Category: Circumcision

For some reason, my position is still often considered the radical position. I posted a comment yesterday, now deleted, on this blog entry by a mother-to-be. In discussing her lamaze class, she wrote (CAPS in the original, bold emphasis mine):

… We watched videos showing different labors and births, and we did see one C-section, which convinced me more than ever that I DO NOT WANT ONE, unless it is medically necessary. The instructor was very good about saying “partners” instead of “Dads” most of the time, but at one point we did feel very judged when she asked us all about circumcision, and we said we were planning on having our son circumcised. …

To which I responded with this:

So you don’t want a C-section unless it’s medically necessary, but it’s okay to circumcise your son, even though it’s not medically necessary. Why would your son feel differently about medically unnecessary surgery than you?

I probably should’ve responded with something like this, too:

I live with my circumcision, which convinced me that I DID NOT WANT ONE, since it was medically unnecessary.

Or I could’ve asked if she’s watched videos of a medically unnecessary circumcision. I wonder what her son would think if he could watch one. I doubt it would’ve mattered since she deleted my comment. I’m not surprised. In my experience, parents who have such a contradictory, narcissistic view of birth medicine tend to hate debates challenging their illogical decision to have their son’s healthy genitals cut.

Circumcision is medically unnecessary, despite whatever mistaken notions this mother may hold about potential benefits. It’s that simple, which is frustrating because this woman understands the concept that medically unnecessary procedures are undesirable and unwanted. But rather than protect her son, she will force on him a standard she rejects for herself.

Anyone want to argue with me on my stance that some parents act as though their sons are their own personal property rather than fully-formed human beings with a basic inalienable right to the body he’s born with? I’m not arguing that they believe it, although I’ve encountered parents who will admit to that abomination. But their actions speak volumes louder than any empty rhetoric offered to justify genital cutting.

In the circumcision debate, most regard those of us who would require immediate medical need before permitting the circumcision of children as the nutjobs. Consider this quick analysis of that opinion, based on two competing quotes from an Australian newspaper, The Age. First, this:

Kai is the third son the Barwicks have had circumcised by Dr Russell, a Brisbane GP who specialises in circumcision. “For us we decided to do it because of cleanliness and hygiene,” Ms Barwick said. “My third boy at two weeks had a urinary tract infection and Dr Russell said the circumcision would mean there would be less chance of this happening in the future.”

Second, this:

Dr [George] Williams does not understand why parents choose to circumcise their boys because of cleanliness. “It’s much harder for a female to practise hygiene but we don’t recommend circumcision of a female for that reason. This idea that males are hopeless and unable to look after themselves so they use circumcision as genital hygiene is just stupid.”

Notice, of course, that us in the first excerpt involves those in the family not in possession of the penis in question. Notice, also, that the second excerpt relies on logic, something absent from the first excerpt. A male infant’s intact foreskin adheres at birth, so his penis requires no more care than cleaning his finger. After circumcision, parents must care for the wound, which is clearly more work than having no wound.

Cultural acceptance does not make an argument the sane position in the debate. This is especially true in the first article, as it discards the ethical dilemma involved in forcing medically-unnecessary on a child because there’s “no pain.”

Here’s a not-hypothetical situation. Last week, on April 26th, an artist circumcised himself in public as art. I have no idea what he aimed at. He’s an adult, and other than the obnoxiousness that pushing such a “performance” on an unsuspecting audience implies, he’s free to cut off his entire penis. I don’t care.

Still, I can’t help thinking about this. I was repulsed by this when I first read about it, as I suspect most people would be. Why would he do that? That reaction can be instructive, I think. For anyone who finds this artist’s action mind-boggling, as I do, is it consistent to believe that infant circumcision is reasonable? The response should be the opposite. Both operations have the same level of medical necessity, which is to say none. Yet we allow what is little more than the same kind of performance art, but on a societal scale, more than one million times every year in America. That can’t be right.

The artist, Adrian Parsons, posted pictures here. They’re very graphic and most definitely not safe for work viewing.

From Oregon:

A former Medford man who converted to Judaism wants his 12-year-old son to do the same. That requires circumcision — something the mother adamantly opposes.

The divorced couple has been battling over the issue for three years, including whether the boy wants to undergo the procedure. So far, Oregon courts have squarely sided with the father, who has custody.

The custodial parent has the right to raise his/her child in a chosen religion. Fair enough, and not something under direct debate here. But the obvious question exists: to what extent can parents force religion on their children? Regarding circumcision, the courts have long been blind to the obvious point that circumcision is medically unnecessary surgery that carries inherent risks. This is wrong, in this case, and in any case where a child is circumcised for religion¹.

This attorney states it well:

“You’re talking about not just religious instruction or whether you’re going to send the child to parochial school or public school,” commented Lawrence D. Gorin, a Portland attorney. “This is a matter of permanent change of bodily structure. And it’s irreversible.”

The analysis shouldn’t change just because the boy has lived for twelve years rather than twelve hours, but it does readily demonstrate the lack of respect for individual rights inherent to every human being. There should be a high hurdle to overcome when imposing surgery on another human being. The first and foremost should be medical need. Without need, no further analysis is necessary. Imposing surgery must be prevented. But our society overlooks that. Still, in the case of a twelve-year-old boy who does not wish to be circumcised, as this boy does not, the act is clearly a proposed physical assault on the child. No society can permit this and continue calling itself civilized.

“I am still of the opinion that the decision of whether or not a child has elective surgery, which this appears to be, is a call that should be made and is reserved to the custodial parent,” [Jackson County Circuit Judge Rebecca G.] Orf said in a hearing.

I wonder how Judge Orf would feel if this case was about forced elective rhinoplasty? Elective breast augmentation? Elective labiaplasty? Elective clitoridectomy? Oh, wait, federal law already prohibits parents from forcing those last two on their children for any reason other than medical need, including religion, so strike them. Elective labiaplasty. Elective clitoridectomy. Yet, we somehow believe that it’s acceptable for parents to order a boy’s genitals cut for their own reasons. Society is grossly mistaken.

But Julie H. McFarlane, a supervising attorney with the Portland-based Juvenile Rights Project, said that the child’s consent for a medical procedure is not required until he turns 15.

“I think the dad has the legal right as the custodial parent to make those kind of religious or medical decisions,” McFarlane said. “It’s not much different from cosmetic surgery.”

The bottom line, McFarlane said, is that “when you lose custody, you lose a lot of those things that go with custody — deciding whether the kids go to school and the rest of the day-to-day parenting decisions.”

This is not “day-to-day” parenting, or even “parenting”. It’s genital mutilation without consent. This is wrong. A guardian ad litem should be appointed immediately to protect the boy. It’s his penis facing the knife, after all. It shouldn’t matter what the parents want, only what he needs. In the end, the Oregon Supreme Court should protect² the boy.

¹ It is wrong in all cases where it’s not medically indicated. I want to restrict the analysis here to religious justifications, although they’re as equally flimsy as any cultural excuse (i.e. “look like daddy”).

² Every court and legislature should do the same, of course. They’re cowards, so they won’t. Yet.

The Salt Lake Tribune discusses circumcision trends in Utah.

While Americans have been increasingly rejecting circumcision for their sons for 20 years, new international studies indicate it may dramatically cut the chances of HIV infection.

Will the findings change any parents’ decisions in Utah?

Not likely, say experts, because the state is a holdout, circumcising infants more frequently than surrounding Western states.

This doesn’t surprise me as Utah is a conservative state with a heavily religious population. Circumcising infants falls commonly into accepted practice for that audience, for some reason. There could be more in depth analysis of the religious aspect, but today it’ll be useful to focus on Mormons, since that’s common in Utah. From Moroni 8:8:

Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord, and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me.

That seems pretty clear to me. Of course, when digging further into the article, something just as common appears.

“If you wanted to break it down for Utah, about 90 percent of Caucasians and 2 percent of Hispanics [are circumcised],” Park City pediatrician Karen Lantz said.

Those numbers build to the 54 percent circumcision rate of newborn boys in Utah, which is approximately the national average. The state isn’t on the extreme, other than it’s as extreme as everywhere else that allows infant circumcision. The breakdown also corresponds to why states in the Northeast and West have significantly lower circumcision rates than the South and Midwest. Immigrants don’t tend to circumcise unless they’re convinced that it’s “American”.

There’s more from the article:

“It’s almost exclusively social and cultural reasons,” said Chuck Norlin, division chief of general pediatrics at University Hospital.

Ask yourself if, under that reasoning, doctors who circumcise infants without medical indication act ethically.

Two researchers have a study¹ published in the British Journal of Urology. They sought to understand the changes, if any, in men circumcised as adults. The researchers provided a questionnaire.

The study included 373 sexually active men, of whom 255 were circumcised and 118 were not. Of the 255 circumcised men, 138 had been sexually active before circumcision, and all were circumcised at >20 years of age. As the Brief Male Sexual Function Inventory does not specifically address the quality of sex life, questions were added to compare sexual and masturbatory pleasure before and after circumcision.

What were the results? Remember, tissue packed with nerve endings and biological functions would’ve been removed in the process, although in a manner much less severe than occurs in infant circumcision. Try to act surprised.

There were no significant differences in sexual drive, erection, ejaculation, and ejaculation latency time between circumcised and uncircumcised men. Masturbatory pleasure decreased after circumcision in 48% of the respondents, while 8% reported increased pleasure. Masturbatory difficulty increased after circumcision in 63% of the respondents but was easier in 37%. About 6% answered that their sex lives improved, while 20% reported a worse sex life after circumcision.

A word of caution, of course. I do not seek to abuse the study beyond the obvious logical insights. This relates to adult males, and until I confirm otherwise, I’ll assume the 373 men were self-selected. Of the 255 circumcised men, there’s a chance of selection bias against the results of circumcision. Agreed and duly noted.

Still, circumcision advocates have no problem playing fast and loose in applying the findings from studies of adult circumcision to infants. Let me do the same for a moment. This study revealed that circumcision appears to negatively affect a male’s sex life. Besides the obvious duh factor, shouldn’t this study, and others like it, induce caution into a society that permits the unnecessary surgical removal of part of a child’s boy’s genitals? Shouldn’t it cause one lawmaker or judge to reject such non-thinking customs?

The common response to something like this is that it doesn’t apply to American males because you can’t miss what you only briefly possessed. It’s amazing how determined people are to remain unchallenged by any ethical qualms.

¹ Citation:
DaiSik Kim, Myung-Geol Pang (2007)
BJU International 99 (3), 619–622.

In response to S. Kadokech’s essay claiming that female circumcision is a cultural right I blogged, here’s an opinion discrediting the ridiculous claim.

Here he is introducing the old fashioned concept in the FGM debate of the ‘arrogant perceiver.’ This concept holds that aliens in communities that practice some practices measure those communities’ standards by their (aliens’) standards and arrogantly perceive those communities’ standards as barbaric and outrageous.

This concept has been widely criticised because it ignores the idea that there are minimum standards below which any community cannot justifiably treat its people. You cannot say that because in our community it’s a cultural practice to kill baby girls those people who criticised our practice do so because they perceive our cultural right arrogantly.

Kadokech has misunderstood or deliberately ignored the meaning and extent of human rights in Uganda. It’s true that all Ugandans have a right to practice their cultural practices.

Of course. This is obvious, so you probably suspect there’s a reason I’m bringing it up. Indeed.

It is wrong to equate FGM with male circumcision. These are two different things, carried out differently with different consequences. Men who undergo circumcision do not cease to be sexually sensitive.

Once again we get the same warmed-over nonsense. Forced genital cutting is bad for girls because the cutters just want to diminish female sexuality. It’s not the same for boys, because cutters do so to help the boys through circumcision’s medical benefits. Uh-huh. The distinction between right and wrong in unnecessary genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is a subjective analysis of the validity of intention. That can never be right.

The parallel is transparent when looking at this honestly:

On the issue of consent, the majority of the people who are subjected to FGM are young girls who are compelled by their parents or guardians, on whom they depend for financial support and many other things. They never consent and where they allegedly consent they never offer informed consent. We have read about cases in Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal, Egypt and many other parts of the world where FGM is practiced that girls as young as eight years fall victim.

Infant males are not asked if they consent. An infant is younger than eight, so he can’t even surrender the uninformed consent “offered” by the girls.

Kapchorwa is not an exception. If FGM is based on consent, why don’t those communities who practice it avail all the relevant information to the potential victims in time and let them make decisions whether to undergo the practice or not when they reach the age of 18. The only information availed to the young girls is that when if they don’t undergo FGM they will not get married, or they will be a disgrace to their families.

And infant males are circumcised in the United States because their future female sex partners will find the foreskin disgusting and will refuse to have sex with him. You don’t want your son to die a virgin, do you?

The author goes on to discuss an earlier notion that Chinese girls would be unable to get married if their parents didn’t bind the girl’s feet. Same thing. Cultural pressure used as an excuse to force body modifications on a non-consenting individual is wrong. There is no difference, regardless of whether it’s feet-binding, arranged marriages¹, female genital cutting, or male genital cutting. This includes potential health benefits, since some benefit could inevitably be argued from any preventive cutting. Infant mastectomies, anyone?

Human rights require more than good intentions and potential benefits.

¹ Kip made this astute comparison in the comments here.