Disclaimer: Included in this post is discussion of foreskin carving, head cheese and Charms blow pops. If you're sensitive to this kind of thing, please keep on reading. But be prepared to squirm.
If you have a son, there will come a time when you have a decision to make: What would you like your son's penis to look like, a rocket ship or a snake hiding inside a sock? These are questions that soon-to-be parents don't often think about ahead of time.
This is not an easy decision to make. On the one hand, you might not want anyone to slice into your son's genitalia like it's an episode of "Nip/Tuck." On the other hand, maybe you want your son to have a chance to date Nicole Ritchie, who apparently won't date uncircumcised men. Equally strong arguments, right? Err.
There are serious arguments in favor and against this tradition, which dates back to the Bible when God decreed that men should slice up their sons' penises, never cut hair from their temples, and stay away from pork due to an outbreak of trichinosis and lax regulation by the FDA.
Arguments against it include supposed loss of penile sensitivity, supposed loss of penile sensitivity, and most importantly, supposed loss of penile sensitivity. Arguments for it include religious doctrine, hygiene, and because you don't want your son to be laughed at in the locker room after gym class.
Doctors, nurses and medical personnel in general don't help in this regard. They say it's your decision, and of course it is. But in our case, we didn't really get any guidance as to which is the general medical opinion on the matter. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that it's medically unnecessary.
In the end, we decided to get our son Matthew circumcised. It was a difficult one. For me, the decision hinged on two stories, one from a friend of ours and one from my mother.
The friend told us of someone he knew that had not been circumcised at birth. When he turned about eight, he was having some hygiene issues. One thing about being uncircumcised is that you have to keep it clean in there. You've got to pull back the turtle's shell and scrub away, if you catch my drift. Otherwise you might unintentionally make some new kind of cheese that stinks worse than a top-of-the-line French fromage. But the thing is, when you're eight years old, shining the inside of your foreskin isn't exactly a priority. There are bullfrogs to catch, skateboard ramps to be conquered, and video games to be defeated.
Back to this person that our friend knew. Because of these hygiene issues, his parents asked him if he wanted to be circumcised. He said yes. And to this day, he still remembers the procedure. I'm not sure if this is true, but I picture him waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, moaning, his hands over his crotch like he's setting up a defensive wall for a free kick in a World Cup soccer match.
Now for the second story. My mother is a nurse, and told us of the many times elderly men would come into the hospital for the procedure. Because they had grown old, cleaning the foreskin was more and more difficult, and like the eight-year-old boys, it fell by the wayside. Just imagine a line of 80-something men at some health clinic, shuffling along, waiting to get circumcised. At a time when you should be living off your pension, catching a weekly bus from the senior center to the casino, and reading "Hagar the Horrible" for a good laugh every morning, you've instead got to head to the hospital to have your manhood hacked up. Ah, the golden years.
So let me give you an idea of what infant circumcision is like. You're in the hospital, or at least we were. When the time comes, the doctor comes in with a big, over-exaggerated smile on his/her face to take your baby away. Most people let their sons be taken into the other room without watching, but I wasn't having it. Bea and I felt that maybe, just maybe, my presence would help Matthew emotionally during it all.
My presence didn't mean squat.
They brought him in another room and laid him down. They removed his diaper. The nurse held his arms down. At this point, Matthew started giving a puzzled look, like, "What the hell are you doing to me now?" Then the doctor put Matthew's penis in a contraption that looked like a miniature version of the neck clamps that some African tribal women wear. Except it was my son's penis in there, the foreskin hanging loose.
The doctor then took a scalpel and started cutting the foreskin off like it was an arts and crafts project. Matthew's puzzled look morphed into outright screaming and crying.
At this point, the nurse dipped a pacifier into a little bowl of sugar water and gave it to Matthew. Surprisingly, Matthew didn't give a damn. My personal opinion: As long as you put a Charms blow pop in my mouth, you can jam my penis in a food processor. It's only logical, right?
There is blood. The doctor cleans it up. When she finishes, a little circular flap of foreskin is gone, and your son is still crying. He will continue to cry as the doctor puts ointment and gauze over his penis, as you wheel him back to your hospital room, and for the next few minutes as you try to console him while you (maybe) weep a little yourself.
But then he stops crying, and everything is, I guess, OK. With every diaper change over the next couple weeks, you have to change the gauze and put fresh ointment on your son's circumcised penis. Then your son is fine, and it's time to look up Nicole Ritchie's telephone number.
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I'm very undecided with my 3 sons whether to circumcise or not. So I'm leaving them intact. Whichever we decide, I'm sure it's for the good of our kids.
Jeez you guys seem to be giving him such a hard time. You would think that perhaps we should applaud his candidness and openness.
Seriously, I am not a militant. Just that I prefer color, HD TV. Why would anyone want otherwise when it is available.
Remember, the foreskin is the most sensitive part of the Penis..... not the head of the Penis. I ask that you re-consider your decision for the next male child
Thanks for posting an honest account of your decision to circumcise. I am uncircumcised. Your article is certainly written from a circumcised male point-of-view.
If only you knew the pleasure that you have taken from your son. The problems that your are concerned about are such a minority. I am glad that decided to keep your son's eyelids... the other body part that closely resembles the foreskin. Eye infections are much higher in statistics and to use your argument would require their removal, too.
American, circumcised men must like living in the dark. They were circumcised originally to conform to the Victorian ideal of the removal of pleasure, not hygiene. Uncircumcised men know this.
As with any cycle of abuse, it takes extraordinary courage to break the cycle. What I have read is just the continuation of a reduced, circumcised father ensuring the same is bestowed onto his male son. Perhaps you don't know what you are missing. Surely you can not know. That is not your fault.
Perhaps you couldn't allow your son to have more pleasure than yourself? For sure, now, you have made him follow your existence.
Seriously, I am not a militant. Just that I prefer color, HD TV. Why would anyone want otherwise when it is available.
Remember, the foreskin is the most sensitive part of the Penis..... not the head of the Penis. I ask that you re-consider your decision for the next male child.
Respectfully... a reader.
its a pity you can make jokes about cutting the most sensitive part off your sons body.
if you can be bothered writing this vacuous blog about it, i'm surprised you didn't at least examine your own facile assumptions. lets look at some of the things you've said:
--- "Arguments against it include supposed loss of penile sensitivity, supposed loss of penile sensitivity, and most importantly, supposed loss of penile sensitivity."
well, ok, that's one of the arguments, repeated three times for emphasis. its a perfectly good one, but while you may think it's the only one, it isn't.
there is also the idea that your son's foreskin is part of his body, not yours. he has a right to his entire body, not the parts you decide to keep, and it is your duty to protect that right.
there are also consequences to your making a painful and traumatic injury to the most sensitive part of his anatomy a landmark among your son's earliest experiences of nurturing.
long term cortisol sensitivity (post traumatic stress disorder) is a common reaction to painful neonatal procedures, and you have very likely given him a reduced capacity to manage stress, increased his reaction to pain and increased his susceptibility to depression and neurosis in adulthood.
then you mention some arguments for circumcision:
--- "religious doctrine". was that involved in your decision? if not, why mention it? it may interest you to know that Judaic doctrine is clear that circumcision involves a loss of sexual feeling, and also that medical arguments for circumcision are specifically rejected by orthodox rabbis. it should never be done for earthly benefit, only for perfection in the eyes of G*d.
--- "hygiene". this is a convenient canard, but one rejected totally by the medical profession, and possessing little logic. what other parts of your sons body would you cut off to save him the trouble of cleaning them? his ears? his feet? you know, little girls need to clean that area too. would you cut off parts of a daughter's genitals for 'hygiene'?
--- "laughed at in the locker room after gym class". lol, now you are really thinking. what if your son ends up in the roundhead minority in a locker room full of cavaliers, as i did as a child. let me tell you, it didn't bother me that i was different, but it made me mad as hell i didn't have all of my body parts.
--- "Doctors, nurses and medical personnel in general don't help in this regard." well, what kind of help do you expect? maybe they just think its a stupid idea, but also know that if you're determined to do it, there's nothing they can do to stop you. they also get paid for it, so i suppose they can see that benefit at least.
--- "They say it's your decision, and of course it is." now we're getting down to tin tacks. of course its your decision! who else's decision could it possibly be? not your son's, surely. after all, its only his body.
--- "But in our case, we didn't really get any guidance as to which is the general medical opinion on the matter. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that it's medically unnecessary."
so, you didn't get any guidance except a clear statement saying it's pointless. i guess you need a lot more than that to convince you not to deliberately amputate your sons primary erogenous zone.
i don't understand why you have done this to your son, except i do believe circumcised men have a tendency to reenact the trauma. i'm not intending to be insulting, but you have blogged about this, so you must expect a response and this is mine. i hope to develop a little more wisdom, for your sons sake.
For real information:
Gillian Longley, a Newborn Intensive Care nurse, will be doing a course for
parents and professionals on the internet. Gillian is a very articulate
medical professional and she co-ordinates the Colorado NOCIRC chapter, as
well. She's the mother of two grown intact sons.
The course is 90 minutes long and the graphics she uses are fantastic. I
particularly liked one graphic she had on the sensitivity of the penis,
comparing cut and intact. Please check it out by going to
http://www.consciouswoman.org
Thanks to all for commenting, I appreciate it. I understand that there is a passionate anti-circumcision crowd out there, and I can definitely understand that point of view. Please understand ours and our decision to circumcise. The American Medical Association has found higher rates of urinary tract infections and sexual disorders among uncircumcised men (http://tinyurl.com/3fkx29 and http://tinyurl.com/42rev3). I realize I should have included this information in my original blog post.
I also realize this blog post will make some people squirm. I didn't want to spare any details in the description of the circumcision so that readers can understand what really happens. As I've told other readers who have emailed me, my wife and I aren't sure what we would do if we had another son. But we have absolutely no regrets with Matthew. He's a healthy young boy, his circumcision looks great, and he'll be just fine. Well, maybe when he gets older and reads this, he'll be a little embarrassed. But other than that, he'll be fine.
Thanks,
Mark
yeah... but for every 100 boys that have a part of their penis amputated, only ONE is prevented from getting a UTI in the first year of life (and that is not taking into account the risk from the surgery itself, as well as the permanent damage done to the penis). UTIs are easily treated with antibiotics, and in fact, baby girls are at a higher risk for UTIs than intact baby boys. (Why dont we just start cutting off baby girls' labias as well?)
With your logic, you should also have your baby's tonsils and appendix removed as well, just because it might get infected later on.
Lari:
Thanks for writing. Where did you get that statistic about 1 of every 100 circumcisions preventing UTI? I have seen statistics as high as 4.1% for UTIs among uncircumcised boys (http://tinyurl.com/4crpmf).
You say that UTIs are easily treatable, and that may be the case, but the problem is that many of them go unreported. UTIs are not something to be taken lightly, and can lead to dehydration, renal failure and death (http://tinyurl.com/4crpmf) among young infants.
There is also evidence that circumcision among men can help prevent HIV, penile cancer, and transmission of the human papilloma virus, which can lead to cervical cancer in women. A study found that chlamydia infection is three times more common among female partners of uncircumcised men than in female partners of circumcised men. All these statistics can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/4ozrt3
Furthermore, there have been studies comparing the sexual pleasure in circumcised vs. uncircumcised men that show no "clinically significant difference": http://tinyurl.com/4ozrt3
Thanks for reading and writing in, though. I really appreciate it!
Mark,
You did the right thing for Matthew's future. Besides the whole cheese thing, women I know do not like a penis that has its own carrying case. We don't want to play peek-a-boo penis. It is just creepy.
In fact, in one episode of Sex and the City, which is on point with just about every woman on the planet, Charlotte is dating a guy who is uncircumcised and discusses how grose it it. She said"
"There is so much skin it looks like a shar-pei!"
You don't want women calling your son's penis a shar-pei.
An I know a guy, who may or may not be my boyfriend, who wasn't circumcised at birth and had so many UTI's his doctor told his parents to have him clipped - at age 5. That was 32 years ago and I think I can still see the tear in his eye.
But, I am glad they did because he didn't have to be embarrased in the guys locker room growing up, and it looks good. In fact, if it weren't entirely innapropriate, I would thank his parents for having the casing removed.
Some compelling arguments for and against. Now what? I totally hadn't thought about this until right this minute.
I've got a son on the way, and I'm leaning towards no, because I don't like doctors in general and would just as soon not take my son back to the hospital. But the absolutism and zeal of the pro-foreskin crowd kind of freaks me out. I might just have to circumcise my kid so he doesn't grow up to be such a holier-than-thou prick.
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