After being confronted by Intactivists for his views on circumcision, Josh Bowman wants to cut through the rhetoric of the anti-circumcision movement.
I wanted to reply to some comments I received on a previous post and understand why I (and other writers) have managed to raise the ire of so many commentators out there by expressing what I consider to be relatively mundane views on what I always assumed was a prominent and common practice – circumcision.
“…you let your wife harm your son without the least bit of resistance. You both should be ashamed of yourselves. “
“Just passing by to tell you that you’re a failure of a parent for letting this happen.”
“Your wife’s a bitch.”
“Inflicting this amputation on the unconsenting is a human-rights violation.”
“Welcome to our world of insanity our beloved new born boy. First we tear you away from your mother’s loving arms and we take you into another room where she can not hear you scream…”
“If adult men decide they want to get bits cut off them… fine. Their call. Doing that to kids isn’t ok, there’s nothing ok about it.”
“The circumcised ones are prone to pound away like jackhammers with a single speed setting. It is because of decreased sensitivity? I don’t know.”
“I am anti-circumcision. It violates human rights when preformed on infants/children. It is a potential human rights violation when preformed on adults. FYI I love my foreskin.”
“LOL @ “I am pro-circ” followed by “we treat our penises poorly”. Get your head checked.”
Ouch.
I never realized, as I was growing up a young circumcised Jew (and being ok with it), that I had actually joined a movement from birth. That movement, from what I can tell, is called the “pro-circ” movement, and we are the enemies of the “intactivists”. We “violate human rights”, through “amputating” the foreskin. Which, from what I understand, we absolutely loathe.
Language is a funny thing. Language can be used to cement ideology, to make abstract ideas more concrete, to give names to new concepts. The power of chanting, of repetition can be empowering, or it can be sinister. A repeated word can be a mantra, and with language we can categorize, separate, and other.
There is power in a movement. When we create terminology and language, we can begin to relate to each other and, conversely, label those who disagree with us. So, if I’m liberal, I hate conservatives, and vice versa. If I’m pro-choice, I hate anti-choicers. If I’m pro-life, I hate pro-aborts.
Binaries are easy to create, and once you start enforcing them, it becomes very hard to get back to a place of understanding. I remember arguing with my mother many years ago (during the height of my own activist fervor), because she was a second-wave feminist, and I was third-wave, and I considered her to not be trans-positive enough. She was a bad feminist, in my mind. My mom is an award-winning comedienne, writer, and has marched for more good causes than I can imagine.
And I was being an arrogant little jerk.
I had stumbled upon a movement in university, and became so self-righteous about it that I was outraged by anybody who did not immediately hold all of the views I held. I was appalled by the racism I saw around me, the trans-phobia. All of these people who were unenlightened! It was disgusting.
It was much faster and easier to judge those around me than to try to understand where they were coming from. It was great for a while, until I was judged. Eventually, I encountered people who were even more activist than me! More anti-oppression. Better feminists. I got labeled, tried, and convicted in a court of public opinion.
I took some time after that to think. I realized that change is something that happens agonizingly slowly, but it does happen. I realized that there will always be a difference of opinion, and that is wonderful, because what kind of society would we be if we didn’t disagree? I realized the dangers inherent in ideological fervor, and how hurtful we can be when we don’t take the time to recognize that not all of us are at the same place, but all of us deserve some level of respect.
I don’t know a lot about this intactivist movement, but I’m willing to listen. At the same time, I am circumcised, and that practice has a deep, cultural significance for me. I love my parents, and respect their choice to give me a bris. For many, many years, this practice has been incredibly common in North American society. So please don’t be surprised or angry when people are in favour of it. I’m not interested in violating human rights, but I get my back up when I’m attacked or labeled for views that until recently, I’ve never even thought twice about.
I believe change happens through education and dialogue over time. So, let’s talk about circumcision like the gentlemen and ladies that we are.
Photo courtesy of Michael Bentley
About Josh Bowman
“Binaries are easy to create, and once you start enforcing them, it becomes very hard to get back to a place of understanding.”
Thanks for this.
Thanks Mark!!
I honestly, non-sarcastically, wonder how this comes into play when discussing Human Rights.
Well I dunno – I have a foreskin, have never had a moment of worry about having a foreskin, don’t anticipate having a moment of worry about having a foreskin and consider that cutting on an infant is cruel unless it’s necessary to save his life. I do not know why the practice exists since the race managed just fine without it for thousands of generations. I think it’s kinda weird to make a statement that basically says that God/Gia/Nature is wrong/flawed/design challenged and we know better. Personally I prefer things the way nature made them except I like it when you shave your pubes………..but hey – you can always grow em back right?
I’m gay and circumcised and spent many years gleefully expanding the definition of the term “slut”. Suffice to say that I have seen a lot of dick. In my experience there are way too many men out there with foreskins that are too small – they don’t cover enough of the glans when flaccid and are pulled too tight when erect. I think the solution to this is to properly train OB/GYNs on the proper method to use.
I was fortunate in that my mom’s OB/GYN was considered one of the best in the state at the time. I was cut and left with enough foreskin that when erect I don’t need lube to masturbate. He also cut from the base of the penis – not the mid-shaft – and kept most of the top of the foreskin intact (the more sensitive part).
I do not buy into the idea that circumcision is torture or somehow permanently traumatizes an infant. Thousands of years and hundreds of millions of circumcisions later disprove the general notion behind this theory. It is however, ultimately the choice of the parents in question.
I think if in cases where it is, in fact, necessary as a medical procedure….well then it’s a medical procedure. We don’t have long-term memory days after being born, so I don’t think that the event itself will necessarily traumatize someone. However, the after-effects of a circumcision that doesn’t go well could be traumatizing. And even if everything goes fine…we still shouldn’t be physically altering a child’s body when they can’t give consent (unless, as I said, it’s medically necessary).
”we still shouldn’t be physically altering a child’s body when they can’t give consent (unless, as I said, it’s medically necessary).”
That logic should also be applied to those whom pierce their babies ears as well.
To some degree yes, dunno why people pierce babies ears? Although the removal of tissue for a circumcision is muuuchhhhhhhhhh worse, you can’t really just let it heal over like a pierced ear.
During forced genital cutting of an infant stress hormone (cortisol) levels rinse in a child’s brain to levels we deem unacceptable in animals, this is how we regulate animal cruelty, yet baby boys are subjected to this as the most sensate part of their penis is cut off, without consent!?
Parents have a role to protect their children from harm, not subject them to it, no matter how misinformed, superstitious or otherwise unaware of normal sexual anatomy and development they may be.
I am gay too, lived though the seventies and saw and experienced a great many penises too. Your statement that, (“there are way too many men out there with foreskins that are too small – they don’t cover enough of the glans when flaccid and are pulled too tight when erect. I think the solution to this is to properly train OB/GYNs on the proper method to use.”) belies a rather cruel and prejudicial viewpoint. If a man has a foreskin that is “too tight” or he wants it adjusted surgically he goes to a urologist, not an OB/GYN. Cutting the foreskins off baby boys (without consent) is haphazard at best. The results are too often a very poor outcome with far too much skin removed. This is far more a problem that some men who have by your definition, “a foreskin that is too small.”
@ David in SLC
“In my experience there are way too many men out there with foreskins that are too small – they don’t cover enough of the glans when flaccid and are pulled too tight when erect. I think the solution to this is to properly train OB/GYNs on the proper method to use.”
The proper solution is not to have had the circumcision done. How can gay men especially support infant circumcision and assert that people shouldn’t attempt to alter their sexual orientation or suppress their sexual identity because they were born that way, amazing?
the first anti-circ propoganda I ever saw was all out anti-semetic by a Christian group who willfully forgot that Jesus was a Jew therefor he would have been circumcised. This was around 1998. That sticks in your head when you see it. now its even more feverish with islamaphobia. during WWII how do you think they might have culled Jews hiding in plain sight. Euroupe still is very anti-semetic and anti-islam. Some of the same anti-circ people are anti-vaccination and run the risk of their child dying from a preventable illness like whopping cough or causing the death of someone who is immunousupressed (HIV/AIDS, cancer, organ transplant, etc.). Some childhood illnesses when contracted inyour teens or in adulthood can lead to infertility. all because they beleieve vaccines cause Autism. People never like to blame themselves for their ills and defects. Nor are these people looking at common carcinagins, like the chemoical in teflon. to me the foreskin is a convinent way to hide disease. I would never impose a risk of UTI’s on my child as having 1 too many can lead to incontinance and kidney infections if left untreated.
Insurance and Medicaid doesn’t pay for it so some families don’t or cant afford it.
You can’t compare FGM to this as the purposes behind FGM is complete sexual repression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waris_Dirie this is a true story not some money driven research study.
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/health-wellness-articles/waris-genital-mutilation-0210
Not much will change my mind.
Anyone who does not properly clean their body is subject to health problems. Anybody.
Removing a body part is no substitute for training children to properly clean their bodies.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve had so many root canals? Naw, couldn’t be. lol
“You can’t compare FGM to this as the purposes behind FGM is complete sexual repression. ”
The purposes behind MGM – at least as it pertains to the history of how it got started in America – is also sexual repression.
Yes, the two can definitely be compared. They both involve forcible removal of something healthy and normal from someone’s body; they both involve the sex organs, and they both involve what is defined as mutilation.
Also, there are various forms of FGM – some of which are mild in comparison to what happens during infant circ. And yet girls are protected from this; boys are not. This denial of equal protection for boys is unconstitutional. And the practice itself is medically unethical.
http://www.circumstitions.com/FGMvsMGM.html
http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/third/hanny3.html
http://birthingalternatives.com/Resources/Circumcision/Similarities%20between%20circumcision%20and%20female%20genital%20mutilation.pdf
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“I would never impose a risk of UTI’s on my child as having 1 too many can lead to incontinance and kidney infections if left untreated.”
If you’re going to use this logic, then you shouldn’t have a problem with removing the breast buds from children (male and female), the vulva from little girls (vulvar cancer is more prevalent than penile cancer), and any number of other body parts that can develop possible issues in the future. BTW – girls are much more prone to UTI than boys.
There are more risks/complications/damage associated with infant genital cutting than any possible issue which *might* arise from remaining intact. Circumcising a child on the basis of future issues which *could* happen (but most likely will NOT) does not stand up to the test of reality and logic. Medically necessary circs are extremely rare (despite what some doctors may try to say); the fact is that many of the so-called medically ‘necessary’ circs are a direct result of ignorance about the proper care of an intact penis (medical ‘professionals’ will often advise parents to forcibly retract their child’s adhered foreskin – this is a huge no-no, as forcible retraction can lead to damage and recurring infections; also, parents sometimes wash the child’s genitals with soap – another huge no-no, for children of either sex). In essence, the ‘foreskin problems’ that happen are generally not the fault of foreskin itself, but other factors at play.
Great information! Thanks!
@ Cherie
“Jesus was a Jew”
No he was not. Jesus always knew that he was the son of God so unless Jews also believe that then he was a Christian. Jews were also born with original sin I’m not even sure that Mary was a Jew.
@Cyn: good to see you here, fighting the good fight.
@Cherie: Very surprisingly, many African married women who underwent a less savage form of FGM as girls have told western investigators that they climax with their husbands. If this can be believed, FGM often does not destroy a woman’s ability to enjoy vaginal intercourse. In no way does this justify FGM. It is true that in your time and mine, RIC has not been practiced to reduce male sexual pleasure. But that was not true in the Victorian-Edwardian era, when the bald penis first became fashionable among the urban upper middle class. At that time, circumcised men were believed to be less horny and hence less prone to masturbation and other anti-social behaviour. Of course, the vast natural experiment called the quasi universal circumcision of North American baby boomers gave the lie to that belief. Circumcised American business men gave the world Playboy and Hustler, and invented the massage parlor, the lap dance, the strip joint featuring naked women (before 1970 a stripper stopped at a g string), the adult film industry with products rentable in every neighbourhood, and internet porn. I am confident this list can be added to. And are circumcised American husbands more faithful spouses than intact British ones?
I have asked mothers and nurses about UTIs among preschoolers. Not a single one ever said more than that they occur occasionally, and clear up quickly with sulfa and/or routine antibiotics. It is well known that they occur much more often in girls than in boys, and nobody says that girls are at risk of urethral scarring or kidney damage.
Here’s a test for the people who think that MGM is a-ok and FGM is not:
Imagine you have a 12 year old daughter. One day she comes home late from school and cheerfully tells you she’s joined a new religion. She tells you a few things about the nice goddess in the sky who has chosen her people for great things and will someday grant them a land of their own.
Then she tells you how a non-medical professional is going to cut off a part of her genitalia next week to seal the deal.
How many seconds before the police are called?
I don’t have any problem with religion, it can be a very positive force in people’s lives. But I draw the line at permanent body-modification for kids, male or female.
Goddess based religions haven’t shown to be into FGM infact they celebrate sex and sexuality and embrace bisexuality too.
Maybe Egyptian goddesses.
“So, let’s talk about circumcision like the gentlemen and ladies that we are.”
Sometimes that is able to happen, but sometimes it is difficult when people simply refuse to look at what is happening to children. Since the subject revolves around babies who are helpless to defend themselves, it can be infuriating to see how callous some people can be about inflicting this onto the body of a non-consenting human being. :-/
Absolutely!
Check out these websites
cirp.org
circinfo.org
thewholenetowork.org
drmomma.org (search circumcision, you’ll find a ton)
doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/Canada/court1/
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/smith/
Great resources Mark!
When one understands that the anatomy of the penis and foreskin, forced circumcision becomes far more cruel than we initially think. While parents may have done this with our best interests at heart, with advice from people who genuinely may not have known better, the fact is cutting off the foreskin is a rather severe, harmful and sexually repressive act.
Ken McGrath explains this anatomy in detail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD2yW7AaZFw&feature=plcp&context=C43b2f62VDvjVQa1PpcFPfjQgFlxd2crTP60nh3aXpmMKXnOn5ZbQ=
Yes, forced circumcision, of any gender, is cruel, even when done by parents with the best intentions. Thanks for speaking up, James.
Religion is vary civilizing to a society. Ancient religions are rich and steeped in traditions. Marking and scaring the skin are probably among the oldest examples of enduring human ritual. In prehistoric times they served various ends: promoting hunting magic, storing and transmitting mythological lore and forging tribal identity.
There is no doubt that bodily modifications have been going on for a long time with humans. I have no problem with an adult electing to mark their body in any way they wish. The issue I have is when bodily modifications are done to a person who has no capacity to consent and when they are too young to understand the full consequences of the modification. Our society has determined that 18 is the legal age of adulthood. I do not believe anyone should consent to permanantly alter the body of another. If a cultural, religious or ethnic group wishes to mark themselves, I can fully support that as long at the individual has a choice and is of age to consent. Infant circumcision does not meet this criteria. Child circumcision does not meet this criteria. In my mind, that makes it an unacceptable violation of an individual’s rights.
very well stated! thank you.
Hi Josh,
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet or not, but you might find this to be a useful resource, specifically to do with the Jewish context.
http://www.beyondthebris.com/
Cheers, and thank you for opening this dialogue: interaction such as what I’ve (mostly) seen here is what will foster understanding: not hostility (which I understand, but don’t condone).
Laurel, to speak for others is sort of a no no. Reminds me of what happened yesterday.
A man came over to talk to my friends I am staying with (who I met through Occupy Boston and have given me a place to stay instead of homeless shelters), he was ernest in his quest to talk about the death/murder of Martin Luther King Jr and the conspiracy that the Gov and CIA really did the deed. This man is white telling People of Color Working Group and anyone of color that THEY should be the ones to look into this, to get the TRUTH. My hosts are twin brothers who are of mixed race but mostly self-identify as black, they have been activist their whole lives and public defenders.
Are your Jewish friends devout? The Muslim man you spoke of also must speak up for himself. They both should be on here speaking on their own behalf instead of being a talking point.
We live in a Patriarcial society that does what it can to suppress women. Look at the Abortion and Birth Control issues that just blew up this year and what our own American Government is doing to us, to shame women, not men and their lack of responsibility.
genital mutilation of infants is wrong, nothing will ever justify destroying healthy and normal tissue from an infant. Much less so when it’s nerve dense tissue that is responsible for sexual pleasure. Even less so when it is forced only for one gender’s “benefit” while the other gender’s analogous body part remains free from such horrendous misinformation and fearmongering.
Until Americans can free themselves from this sadistic idea that the parents only own their male child’s genitals and can mutilate them at the slightest whim we can never say we are a free nation, Some of us are free, while others must bow down before various bloodthirsty gods to have our genitals mutilated against our whim before we even fucking know what we have.
Sensitivity has its place but not for the perpetrators of a heinous act against innocent children, regardless of the motives, This is sexual assault, any sugar coating is to deny those who feel wronged the justice they deserve.
Totally agree with you Joshua.
Joshua, yo da man!
Decided a while back to write out the most even-handed take on the issue that I could. Verbose, but hopefully useful:
Genital mutilation is a cultural and religious practice consisting of the forced surgical alteration of the genitals without medical necessity. It is usually inflicted on children. Owing to differences in anatomy, technique, and setting, female victims suffer debilitation, complications and fatalities at a much higher rate than male victims. Even in hospital settings the results for any victim can be life-altering or fatal. Anatomically, genital mutilation against females is vastly different than the mutilation of males. Ethically, culturally and psychologically they are the same practice and have frequently had the same advocates.
There is a single human right which is violated, to different extents, in every instance of genital mutilation – the right to bodily integrity. Since it is necessary to be proactive in identifying both current and potential threats to human rights, this right can also apply to all other types of violence or forced physical alteration both real and theoretical (such as beating someone, coercing someone to carry an RFID implant, denying reproductive rights, or mislabeling food ingredients to prevent an informed choice).
The primary motivations behind the invention of this practice were a patriarchal desire to control human sexuality by decreasing the pleasure of sex or masturbation, and to mark the victim as the property of a group or deity. Cultural and religious justifications, along with overstated distinctions between culture and religion, allow practitioners to claim persecution if their actions are questioned. In modern cities as in medieval deserts, children are considered to be the property of their parents and do not have rights except those arbitrarily granted by popular opinion.
In some cultures the original intent of the practice has been forgotten and replaced by spurious claims about the hygienic effects of normal anatomy on the health of the victim or their partner. Misinformation about the structure and function of the genitals is spread through popular discourse, medical training, and pseudoscientific studies. Due to the extreme difficulty in admitting that something which seems normal is actually an atrocity, new ‘hygienic’ and ‘medical’ reasons are constantly fabricated to justify the use of mutilation as a cure – such as the belief that the clitoris will kill any man who touches it. Many people convince themselves that male infants are miraculously unable to feel any pain in the most sensitive part of the body, even though it is extremely dangerous to administer sufficient anesthesia to an infant. Many convince themselves that nothing is being removed at all. This despite a booming business in the sale of prepuces at $300-400 apiece to cosmetics and biomedical companies. The practice of genital mutilation is promoted most vehemently by those who have been subjected to it, and the practitioners are usually victims themselves.
In areas where one sex or the other is the primary target of mutilation, the existence of such a practice with regard to one sex creates a climate which encourages its use against both sexes (including those with sexually ambiguous anatomy). Other attempts to spread this practice focus on supposed health benefits despite the fact that such benefits cannot override the human rights concerns involved even if the benefits are real.
Advocates who condone or ignore the mutilation of one sex while condemning its use against the other sex are committing what is called a ‘stolen concept’ fallacy – the acceptance of a principle only when it supports one’s own views. When challenged by supporters of whichever form of mutilation they oppose, they find their own arguments staring back at them. Their arguments against the mutilation of one sex do not rely on human rights, and are specifically crafted to cover only one sex. With regard to the other sex, their views and justifications are identical to those of their opponents. As long as this is the case, they are arguing both for and against the mutilation of both sexes. In a racist patriarchal society with a history of such atrocities against both sexes this type of dishonesty promotes the view that males and females can only have opposing interests rather than common interests, and in so doing perpetuates all forms of gender discrimination.
I was circed against my will at 15 and I can tell you that if you are circed you were left with 10 – 15 percent of the feeling that God intended for you to have. Dictating how a person should or should not enjoy sex later in life is never right. Check out my website you can contact me through there. I will be more than willing to talk to anybody about the other side of circumcision. http://www.oregonintactivist.com
Just as Girls have a right to stay the way they were born, so do boys.
Few middle aged educated middle class American men have foreskins. Few women from the same stratum have husbands with foreskins. Therefore polite America has a blind spot when it comes to the sexual advantages of foreskin. Last century, this blind spot badly biased American parents towards circumcising their newborn sons. The desire to circumcise springs from an inadequate understanding of human sexuality. Let me give you Yanks some lecture notes to remedy this lacuna.
In the gaslight era, the English speaking gentile middle class began circumcising their boys because it was thought to make masturbation, then seen as highly immoral, difficult and boring. Foreskin motion does wonders for male masturbation, which few readers of this blog will deem immoral. Likewise, the foreskin makes digital foreplay more thrilling and effective. Few men can stay hard for long if a woman knows how to pump foreskin and fondle frenulum. This foreplay stimulates precum, which the foreskin catches and spreads around in a very nice way, revealing Mother Nature to be a cunning engineering. The “give” in the skin of the intact penis cushions penetration until the end, especial the initial insertion. Jane Smiley spoke to this virtue of the foreskin in a passage in her novel Horse Heaven.
The bits that circumcision destroys, the foreskin and frenulum, are the most richly enervated, and therefore most sexual, parts of the male body. This nervous system makes penetration a lot more thrilling. There are American young men who cannot ejaculate from slow loving normal sex. So they take porn literally and thrust too fast, too hard and too deep, leaving her feeling date raped. Intact men don’t thrust as fast and as hard, so that she is less likely to feel date raped.
There still are Americans who say that the natural penis is impossibly ugly, oblivious to the fact that an erotically engaged penis is an erect penis, and erection usually makes the foreskin vanish. It takes an expert eye to distinguish cut from uncut when both are erect and when the lights are off. The fingers always know, however.
Another common American belief, never articulated in polite society of course, is that fellatio is an essential part of intimacy and that foreskin makes fellatio impossibly disgusting. In fact when he’s intact, her fingers alone are capable of supplying quite expert foreplay. Second, civilised sex takes place within 20 feet of a bathroom. A 30 second detour into her bath on the way to her bedroom is entirely permissible. More important, just as women should take responsibility for their own orgasms, they also have the right, by virtue of their willingness to be intimate with a man, to inspect and clean said man to their standards. This too can be part of foreplay.
American medicine has yet to investigate properly whether circumcised men are more likely to experience premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. What is a fact is that Viagra is curiously popular in the USA and Israel. We do not know how many adult American men suffer from penises damaged because too much was cut off, or because the scalpel did not spare the glans, or because of scar tissue. There has never been a carefully study of a stratified random sample of adult American penises. That a great deal of the caseload of American pediatric urologists consists of repairing infant circumcision damage is only known anecdotally; no scholarly article has gone there.
Straight men only know the one penis they have. Most women around the world have been intimate only with one kind of penis, the kind that their native culture and religion deems appropriate for an adult man to have. This may explain why I have learned little about the sexual virtues of the foreskin from comments and posts made by non-Americans. Most of what I know about the foreskin and sex, I know only because some American women have not only strayed off the American Bald Penis ranch and bit into the Forbidden Fruit called the foreskin, but have blogged and commented about what they have seen and felt there. Some women have done this on YouTube, without concealing their faces. I am extremely grateful to these women for having unwittingly furthered the sexual education of our species.
A woman named Kristen O’Hara wrote an entire book on the theme of this post. I do not trust her research methods and her shrill tone. I detest her blog; for one thing, it makes free use of porn video footage, and is the ugliest web site I know. But I do suspect that there is a fair bit of truth in what she writes, so that my post below could be greatly expanded. I have a dream. One day, a very smart and very funny secular Jewish woman will write a long essay about her discovery and enjoyment of uncircumcised men. Her wit will make it impossible for people to blithely assume that circumcision has no adverse consequences for sexual performance and enjoyment. The reason why those adverse consequences are so hard to suss, is that they vary greatly by man and by spouse, and very gradually grow worse with age. Nearly all circumcised men are not aware of how their sexual experiences fall short of what they could be, and do not know that the absence of foreskin is to blame.