The glans, which is at the end of the penis, [is] covered with a very thin membrane, by reason of which it is of a most exquisite feeling. It is covered with a preputium or foreskin, which in some covers the top of the yard [slang for penis] quite close, in others not so, and by its moving up and down in the act of copulation brings pleasure to both the man and woman. 1 – Aristotle
A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed without administering anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutory effect upon the mind, especially, if it is connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases.2 – Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, creator of the Corn Flake
I suggest that all male children should be circumcised. This is ‘against nature’, but that is exactly the reason why it should be done. Nature intends that the adolescent male shall copulate as often and as promiscuously as possible, and to that end covers the sensitive glans so that it shall be ever ready to receive stimuli. Civilization, on the contrary, requires chastity, and the glans of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. 3 – R.W. Cockshut
While the history of circumcision goes back to ancient Egypt and is found in the religious texts of Judaism and Islam, the normalization of circumcision in the West is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back only to the nineteenth century. It originated in response to the hysteria around masturbation in Victorian times, and was named a cure all for a number of other serious medical problems. However, the evidence for this was thoroughly debunked by the middle of the twentieth century and, as a result, circumcision rates in Europe began a steady decline. Only in America did this procedure remain standardized – the only nontherapeutic and “preventative” surgery that we commonly subject babies to. So what is a foreskin? Why does having one matter? How did a ritual practice become a prophylactic one? And why do we still circumcise today?
Sex 101: Foreskin and Function
The glans cover’d with its prepuce, which is at one of its extremities, has such tender and sensible [sensitive] flesh, that nature hath there established the throne of sensitivity and pleasure in women’s embraces.4 – Nicholas De Venette
Knowledge about the fully-formed human penis should be part of normal sex education – but it often isn’t. In America today it is common in anatomy books for the foreskin to be left out altogether.
The foreskin is not a birth defect – it is a normal part of human anatomy. The foreskin of the penis starts out growing from the same tissue as the clitoral hood, the skin that covers the clitoris. The gender-neutral term for this bit of skin is the prepuce. The glans (head of the penis) is an internal organ, meant to remain covered in the same way our eyelids protect our eyes or our fingernails protect our nail beds. In our society, those assigned female at birth get to keep their foreskin, but those assigned male and then circumcised do not.
There are repercussions to making an internal organ external. In order to survive the organ must adapt. In addition to losing sensitivity, removing the foreskin means that over time the pH will be altered, the temperature will no longer remain stable, moisture and lubrication will be lost (leading to dryness and chapping), antibodies and healthy microflora will no longer exist, and callusing will take place. (To see a side by side comparison of an adult male penis, cut and uncut, click here. Warning: graphic content.)
The foreskin contains some of the most erogenous tissue in the male body. There are twelve to fifteen square inches of foreskin, containing an astounding 20,000 fine touch nerve endings – or Meissner’s corpuscles. Most of the rest of the penis has Pacinian corpuscles, the most common nerve ending in the skin. If you want to understand the difference between Meissner’s corpuscles and Pacinian corpuscles, stroke the back of your hand repeatedly and softly, and then do the same to the palm of your hand. The palms of your hand have Meissner’s corpuscles – as do the mouth, anus, frenulum, foreskin and other openings of the body.
Normally, the foreskin covers and protects the head of the penis, keeping contaminants out. The foreskin actually has many functions – it allows the skin to move around and the penis to remain softer, moister and warmer. In contrast to a circumcised penis, the foreskin actually contributes lubrication to sexual intercourse, as well as helping to keep the lubrication present in the sex act.
As Marilyn Miros, former nurse and “intactivist” (that’s an activist who campaigns for the penis to be left in tact) put it, “you can’t change form without altering function.”5 Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin, alters the function of the penis. Regardless of which side one falls on the circumcision debate, it is important to know and understand how function changes.
“The biological sexual act for the circumcised male becomes a satisfaction of an urge and not the refined sensory experience it was meant to be.”6 – C.J. Falliers
The problems of painful intercourse, lack of lubrication, premature ejaculation and inability to climax can be related to circumcision. Without the foreskin the penis takes longer strokes to ejaculate because it has no fine sensitivity. With these longer strokes, each withdrawal of the penis drags some of the lubrication out – on top of not contributing any lubricant of its own, as an intact penis would. A person with a penis has to work harder and harder to climax as they get older and loses more sensitivity due to increased dryness. In the meantime, if they have a partner with a vulva, their partner loses their ability to “ride the wave to orgasm”7 as Miros puts it, because of the penis constantly withdrawing. Without an honest and open discourse on the effects of circumcision, it is possible that many are struggling in their sexual relationships over issues they have no idea are due to the penis being circumcised.
Ancient History
No one actually knows how the ritual of circumcision came about. There are endless (often contradictory) theories on the reason for it. As Wikipedia summarizes:
It has been variously proposed that it began as a religious sacrifice, as a rite of passage marking a boy’s entrance into adulthood, as a form of sympathetic magic to ensure virility or fertility, as a means of enhancing sexual pleasure, as an aid to hygiene where regular bathing was impractical, as a means of marking those of higher social status, as a means of humiliating enemies and slaves by symbolic castration, as a means of differentiating a circumcising group from their non-circumcising neighbors, as a means of discouraging masturbation or other socially proscribed sexual behaviors, as a means of removing “excess” pleasure, as a means of increasing a man’s attractiveness to women, as a demonstration of one’s ability to endure pain, or as a male counterpart to menstruation or the breaking of the hymen, or to copy the rare natural occurrence of a missing foreskin of an important leader, and as a display of disgust of the smegma produced by the foreskin.8
The only thing all these theories have in common is that they have nothing to do with health. The argument that circumcision is “cleaner” because it prevents the normal buildup of smegma (the substance which is actually produced by both the penis and the vagina) is the equivalent of saying it’s easier to chop off some of your ear than to have to clean out your earwax. Washing the intact penis is a simple matter of pulling back the skin and rinsing with water (not soap, which is irritating) in the shower or bath, just as one might wash the vulva.
Circumcision is strongly associated with Judaism, but the ancient Egyptians practiced it as well. Bodies dating back to 4000 B.C. and hieroglyphs from before 2300 B.C. show circumcision in ancient Egypt and it is likely the Jews learned from the Egyptians. Circumcision was also performed by many other Semitic peoples as well as tribes throughout Africa.
But the amount of foreskin cut and the age at which the ritual takes place has changed over time. The Egyptians performed circumcision on boys rather than infants, and ritualized circumcision took place with large groups of boys being cut at the same time. (In Islamic traditions to this day, circumcision traditionally takes place as a boy, before age ten.) The Jewish tradition eventually became to circumcise infants. Originally it was the mother who would circumcise her baby, though later that role was taken over by the mohel.
The circumcision of ancient times, as was supposed to be practiced by Abraham, was a much less severe operation than it is today.9 Originally just the tip of the foreskin was cut, called milah. This practice lasted two thousand years, until the Hellenistic period, when many Jews started stretching their foreskin back in order to conceal their circumcised penises (which were looked down upon by the Greeks). Because of this, the rabbis of the time decided that circumcision must be performed in such a way that there would be no way to disguise it. So began the practice called periah, the removal of the entire foreskin. It is this practice which was originally taught by Jewish mohels to Western doctors in the nineteenth century, and which remains our standard practice of circumcision to this day. This technique is significantly more severe than most ritual or tribal varieties – or what the God of the Old Testament was said to have commanded.
A Note on Language
Moving into modern history and away from religion and ritual, it seems appropriate to examine the language that is used today around circumcision. The word “uncircumcised” to refer to a whole, intact penis implies that an uncircumcised penis is not yet in the normal state. It would be similar to referring to a person with breasts who had not had a mastectomy as “unmastectomized” – which would be strange indeed! Therefore for the rest of the article I will refer to “uncircumcised” as “intact”. For “circumcision” I prefer the more neutral term “genital cutting” which is a more accurate description of what is occurring – although some would argue that the term “genital mutilation” would be appropriate as well.
Western History
The first medical (non-ritual) genital cutting of the penis took place in Britain in the eighteenth century, becoming a routine preventative procedure by the late nineteenth century, in the context of Victorian morality. Up until this time people with penises valued their foreskins as the “best of your property,”10 as demonstrated in the mid-eighteenth century when Jewish emancipation was feared in case it meant universal genital cutting – seen back then as both humiliating and mutilating.
It was the rise of hysteria around masturbation that is the key to this story. This medical crisis over masturbation is an example of what Thomas Szasz describes as the “therapeutic state” where “social controls are legitimized by the ideology of health.”11 At this time, many things that were taboo from a spiritual or social point of view such as masturbation, homosexuality or suicide – suddenly become forcibly controlled through medical justifications.
In this case, a variety of illnesses came to be blamed on masturbation. Young children and even babies with penises that were caught masturbating were given the mistaken diagnosis of “phimosis”, where the foreskin does not retract back over the glans. It was later proven that phimosis is the normal state for intact penises until pre-pubescence. Back in those times however, the diagnosis of phimosis would be used to justify the cutting of the foreskin.
While today we argue over whether genital cutting affects the sensitivity of the penis, back then there was no question. Often the whole point was to reduce sexual pleasure and therefore sexual temptation:
Another advantage of circumcision is … the lessened liability to masturbation. A long foreskin is irritating per se, as it necessitates more manipulation of the parts in bathing. … This leads the child to handle the parts, and as a rule pleasurable sensations are elicited from the extremely sensitive mucous membrane, with resultant manipulation and masturbation. The exposure of the glans penis following circumcision … lessens the sensitiveness of the organ. It therefore lies with the physicians, the family adviser in affairs hygienic and medical, to urge its acceptance.12
To understand how masturbation could be blamed for so many medical issues, one has to understand the degenerative theory of disease, which said that the body had a limited amount of energy. This energy could either be conserved through “correct living”, or permanently lost through “wrong living”. 13 Sexuality then represented a life-threatening loss of energy, because the non-procreative use of the sexual organs was seen as physically dangerous. The Reflex Neurosis Theory of Disease “postulated that the sexual organs and the erotic sensations they produced were the cause of all human disease.”14 Preposterous now, but this was the original justification for circumcision in the West.
In this way, patients who might have been suffering from various illness due stresses such as overwork, bacterial infections, mental disorders or malnutrition, would then be interviewed by doctors to inevitably reveal that they masturbate, which doctors concluded was the reason for their conditions. All of sexual function was pathologized, with erotic sensation being redefined as “irritation”, orgasm redefined as “convulsion” and erection now termed “priapism.” 15 Thus sexuality became both symptoms and cause of disease, and the stimulation of the genitals could “cause” problems throughout the body.
As time went on there were few things that genital cutting wasn’t “proven” to treat. By reducing pleasure and therefore masturbation, circumcision would cure and prevent cancer, epilepsy, paralysis – you name it!
Circumcision wasn’t the only surgery of the time aimed at eliminating sexual desire. America specialized in alternative treatments to curbing carnal lust. “Spermectomy”, a less drastic alternative to castration (but more severe than a vasectomy), involved surgically removing the spermatic ducts. Neurectomy had a brief popularity in the 1890s, which involved severing the dorsal nerves of the penis, permanently and completely destroying sensation and function. This was commonly performed on people with penises who were caught masturbating. Other less drastic measures included:
slitting open the urethra, cauterizing the prostate, corporal punishment, blistering the penis with caustics, acid or heat, flaying the skin of the penis with razor blades, sewing the penis shut with metal wire, encasing the genitals in plaster or lockable metal cages, or fitting the penis with rings studded with sharp teeth to discourage erections.16
New diagnoses such as “spermatorrhoea” emerged. The tell tale symptoms of spermatorrhoea included the ejaculation of sperm under any condition other than marital intercourse. How did one treat spermatorrhoea? Circumcision, of course.
The hysteria around sexuality wasn’t exclusively for those with penises. For those with vulvas, the preferred treatment for epilepsy and masturbation was clitoridectomy (the removal of the clitoris).17
In this time, one often encounters medical articles with such titles as “The value of circumcision as a hygienic and therapeutic measure”, which might bring to mind today’s claims that circumcision is more “hygienic”. But it’s interesting to note that back then the word “hygiene” was being used to refer to moral hygiene (i.e., not masturbating), not personal cleanliness.
In the UK, genital cutting of the penis became routine and widespread among the wealthier classes by the end of the nineteenth century. The final push had been a paper published by English surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson claiming that it provided protection against syphilis (paralleling the rise of the claim that it protects against AIDS today) – one of the most influential texts in the history of circumcision advocacy. There were some pretty extreme flaws in Hutchinson’s methodology. The paper was based on his observations at the Metropolitan Free Hospital in east London, where many Jewish immigrants had settled. He observed that fewer Jews than Englishmen sought treatment for syphilis. As noted by Robert Darby:
Being innocent of any awareness of the principles of statistical analysis, epidemiology, the germ theory of disease or the quarantine effect of ghetto living, Hutchinson asserted that only circumcision could account for the difference in the incidence of the disease.18
Despite these flaws, Hutchinson’s paper retained its influence until the 1940s.
The president of the American Medical Association in 1890, Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, spent his entire career urging physicians that they must examine a boy’s prepuce first, in all cases of disease. While his claims seem ridiculous now, they were always supported with numerous case studies and an abundance of clinical evidence. This is a running theme with genital cutting, with new “evidence” popping up for new justifications, just when the old ones had been debunked.
My original intention in writing this piece was to track the history of medical justifications (and their later disproving) throughout the past two centuries. But this turned out to be too arduous a task. It’s a long and checkered history, and if one is really interested, “A short history of circumcision in the United States” by Robert Darby is an in-depth history that is highly recommended and thoroughly annotated (footnotes at end of Part 2 of the article.)
To summarize, in the last two hundred years circumcision has been “proven” and then disproven to prevent or cure:
- Masturbation
- Epilepsy
- Convulsions
- Paralysis
- Cancer
- Hip-joint disease
- Hernia
- Bad digestion
- Inflammation of the bladder
- Clumsiness
- Lameness
- Curvature of the spine
- Club foot
- Nervous tension
- Restlessness and Irritability
- Tuberculosis
- Venereal disease
- Penile cancer
- Chorea
- Malnutrition
Even after the germ theory of disease was established (and diagnoses like tuberculosis were therefore no longer attributable to the intact penis), anti-sexual attitudes and bad information prevailed. An article that appeared in the September 1941 issue of Parents Magazine by Dr. Ian F. Guttmacher, an obstetrician at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, openly admits that circumcision “causes blunting of male sexual sensitivity” but argued that this was an advantage.19 Myths about the difficulty cleaning the penis prevailed in American literature just as they were being disproven in British medical journals. Guttmacher argued that circumcision at birth is easier for the mother, so that the mother doesn’t have to handle her child’s genitals as much – making masturbation less likely.
The landmark 1949 study “The fate of the foreskin” by Cambridge pediatrician Douglas Gairdner, published in the British Medical Journal, marked the end of the era of mass circumcision in the UK. Gairdner debunks the phimosis myth, and rejected the “evidence” that male genital cutting reduced risks of syphilis and cancer as spurious. As a result the National Health Service in the UK did not cover the operation, which would have to be performed at parents’ discretion through a private doctor. Circumcision rates plummeted as a result. To this day, the NHS website states, “most healthcare professionals now agree that the risks associated with routine circumcision, such as infection and excessive bleeding, outweigh any potential benefits.” 20
In the United States, however, Gairdner’s paper was ignored. Old circumcision myths were recycled, new myths were created (such as the idea that male genital cutting was actually good for the male libido), and the Gomco clamp went into mass manufacture (the stainless steel device still widely used today to crush the foreskin and isolate it during the surgical procedure). There was a new cancer scare that was blamed on foreskin, blaming it for prostate, penal and cervical cancers. In this same period of time there was another push to popularize circumcision of those with vulvas by removing the clitoral hood.
But by 1962, theories that retaining a foreskin caused cancer or that smegma was carcinogenic were disproven, even in America. Further medical research led to the revolutionary statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1971 that “There is no valid medical indication for circumcision in the neonatal period.”21
This lead to a period where an American grass roots movement questioned the ethics of neonatal circumcision and considered the issue of who had the right to consent for a baby to have an unnecessary surgical procedure. In the mainstream however, myths began circulating in popular baby care guides that it would be terribly traumatizing for a child to realize that their father’s circumcised penis differed from their own.
Another myth that created social pressure for circumcision was the idea that uncut children would feel awkward and weird in school locker rooms.
Meanwhile, even clitoral circumcision hung about as a possibility in the American medical practice of the 1970s. Dr. Leo Wollman published an article arguing that the removal of the clitoral hood was a cure for frigidity.22 This was aimed to appeal to the ethos of the sexual revolution – and was the exact opposite of the argument being made in support of circumcision a century earlier!
What should have been the final death knell for neonatal circumcision appeared in 1975 when the American Academy of Pediatrics clarified:
There is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn… A program of education leading to continuing good personal hygiene would offer all the advantages of circumcision without the attendant surgical risk. Therefore, circumcision of the male neonate cannot be considered an essential component of adequate total health care.23
But another decade, another excuse. There was a scare that intact penises were more prone to urinary tract infections – little mention being made that UTIs are relatively common for girls as well and no one has suggested cutting their clitoral hoods off as a preventative measure (not yet anyway!)
There is a clear historical pattern here of finding ever new reasons to perform male genital cutting. I will take a brief look at the modern medical justifications later in this piece.
What Does Circumcision Involve?
First however, it seems appropriate to take a minute to clarify exactly what this surgical procedure looks like. Often misconstrued as “a little snip”, circumcision is a serious operation that is often performed without anesthesia.
This video is not for the squeamish, but as Michelle Storms, an obstetrician who stopped performing circumcisions in 1988 for reasons of conscience, said, “any person who wants to subject a child to this should be required to witness one first.”24 Many parents have expressed regret in the aftermath of the procedure, only then realizing the severity of what has been done to their child.
WARNING: This is a graphic video of a real life circumcision of the newborn, screaming and crying the whole way through. If you can’t handle the video and would like to see a side by side comparison of a cut and uncut baby, click here (again: graphic).
Not often spoken of, there are common surgical complications, from the scarring that is universal to penile adhesions, punctures, skin bridges, “buried” penis, and even accidental full amputation of the head. Postoperatively, there can be difficulty breastfeeding, excessive bleeding, long-term aggravated response to pain, infection, meatitis, necrosis, and even severe permanent disability or death.
Why Do We Still Do It?
Even today there are popular news stories with dramatic warnings on the dangers of the falling rate of circumcision and the public health repercussions, like this CBS news article, for example. There are also revivals of medical justifications, such as the idea that circumcising reduces risk of prostate cancer, such as this study from just last year.
At the same time, countries like Germany are coming to the determination that “circumcising young boys represents grievous bodily harm.”
The current justifications for circumcision, outside of social pressures and mistaken ideas about hygiene, include the prevention of UTIs, penile and prostate cancers, HIV, HPV and other STDs.
The American Cancer Society actually disagrees with the idea that circumcision prevents penile cancer, which has an incredibly low rate of 1/100,000 in any case. A similar number of people actually die of circumcision related deaths (117) to penile cancer (328) in the United States each year.25 26
The main 2002 study that linked foreskin to cervical cancer a) presumes that the child will be having sex with a woman when they are an adult and makes a surgical decision based on that presumption, and b) was later invalidated because the partners in the study were actually found to have different strains of HPV, and therefore could not have gotten it from each other.27
The idea of circumcision for HIV prevention got its start in the 2000s, but there were many problems with the three randomized control trials in Africa that are cited as evidence, including the fact that the circumcised men were provided more access to condoms and safe sex information than intact men. The idea that the author promotes of likening circumcision to an effective vaccine, when they are only claiming a 60% effective rate, is hugely irresponsible. As a result of this study there are now people in Africa who think they are immune to HIV because they are circumcised.28
The major 1986 study that is often cited as confirmation that circumcision is an effective preventative measure for UTIs was skewed. In the study, parents of children with foreskins were told to wash with soap – interrupting the normal colonization of bacteria and leading to increased risk of infection. 29
It’s also ironic to note that the United States, with the highest rate of sexually active, circumcised penises in the world – also has one of the highest rates of genital cancers and STDs in the Western world. By contrast, countries such as Japan and Scandinavia, where circumcision is practically unknown, have much lower rates.30
But in the meantime, the American Association of Pediatrics backtracked once again in 2012, moving way from their more neutral position to state that the health benefits of infant male genital cutting outweigh the potential risks.
As one can read here, the medical associations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, and Canada would disagree.
Social Pressures: Normalizing Mutilation
Some of the most common reasons given today for circumcising a child are social pressures: wanting them to look “normal” or like their father, for instance. In what other situation today would we allow a parent to elect a nontherapeutic (not medically necessary) surgery for their child in the name of a social or aesthetic preference?
While the female genital mutilation that we often hear about and judge in Africa can vary from the removal of the clitoral hood to the removal of the entire clitoris, it is worth comparing notes for a minute. The justifications used in Africa often sound the same – better or preferred appearance, necessary for social acceptance – as well as “medical” justifications based on the idea of increased “hygiene” and disease prevention. Backwards social practices often hide under the accepted and institutionalized discourse of the time – in this case, modern medicine.
Denial, Grief, Mourning
Why do many still defend circumcision in the face of evidence? It is an emotionally charged issue for many reasons. There is denial, grief, and anger at the realization of having experienced what in reality was a completely unnecessary violation and loss, a kind of abuse. There is also the pain of realizing what one might have unknowingly done to one’s own child. It’s an emotional issue, to say the least.
There is an aspect of “cognitive dissonance” here, whereby the easiest way to deal with the fact that one may be missing something important or have deprived a child of something important, is to discount the foreskin, claiming it’s no big shakes. But the answer cannot be to turn away from the facts.
Foreskin Restoration and Resources
Some people with circumcised penises are now reclaiming their foreskin as part of a physical and psychological healing process. Scar tissue remediation (especially working with castor oil) can help regain some sensitivity. And while it is not possible to regain entirely lost nerve endings, it is possible to stretch and expand the skin back into a foreskin, over a course of years. This has the effect of recreating the mucus membrane, increasing sensitivity of the glans and lubrication, as well as healing any callousing. Some who have undergone foreskin restoration say the process also promotes psychological wellbeing through a sense of reclaiming wholeness. For more resources on regrowing foreskin, see the end of this article.
Conclusion
I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine neonatal circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in a condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.31 – Thomas Szasz
Many practices that are now seen as very clearly unethical had been going on for an extremely long time before anyone had the idea to question them. Examples include slavery, footbinding, the cutting of female genitals, and beating disobedient children with sticks…what’s happening right now with circumcision…the relevant ethical principles—about bodily integrity, consent, protecting the vulnerable in society, and so on—have been available to us for quite some time now. It’s just that we’re so used to circumcision as a cultural habit, that many people fail to see how blatantly inconsistent this practice is with the rest of their own moral landscape.32
– Brian Earp, research associate at Oxford University
Throughout history, many injustices have hid in plain view, normalized by the society of the time. Circumcision is one of them. We hear justifications all the time: “it’s cleaner”, “it looks better”, “everyone does it”, “I’m circumcised and I’m fine”, “babies don’t feel anything”, “doctors do it”, “it’s just a little snip”. But looked at from a fresh angle, we see a procedure that removes a healthy unique organ part as a social ritual and not a medical treatment. Such a procedure would be illegal on those with vulvas but is more or less standard for those born with penises in America, in spite of potential complications and lifelong loss of function.
It’s interesting to note that it was glaringly obvious to people living a hundred and fifty years ago that the removal of the foreskin would greatly reduce the amount of sexual pleasure a person with a penis would experience, but we argue today over whether it makes any difference at all. Or at least we do in America, as opposed to Britain where studies are still being published showing that:
The glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis. The transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce [ridged band, removed in all circumcisions] is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis.33
Only three in ten men in the world are circumcised, but eight out of every ten American men are. There is a conversation that needs to take place here. Our society needs a better understanding of the repercussions of circumcision so that, if nothing else, parents make more informed decisions. And perhaps one day we will recognize that no parent has the right to perform a cosmetic and medically unnecessary surgical operation on a child who is unable to consent.
~ 🖤 🖤 🖤 ~
All fired up? Here are some great resources for sharing:
- Laci Green says “I Love Foreskin” and explains why, in a great video to share to your friends that covers a lot of this article in a few entertaining minutes.
- Marilyn Milos explains the function of foreskin and the loss of sexual function after circumcision in this Sex 101 video.
- Ryan McAllister gives a great short presentation on child circumcision in “Child Circumcision: The Elephant in the Hospital”.
- This is a great page full of resources for men who are interested in foreskin restoration.
Still want to know more? Here is some recommended reading:
Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae
~ 🖤 🖤 🖤 ~
Notes
1. Aristotle’s complete masterpiece, in three parts, displaying the secrets of nature in the generation of man. 1749. Fascimile of the 23rd London ed. (New York: Garland, 1986).
2. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Treatment for Self-Abuse and Its Effects: Plain Facts for Old and Young (Burlington, Iowa: P. Segner & Co., 1888), 295.
3. R.W. Cockshut, “Circumcision,” British Medical Journal 2 (1935): 764.
4. Nicolas De Venette, The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveal’d. English translation, 3rd Edition. (London: 1712).
5. Marilyn Milos, “The Penis – Sex Education 101.” YouTube video, 9:43. Posted by “Bonobo3D,” August 6, 2009. http://youtu.be/BgoTRMKrJo4
6. C.J. Falliers, “Circumcision,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 214, no. 12 (1970): 2194.
7. Milos, “The Penis – Sex Education 101.”
8. “History of male circumcision.” In Wikipedia. Last modified June 5, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision.
9. James E. Peron, “Circumcision: Then and Now,” CIRP: Circumcision Information and Resource Pages, http://www.cirp.org/library/history/peron2/.
10. Quoted in Robert Darby, “Circumcision: A history of the world’s most controversial surgery,” History of Circumcision, http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=14.
11. Quoted in Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision in the United States: Part 1,” History of Circumcision,http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=90
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Robert Darby, “Circumcision in the United States of America,” History of Circumcision,http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=8&id=73
17. Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision in the United States: Part 1,” History of Circumcision,http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=90
18. Robert Darby, “Circumcision in Britain,” History of Circumcision, http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=7&id=72&Itemid=51
19. Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision: Part 1”.
20. “Circumcision” NHS Choices. Last modified Jan 10, 2014, http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Circumcision/Pages/Introduction.aspx
21. Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision: Part 1”.
22. Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision in the United States: Part 2,” History of Circumcision,http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=91
23. Ibid.
24. Quoted in Ryan McAllister, ” Child Circumcision: The Elephant in the Hospital.” YouTube video, 33:32. Posted by “painfulquestioning,” July 8, 2011. http://youtu.be/Ceht-3xu84I
25. Dan Bollinger, “Lost Boys: An Estimate of U.S. Circumcision-Related Infant Deaths,” Thymos: Journal of Boyhood Studies 4, no. 1 (2010): 78-90.
26. American Cancer Society, “What are the key statistics about penile cancer?,” American Cancer Society,
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/penilecancer/detailedguide/penile-cancer-key-statistics
27. Ryan McAllister, “Child Circumcision”.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Robert Darby, “A short history of circumcision: Part 2”.
31. Thomas Stephen Szasz, “Routine Neonatal Circumcision: A Medical Ritual” in The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007). 88.
32. Brian Earp, “Religious vs. Secular Ethics and a Note About Respect,” Practical Ethics,
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/10/religious-vs-secular-ethics-and-a-note-about-respect/.
33. Morris L. Sorrells et al, “Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis.” BJU International 99, no. 4 (2007): 864-869.