin. The more radical surgery practiced by modem Jews and the medical establishment, in which the entire foreskin is removed, is not in keeping with the original practice. The surgery itself, far from being benign, causes extreme pain and trauma. It is not as risk-free as we have been told, and instances of mutilation and death have been reported. The United States is the only country in the world that still practices routine medical circumcision for infants. Three thousand three hundred boys each day-that's 1.2 million per year-undergo this so-called elective surgery that's done without the patient's permission. Though the rate of circumcision declined from a high of 85 percent in 1980, it has remained constant around 60 percent since 1988. Some of you may feel that I'm devoting too much space to this topic. Before I learned the facts, I would have agreed with you. Consider the following:
Words from those who were there. Most of the men reading this book have been circumcised. Many of us had our sons circumcised when they were born. Learning the truth about circumcision is difficult. It's easy to feel angry, guilty, and shameful. Yet, I know that we each did the best we could, and our parents did the best they could, given the knowledge available at the time. Hearing from those who have had the courage to remember can help us get back in touch with the feelings we have so long suppressed. What we feel we can heal. I began by asking my wife what she felt about circumcision. Her three sons from a previous marriage were all circumcised routinely as infants. I was surprised by the strength of her feelings. “I thought it was done for health reasons. I knew it was done for boys, because I had two younger brothers and assumed they were circumcised to protect them, like getting an immunization shot. With Dane, my first-born, it wasn't until we left the hospital and I changed him at home that I saw what had been done. I had been given instructions in the hospital about keeping his penis clean, but I was shocked when I saw how red and swollen it was. Every time he peed, it seemed to irritate him. The wound would begin to heal then become irritated again and break open. It didn't seem right. A baby should cry when he is hungry or cold, not because his penis By the time she finished talking, we were both crying. The tears continue to flow as my body, if not my mind, remembers what was done to me as an infant. Listen to the experiences of others. “Unfortunately, I'm another son of another new mother who fell into the automatic circumcision trap. It makes me wonder where the hell my father was, or if he ever knew what was going on. I want it back! “They strapped him down, which we hated. We massaged his head, stroked him, and talked to him the whole time. My husband said it was the most awful thing he'd ever seen or done. I stood outside the door while they were doing it to him and listened to him scream and cry. That's the first time I really began to wonder what the hell I had let them do to my baby! Since then I have asked myself that a million times.” “I am a 17-year-old male who is circumcised. I got to thinking, what am I missing? Most likely, I'll never know. It makes me sad because I'm not whole, as I was intended to be. I try not to be bitter about it. I try not to blame my parents, but who can I blame? I had no say in the matter, and after all, it is my penis. It's a part of me that I'll never know.” “I'm a victim of infant circumcision, and even though I'm 55 years old, I'm forcefully and painfully reminded of this atrocity, perpetrated upon me deliberately by my mother, who ordered it done, every time I take a shower, dress and undress, look at myself in a full-length mirror, or masturbate. And my studies indicate this atrocity even takes all the fun out of the last item above. I am still dealing with deep anger and rage over this.” “I was deprived of my foreskin when I was 26. I had ample experience in the sexual area, and I was quite happy-delirious, in fact-with what pleasure I could experience, beginning with foreplay and continuing, as an intact male. After my circumcision, that pleasure was utterly gone. Let me put it this way. On a scale of 10, the uncircumcised penis experiences pleasure that is at least 11 or 12; the circumcised penis is lucky to get to 3. Really-and I mean this in all seriousness-if American men who were circumcised at birth could know the deprivation of pleasure that they would experience, they would storm the hospitals and not permit their sons to undergo this unnecessary loss. But how can they know this? You have to be circumcised as an adult, as I was, to realize what a terrible loss of pleasure results from this cruel operation.” Marilyn Milos is the mother of three circumcised boys. She was a student nurse in 1979 the day she first saw the operation performed. "It was a day that changed the course of my life," she says now. “We students filed in the newborn nursery to find a baby strapped spread-eagle to a plastic board on a counter top across the room. He was struggling against his restraints-tugging, whimpering, and then crying helplessly. No one was tending the infant, but when I asked my instructor if I could comfort him, she said, "Wait til the doctor gets here." I wondered how a teacher of the healing arts could watch someone suffer arid not offer assistance. I wondered about the doctor's power which could intimidate others from following protective instincts. When he did arrive, I immediately asked the doctor if I could help the baby. He told me to put my finger into the baby's mouth; I did, and the baby sucked. I stroked his little head and spoke softly to him. He began to relax, and was momentarily quiet. The silence was soon broken by a piercing scream-the baby's reaction to having his foreskin pinched and crushed as the doctor attached the clamp to his penis. The shriek intensified when the doctor inserted an instrument between the foreskin and the glans (head of the penis), tearing the two structures apart. (They are normally attached to each other during infancy so the foreskin can protect the sensitive glans from urine and faeces.) The baby started shaking his head back and forth-the only part of his body free to move-as the doctor used another clamp to crush the foreskin length-wise, where he then cut. This made the opening of the foreskin large enough to insert a circumcision instrument, the device used to protect the glans from being severed during the surgery. The baby began to gasp and choke, breathless from his shrill, continuous screams. How could anyone say circumcision is painless when the suffering is so obvious? My bottom lip began to quiver, tears filled my eyes and spilled over, I found my own sobs difficult to contain. How much longer could this go on? During the next stage of the surgery, the doctor crushed the foreskin against the circumcision instrument and then, finally, amputated it. The baby was limp, exhausted, spent. I had not been prepared; nothing could have prepared me, for this experience. To see a part of this baby's penis being cut off-without an anaesthetic-was devastating. But even more shocking was the doctor's comment, barely audible several octaves below the piercing screams of the baby: "There's no medical reason for doing this." I couldn't believe my ears, my knees became weak, and I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't believe that medical professionals, dedicated to helping and healing, could inflict such unnecessary pain and anguish on innocent babies.” Since that day, Marilyn has dedicated herself to providing information to parents and medical professionals so they can have all the facts available before they decide whether circumcision should be' performed. She is the Director of the National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centres. Among their various activities, they have put together two international conferences on circumcision. What the health professionals say now. The most authoritative book on the subject, Say No to Circumcision! 40 compelling reasons why you should respect his birthright and keep your son whole, was written by Thomas J. Ritter, M.D., in 1992. "I am a general surgeon," he writes. "The prime dictum in medicine is 'Thou shalt do no harm.' The intent of this book is to explode the myth that routine newborn circumcision does no harm." After years of having gathered information, he draws the following conclusion: “The operation of routine, infant circumcision of males involves a paradox of absurdities completely at variance with sound medical-surgical-legal practice; a normal structure is operated upon; no anaesthesia is used; the patient does not give his consent; he is forcibly restrained while a normal segment of his body is removed; the parental consent is of quasi-legality since the part removed is a healthy, non-diseased appendage; there are no legitimate surgical-medical indications for the operation; the patient and the part operated upon are subject to a host of possible complications, including death; the genitalia are now irrevocably diminished in appearance, function and sensitivity.” Dr. Ritter is not alone in his opinion. Here are the words of a few experts who are calling for an end to the cruelty we are inflicting on our baby boys, My own preference, if I had the good fortune to have another son, would be to leave his little penis alone.” -Benjamin Spock, M.D., author, Baby and Child Care “Circumcision is a very cruel, very painful practice with no benefit whatsoever. “In addition to the obvious discomfort involved, there is now serious concern this routine procedure may actually deprive adult men of a vital part of their sexual sensitivity.”-Dean Edell, M.D., National radio and television personality. “All of the Western world raises its children uncircumcised and it seems logical that, with the extent of health knowledge in those countries, such a practice must be safe.”-CO Everett Koop, M.D., former U.S. Surgeon General. “In this case, the old dictum that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to make good sense. Minor surgery is one that is performed on someone else. Using the surgical treatment of circumcision to prevent phimosis is a little like preventing headaches by decapitation. It works but it is hardly a prudent form of treatment.” -Eugene Robin, M.D., Stanford University Medical School. “Even if you found that there were absolutely no harmful psychological effects, it would still not justify doing an unnecessary procedure. You just should not be cruel to babies.”-Paul Heiss, M.D., University of Southern California Medical School. “No one seriously advocates removing the breasts of female infants to prevent the more common malignancy of breast cancer. Circumcision must be recognized as an equally serious mutilation of men with equally insubstantial justification for continuing the practice.”-James Snyder, M.D., past president, Virginia Urologic Society. “We cannot but wonder why such a torture has been inflicted on the child. How could a being who has been aggressed in this way, while totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, loving, trusting person? Indeed, he will never to able to trust anyone in life, he will always be on the defensive, unable to open up to others and to life.”-Dr. Frederick Leboler, author Birth Without Violence. There is a relationship between the later experiences men have with shame-I'm too short, too fat, too tall, too hairy, not hairy enough, not a real man-and the first experience that gave us the message that our penis was wrong. Stage 5 recovery: healing men's shame. To accomplish the task of healing our body and soul, we must work with the following issues:
Male genital mutilation is the first way in which men are shamed. It is also the most damaging, and lays the foundation for later assaults on our body and soul. In order to heal, we must understand why we continue to condone such behaviour in the United States. "Circumcision," says Dr. Nicholas Cunningham of the Departments of Paediatrics and Public Health at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, "is probably an idea whose time has gone." Yet the practice continues, and the majority of baby boys in America are still subjected to this cruel and unusual punishment. We must ask why. "Male babies need to be circumcised" is a mythic statement, not a statement of fact. Mythic statements are not just untrue and superstitious, but connect with our deepest desires and fears. Social Psychologist Elizabeth Janeway says that it is characteristic of mythic statements generally to be prescriptions more than descriptions reflecting reality. "For it is the nature of myth," she asserts, "to be both true and false, false in fact, but true to human yearnings and human fears and thus, at all times, a powerful shaping force.” To change behaviour based on social myth, we need to uncover the roots and understand the real reasons why a given behaviour is valued in a culture. This is explored in greater detail below. The tame-and-shame syndrome: hidden reasons for cutting boy's genitals. We can get clues about the hidden agenda supporting circumcision if we understand why the practice began to spread in the U.S. in the late 1800s. Circumcision gained importance only after the medical profession, playing upon prevailing sexual anxieties, urged it as a "cure" for a long list of childhood diseases and disorders, including polio, tuberculosis, bedwetting, and a new syndrome which appeared widely in the medical literature of the time, "masturbatory insanity." Circumcision was then advocated along with a host of exceedingly harsh, pain-inducing devices and practices designed to thwart any vestige of genital pleasure in children, and to ensure that they remained under parental control. I found the religious roots and reasoning for circumcision by looking to my Jewish heritage. The thirteenth-century Rabbi Moses Maimonides was more honest than almost anyone since in his reasons for supporting circumcision: “The bodily injury caused to that organ is exactly that which is desired, it does not interrupt any vital function, nor does it destroy the power of regeneration. Circumcision simply counteracts excessive lust; for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment.” We need to recognise that decreasing sexual pleasure and increasing sexual pain has a very useful purpose in a dominator culture. It produces men who are numb, cut off from their feelings, with a great deal of repressed rage. The real purpose of circumcising baby boys is to begin a process of taking the "wild" out of them. This has been the goal of all the dominator cultures that have arisen over the last 10,000 years. As we have tried to wipe out the indigenous wild cultures of the world, kill the wild animals, and destroy the naturally occurring plant life, so too have we tried to tame men's "wild sexuality." What better way to destroy the hunter-warrior in us all than to attack the basis of our manhood, our genitals? What better way to make us docile enough to be willing to go off to desert wars, or fight in the jungles of Wall Street to keep the over-consumptive, addictive, American dream alive? Shame of all kinds serves the same purpose. If men can be convinced that they are inherently bad, that there is something wrong with us at our core, then we are more easily controlled. The final step in the shaming process calls for us to forget the source of our shame. The first step in healing is to remember what was done to us, feel the feelings we have so long repressed, and allow ourselves to grieve for what we have lost.
By Laird Harrison I don't know what I thought circumcision would be like. A haircut? Trimming toenails? The fact is that it hurts. I could hear it in my son's scream when he felt himself cut. My gut tightened as his tiny hand clenched around my finger. And I'm amazed now that I didn't expect that. That knot inside me relaxed a little when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended this month that babies being circumcised should get painkillers. The academy is the most influential group of children's doctors in the country; people who write books about childcare defer to the academy on questions as trivial as "When can you give a baby fruit juice?" So the chances are good that a lot more newborns are going to get anesthesia from now on. But the academy refrained from answering the really big circumcision question: Should a healthy boy be circumcised? Millions of parents spend millions of hours debating this issue. It bedeviled my wife and me so much that we ended up circumcising one of our sons and not the other. And even the academy's taskforce on circumcision, after two years of poring over crates full of scientific reports, essentially couldn't make up its collective mind. "Existing scientific evidence demonstrates potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision," the academy wrote. "However, these data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision....Parents should determine what's in the interest of the child." The ethnic and the scientific Wishy-washy as it sounds, I think that's a wise position. I spent days mucking around in the scientific literature on circumcision until I realized that some questions just can't be answered in the laboratory. To satisfy the normal rigors of scientific research, you would have to randomly select babies to be either circumcised or not circumcised, then follow them for several years to see which group was healthier. Obviously, no sane parent would consent to such an experiment. So researchers are left trying to answer the question by comparing people whose parents (or doctors) chose to circumcise them to those with their foreskins intact. But that leaves too many variables unaccounted for. For example, educated people, until recently, were more likely to have their kids circumcised than uneducated ones. Whites are more likely to be circumcised than blacks, Midwesterners more than Californians, and of course, Jews more than Christians. And all of these social, geographic, and genetic factors influence a child's health.
"It is legitimate for parents to take into account cultural, religious
and ethnic traditions, in addition to the medical factors, when making
this decision," the academy wrote. And that's where I disagree. I think
the ethnic factors are the only ones worth taking into account. Binding the tribe Let's assume for a moment that you could design a truly scientific experiment and prove that removing a boy's foreskin reduces his risk of a serious disease, such as cancer of the penis. It still wouldn't make any more sense to remove a boy's foreskin at birth than it would to remove his breast tissue (breast cancer in men is about common as penis cancer), his tonsils, or his appendix. Why do we discriminate against the foreskin in this way? Why is circumcision the only surgery commonly done without anesthesia? Why are only a tiny fraction of European boys circumcised while more than a half of American males go under the knife? And why have advocates changed their minds about what circumcision is supposed to prevent, from masturbation in the 19th century to sexually transmitted disease in the 1940s to urinary tract infections today? The reason, I think, is that circumcision is not a medical procedure and it never has been.
Even when performed by white-coated doctors in antiseptic hospital
rooms, circumcision is a ritual. Like scarring, branding, tattooing and
piercing, it sets members of one group apart from another. It binds the
tribe. Getting our own answers My wife is Jewish. I'm...well, let's say ethnically Christian. But more important, I was circumcised at birth. My father was circumcised, and his father before him. So when Rachele wanted our son, Dashiell, circumcised, I went along with it. And because I believed then as now that the procedure served only a religious function, I insisted that we hold a bris, the traditional Jewish ceremony, performed by a mohel, in our living room, with a bagel brunch. While Rachele ducked into the kitchen, I watched the mohel slice away a little bit of my son. That was five years ago, and it's true that Dashiell has no conscious memory of that pain, no sense of loss. He doesn't miss what he never knew he had. But I miss it. I miss it because as soon as the blade bit into him I knew I had transgressed. I knew that it was wrong to take away a healthy, living piece of a human being's body all against his will. I knew that I would never let that happen to another son of mine. Every tribe looks to its priests to approve its rituals; we look to our scientists. But the panel we anointed to authorize this particular rite has modestly abstained. We have to look beyond them to whatever or whoever creates the human conscience. Over the years, together and separately, like any couple, Rachele and I have turned to that authority with any question that really matters. Our sons will always bear the record of the one time we got different answers.~*~ Protecting Our Sons We have five living sons and one daughter. Although Bruce was circumcised at birth, we
jointly agreed not to have our sons circumcised.
BRUCE - I studied the subject extensively before marriage, and the only half-valid reasons the american medical community could give for the procedure was so-called cleanliness reasons - which experience has taught are false. After studying the history of the introduction of circumcision as a common procedure - that of curing masturbation as well as headaches and back aches and a list of about fifty other disorders not even related to that part of the body - I decided the american medical community didn't have a real clue - it was a matter of 'everyone else does it'. I also discovered America is alone in routine infant circumcision! All other countries have abandoned (or are abandoning) it as not only unnecessary but as a harmful procedure! (Of course, it is still practiced by Muslim and Jewish communities.) Being a religious person, I turned to the Bible - God created mankind and pronounced the creation "very good". It's true circumcision was a sign of the covenant God made with Abraham, but today's procedure is not the same procedure! In Abraham's day only enough of the foreskin was removed to expose the tip of the glans (or, the 'head'); the same amount usually loose at birth! The Maccabees, during their famous revolt against the Greek domination of the Jews, changed it to the procedure known today and forced it on all Jewish men on pain of death! It became a political sign of revolt against the Greeks instead of the spiritual sign of having made a covenant with God! And there were many who chose death rather than meddle with God's ordinance! In the New Testament, the Apostles announced (Acts chapter fifteen) that the ordinances of the Law of Moses we no longer required. The Book of Mormon is even more direct, the subject being addressed by the resurrected Christ Himself: "the law of circumcision is done away with in me." (Moroni 8:8). In Europe and some parts of Asia the procedure is gaining popularity - not as a health proedure but as a cosmetic operation to look more american! This is being done mainly among the pornography industry in an attempt to become profitable in the American market - there's no mention of any so-called health reasons! Among the non-pornography society in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the non-U.S. world, circumcision is not only ignored but actively discouraged! Several European countries will treat foreskin problems even to the extent of hospitalizing the patient long before they'll even consider removal. So, all my pre-marriage study showed plainly that there's no valid medical, social, or Christian reason to circumcise my sons! And as far as Judaism and Islam goes, they are not practicing the covenant God established with Abraham - they are practicing a political substitute! There are many Americans who have the false notion that circumcising our sons shows we aren't anti-Jewish. I grew up with many Jewish friends, have I've been to Israel multiple times and even made friends there - they all knew that even though I am Christian I still had a deep love for the Old Testament and a fierce love for all the children of Abraham - and my circumcision status has never been sought after and has never been required to prove anything! My love for Israel, the Jewish people, and the Old Testament is from the heart, not the groin. I think the Jews and Israelis I know would be horrified at the thought that we would mutilate our bodies to show religious and/or political support! (This action would even be forbidden by the Law of Moses!) LAURIE - I didn't really know what circumcision was until Bruce explained it to me shortly after we were engaged, and at that point I didn't really care. (Bruce says we talked about it before we were married, but I don't remember.) To be frank, it just plain made no sense to destroy what God had created. I would never inflict such torture on such an innocent person who could never protect themself! And that's all it is: useless, senseless torture! With our first several sons, we followed the advise of american doctors; that of pulling the foreskin back, forcing it to let go of the glans and routinely cleaning it. But after more independent study we gave it up - non-american medical writings make it plain that as boys grow and as the need is present, then the foreskin detaches on its own. As long as the urinary opening has access to the 'outside world', the foreskin should be left alone! And with our boys, the wisdom of the European doctors has proven true. We've had no infection or disease because of our decision. While bathing the child I would push the skin back to clean only as far as it had already let go as I would the rest of the body. But I only did it weekly at the most; the foreskin was just too good at keeping the glans clean all by itself! The glans is kept perfectly clean and healthy by letting Nature alone! One item of interest to those changing diapers: It's all too common for a baby boy to urinate just as soon as the diaper is opened. But with our intact sons, there isn't any sudden air temperature change on the glans, and so there isn't anything to trigger the response to urinate! Through the diapers of five boys, we have yet to be wet on! I've taken great delight in watching mothers with circumcised babies get wet on nearly every time they open the diaper! (Great sport in a boring hospital room.) My husband refuses to change a diaper on anyone else's son unless they're intact because of this; he refuses to be wet on! BRUCE - One great fear a lot of fathers voice is having to explain the difference between their circumcision and their son's intactness. This is trivial - when each of my boys were three and four and we were still bathing together, every one of them have asked. I've simply told them that when I was a baby the doctors thought it was a good thing to cut it off but now we know better. With that, the subject has always dropped until they were old enough to have more extensive health discussions - I didn't make a big deal out of it, so they saw no reason to make a big deal out of it. As far as pains of jealousy, etc. - yes, I went through them, but I've gotten over it and am glad I made the decision I did - and, I'm even considering one of the many restoration techniques. As far as being uncomfortable - what is there to be uncomfortable about? My parents made their decision and I made mine; what they did is water under the bridge, and I've corrected it with the next generation. And I doubt very much my sons are jealous of my circumcision. From talks with my oldest son (16 years old at this writing) I've discovered that he's not experienced ninety-nine percent of the unintentional stimulation's I went through as a teenager! We circumcised men well remember those puberty years when just turning and having our underwear rub our exposed glans was enough to set off erection after erection. There were times when just walking or riding a bicycle was enough rubbing across the glans (and I wore loose, modest clothing) to trigger the reaction. (This is rough for paper boys!) My son, with his glans safely tucked away and covered against undue stimulation, tells me he's never experienced this and was horrified over my stories. So much for circumcision being a cure for masturbation; as far as I'm concerned circumcision is a major cause of masturbation! Some people are afraid their son will feel 'uncomfortable' in the school shower. With the trend in non-circumcision we've been experiencing in the last twenty years, more likely your son will have plenty of company and will be envied. Again I've consulted my oldest son, and he tells me boys his age are so paranoid about being caught 'looking' and being branded with a sexual-orientation accusation that today's boys are overcautious and almost afraid to look at anyone below the navel - he went an entire school year without being able to tell me if any of the boys in his gym class were also intact! And as far as your son having to match the other men in the family - how often does the need to match come up? Wedding pictures? Christmas card photos? Unless you're a family of nudists this really isn't a problem! This excuse is really a declaration of either jealousy on the part of the men in your family (misery loves company) or the fear to tell your family you've made a decision with which they're not going to agree. Let the relatives know to back off - we had to! My father was horrified the first time he saw a foreskin on a grandson, but we held our ground. And my mother-in-law put us through the ringer, sure her grandson was in for a lifetime of horrible health problems. Five sons later, we still haven't seen a single one of them. LAURIE - The biggest thing new parents must remember is that the doctor is not the one in control. And, american doctors will even admit that they aren't even trained in knowledge or theory concerning the function, use, or maintenance of the foreskin; they're only taught to cut it off for reasons that weren't even valid 80 years ago when a non-medical 'authority' decreed it to be the ultimate cure for all male ills. Simply tell the doctors and the nurses 'No'. You do not owe them any explanation. My husband I was once threatened with child neglect; in return he threatened that nurse with child molestation and mutilation. [BRUCE - My experience is that the biggest problem will be with the nurses. They are the ones with the plans, schedules, and programs, and by not having your son circumcised you will be upsetting those plans, schedules, and programs. And my experiences tells me that a nurse with an upset program or schedule is not a happy nurse.] Everyday in the hospital the nurses will ask if you want the procedure done; just tell them no. When they badger you tell them to back off - they have no right to tell you what to do! Don't let them bully you; you tell them what YOU want and make sure it gets done! After all, they are there to serve and not to dictate. Every morning when they take the babies away for the doctor to check them, make sure they know you don't want it done. LAURIE and BRUCE - DO NOT SIGN ANY CONSENT FORMS WITHOUT READING THEM COMPLETELY! AND READ THE FINE PRINT; consent to this procedure often shows up in the fine print!! Also, many consent forms give the medical professionals the right to perform any procedure they deem necessary - no not sign these forms! (We don't even sign them today for scout, school, or church activities!) Too many consent forms are all-inclusive and give the doctor or scout leader the right to treat your child any way he or she deems correct - trash those forms and only consent to procedures on a one-by-one basis. (For field trips and scout trips we specify they are only allowed to perform life-saving emergency procedures without our presence and/or specific permission.) In many places you can cross out and add items to consent forms; if you live in a place where you can do this, then do it! And remember that you cannot be forced to sign anything. Not by doctors, school teachers, or even scout and religious youth group leaders. (BRUCE - Since first sending this writing out on the internet, a lawyer contacted us and advised us that here in the United States it IS legal to cross off anything on a consent form you don't agree with; he said to make sure you initial the cross-off to show that you did in fact cross it off and not someone else. I say just hand the form back and make them, the service-provider, give you a form without the items to which you object. YOU are the customer; they can interrupt their schedule and program to provide for you.) When an institution tells you that you have to use their pre-printed release form, laugh at them and ask them who is the customer and who is the service-provider. I've had to tell scout leaders that they will use the form I approve of and am willing to sign and that's that. I've done the same with schools, church, and hospitals. A lot of these organizations have changed their forms because of my stubbornness. LAURIE - In the military hospitals our children have been born in, they've put a sign in bold letters on the baby's basket: "NO CIRC". Make sure your hospital has some way of quickly identifying your son so no one 'accidentally' wheels him in for the procedure. I've discovered that all the instructions American doctors give concerning stretching the baby's foreskin and daily washing are wrong. With our last two sons we followed the advise of non-american doctors and the results have been healthier than when we meddled with Nature. BRUCE - The internet web sites and e-mail groups on this subject have been abuzz lately with what I feel are the real reasons circumcision is still alive in this country - hospitals are actually making money selling the foreskins. Some are going for skin grafts for burn patients. Some are going to cosmetic companies - all that testing no longer done on animals is now being done on the foreskins of the American male! So, after billing you for removing healthy tissue from your son, they turn around and sell it and make even more money off that healthy skin! What it came down to for us is that there is simply no reason for the procedure and that modern research has proven what the rest of the world knew all along. As parents it's up to us to do what's best for our children. Whether they are male or female, leaving their reproductive organs intact so they can function correctly is the right moral and medical decision. Today there is a growing 'civil rights' movement of allowing persons of both genders to make decisions about their body. Men - it's time we better educate ourselves on this subject and then take hold of our parental right and not leave it up to ill-informed doctors and too-trusting mothers (I don't say this to insult any woman!) - it's not a dirty or embarrassing subject; it's mass mutilation based solely on gender! It's our son's health we're talking about; open your mouth and be heard! (And do it before you even marry! As a man, you need to educate your future spouse on male sexuality and its needs and rights.) Five years ago, in response to a magazine article, I wrote that when we men demand and hold out for the right to control our body (as women so demand) as a heritage for all men, then this practice of mutilation will end! Women - every time I hear you announcing your rights in controlling your bodies (which
I am not denying), I can't help but hope you'll grant this same right of personal control
and decision to your sons - as you already do to your daughters! If the U.S. Congress can
give African women refugee status so they can remain in the U.S. to escape female
circumcision, then maybe it's time to reconsider the ignorant manner in which we mutilate
our sons at birth. Why do we so thoroughly mass-mutilate our own sons while at the same
time take to the streets and write our government, insisting on the protection of foreign
women from the same form of mutilation? ~*~
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
I'm pregnant, so I researched circumcision It's amazing the number of things you never have to consider before
becoming a parent - breastfeed or formula feed; cloth diapers or
disposables; vaccinations; when to start solids; organic vs.
conventional foods; public school, private school or homeschool; and,
of course, if you are having a boy - whether or not to circumcise.
I hope to write about my feelings, opinions and choices regarding circumcision and my son, knowing full well that everyone who reads this blog will not agree with me. I think that anyone who has a son will have their list of reasons for why they decided for or against circumcision. I simply wish to share my reasons here (and some of the information I came across along the way) for deciding against it. I hope that by including some links below to reputable sources, other parents who are trying to decide what is best for their son can make an informed decision - whether it be to circumcise or not. =========================================== The short and sweet answer as to why Jody and I are not having our son circumcised is that we can't find a single reason to indicate that it is a necessary procedure. I believe that the body we are born with, in its entirety, is that way for a reason. I think that each different part has a unique purpose for existing. If we didn't need a certain part, I believe that over time we would evolve so that it no longer existed. In doing my research on circumcision, I came across a lot of interesting information. Some of it has to do with the origins of circumcision in the United States, some about the actual procedure, some about the effects of circumcision and about the current rates of circumcision in the U.S. I read a lot more than I will blog about here, but these are some things I thought were worth mentioning. "Circumcision started in America during the masturbation hysteria of the Victorian Era, when a few American doctors circumcised boys to punish them for masturbating. Victorian doctors knew very well that circumcision denudes, desensitizes, and disables the penis. Nevertheless, they were soon claiming that circumcision cured epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, elephantiasis, tuberculosis, eczema, bed-wetting, hip-joint disease, fecal incontinence, rectal prolapse, wet dreams, hernia, headaches, nervousness, hysteria, poor eyesight, idiocy, mental retardation, and insanity. In fact, no procedure in the history of medicine has been claimed to cure and prevent more diseases than circumcision. As late as the 1970s, leading American medical textbooks still advocated routine circumcision as a way to prevent masturbation." -- Paul M. Fleiss, MD The Case Against Circumcision Uh, I'm not a guy and no expert, but I am pretty sure that circumcision does NOT prevent masturbation. "Today the reasons given for circumcision have been updated to play on contemporary fears and anxieties; but one day they, too, will be considered irrational. Now that such current excuses as the claim that this procedure prevents cancer and sexually transmitted diseases have been thoroughly discredited, circumcisers will undoubtedly invent new ones. But if circumcisers were really motivated by purely medical considerations, the procedure would have died out long ago, along with leeching, skull-drilling, and castration. The fact that it has not suggests that the compulsion to circumcise came first, the "reasons," later." -- Fleiss The fact that new reasons to continue the circumcision practice are being invented is rather disturbing if you ask me. One website I came across in my research shows step-by-step (graphic) pictures of an actual circumcision of a newborn boy. What Happens During Circumcision There is also a video there, but the pictures alone were more than enough for me. I don't think I could've stomached the video. I had never thought much about the actual procedure itself. I figured that the foreskin was clamped and removed without much effort and the baby was left to heal over the next week or whatever. I didn't think about the baby needing to be restrained, whether or not any type of anesthesia is used, the foreskin needing to be pried apart from the penis, the amount of bleeding involved, the raw exposed penis, etc. Not to mention the child crying in pain. :( It was not easy to look at. There's a laundry list of "things" that are lost forever when a circumcision takes place. While all of these things in the list are noteworthy, I thought I would mention a few here that stood out to me: "When a baby boy's natural and intact penis is "circumcised," this is what is lost forever: ** An estimated 240 feet of microscopic nerves, including branches of the dorsal nerve. ** Several feet of blood vessels, including the frenular artery and branches of the dorsal artery. The loss of this dense vascularity interrupts normal blood flow to the shaft and glans of the penis, obviously damaging its natural function and possibly stunting its complete and healthy development. ** The immunological defense system of the soft mucosa, which may produce antibacterial and antiviral proteins such as lysozyme, also found in mothers milk, and plasma cells, which secrete immunoglobulin antibodies. ** The essential "gliding" mechanism. If unfolded and spread out flat, the average adult foreskin measures about 15 square inches, the size of a postcard. This abundance of specialized, self-lubricating mobile skin gives the natural penis its unique hallmark ability to smoothly "glide" in and out within itself—permitting natural non-abrasive masturbation and intercourse, without drying out the vagina or requiring artificial lubricants." -- Gary L. Harryman - What is Lost to Circumcision I know some parents may be concerned about whether or not an intact penis requires special care. Personally, having no experience with an uncircumcised penis in the past, I had no idea what the answer was before asking friends of mine who's sons were left intact. FYI: "The natural penis requires no special care. A child's foreskin, like his eyelids, is self-cleansing. For the same reason it is inadvisable to lift the eyelids and wash the eyeballs, it is inadvisable to retract a child's foreskin and wash the glans. Immersion in plain water during the bath is all that is needed to keep the intact penis clean." -- Fleiss Also worth noting that the foreskin should never be forced to retract before it is ready. "As noted, the foreskin and glans develop as one tissue. Separation will evolve over time. It should not be forced. When will separation occur? Each child is different. Separation may occur before birth; this is rare. It may take a few days, weeks, months, or even years. This is normal. Although many foreskins will retract by age 5, there is no need for concern even after a longer period. Some boys do not attain full retractability of the foreskin until adolescence." -- Newborns: Care of the Uncircumcised Penis Regarding the rate of circumcision in the world and U.S.: "Circumcision is almost unheard of in Europe, South America, and non-Muslim Asia. In fact, only 10 to 15 percent of men throughout the world are circumcised, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. The neonatal circumcision rate in the western U.S. has now fallen to 34.2 percent." -- Fleiss "The nationwide circumcision rate had been fluctuating in the low 60 percent range for some years, but a decline in the percentage of boys circumcised started in 2002 and continued into 2003. From 2002 to 2003 declines occured in all four census regions. Non-circumcision has been the norm in the Western Region for more than a decade."-- U.S. Circumcision Incidence I think it's important to note that the circumcision rate is dropping in the United States because the old parental concern of not wanting a child to be teased because they look differently from the other boys will no longer be an issue if the ratio of circ'd boys to uncirc'd boys is approaching 50-50. I know in my own circle of friends, the ratio of circ'd boys to uncirc'd boys (babies and toddlers I mean) is probably more like 20 (circ'd) to 80 (uncirc'd) or even slightly higher in favor of the uncircumcised boys. Some parents I know (both in "real life" and on message boards) had their first son circumcised before they had done much research on the topic, and then, after learning more about the procedure, chose not to circumcise their second son. (And now at the risk of sharing TMI...) Having never been with an uncircumcised man (yes, you can infer from that that Jody is circumcised), I was very interested to learn that not only is the pleasure of the male affected by circumcision, but also the pleasure of the female. (I mentioned a bit about this above as well.) "One of the foreskin's functions is to facilitate smooth, gentle movement between the mucosal surfaces of the two partners during intercourse. The foreskin enables the penis to slip in and out of the vagina nonabrasively inside its own slick sheath of self-lubricating, movable skin. The female is thus stimulated by moving pressure rather than by friction only, as when the male's foreskin is missing."-- Fleiss Like I said above, I couldn't find a reason to convince me that circumcision is necessary for our son. I don't feel the need to provide a list of all of the reasons against it. They are easy enough to find online. By reading through some of the links I provided below, you can read more information for yourself if you so desire. I feel it is worth noting that I tried to find some pro-circumcision websites to include in my list (to keep it balanced), but 99% of the information I found "out there" is anti-circumcision. The one site (a members-only list serv "where circumcision is discussed and always supported") I did find turned out to be centered around pornography associated with circumcision so I removed it from my list. The fact that it is a porn site is not apparent from anything posted on the public side of it. In conclusion, I don't feel that it is my right to make the decision to remove a part of my son's anatomy without his consent. I believe that circumcision is a personal choice - one that should be made by the person who owns the penis. By leaving my son intact, he can always decide when he gets older that he wants to have a circumcision. If I were to circumcise him as a baby, he wouldn't have the option of taking that back. I feel it is his body, his penis, and his choice. Resources: National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers The Case Against Circumcision - an eye-opening, very informative (IMO) article By Paul M. Fleiss, MD, MPH (interesting to note that Fleiss is Jewish) My Son: The Little Jew with a Foreskin - By Stacey Greenberg The Case Against Circumcision Discussion Forum on Mothering.com What Happens During Circumcision? - Graphic photos/video of the circumcision process on a newborn Protect Your Uncircumcised Son: Expert Medical Advice for Parents Circumcision Information and Resource Pages ~*~
Some of my friends and family have given me crap about not circumcising
our little baby, and the ignorant comments are fairly irritating. There
are so many stupid myths that people in this country believe about
circumcision. I did my research and agreed with my husband that the
minimal possible benefits were not worth the risks of the surgery. I
think I have heard every possible argument for why it should be done,
and I have a response for each one.
"It's harder to take care of an intact penis" - Actually, in the first few weeks it is easier to care for an uncircumcised newborn. At birth the foreskin is fused to the head of the penis and no special care is required... no Vaseline to mess with, no worrying about if the penis is healing properly. It usually takes several years for the foreskin to naturally retract, sometimes up to puberty. Forcefully retracting the foreskin can cause pain, bleeding, and lead to infection and other complications. Once the foreskin is able to naturally retract, it takes maybe an extra 30 seconds to clean. "The Bible says you have to circumcise" - Unlike Jews, Christians are NOT required to circumcise. It states this several times in the New Testament. "He should look like his father" - This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard. If John lost one of his fingers in an accident, we wouldn't have our baby's corresponding digit removed. "He'll get an infection if he's not circumcised" - As long as no one forcefully retracts my son's foreskin (if that happens, someone's looking for a beat down), he has less than a 1% chance of having an issue. There is a greater chance of having a problem resulting from circumcision surgery. "He'll be different from all the other boys and will get teased in the locker room" - There's nothing wrong with being different. It is becoming increasingly popular to leave boys intact. My pediatrician estimates that our area has about a 30% intact rate, and some other parts of the country are closer to 50%. I have spoken with several intact men and parents of intact boys, and locker room teasing isn't any worse for intact boys than circumcised boys. If one boy says something about another boy's penis, the teaser is usually made fun of for looking. Some boys might compare size, but intact penises generally look larger. "If he needs/wants to be circumcised later, it'll be more painful" - If our son wants or needs the surgery later on, he'll have a higher pain threshold, will be able to be unconscious for the procedure, and will be able to have some nice drugs for pain management. "Routine infant circumcision is no big deal... they don't feel pain and they won't remember it anyway" - I find it absurd to have surgery performed on a perfectly healthy infant. Circumcision is a painful cosmetic surgery with some serious risks. Many hospitals (including the one I delivered at) do not use anything to numb the skin or relieve the pain, and infants definitely do feel pain! I have seen how they do the procedure, and it's awful. Even if he won't remember the pain, that does not justify it. I wouldn't make him go through it alone, and I couldn't stand to see my little guy have the most sensitive part of his body cut up. "He'll be rejected by women as an adult" - Some women think that intact penises look ugly, but penises in general don't really look "pretty". Any chick who doesn't want to be with a guy simply because he has an unaltered and NORMAL penis is a shallow, ignorant bitch. I wouldn't want my son with someone like that. "He'll be more likely to contract an STD" - If you look closely at the Africa HIV study; you'll see that the circumcised men had a lower HIV infection rate because their sexual behavior was less risky. All in the circumcised group were circumcised as adults, and the majority of those not infected had complications from the surgery that made it difficult or nearly impossible to have sex. There has been a study done that shows that when males are circumcised as infants, they are no less likely to contract STDs in adulthood than intact males. It is responsible sexual behavior that protects against STDs, not the lack of a foreskin! "He'll hate you for not circumcising him" - There may be a very small percentage of intact males who wish they'd been circumcised as infants, but most intact men like their foreskins. We should all be able to choose our own unnecessary body alterations, and I refuse to take away my son's choice in this matter for the miniscule chance that he might be bitter about it down the road. I got to choose all of my optional physical modifications, and so will my son. I could not find a single justifiable reason for having our son
circumcised, but plenty of reasons to leave him intact. Most people in
this country circumcise their son without really thinking about it
simply because it's what the majority does. Some people berate me for
not going with the majority. Well, those people can kiss my ass! You
make the best decision with the information you have, and I had more
information than most on this issue. I am confident that my husband and
I made the best choice for our son in leaving him with a natural and
normal penis. I am very glad that I brought my son home from the
hospital in one piece. No one is going to change my mind, so those who
disagree with me can step off. ~*~
By Suzanne Cook
I have never gotten so worked up about a particular issue as I have with circumcision. Since the birth of my first child, I have learned more about circumcision than I ever wanted to know. I am glad that I have been able to make a truly informed decision on behalf of my children. None of my children have been circumcised. At the time my first son was born in 1992, all I knew about circumcision was what I learned in a pamphlet - that it was not medically necessary and was painful for the baby. That's all I needed to know to say no to circumcision. Caring for my intact baby boy couldn't have been easier. Just external washing was all that was needed. I knew his penis was still developing and retraction wouldn't be possible or even needed until his teen years, when he would be perfectly capable of doing it for himself. I have 100% confidence that my sons will be capable of cleaning their own genitals. What bothers me most about the circumcision issue is the fact that most parents have no idea what circumcision is or what the foreskin is for. Even those who have been given ample opportunity to learn the facts still brush them off and refuse to accept them. They do this so they can continue to circumcise their children without guilt. I mean, how many parents are actually going to admit that they chose unnecessary surgery for their newborn baby that removed healthy, normal, functioning tissue from his genitals which caused unnecessary pain and suffering and a life-time of problems from the lack of foreskin? Not many. Instead, they hide behind the myths of "it's cleaner", "he will be teased if he is not circumcised", "he'll have to have it done later in life so better to do it when he's still a baby". Years ago, it is understandable that the majority of parents were ignorant about the issue because they were specifically told that circumcision was cleaner, healthier, etc. Today, there is no excuse. No medical organization in the world recommends routine infant circumcision. There are no valid medical reasons to circumcise a newborn baby, yet the cutting continues. Why? The excuses used today are mostly so the baby will look like his father, if the father has been circumcised. That has got to be the stupidest excuse I have ever heard. I know parents who have used this excuse and guess what? The boy looks more like his mother than his father! In hair color, eye color, general facial appearance. Why his penis has to be cut up to match his father's is absolutely ridiculous! It's obvious a hang-up on the father's side. Maybe by circumcising his own son it justifies his own circumcision. He is the one that doesn't want to feel like the odd one. I just cannot believe these factors actually play a role in deciding whether to put a little baby through medically unwarranted surgery. Where is their common sense? Where are their parental instincts to protect their child? It's absurd. "Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) I often hear from circumcised men saying "There's nothing wrong with MY penis", "I am glad I am circumcised". That's fine. No one is trying to make you feel bad about being circumcised. No one wants you to feel inferior because you are missing a part of your penis. What I oppose is these attitudes contributing to harming more baby boys. A father's preferences for his own penis should have no effect on deciding upon surgery for his newborn baby! Surely if he had an appendectomy or tonsillectomy, he would not insist that his child have one too. When he looks objectively at the facts, he will see that circumcision is not in the best interest of his son. He was circumcised in a time when it was thought to be preferable...healthier, cleaner. We now know better. Fathers and sons will always have differences and the difference in their circumcision status' can be easily explained along with the other differences. A child is a product of their parents' love for one another, not a clone! I do feel that circumcision is a form of abuse. It has become a social ritual here in America. People cling to their personal opinions and fears in order to continue the practice of circumcising baby boys. If it were any other part of the body in which parents were deciding to amputate healthy tissue without the presence of disease or severe infection, you would hear a lot more outcry from the public. Since circumcision has been ingrained into our society as "normal", many people don't even think twice about it. In fact, many people don't even want to think about it at all! They don't want to think about it, or talk about it, or hear about it. Just do it, get it over with, and forget it ever happened. The foreskin is the only tissue in which amputation is performed without medical justification. Rarely do problems occur that necessitates circumcision later in life. As with any part of the body, problems can occur and as with any other part of the body, problems can be treated medically rather than surgically. Surgery should be a last resort. But often with any and all problems related to the foreskin, circumcision is offered as the only solution. Parents in favor of infant circumcision state the men they know who HAD to have a circumcision later in life. In this society, it's no wonder. They either get them at birth or get them later in life. Either way, they WILL get them. Why the obsession with foreskin cutting? I think the issue is deep seated and may never be understood. Improper treatment of an intact boy is a major cause of later problems and later circumcisions. Many parents and doctors harm little boys by retracting their foreskins before they are ready. The foreskin is attached to the head of the penis at birth. As the penis grows and develops, it gradually separates from the head (glans) and becomes retractable. There is no exact age when this occurs. There is also no reason to retract the foreskin before this separation is complete. Even after completion, retracting and rinsing does not need to begin until adolescence, when during puberty the body goes through tremendous change and personal hygiene needs to be given more priority in both sexes. I have never retracted either of my son's foreskins nor attempted to retract them. Any medical professional who has examined my sons has been told outright not to retract their foreskins. I really wouldn't think this would be necessary except that the sad situation exists that many doctors, nurses, etc. are uninformed about the normal male penis and their incompetence could harm my child through forced retraction. I have heard from many parents, horror stories about how a doctor forced their child's foreskin back to the point of causing pain and bleeding. This is abuse. Doctors are taught in medical school how to cut off the foreskin but they are not taught how to simply leave it alone! The responsibility is now placed upon us as parents to ensure that our children are not harmed. This is so important. Every male is born with a foreskin. If he is not, he is considered to have a birth defect called aposthia. Interesting that to be circumcised is considered to be "normal" yet to be born circumcised and it's considered a defect. The foreskin protects the penis throughout life and aids in sexual functioning. The male glans is meant to be an internal organ, similar to the female clitoral glans. The double layered foreskin protects the male glans, just as the female foreskin, also known as a clitoral hood, protects the female glans. Many parents don't even realize how much tissue is removed from their child's genitals during a circumcision. Many men have scar lines from the circular cut at mid shaft on their penis. What they don't realize is from that point forward is all scars, including the entire glans, since the foreskin had to be unnaturally separated and torn away from the glans before it could be cut off. The fact that this tissue has to be torn away should send red flags up to anyone. It is not supposed to be removed, especially at birth. During the diaper years, the foreskin protects the penis from urine, feces, and abrasions from diapers. Throughout life, the foreskin protects from abrasions from clothing, secretes antibiotic chemicals, and provides a sensual rolling and gliding mechanism during intercourse and masturbation. From birth to adolescence, the penis is self-cleaning. The foreskin keeps the penis clean. Nothing gets up in there that isn't supposed to be there. External washing is all that is needed and is easily accomplished during a bath or shower. In adolescence and after the foreskin becomes retractable, a simple retract and rinse is all that it needed to maintain genital hygiene. Another part of this issue that I am concerned about is human rights and sex discrimination. Because of the facts concerning circumcision: that it is not medically necessary, that it removes normal, healthy, functioning tissue, that it is painful and traumatic, and is permanent, I feel that a child's rights have been violated when he is circumcised. Why should anyone have the right to remove a part of his body that he needs to function properly? Why should he be subjected to genital alteration for his parent's cosmetic preferences? It is HIS body. HE has to live with the consequences from the lack of foreskin and any complications from the circumcision surgery itself. When we speak about female circumcision, which is illegal in this country by the way, we are appalled that little girls are held down and ritually cut, regardless of the reasons to why it's being done. We know there are no medical reasons for it and it is very painful. The American Academy of Pediatrics has taken a solid stance against female circumcision and specifically states that parents religious, cultural or personal beliefs should not be taken into consideration. But with male circumcision, the AAP states that a parent's religious, cultural and personal beliefs SHOULD be considered and any decision to circumcise is appropriate. That is sex discrimination. It's not o.k. for girls but it is o.k. for boys. I've heard the argument "but female circumcision is much more severe; you can't compare the two." Yes, some forms of female genital mutilation are very severe but we are not comparing severity we are comparing soveignity. In the state of Washington, it was proposed that a local hospital be given permission to perform what is called a "sunna" circumcision, in which the clitoral hood (foreskin) of a girl is slit. No tissue is removed. This would satisfy the parent's cultural expectations and spare the girl a more drastic mutilation. The public was outraged and the hospital was not given permission to conduct the circumcisions. People were outraged that a little girl's genitals would be cut, yet they say nothing about the amputation of the entire male foreskin. They were outraged because the sunna circumcision was saw as barbaric, having no medical value and violating the child's right. The same could be said for male circumcision. Some people still refuse to see that but facts are facts. Most people are also totally unaware that the majority of males in this world are not circumcised. America is the only country who routinely circumcises the majority of male infants for non-religious reasons. I don't feel an infant should be a martyr for their parent's religion. It would be anti-Semitic to oppose circumcision for some boys but not for all, just because the reasoning differs. Some Christians mistakenly believe that they must circumcise, as God commanded. Many references in the Bible can attest to the fact that circumcision is not a requirement for Christians. In fact, Paul preached about this "yoke of bondage" in Acts 15. When Jesus was crucified on the cross, he freed us from the laws of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it is talked about as "circumcision of the heart". Surely they don't mean for you to cut open your chest and make a circular incision in your heart! Honestly, I really doubt that circumcision of the penis was ever commanded! Yes, it does say in Genesis "you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin", but in says nothing about "penis". And in other portions of the Bible, it talks about "foreskin of your heart". Just my views but I really doubt that such a loving, caring God would ask people to intentionally harm innocent children through circumcision. The foreskin was not put on the penis so it could be cut off. God made man in his image. He did not make a mistake as far as the genitals are concerned. The foreskin has a life-long function and is supposed to be there. Because of my strong views about this issue, I volunteer a lot of my time trying to educate others. As a parent, I always welcome any information that effects the health and well being of my children. If I were a newborn baby boy, I sure hope someone would tell my parents that genital surgery is not needed! I think we need to move past the point of debating circumcision and on to healing those who have been harmed and keeping all boys and girls intact. ~*~
by Kelley Mason I am constantly dumfounded by new mothers I know who have strong feelings against circumcision yet choose to leave the decision up to their husbands thinking that they should make the choice since they are men. This, in many cases, leads to their baby boys being altered and leaves the women feeling sorrow. This concerns me. Why aren't women standing up for their infant sons? As a Christian I believe that the husband is ultimately the head of the house hold and decision maker (after consulting with the family of course). I respect him for this, for his role as provider etc. and he respects us mothers as the barers and caregivers of the children. But this does not mean that we are to forget or ignore our God given instincts as mothers to protect the purity of our sons bodies as God created them. I believe that women are more capable of making an informed, unbiased, decision about circumcision than many men are. Yes that is what I said!! I believe that many men have underlying feelings that may effect their rationality to make an unbiased, informed decision. And of course this only applies to the decision to circumcise not the decision not to since the decision not to is really not a decision at all it is merely letting things remain the way they were intended to be. And I applaud the many men who have allowed their sons to remain whole, they are not the ones that I refer to in this article. You would think that men, being the ones with the penis's, would be the best qualified to make a decision regarding it. And this is true if he were choosing whether or not to circumcise himself. But as a man, circumcised or not, he is already biased. The man, who was circumcised as an infant, doesn't know what it is like to be uncircumcised and is not only unfamiliar with it, but probably a bit intimidated by it as well. He doesn't know whether or not he has less sensation during sex, or what effect the pain of the procedure had on him as an infant or what side effects it may have had (unless of course he is still suffering from those side effects). He only knows that he is circumcised, and most of his buddies are and that he is fine and happy and has no problems. I am sure he has even been herd to say "I am circumcised and I am fine". Being circumcised it all he knows. This is also the case with the uncircumcised man who chooses circumcision for his son (thought this would be quite rare indeed) based on, in some part, the experiences he has had being intact. A man, feeling a certain way about his "manliness" has preconceived notions about how his son would feel if left intact. These notions seem to overpower any facts that he has read about how unnecessary and harmful circumcision is. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. The cars that we own are Volvo's, we have 2 of them. If a friend, about to buy his first car, were to ask my opinion what do you think I would say? I would recommend Volvo because it is what I know and love, and have had only good experiences with them. I really don't have much experience with many other types of cars. Volvo's have worked great for us. So my friend buys a Volvo as his first car and he HATES it! It is not fast enough, not sleek enough, and he wishes he would have bought that Mercedes he was looking at instead. I cannot fathom anyone not loving Volvo's. But hey, everyone is different. Fortunately for him he can go and buy a different car. The same can't be said for the boy who has been circumcised. In looking at the reasons men choose to circumcise I am not talking about health, hygiene or religion (Jewish excluded) since these can be explained away with facts that these men cannot refute. We know for a fact that there are no significant health benefits as a result of routine infant circumcision. We know for a fact that the uncircumcised penis is no dirtier than a circumcised one and is, in fact, very easy to clean. And we know that for Christians circumcision is not required of us. This is blatantly obvious in the New Testament. For a man to try to use health, hygiene or religion as his reasons to circumcise is moot. He would have no argument because facts would not support him. Most of the reasons I hear about in the mans argument to circumcise their sons are purely cosmetic and egotistic. The biggest excuse I have heard, and the one that holds the least amount of weight, is that the man wants his son to look like his peers (despite of course the fact that in the US today 4 of every 10 boys are uncircumcised). He is afraid that his son will be made fun of in the locker room etc. Well I am not a guy, but I know for a fact that I never paraded around stark naked in front of my girl friends. So in my effort to understand that argument I have come to several conclusions. Perhaps these men made fun of their peers for various reasons in the locker room. Perhaps they were made fun or witnessed someone else being made fun of and they feel and are trying to protect their sons from having to experience this first hand. The flaw in this thinking is that our children are not us. Trying to protect them by having a surgical procedure performed on their genitals is not the answer. They have to find their own way. Rather than submitting your son to an irreversible procedure on the mere chance that someone will see his uncircumcised penis and make fun of him, it is better to educate him about it, let him feel proud of the fact that he is intact and perhaps he will not be the one feeling inferior after all but will feel pity for his peers who have had a piece of them cut off without their consent. Another reason men choose circumcision for their sons is that, being circumcised themselves, they want their boy to look like them. No offense but this is obviously an ego driven decision. Does this man feel so inferior by his own circumcision that he needs to surround himself with men who look the same way? Does the idea of having an uncircumcised male in the house make him feel like he is not as much of a man? Maybe he thinks his son will feel odd if he looks different from his father. Once again I have to ask . . . so what? This can again be dealt with by educating your son about the fact that something was done to his father without his consent and that they didn't want to subject him to the same thing. Allow him to feel proud of how he was created instead of assuming that he will be ashamed of it. I am convinced that we as women and mothers are much more capable of making a decision on circumcision. We are an objective third party. We can see the pros and cons with an opened mind not having preconceived notions. We can appreciate the perfection of our child's body because it grew inside us. We understand that our child was perfect at birth just the way God created him. We are talking about the removal of a part of the sexual organ of your infant son and doing so without his consent. This cannot be remedied or fixed. Yes, as parents we are in a position of authority over our children but we are also their caregivers and protectors. Who will stand up for our sons if not us? This is why I have such a hard time understanding why so many women step aside and leave the decisions up to their husbands who may not be able to make that decision without bias. Aren't we betraying our sons by not following our hearts and God given instincts and standing up for their well being? But how can we protect our sons while respecting our husbands. There is such thing as compromise. A Godly husband will consider his wife's opinion in all his decisions. He understands the wisdom that God has given women and respects it. Compromise can be reached if both parities are willing to look at the facts. Perhaps you, as the mother, can take responsibility for teaching your son about your decision to leave him intact if his father is uncomfortable with doing so. Since this is dealing with the private sexual organs of your son why not let him make the decision himself. Perhaps when he is older if he expresses poor feelings about being intact he can be allowed to be circumcised. At least then it will be his decision. Maybe you can offer to give up something that you had desired. Can we not compromise some of our personal wants to protect our sons? Don't give up!! These are extenuating circumstances!! Be persistent, be honest, share your convictions and your feeling!! Be respectful but don't back down!! Try to understand your husband so that he can understand you. Whatever compromises are needed lets protect our sons, and lets pray for our husbands. Don't give up on them. As women we have a great power of persuasion and much wisdom. Nothing is ever hopeless. God willing our husbands will eventually come around and our sons will retain those perfect little bodies they were born with. No scars, physically or emotionally. ~*~ When do you want him circumcised? By Diane Baker Mason It's only a piece of skin. It shouldn't upset me so much. Anyway, there's nothing I can do about it now. Besides, the experts said it was the best choice. In 1986 when my twin sons were born, the operation was de rigueur.Back then, circumcision was performed on 85 per cent of North American boys. I got the whole spiel from the medical folk. I have no religious requirements respecting the procedure, so circumcision was unnecessary in my case but not according to the hospital staff. If I didn't have my sons circumcised, I was told, they'll be plagued with infections. They'll get cancer of the penis. They'll give their wives vaginal disorders. What's more, since their dad is circumcised, they'll be confused by the difference, and suffer psychological problems. The nurses assured me it was painless, and over in a flash. The message was: do your duty, mom, and get those little boys snipped! I wish I could claim total ignorance. But even then there was discussion about circumcision being unnecessary and painful (although it wasn't a very loud discussion). Men "perhaps since they'd forgotten what it felt like to have it done" didn't speak out against it, and women seemed more concerned with" women's" issues. But even though there wasn't enough objection to make me halt the procedure, I was suspicious about the claim it didn't hurt. How could it not hurt, to have a piece of skin lopped from your genitals? Not trusting my own judgment, I agreed to it. Shortly after the operation, however, I was in the hospital nursery, and happened to see the plastic frame used for the procedure. It was a small device (for babies are small) with a moulded form for the boy to be tied to, so he could be held down easily during the circumcision. I pictured my babies in that device, and instantly recognized what I'd done. Too late. Had I seen that thing earlier--had the hospital shown me what they were really doing" I never would have let them near my children. Nevertheless, I put the matter aside. It was easy to forget what had been done. The boys healed up, of course, and the first sentence they spoke was not " I remember the day I was tied up and mutilated, " but more along the lines of "Lookit car mama." But recently, I've done some reading on the subject, and the whole question of circumcision came back to me. I wouldn't do it to my thirteen-year-old sons, how could I do it to my babies? There is evidence that circumcision is a devastating event that can have intense psychological repercussions. The foreskin is a complex and sensitive tissue, not just an appendix-like, superfluous tag of skin. It has functions. I had no idea, for instance, that the head of the penis is normally a mucous membrane that is permanently changed by the removal of the protective sheath. What remains is arguably scarred tissue. If you're a woman, imagine having your lips removed, or "as is done in some cultures, to the dismay of many" your genital lips, your labia. Imagine the sensitive and moist areas of your body, which normally are shielded, having their shielding taken away. Yet because no baby says, "Hey, don't do that," and no man circumcised in infancy knows what it's like to have a foreskin, the procedure continues. Yet this procedure does damage. Why do we imagine that babies don't suffer and don't remember. How dare we take such a risk with their feelings, and their potential, as to do them such an injury? Looking back, my own weakness in the face of the status quo astounds me. But what astounds me more is that 13 years later, this is still going on. We are still letting this happen to our boy babies. Years ago, when we women suffered ignominy and unnecessary procedures in childbirth "shaving, enemas, being tied down while in labour" we banded together and said no. We changed things. We should be changing this, too. We women in particular should be advocating for our boys. These are our children, and later they become partners and lovers and friends. A man or a boy with the power to declare his choice would not agree to be tied up and submit to an unnecessary operation, without so much as an analgesic, with its attendant psychological, sexual and even physical repercussions. Surely we cannot believe our speechless babies have fewer rights. We are the agents of our children's choice. I wish I had remembered that, when "as I held my new little boys in my arms" I was approached by the doctor who asked me, "When do you want them circumcised?" The answer, of course, should have been: Never. ~*~
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
By Peter Neilson
Summary Over 85% of the world's men know what the foreskin is and why it is there. For America the foreskin is a forgotten organ and few know what a normal penis feels like. A combination of ignorance, conformity, sexism, pseudoscience, dogma, social acceptability and denial has led to rationalized gender-based child abuse. Many boys are traumatized upon learning about their circumcision and a growing number of circumcised men envy nothing more than the normal human body, a body these men had before their society inflicted its American "birth defect."
Introduction Parents in Europe and non-Muslim Asia have never forced their boys to be circumcised. To them, cutting off a part of their boy's penis would be like cutting off parts of their ears.(2) A growing number of men in the United States, Austraila, Canada and other nations are begining to speak about what it means to be missing this sensitive, useful, protective body part. One of the greatest injuries is that they were never given a choice when it was taken from them. Wicked Envy strives to come to terms with what our society has done, that continues to do to our sons, and hopes that wisdom, truth, and common sense will prevail to end this very strange and very personal violation for all genders.
Rationalism
Most boys are never even told that they are circumcised until they ask why they look different. We are not told outright it was done or why, by the adults that had it done to us! When boys do ask, they are given certain rationalized reasons as a matter of fact. The strangest thing to an innocent boy is why one would do such a thing to the PENIS... something about it seems perverse, like the penis is bad... and had to be punished. The rationalized explainations don't even make sense.
To keep you clean... To help prevent infection... Women's preference ...(something you hear when older) Dr. Kopelman of The AAP's Bioethics committee on Female Genital
Mutilation (FGM) has summarized four reasons cultures use to "explain"
the custom of female circumcision.
(2) To help maintain cleanliness and health. (3) To prevent immorality. (4) To further marriage goals. (Men's preference) When coming to terms with the loss of a body part we want to understand how and why it happened. To see if there was a way to prevent it and to find a better safer way of doing being to make sure it doesn't happen again. Personally I believe an amputation by accident would be easier to accept than an intentional one, such as a mutilating crime. If a person was to forcibly cut off a man's foreskin without his consent, let's say while he is asleep, would our American laws protect his person and allow him justice? How different is this crime from that of an infant strapped to a board who has his genitals "circumsised" (mutilated) for life? The only difference is America has rationalized it. They tell him that it is okay, that it was done FOR him not TO him, that they did it for his "benefit," and that is only after he starts asking questions. Where will he find justice when his society says "don't complain!" ?? Today, newborn foreskins supply an multi-million-dollar-a-year industry of skin manufacturers and biotech researchers who say their product is produced from "medical waste" and purport the benefits of this new procedure that grows skin (for burn victims) and interferons (anti-virus protiens) from, in all truth, a stolen body part.(5) That anyone, especially science, can rationalize and justify taking a healthy body part from a baby in the name of rightous medicine, disgusts and infuriates me. This practice is NOT Robin Hood morality, it is rationalized insanity! Rationalism based on truth of ignorance. One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we have been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth... It's simply to painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. - Carl Sagan - Demon Haunted World
Science and Medicine Today
The AAP stated that routine male "circumcision" is purely elective and has no conclusive benefits, but did not suggest that there were any negative aspects to the practice. (12) There is a clear discrepancy here concerning our American "ethical" issues
toward female circumcision (aka.,FGM) and male genital mutilation (aka.,circumcision). In 1996 the Canadian Pediatric Society says "Circumcision of newborns should not be routinely performed" "To circumcise... would be unethical and inappropriate" says the British Medical Association Male circumcision is now purely a matter of personal choice, which means it is not a societal one or a parental one.(5) Most intact men when they arrive at adulthood value their wholeness, and those that had the "procedure" performed after they reached adulthood found that sexual pleasure was utterly gone. Here's a little insight from a 26 year old, who had himself circumcised on the advice of his doctor.(8) "I had ample sexual experience, and I was quite happy as an intact male. After my circumcision, that pleasure was utterly gone. On a scale of 1 to 10, the uncircumcised penis experiences pleasure of at least 11 or 12; the circumcised penis is lucky to get a 3. If circumcised men knew the loss of pleasure they would experience, they would storm the hospitals and not allow their sons to undergo this." ---Rick Thomas
Dogma
No one likes to think that their doctor could be giving wrong advice, but that is why people seek second opinions. Unfortunately most doctors practicing circumcision don't have all the facts or don't want to think that what they have been doing may, in fact, have been harmful. Denial, in this case, is a dangerous thing and your son will be its victim. If you are unsure about the facts surrounding circumcision become better informed about it and visit the Circumcision Resource Pages and the National Organization of Circumcision Resource Centers at www.NOCIRC.org for more information. For decades doctors have promoted the benefits of circumcision to "prevent" urinary tract infections (UTI), yet UTIs are uncommon for men according to the National Institutes of Health. "UTI's may occur in infants who are born with abnormalities of the urinary tract, which sometimes need to be corrected with surgery. UTI's are rarely seen in boys and young men. In women, though, the rate of UTI's gradually increases with age. Scientists are not sure why women have more urinary infections than men. One factor may be that a woman's urethra is short, allowing bacteria quick access to the bladder. Also, a woman's urethral opening is near sources of bacteria from the anus and vagina."(9) UTIs can be treated with antibiotics, the amputation of a boy's foreskin is permanent and more damaging than the UTI itself. It is more likely that a boy will get a UTI due to an abnormality of his urinary tract than his foreskin. The Canadian Pediatric Society suggests that breast feeding may play an important part in reducing UTIs in boys and girls.(10) Which method is less invasive and more conservative? Breastfeeding or amputation? What about sexually transmitted diseases? Condom use or amputation? A real scientist would never propose to conduct an irreversible, non-therapeutic surgical procedure unless he is of the pseudoscientist type that promotes contraceptive sterilization. A male with his foreskin (most of the world) should think carefully before disfiguring his body for the benefit of his partner and his partner should know who she is sleeping with. Dogma is a facisinating human attribute. Notably, a most profound defense mechanism used by those who have their belief system challenged. Dogma also occures to those who don't have a sound belief system based on their own inner sense of authority or conscience. when science became the authority in medicine, something unfortunate happened. People stopped asking questions of conscience and deffered to those who they believed knew what was right and what was wrong. These people gave up something most dear and may never have the ability to believe in themseleves again. They, too, were circumcised that day. Medicine now uses dogma to perpetute circumcision, looking as hard as they can to find a reason to keep doing it, and asserts their views, their "medical opinions," as if they were facts. They ignore the history, ignore the deaths, ignore the amputations, ignore the pain they have caused in body and spirit, ignore the cultural influences that perpetuate it, ignore the similarities to female genital mutilation, ignore the human rights issue, ignore the baby that bleeds, ignores the beauty of the intact male body, and ignores the screams for humanity. Dogma has no belief, it has no truth, for something cannot be true if it has not a false. Dogma is the loudest silence ever heard and the greatest silencer. Dogma says to its followers "do not question me or my authority. Do not look beyond, for you may not like what you see." Dogma uses fear to control its followers, limiting their potential. It claims to keep people safe in the pretend harmony they seek. All they will find is stagnation and a false god. There is no place for dogma in science and there is no place for dogma in religion. Morality is not just for religion and science cannot claim that it is not one for it is. Just because science is based on the provable does not mean it will not function like a religion. The beauty of morality and conscience is that one bases his beliefs on an inner awareness of what is right and wrong. Now science, through self-evident truths will be able to show that it has helped perpetuate a most serious crime against its god. Leo Tolstoy "An event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.
Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable
crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money,
burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not
recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which
those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes."
Hypocrisy
Saying one thing while behaving otherwise. Such is the case of current law that protects the female of our society from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) euphemistically called "circumcision" by the countries that practice it. Why is this law only protecting the female of our society? Is it because Male Genital Mutilation (MGM) or "circumcision" is over six times more frequent worldwide (4) and has been for such a long time that we have forgotten why it is even done or how it was started by medicine? Our society recoils when we hear cases of female circumcision but hardly flinch when we do it to our baby boys. When will we realize that this practice of circumcision violates basic human rights and that all genders should have a right to keep their bodies protected? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Committee on Bioethics provides a policy statement for "Female Genital Mutilation" (FGM) and one for routine male infant circumcision titled "Circumcision Policy Statement." In the Bioethics policy they state that FGM is the ritual cutting and alteration of female genitals on infants and older individuals. They recommend that physicians oppose all forms of FGM, which according to their definitions, Type I female circumcision is identical to male circumcision (while the severity of the mutilation for the male is closer to Type II). Why then is female circumcision called FGM while male genital mutilation is called "circumcision?" Are they only wearing the hat that is in style? The difference between the two Policy Statements is so staggering, it speaks nothing but with hypocrisy. They say that protection of the girls physical and mental health should be the overriding concern and suggest that performing a lesser procedure to satisfy cultural demands, such as pricking the skin of the clitoris, would just perpetuate the practice. The only reason the AAP presents themselves this way is because male circumcision is pandemic here in the USA. To perpetuate this practice requires that society deny the reality of what is happening. The AAP's task force on circumcision, mentions nothing about the physical or mental well being of the male. Only that there are "anecdotal reports" that penile sensation and sexual satisfaction is decreased for circumcised males. They turn around from their position on FGM and say that it is legitimate for the parents to take into account cultural, religious, and ethnic traditions and to perform circumcision based on parent demands, this time with procedural analgesia. (12) Doctors have an obligation to educate parents on circumcision and say no to circumcision, and state that it should be the boy's choice not ours. (see www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org) If the father has problems with normal male anatomy, compassionate psychological counseling would help. (2) He, as I did, may need to come to terms with his loss, and be allowed to want a normal body for himself without fear of ridicule or accusation. A woman who had just lost a breast would receive the greatest the medical community can give and is allowed the right to grieve over her loss.(5) Why not so for a man? When a person has grief that is not openly acknowledged or socially sanctioned this grief is called disenfranchised grief and it is a very real condition.
Whose body, whose rights? On December 10, 1948, after decades of war and atrocities, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In it they state that "common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance," and that all schools should teach it. In the U.S.A, basic human rights are violated everyday. Baby boys are welcomed into our country by strapping him to a board, lovingly called a "circumstraint", and amputating a NORMAL healthy part of his body WITHOUT HIS consent!
Imagine this... You don't even need the Declaration of Human Rights to tell you what is wrong with this image! And it's done to over 3000 baby boys a day, whom will someday realize no one asked their permission. What is the difference other than age? The baby may not remember it completely but a 20 year old might do the same thing being subjected to such trauma. An infant can't speak to say "NO, thanks" but his screams mean the same thing. That's it. I guess America is not so outstanding or progressive in human rights as one would like to think.
Whose penis is it? Some fathers will say "I want my son to look like me." Come on dad, let your son decide that for himself when he's old enough. How often do you obsess about your penis not looking like your dad's? Do you feel the same way about your eyes your feet or your lips? You will both be happy that you gave him the choice.
Ignorance and Education For those who need to know how to care for child male anatomy (i.e., most of us in America...). It's simple, never force retraction of the foreskin on the individual. The first person to retract a boy's foreskin should be the child himself. In early years the tissues are connected by a common membrane called synchnia and will separate naturally.(3) Forcing the foreskin back will damage the tissue and cause
complication to the individual in future. (This type of damage can be seen on circumcised men).
Care for the boy is just as it is for a girl. LEAVE IT ALONE! Give his
body the respect it deserves and he'll grow up a happy, healthy boy,
with ALL his parts. Find out more childcare info at NOCIRC's website.
Circumcise and forget about it? In my pro-feminist society, who is pro-circ, anything that has to do with male is to be ridiculed and denigrated; man is heathen, man is brute, man is disgusting like his penis, man defiles, man is impure, man has no right to feel hurt for he has been the oppressor and now must pay his price. So goes the theory obviously, because why else would a virgin pure become otherwise. American men frequently internalize their cultures attitudes towards male genital cutting, which is sexist in nature but made not to seem that way. He may not feel that his experience, while painful, "qualifies" as painful. However, just because a man doesn't call it rape doesn't mean he doesn't feel violated. He may not have the language, or he may never even have been asked. The culture he lives in forces a gender conditioning on boys that does not allow feelings like these to be expressed by men. We will never have equal rights until we have equal rights for what it means to be human. There is no difference between man and woman or intersex, heterosexual and homosexual or bisexual, we are one complementary whole. Color is equal unto itself for all colors are in the same spectrum. There is no god too small to teach, for he may be so humble as dirt that we crush him with our feet. And so in an effort to bring about wholeness and healing I now ask... Do you have any negative feelings about being circumcised?
Denial I had many of these thoughts and more. The hard part was trying to hide from them. When I admitted they were there, trying to express them was just as difficult, or even more so. I had become an expert at hiding from my feelings and hiding them from others. This website is part of my expression. Impartiality  I don't care if the baby boy is circumcised, it's the parents choice. (It's unnecessary, abusive and painful. It goes against human rights...) I'm circumcised, why shouldn't he be? (It's not fair! I don't want him to have more than me...) I'm a woman, I've been oppressed for years. (Does that mean I should also oppress? How can we be equals when either half of the population is made to suffer?) It doesn't affect me why should I care? (Knowing about a violation and choosing not to do anything about it is worse than ignorance itself.) Disbelief They don't circumcise in other countries? Men are fine there? Do men like having their foreskin? What would mine look like? That skin tag is because of circumcision? I would not have that if it were not for my circumcision? The pitted parts of my glans are from my circumcision? My glans is supposed to look glossy and smooth!? My erections are tight and the hair on my penis is not normal? The dark line is from my circumcision? The light colored skin is supposed to cover my glans? Why did they do this? Don't they know? Why my penis of all organs? My sexual organs! Why? I don't even want to pierce my ears for God's sake, why would I want to do this to my penis!? I want to get away, this can't be happening, someone help me. Make it stop! I want to run away, to leave this body. Why didn't someone save me? I cried, couldn't somebody hear me! I screamed, I tried to get away…
Comprehension America didn't circumcise when it was founded! How did this violation of our most precious freedoms come to pass without our knowledge? How could my society be so blind to this sort of gender-based child abuse? It has become accepted and even desired! Medicine that says "First, do no harm!" but I have been harmed in one of the most personal and horrible ways! If I were born 200 years ago I would have a normal body, or if I was born in the future I hope I would have had a normal body. Of all the times to be born in I just had to be born into medical medievalism. Oh my god, what have they done? Realization & Grief It was not until six months after I began foreskin restoration that I realized I had not yet felt any of my feelings. That this was a pattern of behavior I kept in most aspects of my life. I did not allow myself to feel even good feelings. When I cried for the first time in a long time, it was difficult. I had been so afraid to show my feelings (even to myself) that I often just kept it in, or was unaware even to the existence of these feelings. By fighting and resisting my emotions I made them stay in place and I was unable to make progress. During my youth I had many strange experiences that left me wondering where certain emotions and physical reactions came from. I went through periods of depression or sadness that manifested at strange times. Once, when I was spanked, about 4 years old, a combination of the desire for it not to happen and the pain from punishment, induced a strange memory like experience. I later sat on the stairs in my two-story house, crying unable to understand these disconcerting feelings that were hidden inside me. My teenage years were very troubling sexually. I had very tight erections due to the tight "cut" I received as an infant, frequently from the age of 12 that would persist. I did not learn how to masturbate to orgasm until I was 15. I thought men had sex just to get the annoying painful erection to go away. Masturbation was mostly confusing and dissatisfying, as if I was doing something wrong, though I was told it was okay to do... Then one night in the summer of 1993, after masturbating, and a painful session at that, combined with the desire for orgasm not to happen, I fell into a depressed state, with feelings of helplessness and fear. This really confused me. Where did it come from! I had no reason to fall into depression. I could not eat normally for two weeks. (Some would like to blame a chemical imbalance but the timing and trigger speak volumes to me now). Struggling I buried my feelings, unable to find the reason for my sadness. This is when I stopped feeling, it was really the only thing left to do. I put on my mask of pretense and said I was okay, all the while a part of me was looking through hoping to get to breath again. In December of 2001, when I began to allow my feelings to surface about being circumcised and notice what was there, I would pull back and hide from some of them. Over several weeks I worked with these feelings and discovered new ones. Something happend one night when I was crying and feeling the pain fully in all its variety. It was like I could remember something I had forgotten. Like a snap or flash, and I could remember. I did not believe it could be a memory at first, but it was as if a block had been released. I could experience it, if I allowed myself to. Scientifically, I want proof that I do remember, that what I have done was to uncover the memory not fabricate one. Due to the nature of memory, there will always be that question. I cannot believe myself if I do not challenge theory with question. The way the memory surfaced and the way I was experiencing my emotions at the time, was not an attempt to remember, and what I found was something that I do not enjoy remembering. The fact remains that my behavior through childhood, my strange emotional surges, my self-doubt, my inability to say no, my quickness to say "there is no use to speak up it will happen anyway no matter what I want," were huge influences on my character that really have no adequate environmental explanation. My childhood was pretty standard, no traumatic domestic violence other than being mutilated as an infant. True, my gender conditioning had other influences apart from these that I had developed over time, and hiding from my emotions was an easy escape because "men" are supposed to be able to do hide from everything but anger, desire and bravery. To make the connection that I had remembered, that it may have been possible, was a profound relief. A relief because now I knew why I was having some of these feelings and that there was an explanation for the problems I had before. At once a relief yet at the same time troubling, because the memory was the most horrible thing I have ever experienced. I cried every night and sometimes during the day when no one was watching. I experienced pain in my genitals; sensitivity to sound and twice woke up trembling. It took a long time for me to accept that I could remember and I have to say that there will always be a part of me that says maybe it is false, but even so, I am still circumcised. I was assaulted and mutilated and I had no idea I was mutilated until much later. I just remember a horrible thing happened and I didn't know what it was or why. I could hardly go to work, I felt this deep pain in my chest, like heartbreak, all the time. I entertained thoughts of suicide; I experienced loss of appetite and libido. I looked at everyone as being a hypocrite and resented anyone who was intact. I looked at other men and wondered intact or circ'd? Eventually I began to speak about my feelings with family and friends. Expressing my feelings was knew to me as well since I had become so accustomed to keeping it all bottled up. This continued through March 2002. February was when I was able to write down the memory completely, before that I could remember most of how it felt physically but emotionally the memory was different, filled with confusion. I had to work with the emotions separately to identify what I had been feeling at the time. I supposed at such an early stage of development, I did not have the language of feelings. The best way to describe it is like a storm of electricity and fire. If you are experiencing similar problems, counseling is available and support groups are being formed. Visit NOHARMM and the Circumcision Resource Center for more information on counsel and NORM for local support groups.Anger
I hate being circumcised, and my whole outlook on my society has changed. I tried not to be angry about it but once again I was just denying my true feelings. I had become so accustomed to hiding from, or pushing away, my feelings that I had to learn what certain feelings were and where they were coming from. Then allow myself to feel them, no matter what they were. A flood of early childhood memories proceeded one connecting to the other and I allowed myself to observe what came to the surface and what feelings they produced. I think I, and every other circumcised man and women, have every right to be angry with what was done to OUR BODIES, against OUR will. It was a horrible experience and naturally it has affected my life. I have trouble in relationships, aversion to touch, resentment and sometimes a feeling of misogyny. I'm really angry and I'm even angrier that there will be more boys and girls who will have to experience the same thing. I care deeply for the innocent, and I hope I can use my experiences to help them, to help their parents, to expose the crime, to break the silence around this violation of their human rights. It seems like such a simple solution. Let the boy/girl/intersexes keep what is theirs that nature intended. No other primate on this planet would ever do such a disgusting thing to a child, not that I know of. It makes sense, like breastfeeding makes sense. There is a reason for it! Where in the hell did doctors ever come up with the idea of redundant organs! Just because you don't know the name or function of a plant doesn't automatically make it a weed! Victorian Doctors knew what they were doing. Doctors that circumcise today are apparently idiots or evil. Hopefully historians will view biotech in the 21st century, which currently profits from refining infant foreskins, as primitive, heinous, disgusting, abhorrent and infamous. I see it akin to the way we view ancient Aztec human sacrifice. They will liken circumcision to social hysteria and sexual perversion. They will shake their heads in disbelief that Doctors of this era would amputate healthy epithelial tissue for money and not use anesthesia so as to preserve the specimen for secondary sale. That they could do such a thing to an infant only magnifies the crime to proportions that medical students of the next few centuries will be hard pressed to find a more despicable practice ever conducted by their profession on a mass scale. They may wish to change medicine's name so as not to be confused with the wrong crowd.
Envy
I envy not just the intact men and women, I envy that they did not have to go through the horrors of circumcision. The confusion it caused when growing up and the trauma of being reminded that it happened. To be changed because someone didn't like you they way you were made. I desire it more than anything else; to just be comfortable in my own skin, to not have sensory input from the glans. How irritable it makes me! Always there, masking all other input that comes in. To be flaccid and contained, to have grown up with this sort of comfort and security, innocence and trust, is invaluable to me. That is what I miss. I wrote that before I started using the tape ring restoration method. I highly recommend it to those who have enough skin and find sensations from the glans uncomfortable or painful. Having the glans covered feels so much better! I feel grateful that I have this ability to restore myself to a more normal state. I feel it is my duty to despise the ignorance of those who abused children's genitals beyond repair. I get so angry that other people can be compelled to destroy another person's property (especially genitals!) for any reason. Circumcision "mishaps" are tragic disasters; the first one should have been a wake up call. Medicine was able to dissuade parents into its belief system which is in its own state of religious dogma and denial. If medicine were based in true natural science, without an agenda, I believe none of this would have happened.
Truth
What is truth? What is belief? What is faith? What is love? What is hate? Who am I? Who are you? What is right? What is wrong? What is science? What is conscience? What is justice? And whose interest does ignorance serve? During this difficult period of remembering and repeating I found M.K.Gandhi's writings to bring great inspiration. His views on truth and non-violence are beautiful and a society that practices these natural processes is one I want to live in. During my introspection I learned how truth is real. What I want is to know truth no matter how painful it is. It came as a relief to find the motive for specific patterns of behavior I expressed during my life so far. I feel as if I can stop repeating these patterns and move on. Sex and orgasm has turned from a confusing unpleasant experience into something joyful and pleasing. I look forward to the coming years of restoration to achieve a more natural feel. Before my memory surfaced, sex was not an experience, it was a function. It was if I could not understand it or that I knew something wasn't quite right. I have had years of problems and I know I am not alone. I remember as a little boy, before I knew the truth about circumcision, I used to push my glans back under the penile shaft and hope it would stay. How odd it is to look back and wonder, was there an instinctual knowledge or did I unconsciously know the truth back then and wasn't mature enough to be able to handle it? I have come to despise ignorance, hypocrisy, greed and dogma. I especially despise these parts of myself that I have developed over time as a protective defense from the pain. I endeavor to acknowledge these traits whenever I may use them and hope that I can free myself from their limitations.
Activism One of the only ways I can heal my emotional scars is being able to educate others to help end one of the most strange and sickening practices that medical science and culture has done to our children. Religion has no right to behave in this manner either. If genital cutting is a requirement of a religion then it should be after the individual has matured enough to decide on his or her own whether or not he or she wishes to be in that religion. In my case my person BEING circumcised has violated MY religion and there is no going back! Parents have no right to force anything on children, and altering their sexual organs or any other part of their body should be condemned. Ethics is the greatest obstacle to achieving illicit power and the influence to convince people to comply with agonizing, abnormal agendas. Silence perpetuates, protects and hides the unethical.(15) You may be call me an "activist" but I am only asking that people do what is natural and moral. Maybe I prefer the term "normalism" or "normalist?" I am ashamed to be human when I think that I am asking parents and doctors not to harm their children's genitals! If there is a god, I think he cries every time his creations are violated and vandalized in such manner and must feel the pain they feel, one at a time, hundreds of millions in total. "It is easy enough to say, ‘I do not believe in God.’ For God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. He looks at our acts. And any breach of His law carries with it, not its vindictive, but its purifying, compelling punishment." - M.K. Gandhi Acceptance, Forgiveness, and Restoration Until I stopped being afraid of my pain, or until I recognized that I was afraid, I've never felt more real and genuine. My pain is real but so now is my joy. I am still working on this part, acceptance and forgiveness will take more time I guess. The sections I have written so far are still incomplete. I am always asking questions about truth, faith, love and forgiveness. Foreskin restoration has been part of the healing process for me. I'm was a victim, now I am survivor. I don't feel like I am ready to forgive or maybe I never will. If that is so then maybe acceptance never really happened, but who is to say when it has or hasn't anyway. Part of the restoration process is not just my physical body, but the restoration of the society in which I live. Blinded by so many things, we have truly harmed the most precious thing we have, our children. Children are not objects for us to control, raise for our benefit, manipulate, or take pride in who they become. You can admire them for their being but you cannot take credit for it. All of America is an injured child right now. Look at the actions we have taken. Where are we going? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Our views of life are becoming more astray and more distorted. We are lost and looking for the one who was supposed to protect us.
Forgetfulness, Recurrence Will we work so hard to show people their mayhem, their hysteria, their blindness, only to forget what has occured? Or for it to be trivialized? To overlook that part of the past we would rather not look at? It is one of my greatest fears. I can hardly stand living in this society. It is like we are all asleep and numb to reality. I was numb; I didn't want to believe what had happened. A truly horrible abuse; perverted and despicable. Boys and girls worldwide are mutilated by the very adults who are supposed to protect them, who in turn do it to their children because it was done to them. The politics of "government" only further perpetuates the crime and more children continue to be hurt by apathy. Democracy is a cowardly institution today befitting the name of hypocrisy rather than the pretense of freedom. Circumcision is medical medievalism. I and millions of Americans were born in the dark ages. Today Science and Technology are seen as crucial products of "civilization." However, more and more people are becoming dependent on others to explain these advancements. No one thinks for him or herself or regards him or herself as the authority. How else could mothers and fathers mutilate their children and be happy they did it. Flip the coin and Doctors who circumcise against their conscience lose that part of themselves called authority. "We might get away with it for a while but this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces..." - from Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World
Source Notes (1) Sheila Kitzinger, Alfred A. Knopf "The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth" (New York 1996) p.365 (2) Paul M. Fleiss "The Case Against Circumcision" (Mothering Magazine 1995) (3) NOCIRC Information Series #4 "Answers to Your Questions About Your Young Son's Intact Penis" (4) T. Hammond "A preliminary poll of men circumcised in infancy or childhood" (National Organization to Halt the Abuse & Routine Mutilation of Males) - (NOHARMM) (5) Jim Bigelow "The Joy of Uncircumcising" (Hourglass Books) - Founder and Director of (UNCIRC) (6) Mark Jenkins "Seperated at Birth" (Mens Health July/August 1998) p.132 (7) Marilyn Milos, RN. 1999 Mutilating Male Sexual Performance (The Compleat Mother Fall'99) p.47 (8) Mark Jenkins "Seperated at Birth" (Mens Health July/August 1998) p.132 (9) National Institutes of Health 19 - November 1999 - http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/943045175.html (10) Neonatal circumcision revisited Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154(6): 769-780 Reaffirmed February 2001 Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/FN/fn96-01.htm (11) AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS Committee on Bioethics; Female Genital Mutilation (RE9749) Policy Statement; Pediatrics Volume 102, Number 1 July 1998, pp 153-156 (12) AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS Task Force on Circumcision; Circumcision Policy Statement (RE9850); Pediatrics Volume 103, Number 3 March 1999, pp 686-693 (13) THE POPULATION COUNCIL LIBRARY CATALOGING DATA Sexual Coercion and Reproductive Health a focus on research / by Lori Heise, Kirsten Moore [and] Nahid Toubia. -- New York: Population Council. 1995. 59 p. (14) Psychological, neurological, and sociological impacts of circumcision (15) "Is Circumcision ethical or unethical? What others others have to say about it." Medical Ethics Network Inc. (16)p.16, (17)p.77, (18)p.82 Ron Goldman Ph.D. "Questioning Circumcision, a Jewish Perspective" (19) Mark Epstein M.D. "Thoughts Without a Thinker" (Basic Books, 1995) ~*~
Dear Sir,
Pardon the presumption in contacting you, for it has been many years since we were last in each other's presence. You probably do not remember me, but I will remember the choice you made for the rest of my life. Although I know little about you, I do know some things about you that you yourself don't even realize. You believe the design of the human body is inherently flawed and needs to be surgically corrected. This leads you to think that it is your right to amputate a perfectly normal and healthy body part from an individual without their consent. Now maybe you don't think you believe this, but as evidenced by the permanent scar on my body and many others, you do. I do not remember what happened when I was with you, yet every time I use my penis I must face the irreversible consequences of what you did. Let me refresh your memory: Shortly after I was born you took me away from my mother and carried me to a secluded room where she could not see or hear what was going to happen. You strapped my arms and legs firmly to a form-fitting board so that I couldn't move. You held my penis in your hand. You then forcibly separated my glans from my foreskin. You then cut around my penis amputating my foreskin and most of my frenulum. You threw the amputated parts of my penis into the trash. You collected a monetary sum for this. Though at the time I couldn't speak or defend myself, I am a man now and you will listen to what through my profuse crying you should have understood then, "I don't want part of my penis cut off. Get your cold gleaming steel blade away from me. It is my body and you have no permission, authority, or right to cut off part of it. Stop!". However, you never even paused to ask yourself whether I, the person whose body it is, want part of my body cut off or not. Instead you proceeded blithely against my explicit vocal opposition to cut off part of my infant body. I consider your actions, at minimum, tantamount to battery for which you should be held legally accountable. You don't believe you are responsible for this because you were only doing what was asked of you. My parents are not qualified to make medical diagnoses. If they had asked you to cut off any other part of my body you would have refused to have done it, because you have 'morals' and also since it would have been criminal assault. As a medical professional it is your responsibility to be aware that no medical organization including the ones you belong to, consider this justifiable for health reasons which makes this by definition, cosmetic surgical amputation being performed on an infant. No matter how you want to try to rationalize it in your own mind, my blood from your sexual assault upon my infant body was and still is on your hands. Despite all of this I know that you are a person who probably meant well and just got caught up in a cultural ritual. I know you would not have done this to me if you knew that I did not want it. In fact it is even likely that you too are missing part of your penis as well. Though you have permanently simplified and damaged the way my penis functions, you were probably ignorant and not malicious so I forgive you. However from my letter at least, you are ignorant no longer; therefore you now bear full ethical and moral responsibility for any future partial penis amputations you perform on infants. Please reconsider your decision to continue amputating a natural and functional part of someone else's body without their consent and instead let it be a choice each individual makes for himself when he reaches an age where he can decide what is best for his own body. May you understand and heed for the first time what I and every other baby restrained helplessly before you has tried through our screams and tears so many times in vain to say to you. Sincerely,
A Man missing part of his body ~*~
Poll of Circumcised and Uncircumcised Men Overview
There are many factors that affect sexuality(stress, drug use, emotional and physical health etc), the question is, is circumcision among them. Ask most mainstream American Doctors(who were likely circumcised at birth and have received no education on foreskin in medical school) whether circumcision has any effect on sexuality and they will confidently tell you "No". However they say this, with their being little modern research done in this area(almost all modern research focuses on searching for health benefits of doing circumcisions and only extremely rarely does anyone ever think to research why foreskin might be useful to have). To
help fill this void, I have conducted my own poll of cut and uncut men. I tried to
make my survey as thorough as possible within 8 questions, but clearly
there are many more pertinent aspects to studied. There are also limitations such as putting circumcised males all in one group when in reality, each circumcision can vary substantially in how much and what is removed depending merely on the predilection of the circumciser. In particular whether or not the circumcised man is left with all part or none of his highly erogenous frenulum may have a significant impact on how he judges his experience of being circumcised.
This poll was conducted over a period of three months starting in late June 2006. It was hosted and tabulated by a free polling site. The poll takers are users of the site who saw this poll listed and decided to take it. Of the poll takers, 422 are circumcised and 209 are uncircumcised. About 20 circumcised and 4 uncircumcised guys only partially completed the poll. Because this poll was done informally online, it is not meant to be taken as a scientifically-publishable poll that would have poll-takers randomized from the general population. It is meant to be taken that how circumcision affects men's experiences is, in the very least, a valid topic to research and should no longer be taboo in American universities. 1 When fully erect, I have coarse pubic hair Cut Uncut
4% 2% on more than half my shaft.
7% 4% approximately half way up my shaft. 21% 13% approximately a third way up my shaft. 44% 44% approximately a quarter way up my shaft. 24% 37% not on my shaft at all. 2 When fully erect, my testicles Cut Uncut 7% 2% are pulled close to my shaft and it often feels uncomfortable. 42% 36% are pulled close to my shaft and it does not feel uncomfortable. 51% 62% are not pulled close to my shaft. 3 During masturbation as an additional lubricant, I usually use Cut Uncut 34% 7% a commercially-sold product 9% 8% my own saliva
14% 22% my pre-cum fluid 42% 63% none at all 4 I would like my penis to be Cut Uncut 51% 13% more sensitive to physical stimulation. 41% 77% as sensitive as it is now. 8% 10% less sensitive to physical stimulation. 5 The approximate duration of my usual experience of orgasm is: Cut Uncut 13% 5% Less than 5 seconds. 45% 32% Between 5 and 10 seconds. 30% 34% 10 to 20 seconds. 7% 17% Between 20 and 40 seconds. 4% 7% 40 to 60 seconds. 1% 5% More than 1 minute. 6 The approximate location of my usual experience of orgasm is felt Cut Uncut 4% 0% barely anywhere at all. 16% 7% only in my genitalia. 28% 27% in my genitalia and surrounding area. 44% 47% throughout most of my body. 8% 19% throughout my entire body. 7 My usual experience of orgasm is more closely associated with these words (Select as many as apply): Cut Uncut
4% 0% Disappointment, unfinished, depressed, frustration. 36% 29% Relief, release, emptying. pumping, automatic pressure release.
23% 15% More physical than emotional.
2% 6% More emotional than physical.
10% 14% Feelings of love, closeness, and union with my partner. 19% 23% Waves of bliss. 6% 10% Transcendence, Oneness with the universe. 0% 1% None of the above 8 Circumcised Men: Choose one: 44% I am content being circumcised. 37% I would rather be uncircumcised but I will live with it as it is. 15% I would rather be uncircumcised and I am considering restoration. 4% I would rather be uncircumcised and I am actively restoring. 8 Uncircumcised Men: Choose one: 86% I am content being uncircumcised. 7% I would rather be circumcised but I will live with it as it is. 6% I would rather be circumcised and I am considering having it done. 1% I would rather be circumcised and I am definitely going to have it done. Conclusions To varying degrees of effect(it may well be that the effects correlate with how much was cut off), circumcision: increases the amount of coarse pubic hair on the shaft, pulls the scrotum forward during erection, increases the need for lubrication, decreases penile sensitivity, decreases the duration location and intensity of orgasm, and decreases owner satisfaction. UPDATE: Some studies are beginning to be done; here is a one from Denmark. I think it is interesting how they find it surprising this hasn't been studied more before. I think this just shows how much of a taboo there still is in researching circumcision's functional effects.
"Yet, prevention of the rare cases of pathological phimosis remains a leading argument for proponents of routine circumcision. Other claimed benefits of circumcision, such as reduced risks of balanoposthitis, sexually transmitted infections and penile cancer, can be achieved without tissue loss through the maintenance of good penile hygiene combined with proper use of condoms, and whether circumcision reduces the risk of urinary tract infections in infancy has been questioned. Despite the fact that no professional medical organization recommends routine circumcision, not even in the USA where most newborn boys undergo the operation, it remains a widespread belief that circumcision provides superior penile hygiene and protects against urinary tract infections, phimosis, paraphimosis, balanoposthitis, venereal diseases and cancer. Considering the organ involved with its sensitive anatomical structures, surprisingly few population based studies have been carried out to evaluate circumcision’s possible sexual consequences. A number of methodologically questionable reports have led to claims of impaired, improved or unaltered sexual function in circumcised men and their female partners." Highlights include:
You can see its abstract here: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/06/13/ije.dyr104.abstract
~*~
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
What are the Effects of Circumcision?
Reasons to Circumcise Addressed
Let's take a closer look at some of the most common reasons given for infant circumcision: Look Like Dad Hygiene Phimosis Penile Cancer Urinary Tract Infections(UTIs) HIV/AIDS
One of the most irrational excuses for infant circumcision is the notion that it is of such vital importance that a son's penis look like his father's penis that his foreskin must be amputated. When the circumcision frenzy began in earnest about 55 years ago almost all of the fathers were intact. The circumcision promoters told parents for over two decades that the father-son penile difference was so unimportant that it should not be a factor in the decision to circumcise. In most cases, if there were a consideration of the son having a foreskin like dad, the doctor went ahead and circumcised him without parental assent. Once more than 50% of males in the child rearing age were circumcised, the promoters began telling parents that it was important for the son's penis to look like his father's. It is very fortunate that any scars on the father's face or other parts of his body, missing fingers or other physical incidents which changed his physical appearance, and noticeable at most or all times, were not also important enough to maim infant boys in a similar manner to look like dad. In the 1980's and 1990's over 8 million circumcised fathers and enlightened mothers have taken the action to guarantee and protect the genital integrity of their sons and are raising healthy, happy intact boys. As one intact young man in high school replied when asked about looking different than his father and many of his friends, "Yes, delightfully different!" It will not be long before the grateful intact boys are the majority in the U.S. as they are in the rest of the western world. It is much easier for a man with a circumcised penis to explain to his intact son why his penis looks different. Old excuses invalidated, exposure of the possible benefits as frauds, new information on the sensuousness of the foreskin and all of its parts and attachments, the importance of that moveable part, its function and protection, and that the father was denied all of this due to the advice given his parents and accepted by most people at that time. On the other hand, an intact father cannot tell, or will find it very difficult to tell his son, that he was circumcised because there is any benefit. The first question that will come to the boy's mind and remain there for years is, "If it is better, or there is some benefit, why don't you have your foreskin cut-off, too?" There would be benefits for both the circumcised father and his son if the father restored a facsimile of his foreskin and insured his son's genital integrity. The father will realize sexual and physical gains by creating that new foreskin, the son will not be forced to suffer the loss, and their penises will look the same - if such a transparent physical similarity is that important to the father or mother. Regardless of the foregoing, every person, male or female, has the basic human right to all of their body parts and any decision to remove, modify or alter any body parts must be the decision of the adult, reasonably informed owner of those body parts. Many people continue to believe the myth that a circumcised penis is somehow cleaner than the natural, intact penis. In reality, the intact penis is cleaner due to Nature’s meticulous design of the foreskin and the protection it affords the glans and inner foreskin mucosa from all forms of harmful foreign substances detrimental to penile health. The natural penis was designed to be self-cleaning. All body parts, external and internal, should be protected from natural and unnatural deleterious pollutants. The glans penis is an internal organ. The penis is not enhanced, but diminished by subtracting from this natural design. It makes no sense whatever to remove a seal, wrapper, cover, sheath, cap or lid until the time the protected product is ready for use. After use, the product is re-sealed, re-capped or re-wrapped to protect the contents until future use. A book without a cover quickly becomes soiled, deteriorates and falls apart. The same is true of any man made or natural object being protected from damage. The penis is no exception. When the penis becomes erect, the glans is usually fully or partially exposed when the foreskin (sheath, cover, wrapper) removes itself (retracts), enabling the male to experience full sexual sensuousness. This includes the unique tactile sensations of the foreskin itself. The glans is then re-covered to protect it from foreign substances, cold, abrasive action of friction with clothing, etc. When bathing, after natural foreskin/glans separation, the foreskin is retracted for a couple of seconds, rinsed and replaced. Dirt, all forms of dust and particles (soil, coal, metallic, wood), chemicals and other compounds and pollutants can easily be embedded in the exposed and toughened glans of the unprotected penis. Any embedment, sometimes quite deep, is caused by the friction between glans and clothing with the foreign debris acting as abrasive material between them. The head of the intact penis is untouched and a man simply washes any debris from the outer foreskin when bathing and retracts to was the naturally clean, undisturbed and naturally lubricated glans and inner foreskin. The circumcised peris of an infant and toddler is exposed to feces and other pollutants on his glans, urethral opening and scar tissue. Parents must be alert to anyone interfering with this protection by probing, stretching and retracting their son’s foreskin. How does the circumcised penis protect itself? The constantly exposed glans grows layers of nerveless skin cells (cornification) in an attempt to protect itself and the head becomes an abnormal, unnatural, desensitized and toughened organ. Constant friction with clothing destroys most of the near surface nerve endings in the glans. The layers of skin cells that are grown for protection do not protect the glans from the dirt and debris that will continue to be embedded in the added layers of skin cells. Circumcised men have written of problems with accumulations of debris in skin tunnels and suture holes from their circumcision causing abscesses and “blackheads” that require constant attention, as well as sores on the scar and glans. Nature’s system of keeping the head of the penis clean, lubricated and protected is gone when the foreskin is amputated. Does absence of of smegma mean a cleaner penis? A definition of smegma must be given as it is misunderstood and ill defined. Smegma is NOT the micro-fine film of natural which protects the glans, enables the foreskin to glide easily back and forth over the glans and insures the very soft , smooth texture. A dried out, rough glans and innerforeskin is not natural and just wouldn’t work very well! Smegma is NOT the fragrance released after the glans has been covered for a period of time. Some people mistakenly consider just the film of lubricant or the aroma as smegma. Smegma IS the substance created by discarded cells of the epithelium of the glans and inner foreskin mixed with the natural glans lubrication. All organs of the body undergo this constant process of cellular regeneration, the replacement of dead cells, and the penis is no exception. Natural males seldom, if ever, experience smegma or “accumulation” of smegma. Most will only experience the lubrication and occasionally a very subtle aroma. Females also produce smegma under the clitoral foreskin and in the folds of the labia minora and labia majora. Would this be a reason for female circumcision or infibulation? Of course not! This natural substance present among natural men and women is beneficial. Joyce Wright, M.D., in an article for Sexology: HOW SMEGMA SERVES THE PENIS, “Nature’s Assurance That The Uncircumcised Glans Penis Will Function Smoothly Is Provided By Smegma.” relates, “Is smegma useful? Yes, certainly. It lubricates the cavity between the foreskin of the penis and the glans, thus allowing smooth movement between them during intercourse.” (The lubrication is not “smegma”) In The Circumcision Decision, Edward Wallerstein says, “Not only is smegma not harmful, but beneficial, serving as a protective coating for and lubricant for the glans.” “Wash, don’t amputate,” is the advice of Dr. Alex Comfort. “Hygiene is another misplaced concern: The foreskin keeps itself clean by shedding dead cells.” says Dr. Marguerite Kelly in The Family Almanac. Dr. Loraine Stern in Off to a Great Start, says, “It’s true that boys without foreskins don’t have these secretions, but that doesn’t mean that the foreskin is unclean.” In Your Child’s Health, Dr. Barton Schmitt says, “The foreskin is not some cosmic error, it is there for protection, especially the sensitivity of the glans.” Cleanliness is a mental state! There will be a certain percentage of people who will remain unclean. We may inspire good habits, but mostly a sense of cleanliness is a gift, which a certain number of humans, no matter where they may be found, whether in palaces, hovels, mansions, or huts, rich or poor, circumcised or natural, do not possess. A human with a sense of cleanliness, or one who is conditioned by good training and habits, will avail himself of a little soap or a handful of water to render himself clean. Men with a circumcised penis must practice genital hygiene as often as natural men. If a male, natural or circumcised, is constitutionally incapable of keeping himself clean, his penis is the least of his worries! Circumcision was introduced to North America to aid male’s “moral hygiene,” to reduce, or prevent masturbation. They used penis and body restraints, acid and caustic solutions on the glans and foreskin to deaden and limit the penis and even castration and penis amputation to stop males from masturbating. They found that circumcision would produce the same results to the penis as acids and caustic solutions as well as limit movement of the shaft and promoted circumcision for the boys’ moral hygiene. But males didn’t masturbate any less. When that fact was discovered, the circumcision promoters changed the phrase from moral hygiene to physical hygiene, both hoaxes. Recent research (Journal of the American Medical Association) found that circumcised males masturbate and engage in anal intercourse more frequently than the intact males.
Parents, all males and females have the basic human right to whole, natural, sensuous and self-cleaning sex organs. Allow your sons to have the natural, normal, sensuous, protective and functional foreskin that Nature intended him to have. Non-existent “phimosis” is widely used as a medically fraudulent excuse to circumcise many children, some teens and a few adult males. Phimosis is a rare condition of the foreskin that is widely misunderstood and very conveniently misdiagnosed. The myth that circumcision is the only solution to either a real or imagined pathology must be smashed. Medical treatment, not surgical intervention, should be the approach to a true diagnosis of phimosis. We must have some definition that has some degree of accuracy and understand what phimosis is not. What is acquired phimosis, or iatrogenic (doctor caused) phimosis? How can doctors label early natural and normal fusion as phimosis when it is not? Is it a real concern, or does the presence of the foreskin trigger some psychic need to create a phantom diagnosis with circumcision the underlying intent? Is pathological or physiological phimosis rare? Is it a fact that medical treatment is often initiated when phimosis is not present due to physician ignorance of the intact penis? Do some doctors and nurses force retraction on purpose, fully aware it is damaging, in the hope of future circumcision due to that deliberate damage? Definition? “The term phimosis (from the Greek word for muzzling),is often incorrectly applied to any foreskin that cannot be retracted. The underlying difficulty is the imprecision of the term phimosis.” 1 “This term used to be used in hospital records to justify social circumcision. It is easier to define what phimosis is not.” 2 It still is a term used to justify contraindicated circumcisions! “...a non-retractable foreskin beyond the age of 3 years.” 2 “Phimosis: Inability to retract the foreskin after the age of puberty.”3 Is this confusing? The doctor’s personal motives determine his particular definition and almost always it is incorrect. Acquired phimosis is the condition of non-retractability due to the ignorance of the doctor, ignorance of the parents or other care givers due to misinformation or no information from the doctor. Consequently, the infant’s foreskin opening (at the ridged band or “frenar band”) is probed and widened unnecessarily or the foreskin is partially or fully retracted by force causing slight tears in the foreskin. This invasion of the foreskin may narrow and constrict the foreskin opening when the tears heal, can obstruct urine flow, can scar the glans when the mucosa is torn away and cause re-adhesion of the mucosato the glans after the tearing apart. Boys can also cause their foreskins to be quite snug to very tight, and in some cases unretractable (self-acquired phimosis) when they discover masturbation. 4 Instead of drawing the foreskin back and forth over their glans mimicking vaginal penetration and intercourse (using their glans as a natural dilator) which naturally increases the size of the opening and adding foreskin suppleness, some boys will masturbate by rubbing their glans under their foreskin and only pulling their foreskin forward instead of toward the pubis. This will sometimes result in a longer, narrower, more tubular (as in childhood) foreskin which can be more restrictive. 4 Parents should talk with their sons about the natural and normal pleasures of masturbation which virtually all males will indulge. Make a suggestion or suggestions of method (or if embarrassed to do so,leave some information around the house that he will find). If he does have a rather tight or restrictive foreskin, masturbation by stroking the entire shaft and glans, allowing the foreskin to travel back and forth over the glans and down the shaft, will relieve a restrictive opening. Some men have experienced self-acquired phimosis by stretching their foreskin in the desire to have a longer, more substantial foreskin. The inner foreskin mucosa is naturally fused to the glans of almost every infant (96%)5 as the development of the penis is not complete at birth. The synechia is the membrane attaching the foreskin to the glans. The desquamation of the cells of the synechia will cause the foreskin to naturally separate from the glans in most boys by the age of 5 or 6 (90%), by early teens (99%) or later teen years. This fusion is a natural design of oneness to protect the glans and meatus from feces, urine and foreign debris and protection against infection which obviously prevents the foreskin from retracting over the glans. This is NOT phimosis, but natural fusion. It is, however, the leading excuse to circumcise young boys when their foreskin has not yet retracted. “The time to pull the foreskin back is when the child is old enough to do this himself.”2 For parents of intact sons, please tell them, “No one should pull your foreskin back unless it’s OK with you. If your doctor wants to check it, you can slide it back yourself.”6 Phimosis, then, is the inability to retract the foreskin over the glans of older boys and men due to one of the following etiologies: Pathological, Physiological, Iatrogenic, or Acquired Phimosis. In almost all cases, a normal degree of retractability will be achieved through treatment. Most of the circumcisions performed using the excuse of phimosis are fraudulent or “sham diagnoses” of children with perfectly normal foreskins which are still naturally fused to their glans. Such circumcisions are contraindicated and the perpetrators should be reported to their respective medical society, ethics committees, state medical boards and prosecuted. This is as evil and fraudulent as telling parents that their son’s foreskin is “redundant” (too long)! Circumcision for these hoaxes make as much sense as telling a well endowed man that his nine inch penis must be reduced by three inches due to penile redundancy! It must also be stressed that some men with phimosis are perfectly happy with that condition, will not consider circumcision nor treatment to achieve retractability. This is and should be a personal choice. Treatment published in medical journal literature reports a 90% success rate with conservative treatment using a topical steroid (betamethasone valerate 0.5%2 or clobetasol propionate cream, 0.05%7). Some individuals in the 10% who are still unable to retract opt to leave their foreskin or their son’s foreskin alone. This is also a successful treatment for the restriction of the opening if urine flow is obstructed. Balloon dilation is another treatment that reported a 100% cure rate among 512 cases.8 Pathological phimosis, due to balanitis xerotica obliterans (lichen sclerosis et atrophicus), is usually not responsive to treatment and the patient or his parents must decide whether to leave it alone, try other foreskin saving options (surgical - see below), or circumcision. Physiological phimosis, perhaps a fibrotic disease, is not understood and may be iatrogenic or self-induced. It appears that the vast majority of the phimosis diagnoses are false - either through ignorance on the part of the physician or an excuse used to fulfill some need to circumcise his patient without medical indication. In this case, the pathology of the circumcisers should be studied. Investigating the literature and figures in journal articles and removing all misdiagnosis of phimosis of the naturally fused glans and inner foreskin as well as iatrogenic phimosis caused either intentionally or unintentionally, very few intact males will ever experience this. Perhaps one male per thousand will experience a totally unretractable foreskin. With treatment 90% successful, one intact male in 10,000 would have to make the decision to just leave it alone, try Prepucial Plasty or Y-V Plasties, other interventions, or circumcision. About 5% of our children are being circumcised because of this fraud! Paraphimosis is the strangling of the penis behind the glans at the sulcus. This is a rare condition caused by a tight foreskin (ridged band) which passes over the glans, tightens, will not allow theforeskin to pass back over the glans and restricts blood flow. The same treatment for phimosis will cure virtually every case of paraphimosis. If a child’s foreskin is found to be in this position, apply pressure to his glans and slide his foreskin back over. The Solution: Phimosis would be very rare if medical staff and parents would leave the foreskin of infants and children alone and physicians educate themselves on what is and what is not phimosis and the treatments available should they ever encounter a real case. 1. Gordon A., Collin, J., “Save the normal foreskin,” British Medical Journal, vol. 30, January 2, 1996. 2. Wright, JE., “Further to ‘the further fate of the foreskin’,” The Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 180, February 7, 1994. 3. Ritter, TJ, MD, Denniston, GC, MD, MPH, Glossary, Say NO to Circumcision, Hourglass Publishing, 1996. 4. Beauge, M, MD, “Conservative Treatment of Primary Phimosis in Adolescents,” Faculty of Medicine, Saint-Antoine University, Paris VI, 1991. Translated by Dr. JP Warren. 5. Gairdner, D, “The Fate of the Foreskin,” British Medical Journal, December 24, 1949, p 1433-1437. 6. Noble, E, Sorger, L., MD, “The Joy of Being a Boy,” New LifeImages, 1994. 7. Jorgensen, ET, Svensson, A, “The Treatment of Phimosis in Boys,with a Potent Topical Steroid (Clobetasol Propionate 0.05%) Cream,” Acta Dermato-Vernereologica (Stockholm), vol. 73, No. 1, February, 1993.
8. From SURGERY, Gynecology & Obstetrics, Vol. 175, No. 3, September, 1992. (He Ying and Zhou Xiu-hua, Chinese Medical Journal, 1991). The following letter from the American Cancer Society to the American Academy of Pediatrics should end to the disproved claim that having a foreskin increases the risk of penile cancer in older men. This is not an "official" statement of policy from the ACS. However, the ACS official statements on penile and cervical carcinomas do not include circumcision as any preventative. After this letter is a discussion of how this hoax was begun, perpetuated and proven false. AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY NATIONAL HOME OFFICE February 16, 1996 Dr. Peter Rappo Committee on Practice & Ambulatory Medicine American Academy of Pediatrics 141 Northwest Point Boulevard P. O. Box 927 Elk Grove Village, IL 60009-0927 Dear Dr. Rappo: As representatives of the American Cancer Society, we would like to discourage the American Academy of Pediatrics from promoting circumcision as a preventative measure for penile or cervical cancer. The American Cancer Society does not consider routine circumcision to be a valid or effective measure to prevent suchcancers. Research suggesting a pattern in the circumcision status of partners of women with cervical cancer is methodologically flawed, outdated and has not been taken seriously in the medical community for decades. Likewise, research claiming a relationship between circumcision and penile cancer is inconclusive. Penile cancer is an extremely rare condition, effecting one in 200,000 men in the United States. Penile cancer rates in countries which do not practice circumcision are lower than those in the United States. Fatalities caused by circumcision accidents may approximate the mortality rate from penile cancer. Portraying routine circumcision as an effective means of prevention distracts the public from the task of avoiding the behaviors proven to contribute to penile and cervical cancer: especially cigarette smoking and unprotected sexual relations with multiple partners. Perpetuating the mistaken belief that circumcision prevents cancer is inappropriate. Sincerely, Hugh Shingleton, M.D. Clark W. Heath, Jr., M.D. National Vice President Vice President Detection & Treatment Epidemiology & Surveillance Research 1599 CLIFTON ROAD, N.E., ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30329 404-320-3333 An unscientific paper by Abraham Wolbarst, published in the Lancet, January, 1932, began the fraud that penile cancer is found only among intact men. Wolbarst asked hospitals for the number of patients diagnosed with penile cancer and whether or not they were Jewish (not whether or not they were ircumcised). To achieve desired results, he added numbers from older studies (1907, for example). The birth dates of men with penile cancer in these "studies" were from 1830 to 1885, years when it was about as difficult to find a circumcised man in the U. S. as it was a circumcised horse. Nearly all cases in those years should have been intact men as almost all men were intact. Circumcision promoters took the annual number of penile cancer cases at that time and multiplied by population increase and the number of years since 1930 and tell us, "Of 60,000 cases of penile cancer since 1930, only 8 (or 10, or 12) have been found among circumcised men." The paper by Wolbarst has been the source for this fraudulent claim for the past 65 years. The intent is clear - use a false cancer scare to convince parents to circumcise their sons. For years neither parents nor circumcision promoters have asked why the rate among European men, virtually all intact, is the same or lower than the more circumcised male population in North America. A circumcised penis is at approximately the same risk as the intact penis. The only means of preventing penile cancer is the amputation of the penis. Any living tissue is at risk of cancer, and this fact should be evident to the physicians who continue to believe this hoax. Dr. Robert Van Howe has written a case study of a circumcised man who was told by his urologist that the neoplasm on his penis was nothing to worry about because, "Circumcised males can't get penile cancer." After two years and the continued growth of the neoplasm, he consulted a dermatologist who took a biopsy and found the neoplasm cancerous. Dr. Van Howe asks, "Is there a pattern here?" There may be. It is pathetic that the promoters have convinced not only the public, but many physicians of this fraud. How many circumcised men with penile cancer, told they couldn't have it, lost their penises, or lives, due to this hoax? Today, how many men with penile cancer are going without treatment due to this deception? Doctors, what do you say to these men later who, thanks to you, now have advanced penile cancer? Oooops? The promoters of circumcision use this"study" as a scare tactic to circumcise male infants, despite the fact that penile cancer is one of the rarest of all carcinomas. This year there will be about 7 cases of penile cancer per million males, 2 deaths per million. Is this the same odds as death by lightning strike? Using data from a six year British study (Gairdner, British Medical Journal, 1949), the odds of the death of an infant boy due to circumcision is 1 in 6,000, or 167 per million circumcisions! "It is an incontestable fact... there are more deaths from circumcision each year than from cancer of the penis." (Gellis, S.S., American Journal of Diseases in Children). Please see the answer to a question in the letters section of this newsletter for an explanation of how these deaths go unreported. Male breast cancer is more common than penile cancer (SEERS Cancer Statistics Review), 6 times that of foreskin cancers and higher than all penile cancers. The findings of the first case/control penile cancer study (Maden et al, an on-going study) was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, January 6,1993. 37% of the cases were circumcised men (which is close to the true percentage of men circumcised in the age group of the cases, born between 1910 and 1945). This study found cancers on the foreskin in 17% of the cases, (one case per 800,000 males). By definition, the difference between an intact and circumcised penis is the presence or absence of the foreskin. Therefore, 83% of penile carcinomas would be found regardless of circumcision status. The incidence of cancers on the foreskin are off-set by the higher incidence of tearing on the circumcised penis. Leading the risk factors for penile cancer, according to the Maden study, are penile rash, odds ratio 9.4 times that of men reporting no such history; genital warts, 5.9; penile tear, 3.9; over 30 sexual partners, 3.4; smoking, over 45 pack-year, 3.2; penile injury, 2.3. The intact, compared to all circumcised was a low 2.0 (1.5 is considered "chance"). Using figures from the Maden study and adjusting for the increased number of circumcised men in the age group at risk, the calculation of a national incidence of penile cancer suggests that in 1996 about 550 intact men and 450 circumcised men will be diagnosed with penile cancer. In the year 2000, when about 55% of the males in the group at risk will have circumcised penises, the data will show about 55% of the cases will be among circumcised men. The average age at diagnosis is 67 years. The circumcision boosters dare not look at the Maden study as the number is 1,400 times higher than the boosters claim! The Seattle area had 8 times more circumcised men with penile cancer in eleven years than the entire country was supposed to have had in 65 years! In an interview with Dr. Janet Daling, study epidemiologist, she told this writer, "Penile cancer should never be considered in a circumcision decision." She said this statement was also given to the media, but never published. Dr. Daling's son is intact and twin boys born to Dr. and Mrs. Maden during the study are intact, which should be an indication that penile cancer is merely a scare tactic and circumcision does not prevent this disease - at least in the eyes of the researchers. Circumcision promoters disregard this study and pretend it doesn't exist. They pretend the letter from the American Cancer Society doesn’t exist. They pretend the intact men of Europe with the same or lower penile cancer rates don’t exist. They continue to use the old fraud, the old scare tactic and continue to parrot the same lie over and over and over....
Two facts must be well understood before addressing the medical literature on the incidence of urinary tract infections between the intact and circumcised boys in the first years of life. The first is the fact that most urinary tract defects are caused by urinary tract birth defects and it makes no difference if the boy is intact or not. Second, if the foreskins of infant boys were not probed, manipulated and inspected there would be no difference between the two cohorts and the intact boys may well have fewer incidents of UTI. The foreskin is designed to keep foreign debris and bacteruim from the urinary tract and when disturbed there is a slight increase in risk of a UTI. Circumcision promoters have been using fraudulent UTI and foreskin presence risk factors for about 15 years and tell parents that an intact boy will be ten or twenty times at higher risk. UTI’s are actually quite rare. Paediatrics and Child Health, Vol.2, Supplement A, Page 55A, May/June 1997 (Canadian Paediatric Society), found, in following 61,543 boys in Ontario for the first five years of life (61% intact, 39% circumcised) that 511 boys were presented for a UTI over the five year period. The researchers found that the incidence of intact boys was 3 times higher than the circumcised. If 100,000 boys were circumcised, perhaps 160 cases of treatable UTI could be prevented according to this study. Urinary tract birth defects were not addressed, so the number would be much lower. Does it make any sense to circumcise a hundred thousand boys to maybe prevent 160 UTI’s when there are over 5,000 serious complications per 100,000 circumcisions (including deaths)? “Understanding Urinary Tract Infection”, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “UTI’s are rarely seen in boys and young men. UTI’s may occur in infants with abnormalities in their urinary tract.” “Urinary Tract Infection in Childhood”, (Infect Urol 8 (4), 111, 114-120, 1995): “60% of children with UTI’s have anatomic abnormalities in their urninary tracts.... In older children, UTI’s are significantly more common in girls and become as much as 50 times more common in girls by the age of five years. 0.3% to 1.2% of all infants will develop sympotomatic UTI’s during the first year of life.” Removing 60% of cases with abnormailities, or urinary tract birth defects, the figures are now 0.12% to 0.48%. Removing the girls and circumcised infants leaves a figure between 0.04% to 0.18%, a mean rate of 0.11%. This means that there are 110 intact boys per 100,000 with a UTI in the first year of life. Since 70% of the male UTI’s in the first five years occur in the first year of life, there would be 157 in the first five years. Is it rational to circumcise 100,000 boys in an attempt to prevent or reduce 150 cases of a treatable UTI? And we must remember that these 100,000 circumcised boys are also at a risk of a UTI! Our studies are very close to the 160 per 100,000 in the Canadian study. P These figures were checked against a study by Dr. Martin Altschul of 118,000 births and infants admitted with a diagnosis of UTI to Northern California Kaiser Permanente Hospitals. His finding for the intact boys is 120 per 100,000 in the first year of life. Although we do not have his figures for the first five years of life, using the 70% for the first year gives 170 cases. Parents, allow your sons to have the natural, normal, sensuous, protective and functional foreskin that Nature intended him to have. Investigate the motives and agendas of the circumcisers and remember that a lifetime of very sensuous and complete sexuality and wholeness is in the balance. A complete penis not only enhances his sexuality, but there is the consideration of right and wrong and whose body it is that is being invaded. Subtraction does not add nor enhance. The suggestion that there is any correlation between the presence of a foreskin and a higher incidence in HIV infection is not only irresponsible, illogical and unethical, but totally false and dangerous. The promoters of circumcision have sunk to a new low grasping for another imaginary straw in their futile search to find a reason to justify circumcision. There is more conclusive medical literature that the absence of the foreskin may increase the likelihood of HIV infection. Should a male have either a natural or circumcised penis he must protect himself from exposure to this terrible disease by adhering to a monogamous relationship, 100% condom usage or abstinence. This misadventure by a very small number of circumcision boosters in the medical community, but with an almost unlimited access to the media to espouse their claims, was not going to be addressed in this series. However, since they have not abandoned the atrocious claim, this fraud must be exposed, too. Thanks to Dr. Robert S. Van Howe and his extensive HIV Meta-analysis and Dr. George Williams, The NOCIRC Newsletter from NOCIRC of Australia (July-December, 1995 edition). A relationship between increased incidence of HIV/AIDS and a natural penis suggested by the late Dr. Aaron Fink was answered ten years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine (11 June 1987) by Dr. Robert Enzenhauer. He wrote, “Circumcision removes the protection normally provided by the foreskin. The absence of circumcision may actually protect against the transmission of AIDS by protecting the urethral mucosa.” The C.D.C. in Atlanta was called and asked if they supported any claim that circumcision protects against HIV transmission. They do not support that claim. Dr. Van Howe’s meta-analysis, completed in late 1996, combined | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
