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[references are in part 3]
Male Circumcision in the USA:
The Profoundly Disturbing and Explosive Facts
Rich Winkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
October 23, 2001
"Despite the obviously irrational cruelty of circumcision, the
profit incentive in American medical practice is unlikely to allow
science or human rights principles to interrupt the highly lucrative
American circumcision industry. It is now time for European medical
associations loudly to condemn the North American medical community
for participating in and profiting from what is by any standard a
senseless and barbaric sexual mutilation of innocent children."
Fleiss PM. MD, MPH. Circumcision. Lancet 1995;345:927[1]
"Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity."
George Bernard Shaw
"What is done to children, they will do to society."
Karl Menninger, MD
The American medical establishment has promoted male circumcision
as a preventative measure for an astonishing array of pathologies,
ranging from masturbatory insanity, moral laxity, aesthetics and
hygiene, to headache, tuberculosis, rheumatism, hydrocephalus,
epilepsy, paralysis, alcoholism, near-sightedness, rectal prolapse,
hernia, gout, clubfoot, urinary tract infections, phimosis, cancer
of the penis, cancer of the cervix and sexually transmitted
diseases.[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] But the only rationale which has clear,
well established scientific support is the one originally and openly
used by the medical establishment when medical circumcision was
introduced as a "public health" measure in the Victorian era. That
is, to punish and control the sexuality of male children. Victorian
doctors knew something that modern medicine has chosen to ignore:
the foreskin is at the heart of male sexuality.
A typical western medical circumcision results in the loss of
approximately 1/2 of the total surface area of the penis and between
50 and 80% or more of its erogenous sexual nerves,[8, 9, 10]
including:
o The Taylor "ridged band"*, the primary erogenous zone of the male
body. This unique, highly specialized and exquisitely sensitive
structure is equipped with soft ridges designed by nature to
stimulate the female's G-spot during intercourse.
o The frenulum, the highly erogenous V-shaped tethering structure
on the underside of the head of the penis.
o Between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings
of several types, which can feel slight variations in pressure and
stretching, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations in
texture.
o Thousands of coiled fine-touch receptors called Meissner's
corpuscles, which are also found in the fingertips.
Also lost are:
o The foreskin's gliding action, the non-abrasive gliding of the
shaft of the penis within its own sheath, which facilitates smooth,
comfortable and pleasurable intercourse for both partners.
____________________________ *Sometimes called the "frenar band"
o The immunological defense system of the foreskin, which produces
immunoglobulin antibodies and antibacterial and antiviral proteins
such as the pathogen-killing enzyme lysozyme, a potent HIV killer
which is also found in tears and mothers' milk.
o Estrogen receptors, the purpose of which is not fully understood.
o The foreskin's apocrine glands, which produce pheromones.
o The protection and lubrication of the erogenous surface of the
penis, which is designed by nature to be an internal organ like
the vagina. Natural sex involves contact between two internal
organs.[11 ]
In essence, medical male genital mutilation (MGM) is the pathologization
and treatment of the "disease" of male sexuality.
"I was quite happy (delirious, in fact) with what pleasure I could
experience beginning with foreplay and continuing as an intact
male. After my circumcision, that pleasure was utterly gone. Let
me put it this way: On a scale of 10, the uncircumcised penis
experiences pleasure that is at least 11 or 12; the circumcised
penis is lucky to get to 3..."
(From a letter to Marilyn Milos, RN, Founder/Director of NOCIRC)[12
]
"[Like] wearing a condom or wearing a glove ... sight without color
would be a good analogy ... only being able to see in black and
white ... rather than seeing in full color would be like experiencing
an orgasm with a foreskin and without. There are feelings you'll
just never have without the foreskin." (Paul Tardiff, circumcised
at age 30)[12 ]
"The 1999 British Journal of Urology Supplement has a study of
American women who have experienced sex with both intact and
circumcised partners. The results of the survey are truly astonishing.
Among other things, the vast majority of surveyed women indicated
that they overwhelmingly prefer intercourse with a man with a
natural penis (approximately 90%) and that they were significantly
more likely to achieve a 'vagina' orgasm during "natural" intercourse.
More astonishing is the fact that many women actually rated
circumcised intercourse a negative experience when compared to the
natural intercourse." -Kristen O'Hara, Author of "Sex As Nature
Intended"[13 , 14]
"I swore that I would never have sex with an un-circumcised man.
The thought of it made me turn up my nose. When I first met my
partner, we tended to have sex in the dark. [...] The sex was the
best I had ever had.
With the unique 'vaginal' orgasms along with the standard clitoris
orgasms. A few months into our relationship, I realized that he
was actually un-circumcised. [...] My point in short is, sex is
incredibly better with an un-circ'ed man.
I never would have thought it, but now, with first hand experience,
I know it is. I never had a 'vaginal' orgasm, until him." (private
correspondence to Stan Emerson, circumcision awareness educator,
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
In 1888, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a well respected physician and
founder of the Kellogg cereal company, spoke for mainstream Victorian
medicine when he wrote: "A remedy for masturbation which is almost
always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation
should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic
as the brief pain [sic, see below] attending the operation will
have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected
with the idea of punishment."[15 ] Whatever the current rationales
for circumcision, the procedure outlined by Kellogg in 1888 is
essentially how MGM is practiced today: without anesthesia, without
patient consent, without the presence of disease or the statistical
likelihood of future disease, and without regard for the human
rights of an innocent boy or the man he will become.
Incidentally, these same Victorian doctors were equally rapacious
in their claims on female genitalia. The fact that FGM didn't follow
MGM in becoming nearly universal in this country may be largely an
accident of anatomy: the surgical risks are likely higher. Yet
American medical journal articles proclaiming the benefits of
clitorectomies persisted until at least the 1950's.[16 , 17, 15]
In any case, MGM is not without risk either. Even today, partial
or total penile amputation or deformity, sepsis, gangrene, coma
and even death are well established immediate risks of MGM. While
American medicine keeps no systematic record, estimates of US deaths
rates range to over 200 per year.[18 , 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
26]
Medical Rationales
Setting aside for a moment the human rights implications of forcibly
cutting healthy erogenous flesh from the bodies of screaming infants,
and the older, more obviously bogus rationalizations for it, one
would hope that an examination of medicine's more recent justifications
for MGM will reveal a valid scientific rationale for its continuation.
Incredibly, the opposite is true: decades of pre-emptive censorship
of male sexuality have resulted in a corresponding censorship of
natural male sexual anatomy and function in American medical schools.
Even today, intact foreskins are routinely omitted from anatomical
medical textbooks, or mentioned solely in the context of circumcision.
As a result, many American doctors and nurses are woefully ignorant
of the routine care of natural male genitalia, and frequently
perform unnecessary circumcisions as a direct consequence of their
ignorance.[27 , 28, 29, 9, 2] Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon
more evident than in the medical establishment's approach to urinary
tract infections and phimosis.
According to the retrospective study of urinary tract infections
(UTI's) in US military hospitals which is usually quoted in support
of MGM, it requires at least 50 to 100 circumcisions to prevent a
single UTI infection. But even this figure is likely unreliable
because ignorant US doctors have frequently induced UTIs in intact
children by advising parents to forcibly retract the child's
normally-attached foreskin and scrub underneath[30 ] (the foreskin
often remains attached to the head of the penis for years after
birth, with no ill effect if simply left alone). This excruciatingly
painful procedure, which is done repeatedly as the raw tissues
reattach, would be hygienically comparable to breaking a girl's
hymen in order to scrub her vagina:
it's an invitation to infection. The study is further confounded
by the fact that MGM was so routine at one time that hospitals
frequently did it "automatically" and neglected to record it on
children's charts, and parents were so sexually ignorant that they
often reported their sick children as intact when they were not.
These and other systematic flaws bring the reliability of the study
into question.[31 , 27]
"The intact baby has a slightly increased chance of developing a
urinary tract infection in infancy but a lower incidence of UTI
(urinary tract infection) the rest of his life. UTI's in females
are found at rates of up to 50 times that of males (Understanding
Urinary Tract Infection, Infect Urol 8 (4), 111,114-120, 1995) and
we do not alter their genitalia as a preventative measure. Most
UTI's in the intact male are iatrogenic (doctor caused) by inspecting,
probing and even retracting the fused foreskin and introducing
bacteria the foreskin is designed to keep out." -Eileen Wayne,
M.D.[13 ]
"Toronto researchers studied almost 60,000 boys. The study suggests
195 circumcisions would need to be performed to prevent one hospital
admission for urinary tract infection in the first year of life.
Since a conservative estimate of the number of significant
complications of circumcision is 2-3%, this would mean that
circumcising nearly 200 boys to prevent one urinary tract infection
would result in at least 4 boys suffering a major complication to
prevent one easily treatable urinary tract infection." -The Lancet
1998; 352:1813-16[13 ]
In fact, breastfeeding and physical contact with the mother have
been shown to be far more effective at preventing UTI's than even
proponents of circumcision claim for MGM. If given a chance, nature
elegantly protects infants from infection by immunizing, via breast
milk, against the very organisms which the child, in the company
of his mother, is likely to be exposed to.[32 ] Recent research in
Japan, a non-circumcising country, has found a much lower rate of
UTI's among intact children than the earlier American studies.[33
] Of course, for any other bodily tissue the standard of care for
infection would be antibiotics, not amputation. Thankfully, the
fact that UTIs are far more common in girls is not used to push
FGM in this country.[34 , 35, 36] MGM has also been routinely
prescribed for "phimosis," a condition in which the foreskin of
the penis is abnormally non-retractable. But phimosis in intact
children is greatly exaggerated in the USA because ignorant doctors
confuse it with normal attachment, and also because they frequently
cause an iatrogenic version of it, again by advising parents to
forcibly retract, leading to infections and scar tissue. In any
case, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently admitted that
true, non-iatrogenic phimosis, which occurs in less than 2% of
intact males, can be successfully treated in 85-95% of cases by
the simple application of a steroid cream.[37 ] This miraculous
medical breakthrough, coming decades after the introduction of
steroid cream, is illustrative of the cavalier contempt medicine
has demonstrated for male sexual integrity.
Between iatrogenic UTI's and phimosis, many boys who survive the
high-tech birthing industry whole and intact later succumb to the
knife in early childhood. In the US, around 80% of males are
circumcised.[38 ] Other contemporary rationales for MGM include
the prevention of penile and cervical cancer. But in a letter to
the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1996, physicians at the
American Cancer Society wrote: "As representatives of the American
Cancer Society, we would like to discourage the American Academy
of Pediatrics from promoting routine circumcision as a preventative
measure for penile or cervical cancer. The American Cancer Society
does not consider routine circumcision to be a valid or effective
measure to prevent such cancers. Research suggesting a pattern in
the circumcision status of partners of women with cervical cancer
is methodologically flawed, outdated and has not been taken seriously
in the medical community for decades. [...] Fatalities caused by
circumcision accidents may approximate the mortality rate from
penile cancer."[39 ] On the issue of sexually transmitted diseases
(STD's) , one obvious point should be stressed: children are not
sexually active, thus infant MGM cannot reasonably be promoted
based on STD prevention arguments. The child can and should be
given the opportunity to judge the facts for himself when he is
old enough to give informed consent for this very important decision
with the full knowledge of the value of his intact organ. The
miniscule rate of adult circumcision provides strong evidence of
what this decision would be.[40 , 41] With that said, the jury is
still out: the body of medical literature gives no clear indication
of whether circumcision protects against STDs. Many studies have
reached contradictory or null conclusions, such as a well controlled
study of 1400 American men published in the April 1997 issue of
the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that
"Circumcised men were slightly more likely to have had both a
bacterial and a viral STD in their lifetime. While these differences
are not statistically significant, they do not lend support to the
thesis that circumcision helps prevent the contraction of STDs.
Indeed, for chlamydia, the difference between circumcised men and
uncircumcised men is quite large. While 26 of 1033 circumcised men
had contracted chlamydia in their lifetime, none of the 353
uncircumcised men reported having had it."[38 ] Regarding AIDS in
particular, it should be noted that among the industrialized nations,
AIDS is positively correlated with circumcision.[42 , 43] Indeed,
of the developed countries, the USA has by far the highest circumcision
rate and the highest AIDS rate.[43 ] This flies in the face of the
recent, widely reported but deeply flawed surveys of AIDS and
circumcision in Africa, which did not control for the strong
correlation between the circumcision status and the socioeconomic
status of African men. Muslim men, for instance, tend to be both
circumcised and non-promiscuous. In circumcising tribes, intact
men are shunned by women and tend to frequent prostitutes.
In more secular African cultures, circumcised men tend to have
access to the western model of medical care, and so are less likely
to have easily treatable STDs such as gonorrhea, the presence of
which causes genital lesions which promote the passage of the AIDS
virus.[44 ] Still more recent medical opinion has indicted the
foreskin for its langerhans cells, specialized immunological sentries
known to be susceptible to HIV, which are present in both male and
female genitalia. But a causal link between intact male genitals
and male HIV susceptibility has never been demonstrated, and
confounding factors, such as the HIV-killing secretions of the
foreskin, may well result in a net loss of biological defenses from
MGM, even before the behavioral and structural anatomical consequences
are considered.
For instance, the dried out internal organ which is the end of a
mutilated penis provides less lubrication and so increases abrasion
during intercourse, creating possible infection sites in both
partners.
This may account for the nearly 5-fold difference in US vs European
male-to-female HIV transmission rates.[45 ] Abrasion is further
exacerbated by the tightness of the penile skin, which can no longer
slide freely on the shaft. Some circumcisions are cut so tightly
that erection produces tearing in the penile skin, creating further
sites for the passage of pathogens. Condoms are more likey to fall
off of a circumcised penis, and American men are less likely to
USE condoms[42 ] (the most effective line of defense against STD's)
probably because of the lack of sensitivity most of them already
endure. Circumcised men are also significantly more likely to engage
in risky sexual behavior such as anal intercourse, possibly in an
effort to compensate for desensitization.[38 , 46] Furthermore, a
small amount of inner foreskin is usually left on the penis, and
it's well known that mucous membrane is more vulnerable to infection
when it is dried out.[47 ] Finally, MGM's adverse impact on sexual
satisfaction for both partners may increase sexual promiscuity.
Finally we reach the last ditch and most deeply embedded cultural
phobia which may be the real driving force behind medical MGM in
the USA, the same irrational fear that drives FGM in Africa:
that intact genitalia are somehow "dirty," that expert human
intervention is needed to remedy unmentionable defects in the design
of the most critical developmental objective of millions of years
of evolution, the reproductive organs. But about 80% of the men in
this world are intact.[2, 48] If male foreskin is such a pathologically
disease-ridden piece of anatomical garbage, why aren't men all over
the world lining up at clinics to be cut? The fact is that in terms
of the difficulty of maintenance, an intact penis is somewhere
between the eyes and the mouth, in other words between low and
medium maintenance. If doctors applied the same hygienic standards
to the mouth as they do the penis, they'd cut off our lips and pull
all our teeth. We spend far more time brushing our teeth than the
second that it takes for an adult man to retract and rinse under
his foreskin.
Intact male genitals likely require less maintenance than that of
females. But of course the assumption is that men are incapable of
keeping themselves clean. If there's a grain of truth buried in
that social edifice, could it be related to the shame and stigma
attached to male sexuality, of which medical MGM is only a
manifestation?
On the basis of well over a century of similarly ambiguous, sloppy,
value-laden and selectively publicized research, the high priests
of American medicine have successfully promoted and defended their
idiosyncratic practice of genital surgery on six generations of
normal, healthy, non-consenting boys, repeatedly indicting, but
never managing to convict the foreskin for one malady after another.
HIV is only the most recent example of this pattern. Even the US
taxpayer has been drafted into the crusade, donating more than $35
million in medicaid payments per year to involuntary circumcisions,
many of which would likely not have occurred without government
subsidy.[49 ] Despite medicine's most strenuous efforts however,
MGM, the USA's most common surgical procedure, remains in search
of a disease. But in any case, even the most enthusiastic claims
of MGM proponents pale in comparison to its scientifically demonstrable
drawbacks.
Indeed, routine circumcision can only be defended by ignoring the
crucial erogenous value of the male prepuce, to both men and women.
When all the pseudo-medical diversions are disposed of, one is left
with a number of useful observations regarding MGM in the USA:
o No one volunteers to be tied down to a table to have pieces of
their genitals cut off without anesthesia. Therefore, it should be
obvious even to those who haven't seen a screaming baby boy being
mutilated in a soundproofed hospital room, that "routine"
infant circumcision would not exist if children could defend
themselves from adults. Unburdened of the medical and social
rationalizations for MGM, and facing the immediacy of his anguish,
the child likely sees circumcision for what it is: a particularly
brutal sexual assault and mutilation.
o Ultimately, the only operative "indications" for routine infant
circumcision are the phobias and ignorance of the parents and the
powerlessness of the infant.
o The central issue of MGM is obviously human rights, specifically
every human being's right to a natural, complete, fully functional
and ecstatic sexuality, free of forcibly imposed handicaps. Despite
the medical establishment's obsession with the purported pathologies
of male genitals, doctors have no more right to enforce Victorian
sexual mores on struggling, screaming children now than they did
a century ago.
o The most virulent, chronic and debilitating pathology associated
with male foreskin appears to be the compulsion to cut it off.
As we'll see below, the medicalization of this compulsion results
in a particularly perverse and destructive form of child abuse.
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