Yes, Nicole eventually learned to accept my extra bit of skin. That’s what love is all about: accepting your partner’s hunched back, wooden leg, or uncircumcised penis. And weird-looking or not, my foreskin belonged to me. My foreskin is me. That’s when I realized my quest to keep my son uncircumcised was at least partially ego-borne. I wanted him to resemble me—and I don’t mean I just wanted strangers to tell me he had my eyes.
The decision of whether to circumcise our son became, therefore, a referendum on my own foreskin. All my anti-circumcision arguments—the barbarity of the procedure, the theory that it lessens sexual sensitivity—withered in the face of one multiply confirmed assertion: foreskin is weird. Women think so. Men think so. The majority of circumcised America—itself is a majority—thinks so. I was hopelessly outnumbered.
A parent’s most important duty is to ensure the next generation improves upon the last. I decided I couldn’t saddle my son with a future filled with recoiling sexual partners. Because as a teen, when you’re not frenziedly masturbating in the closet, you’re trying to figure out why no one thinks you’re sexy. I didn’t want my son to always wonder if he wasn’t getting any because of an extra half-inch of skin that his parents weren’t considerate enough to excise.
And so, after several days of rather conflicted contemplation, I acquiesced.
“You know, this means you owe me. I get to make a real big decision down the road,” I said to Nicole, scraping for dignity like a kid digging through the trash for his retainer.
“Absolutely,” she said. “A day will come when you’ll get to override one of my decisions.” This, of course, we both knew was a lie.
♦◊♦
“So!” shouted our extremely enthusiastic pediatrician. “Everybody ready to do this thing?” I couldn’t help but feel a little better about the procedure—Dr. Thompson’s contagious can-do attitude is perfectly calibrated for parents offering up their child’s genitalia to a scalpel.
Except that Dr. Thompson wielded not a scalpel, but a bell-shaped chunk of plastic, a length of string, and a sugar packet. “The anesthesia,” he said, referring to the sugar. He positioned himself over Dalton, blocking my view, and went to work. With an end of string in either hand, Thompson wrapped the thread around my son’s groin area as though flossing Dalton’s junk. Dalton made nary a peep. After only a few minutes, the doctor stepped aside with a flourish to reveal his magic trick.
Much to my surprise, there was Dalton’s foreskin, essentially intact. I was incredibly relieved to see that modern circumcision no longer involves circumcising.
“So what I’ve done here,” the doctor announced, “is I have tied Dalton’s foreskin off. In about five to 10 days it will turn black and fall off.”
I lost consciousness before I hit the floor. A week later, Dalton’s tip mummified, and the shriveled ring unceremoniously discarded itself. Dalton had traded in his turtleneck for a crewneck.
In time, I formed a peace with Nicole and our decision. It was, literally, a small matter. The real issue resided in our making a major decision for Dalton without his consent—I never wanted to be that kind of father. I hope I can raise Dalton to make his own decisions. I want him to have the freedom to come to his own conclusions about life’s major issues like religion, politics, and his own body. The reality, however, is until he can speak for himself, Nicole and I are calling the shots. Mistakes will be made. This is a parent’s burden. I can only hope he will learn to forgive us.
Of course, if he doesn’t forgive us, there’s always the foreskin restoration movement, which I’m sure would welcome him with open … uh … arms.
Cole Gamble blogs at DadsGood, which features the best of the daddy bloggers.
This story originally appeared on The Daily Beast.
—Photo -kÇ-/Flickr
You’re a damnable coward. Your son was counting on you to keep the vultures away and you failed miserably.
When he finds out the truth of what you had every opportunity to stop and chose not to – and he WILL find that out – you’ll be bloody lucky if he ever speaks to you again. And you’ll deserve that lack of contact.
You’ve helped me make up my mind about circumcision. My wife and I have been wondering about it ever since we figured out our son is a boy. I don’t want him to be teased for what he may see as a deformity, so we’ll get him snipped.
that is the dumbest reason to make a major decision
My best friends wife did almost the same thing when his son was born. Nothing was mentioned about it until 3 days after he was born and she mentioned that he had to go back to the OB to be clipped. She had made the decision by herself and said it was final. She, as a nurse had seen many problems when boys are not circed and believed boys were much better off to have it. Two more boys since then and both had it done. Everything turned out great for them and even now, 15 years later, she says… Read more »
Nice job mangina.
Your “woman” is a capricious monster and you are, what is even worse, a MANGINA:
This is so weak. I agree that there are situations where a circumcision is a good thing and even necessary, however, mutilating a newborn just because you think foreskin is weird… that is stupid. If society thought clits are weird, would it be okay to remove clits, like they do in certain countries? What kind of reason is that? And removing the foreskin reduces pleasure, you deny your child a good part of his nerve endings. Also, sometimes a circumcision can cause lots of trouble in the long run.
http://imgur.com/a/XNtAz Food for thought.
You are a monster.
I can’t believe you called it a “small matter” you mutilated your own child to satisfy your wife, and what she deems astheticly appealing, however i have plenty of terrible things to say about your wife, the problem falls to you, a simple “No” and you would of saved your son from mutilation, just so you could earn brownie points with your manipulative partner
Do you know what happens to a sword when it doesn’t have a sheath?
It goes dull, and useless
Your son will read this when he is able, and he will resent you forever because of your spinelessness. He will learn how to be a man by using you as a counter example.
You’re everything that’s wrong with modern men.
You let your wife mutilate your son based on her sexual/aesthetic preferences, what an absolute, spineless waste of space you are.
What the hell is wrong with you, this is just as morally wrong as FGM you disgusting filth.
Wow, speechless at how easily the author got bullied into circumcising his son. Spineless cuckold of a husband. Ladies and gentlemen pay close attention; this guy is a sad reminder of what not to be.
this man clearly has no sense of pride or self . the point of this is to show that fathers who are lucky enuff to have remained intact need to insure that they teach their sons pride in their bodies – the blame lies with this mans father
.
Uhh!!!! This article is horrible!!! So I can basically sum it up by saying that an adult is going to make a cosmetic amputation for an infant that can’t consent to any such procedures because one of the parents thinks foreskins are ugly???!!! I can’t go on about all the reasons that this is wrong! I am a woman and I love my intact boyfriend. I would never want him to amputate part of himself. If that poor boy was left intact, he would find a woman who loved him exactly the way he is. His body – his choice!
Wow, just wow! Talk about a p wipped milk toast! A real man would of told her to go get her breasts enlarged, clit hood removed butt reduced and then ‘we’ll talk about it’.
If they’re on the west coast I can’t wait to see the look on the bitch’s face when her son asks her why he’s cut unlike the vast majority of the other boys who kept their anatomy.
She obviously gets her rocks off at mutilating male genitals and loves manipulating infants penis as she finds foreskin disgusting. She should be in prison.
I’m sorry your wife bullied you into making this irreversible decision for your son. Sure, there’s foreskin restoration, but that is meant for men who already lost their foreskin long ago due to misinformation at the time of their birth, their only hope to get back some feeling and function that was robbed from them at birth. It will never bring back the nerves and fine touch receptors and all the pleasure that foreskin naturally and normally allow a penis to have. It is not meant as an “oh well, if he doesn’t like it, he can always restore.” You… Read more »
As a woman who strongly prefers intact men and doesn’t like to date circumcised men I find this whole article disgusting on so many levels. I hope he grows up to never speak to either one of his parents especially the mom who the dad needs to divorce like yesterday
good people do not cut off healthy parts of their children’s genitals.
Only horribly misinformed or incredibly evil people do that.
This story isn’t so much about circumcision as about the way the wife treats the husband and the way the husband puts up with it. Not funny.
I apologize for the rudeness and vitriol in my previous comment. Obviously this is a subject that stirs up some very powerful Pagan, pre-Christian impulses and emotions in me, and I wish I had been able to approach it with more love and sympathy. I do implore you to acknowledge and remember that you are a human being too, as much as your wife is, with your own legitimate interests, and you have the right and indeed the duty to stand up for those interests. The strength is within you — you have only to exercise it.
Wow – such a group of foreskin fetishists out in cyberspace. You write very well. An intact friend’s Wife confided in my Wife – we are Jewish and so my status in this regard is well known – that she honestly would have preferred her husband to have been circumcised – she puts up with it – unwillingly as part of the greater good. His perspective won out where their son was concerned. Women’s preferences for or against foreskins often drive the decision and they are as consumers quite well qualified to express these preferences. Peace in the home is… Read more »
It’s pretty sad that your reply is one that attacks the character of anti-circumcision folks (foreskin fetishists), just debate like a rational person. If you argument that since people, in this case men are consumers, gives any preference merit, does it justify foot binding that used to occur in china, or female genital mutilation in africa? Examples of that are Clitoral removal, labia majora removal, the stitching of the vagina years before a females virginity is taken away from her by her husband. You would argue no, because women are not objects, or products as you say and a multitude… Read more »
Peace in the home is not what is described in this article. It’s appeasement. It is sick to appease your spouse, in removing a healthy body part from your child who is too young to consent, because she has an irrational prejudice against that normal body part. The wife/mother has damaged her husband’s already shaky self esteem, and the future responsiveness of her son’s penis. Wanting to refrain from removing thousands of sexually sensitive nerves on another human being, does not equal having a foreskin fetish. Just because your friend’s wife is practicing passive aggression against her husband’s penis, and… Read more »
It is literally, a “small matter”.
No, it is a symptom of a larger issue. You are married to the wrong woman, Cole.
As an intact man, you should know better.
It’s really sad that you didn’t realize how integral to your sex life your foreskin was before you cut it off your son. Did you have his frenulum removed as well? That’s so cruel it should be illegal! Your wife is less than human.
Very energetic blog, I loved that a lot. Will there be a part 2?
I would have told the wife that I thought female clitoral hoods were weird and that she needed hers removed. And eye for and eye.