SEXIS WRONG

“O’Hara makes a compelling argument that circumcised intercourse
may frustrate the primordial subconscious that seems
to know ‘real sex ain’t this way.’ She also suggested that each
circumcised experience has the potential to build-up negative
memory imprints so that over time, repeated sexual encounters
with the same partner may lead to negative feeling between
the two that carry over into everyday life.”
As an obstetrician-gynecologist, Northrup said, she performed
hundreds of circumcisions. While she stops short of
saying she regrets doing them, she does say it’s past time to
rethink the practice. She reported elsewhere that when she
would tell parents at hospital-based childbirth classes that circumcision
need not be done, her invitations to such classes
were withdrawn.
She quotes obstetrics colleague Dr. George Denniston, coauthor
of Doctors Re-Examine Circumcision: “Circumcision
violates the first tenet of medical practice: ‘First, do no harm.’
According to modern medical ethics, parents do not have the
right to consent to a procedure that is not in their son’s best
interest. The removal of a normal, important part of the male
sexual organ is not in their son’s best interest.”
Jews, Muslims, and a few other groups circumcise as part
of their religious practice. But, as a nation, we do not allow
parents to impose their religious practices on children to the
extent that they do physical harm. Blood transfusions, for instance,
are often imposed by court order for children whose
parents do not approve for religious reasons. Should genital
mutilation 13 be any different?
From a worldwide perspective, the noncircumcised state
is the norm for males. Most Europeans and Asians do not
circumcise. Wrongful-circumcision attorney David Llewellyn
says that he attended a conference in Padua, Italy, in 2004
and told a thirty-five-year-old Italian pediatrician that Americans
circumcise about 65% of all boys. “You’re kidding!” she
said.
Although circumcision rates are dropping in the US, it is estimated
that about 60% of newborn males in America are
still being cut. If you’re an American man between the ages
of twenty-five and forty-five, the probability is very high that
you were circumcised. Newborn circumcision rates in the US
climbed after World War II and peaked at about 80-90% somewhere
between 1970 and 1980. If you’re older or younger,
chances are still good that if you were in an American nursery,
you lost your foreskin.
In our cultural acceptance of circumcising males, we keep
company with countries like Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Somalia, and the Congo. Some circumcise
newborns; most do it at older ages, as a part of religious
practice. The United States is the only circumcising country
that, generally, has no religious pretense. Circumcisions are
usually performed on newborns in hospitals for aesthetic
preference, hygienic theory, or for no reason at all. Many parents
simply acquiesce to circumcision when the physician offers
it, without asking questions. “If it’s offered, it must be
recommended,” seems to be the prevailing view. It’s familiar.
It’s the accepted norm.
Several groups, such as NORM (National Organization of Restoring
Men), NOHARMM (National Organization to Halt the
Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males), and NOCIRC, have
formed to fight the practice, but it is entrenched. For many
it’s a matter of “like father, like son.” Men who cannot accept
that they are less than perfect perpetuate the practice.
“Recognizing male circumcision as a mistake reflects on circumcised
males.” 14 Others, doctors and mothers, may be in
denial, as well.
Americans’ willingness to conform and disinclination to inquire
deeply is another factor. Parents are usually unaware of
the extent of the surgery. The amount of skin amputated results
in the loss of about one-third or more of the penile shaft
skin system. Adult foreskin is about two and a half inches
long. It’s double layered, so when unfolded, it would be about
the size of a 3x5-inch card, enough skin to hold millions of
cells and nerves. The removal of the often-described “snip of
skin” is considered a major amputaton by some.
It is usually done without anesthesia. Milos, who first witnessed
circumcision as a student nurse, went on to make a
video of the operation, which she shows to expecting parents.
She was told it was too much for parents to see. “Perhaps
then,” Milos responded, “it’s too much for the baby to
endure.”
“We didn’t learn anything about foreskins or circumcision in
medical school,” says Dr. Paul Fliess. 16 “I watched one, that
was it.” They were taught that infants don’t feel pain, which
has been shown to be an absurd notion.
Taylor and colleagues, who discovered the ridged band, have
also noted “the current tendency to eliminate the prepuce
from anatomy textbooks.”
How it became thus is no mystery. Circumcision got its first
big jump-start in the US in the late nineteenth century when
doctors decided that masturbation was harmful.
A boy with foreskin would have to retract it to urinate, so,
they reasoned, he would be more likely to learn to give himself
pleasure by self-manipulation. Cutting off the foreskin as
286 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG