Involuntary Foreskinectomy Awareness _______ Click →
by Chester McQuarry
It is the part of human anatomy most similar to the eyelid, being sensitive in and of itself, protecting a sensitive part of the body from abrasion and injury, made to slide and glide as part of its functions, and moving on a slightly moist mucous membrane. Yet in the United States, its routine removal a few days after birth is justified as a prophylactic medical procedure to prevent disease and dysfunction.
This practice began in the 1870s as male physicians moved to medicalize and hospitalize birth, pushed to outlaw the ancient practice of female midwifery, and introduced circumcision as a deterrent to male masturbation, thought to be weakening to health and responsible for countless afflictions. There was then only the bare start of a bacterial theory of disease and no understanding at all of viral and genetic afflictions. But it is remarkable that a tiny piece of a man's penis, and/or the excessive masturbation it was thought to incite, was identified as a major factor in, by one medical historian's study, more than 260 diseases. And the rest of the world's medical community looks on in amazement as U.S. medicine continues its century-old obsession with foreskin removal.
Today the largest secular circumcised male population in history lives in the United States. Europe (except for the United Kingdom), Asia, and Latin America never adopted the practice. The United Kingdom abandoned medical circumcision in the late 1940s. Some English-speaking nations like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia still have circumcision rates of 20 percent and more, but no nation matches the United States, where the infant circumcision rate steadily rose decade by decade through the 20th century, reaching 85 to 90 percent in the 1980s. Then it fell to around 60 percent nationally today, which still means about 3,000 un-anesthetized infant circumcisions daily, more than a million annually.
While much of the medical community has argued for the prophylactic effect of male circumcision, there have been increasing dissenting voices and studies in the past 20 years. And there is greater understanding that, like any other evolved part of anatomy, the foreskin has real and valuable functions, and its removal has real and negative consequences for individuals and society. All mammalian penes either are covered by a protective foreskin-like sheath or are protected inside the body. So why is the U.S.-born human male uniquely in need of surgical correction a few days after birth for evolution's presumed error? Since 85 percent of human males alive today still have their foreskins, why are they not suffering the dire consequences foretold by U.S. allopathic medicine for those who remain intact as nature made them?
In 1996, the first histological study of foreskin tissue was published by a team from the University of Manitoba. Contrary to mainstream medicine's continued claim that the foreskin is just a fold of skin covering the glans, the study found clear evidence of the protective and erotic nature of foreskin tissue, with a rich blood and nerve supply characteristic of erotic organs. And the foreskin contains Meissner's corpuscles, the type of pressure- and touch-sensitive nerve bundles that make the fingertips so instantly responsive. While physicians tell parents that circumcision only removes a tiny piece of skin the size of a quarter, the adult reality is that through normal growth, an adult man has lost 1/3 of his penile skin, about 15 square inches, and with it important areas of sensation and function. Since the glans has evolved as protected tissue, when the foreskin covering is removed, the glans develops multiple layers of keratinized cells, a kind of callus, rendering it ever less sensitive. Examinations of adult men show 12 to 24 layers of callus cells on their uncovered glans, and the light pink moist color of the intact glans of Caucasians becomes dark and dull.
The United States has high rates of teen pregnancies and STDs, and much lower rates of condom acceptance and use as compared with the largely uncircumcised populations of western Europe and Japan. So the question arises: Do U.S. men consciously or unconsciously resist condom usage to avoid adding a layer of latex over an already sensually dulled penis and thereby help create the high rates of STDs and teen pregnancies? And more and more women are reporting the differences they have experienced with intact and circumcised sexual partners. With the natural lubrication, slide-and glide-functions, and larger girth of the foreskin gone, circumcised men are often reported by women to be less sensitive and functional sexual partners. As men age and the keratinized callus cells on the glans accumulate in layers-a process unknown to most-they begin to complain that sexual intercourse just isn't good anymore, and this must be due to the birthing-overstretched vaginas of their partners. This is a baseless myth of male culture, when the real physiological culprit is their own callused penises.
A small but growing group of men are using simple, self-administered methods to stretch and restore their foreskin. While the lost nerve function cannot be regained, the glans can be re-covered and re-protected, thereby causing the callus cells to disappear. And the slide-and-glide function of the foreskin is also regained.
The U.S. medical establishment for more than a century has been highly resistant to new information and to the reality that medical circumcision is globally a rare and unique practice. Now it seems that U.S. medicine will have to be pushed by parents, dissenters in the medical professions, and citizen activists into facing the facts that the foreskin evolved as part of normally functioning male sexual anatomy, and that circumcision is a "phallusy."
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