Forcefully removing that which we have no right to remove.
—-
Circumcision creates an early association between violence and sex, between powerlessness and place in the world, between pain and love. It violates an infant’s trust in the world and his own body. It sets the stage for the infant to grow into a man with violence, distrust, and power-over as his ways of relating to intimacy, women, and the earth that supports us all.
My husband, Chris, is a circumcised man. When he was an infant, the tip of his penis was cut off. This was done as a routine part of his modern hospital birth without informed consent.
Chris did not offer informed consent to being circumcised |
Informed consent requires full disclosure and understanding of the action, its impacts, and alternatives. Chris’s parents were not taught the role of the foreskin in protecting the sensitive tissue of the glans and how removal of it would affect the sensitivity of their baby-turned-man’s penis. They were not told he would have less ability to feel pleasure with his partners or himself. They were not taught to think about his ability to feel what nature intended and to love his body the way it was made.
They did not know foreskins are sometimes sold to the cosmetic industry. They were not told that restraining their baby’s arms and legs, grabbing his foreskin, and slicing it off would likely be done with no anesthesia or pain medication.
They did not know any of this. They were not thinking about any of this. They were not informed.
You may be wondering why an article on circumcision is in the “Environment” section |
Chris did not offer informed consent to being circumcised. No one can inform an infant. No one can ask him if he’d like his body cut into pieces or left intact. He can not offer consent.
As an adult, Chris feels deep envy towards men who are intact. He imagines they are better lovers than he is. He imagines they can feel more and therefore pleasure their partners better. He is angry that this barrier of envy and insecurity comes between him and other men he would like to call brother and with whom he wants to feel deep connection.
As you are reading this you might be feeling some pity or empathy for Chris, but you may also be wondering why an article on circumcision is in the “Environment” section. Surely this is a personal issue better placed in medical or sex and relationships categories?
There is no mistake. Environmental issues are personal. The stories and pain played out in our own bodies are the stories and pain we play out in the world around us—in our relationships, in our work lives, and in our interactions with our planet. The small experiences in each life and our global planetary predicament are intimately interconnected.
Strip mining offers an easy way to see this interconnection |
When mining companies come in and blow up mountains to look for coal 600 feet beneath the surface, they are not able to get informed consent from all involved. They often don’t have long term interest in the land and are in some ways like hospital staff—doing the deed and then moving on.
The landowners are agreeing to allow the mining without full education on the impacts, reasons, and alternatives. They are like the parents of infant boys, doing their best in the moment while perhaps allowing and encouraging trauma with far reaching effects.
Like an infant boy, the animals, insects and plant life in the mountain bioregion are neither informed nor consenting to violent change and degradation of the land.
Healing our wounds in our own bodies makes way for change on the environmental level |
The same energy that allows us to routinely circumcise our infant boys is the same energy that allows us to strip mine, create flotillas of trash, and destroy our life support systems. It’s the energy of inertia, resistance to change, surrender to authority, and overwhelm. One million infants circumcised a year in the United States or the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb a week detonated for mountain top removal mining in Appalachia—these numbers are shocking but irrelevant unless we make them personal.
Healing our wounds in our own bodies makes way for change on the environmental level. An organic intelligence unfolds that is sometimes hard to trace in a linear cause and effect way, yet it makes sense that leaving our sons intact and healing our own circumcision pain frees up energy.
When we are not in pain, when we don’t start life with trauma, we are better equipped to be creative, compassionate, and effective. Parents are better able to think, love, parent, and care when not burdened with guilt from allowing their sons to be violated.
By allowing ourselves to feel, we allow ourselves to change. We can free up our energy to find strategies that meet our needs without causing trauma
A friend of mine who made many gentle parenting choices had a son who was circumcised. I asked her about it. I was genuinely curious to find out her thought process and reasoning. She was so considerate about other parenting decisions, I was sure I would learn something. And I did. She said:
“I didn’t think about it. My husband’s family is Jewish and having a Bris was just part of the tradition. I didn’t question it. When it happened I went into shock. I was forced to admit that whether or not this was a tradition with religious value, I had just allowed my son to be mutilated. I experienced trauma, guilt, and a strong commitment to never do that again.
“I would not get pregnant again until my husband agreed that we would not circumcise if we had a boy. I hoped we would have a girl. It would have made it so much easier with my husband and his family. But our second child was a boy. I had to stick by my values and our decision. We had a Bris Shalom; it was a lovely naming ceremony with no trauma, violence, or pain.”
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My friend demonstrated leaning in. She felt her feelings and worked to create a solution in alignment with her and her husband’s values. She did not push her husband or his religious values away in divorce and rejection but instead worked with them. This is a beautiful reminder that the only sure way to destroy our enemies and stop the pain they cause in the world is to befriend them.
When we push away the thing that hurts and make “those people” the wrongdoers it’s too simple. We can’t just pick out the bad guys and tell them to stop. We have to befriend them and notice that “they” are “us”. We have to welcome in the pain and transform it within our own being. Otherwise it just persists.
This is hard to do with giant earthmovers, multinational corporations, and 100,000 tons of rock.
Circumcision is a great place to start. It is old pain and yet it is done again and again every day. You may be circumcised. You certainly know circumcised men. You will need to make the choice about circumcision with your son.
Your personal pain is the enemy you befriend first. Anger, sadness, distrust, betrayal, and violation all may be encountered. As Rumi says
“Welcome and entertain them all. Be grateful. Each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
Coming into honest relationship with your personal pain is the step that makes it possible to see the outer adversaries as partners. Working with those who have been destroying the environment to instead heal, cherish, and value the natural world is vital step on this healing journey.
As we lean into feeling, we will encounter numbness. This is the pain that has been exiled to non-feeling. If we are numb, it is nearly impossible to heal but as we sit with the numbness it changes. Like warming up after a long walk on a winter’s day, thawing out our emotions can feel worse before they feel better.
It’s tempting to check out again. TV, overworking, or a couple of beers look pretty good when the numbing starts to wear off and the feelings start to flood in. On the road to feeling more we need to stay mindful of habits that pull us back into numbness. These habits are shadow comforts—they cast long shadows over our lives and healing journeys, sabotaging our efforts to find the freedom that comes from inner harmony. Getting support is paramount.
We are the saviors we’ve been waiting for |
We start to feel. We heal. We become ready for something bigger and to stretch our newfound capacity to care, feel, heal, not be overwhelmed, and to respond to the bigger issues. Bringing the pain closer to home, making it human sized, and metabolizing it on a personal scale makes it possible to let in more of the pain the earth is feeling due to human abuse. We find that our bodies are holograms for the earth.
We long to be safe and vulnerable; to be seen and known; and to experience connection and belonging. We want to feel safe and peaceful.
To find the way to freedom, we must see the jail we are in. We must see how we step in, lock the door, and then complain about the unfairness of the restriction. What if every human travesty and act of environmental degradation was offered as a service to each of us to notice our personal jails and wake us up to the way out?
We can heal the environment. It’s not technology, governments, non-profits, or someone else that will save us. We are the saviors we’ve been waiting for. We are also the perpetrators, destroyers, and aggressors. They all co-exist within each of us. Which ones we act on is a moment-by-moment choice.
Photo:Luis & Boston Public Library Flickr
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I’m curious about lasting psychological damage too. I think it would be great if someone set up a study to measure it. If you ever hear of one, please share it with me!
There is a lot of research on attachment and how our early caregiver experiences affect/create lifelong habits of connection/relationship. I can’t believe that suffering excruciating genital pain in isolation from the mother (who was so recently always present and the infant’s entire universe) does not have impacts on men’s sexuality, ability to be vulnerable, connection to women, and much more.
What do you think?
I’m curious about lasting psychological damage too. I think it would be great if someone set up a study to measure it. If you ever hear of one, please share it with me!
ive seen discussions on reddit men rights forum about studies suggesting there has been lasting either psychological or pain threshold damage ( i cant remember)
Sorry to be tardy in replying — hope you’ll see this anyhow. I know nothing of any studies on the matter. It’s not my field, either, and I have difficulty imagining how such a study could be done. Seems like it would have to be a highly longitudinal study following large cohorts of circumcised and uncircumcised boys through to adulthood. Aside from the logistics of that, the number of confounds would be staggering.
This is an interesting and thought-provoking analogy. I already agreed with you on circumcision—I’m looking into restoring my foreskin—I’ve long wondered what (surely nonzero) amount of lasting psychological damage is done by the barbaric and stupid mutilation ritual that is circumcision.
I do appreciate the article, even if I think the strip-mining metaphor seems forced. For me, it feels more like being branded. An act of ownership; you’ll survive, but you’ll never know how you would might have looked and felt. Your body and form altered forever, and for nothing. And while I appreciate the article, because I fervently believe that this practice is an abomination, for either gender, I also hate reading it. As hopeful as I am that circumcision will someday be nothing more than one more barbarism consigned to the past, I can’t help but grieve for all… Read more »
Des, I hear so much pain in your words that it’s been hard for me to write back. I appreciate you sharing what’s real for you and am glad we have the forum of GMP to talk about issues, like circumcision, that are hard. There is so much I’d rather not look at in our human cultures – ways we treat ourselves, each other, and the earth. Thanks for being brave to step into the conversation. Doing it together makes it less overwhelming and, if not exactly easy, at least easier.
Wow powerful article which really makes me think.
Thank you.
Kassandra, I appreciate your article. For years I have been saying “What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.” We are part of the earth. When we treat the earth as a “thing to be used” rather than a living presence, we begin to treat ourselves that way. In a book a wrote a number of years ago called The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet, I said I felt circumcision was a form of male sexual abuse. The publisher wanted me to change that statement. They felt it was inflammatory. I disagreed and found another… Read more »
Thanks, Jed. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the topic and the fact that you’re speaking out about it. Looking forward to connecting with you more!
Great, powerful article on circumcision, but the environmental analogy is (ironically) unsustainable. This brings up the classic problem with the “rape of the earth” metaphor in some environmentalist writing.
Basic, obvious question:
How does one actually get the “consent” of the earth?
Another way to put it:
Why is strip mining like a mutilation of an infant but picking wild berries isn’t?
Ummmmmm…well, gosh, wellokaythen, wild berries are meant to be eaten. That’s what they’ve evolved for. If a human doesn’t pick and eat them, some other creature’s likely to. If not, the berries will fall off the bush or vine all by themselves. And—stay with me here, this is where it gets tricky—they grow back.
Now, please, what was it you were saying about unsustainable analogies?
I really appreciate you both taking time to comment. I agree with Daniel on the berry analogy. The other part – how do we get the consent of the earth – is a great question. I have a daily practice of standing on the land in my bare feet (sometimes I skip the bare feet in the winter) and saying good morning to the land, the sun, the air, and the water. I stand and listen. I notice that they are a part of me and I am a part of all I see. We are not so separate; I… Read more »