Circumcision Opinions

Circumcision Opinions from Readers

The following was sent to me; it does not necessarily reflect the opinions of this site.

I would like to make some comments about your circumcision article, as it seems quite biased in favor of circumcision. Your entire web page is so well balanced that I really would like to see more balance in this article.

I would particularly like to see the inclusion of some reasons AGAINST circumcision to balance all the "other reasons" for. Some reasons I would like to see AGAINST circumcision follow.

1) Give the boy a choice! If a boy or man decides he wants to be circumcised, then I'm not against it one little bit.This is part of the privilege of living in a free society. But these poor boys never get a choice in the matter. They have to wear it. They never get to experience anything but having their foreskin removed. I would hate to lose my foreskin, and I thank God and my parents for not doing it to me. Thank you Mum and Dad.

What if boys were offered the choice at an age when they were cognizant enough to decide for themselves, and without undue pressures brought to bear on them? Would that be so bad, to give them the choice?

It is harder for a female to empathize with this. The idea is much less personal and threatening to a female, who would not have to go through it herself; but imagine living in a culture in which a baby girl's outer vaginal lips were removed as a matter of course, because it "looked neater," had always been done this way, and was what everybody was used to. This would be the norm; a lot of people would argue for it and not see the harm in it. (BTW, I do know about the practice of female "circumcision" and find it abhorrent.) Does the mere thought of having something like that done to you not feel threatening and invasive?

I wonder how many men there are out there who were never given the choice, and who wish and perhaps agonize over the fact that they are not completely intact. Have there ever been deaths over circumcisions? Have any men ever committed suicide or suffered depression over it? Even if only 1 percent of the entire circumcised population feels this way (I do not have the stats), that is a lot of needless people suffering.

And how many men will simply never know what they're missing, because their parents decided what to do to their bodies for them?

Please, give the boys the choice.

2) Sexual pleasure. I consider myself lucky not to have been born in a culture in which circumcision is automatically, almost unthinkingly accepted as the normal thing to do. I would hate to lose my foreskin, and I can FEEL how good it feels to have one in sex and in masturbation. The feeling of the foreskin sliding up and down his penis is one of the best feelings a man can have in sex, and a completely natural part of it that circumcised men miss out on.

3) Boys are born with a foreskin. It is a natural part of the male body. One of your reasons FOR circumcision is that it "makes it easy to keep the end of the penis clean and easier for the parents of infant boys to keep them clean." I cannot emphasize enough that it is so easy to clean a penis in a shower or bath, just like any other part of the body. Reports of uncleanness of uncircumcised men come from a culture that circumcises and are so completely distorted and exaggerated.

I find this reason to be so tragic, as you truly do seem to be such a “Cool Nurse,” and yet you are buying into this argument that has been repeated so many times that it becomes an ingrained and unchallenged belief.

It is not so difficult to clean a penis with a foreskin. Peel it back and wash it in the shower. Use soap and water, like you would with any other part of the body. It's so very easy to do, yet so many men have lost a sexual part of themselves just because of this silly argument. It may have made sense in older, less sanitary times, but not in this day and age of clean piped water, showers, soap and baths.

How difficult is it to clean the vagina? Would it make sense to mutilate girls' vaginas just to make it easier to clean them? Or to remove the ear lobes to make it easier to clean behind the ears? It seems ridiculous, doesn't it?

IMHO, the unspoken and tribal reasons I see FOR circumcision are:
1) "We already do it, it's our custom and it's what we've always done. End of story."
2) "Our religion says so."

Then any reason that can be found to justify or rationalize it is used in place of these unspoken beliefs--and by not being born with a penis, you really cannot understand the tremendous emotional significance it has to a male human being, in the same way that I could never truly understand what it is like to give birth.

I do, however, suspect that your educational input would probably suggest that the sexual experience is better for the circumcised man, based on the overall pro-circumcision tone of your article. I truly believe that sometimes we just select the arguments that suit our own prejudice or bias, in the same way that a debating team or lawyer will only select arguments that support their case, and reject evidence to the contrary. I wonder if your educational input will indeed suggest that circumcised men have a better sexual experience.

Of course you may prove me wrong here. I am second guessing; well I'll see. I have to say again that by having a foreskin I know how it contributes to my sexual pleasure in the same way that you know how your clitoris contributes to yours. And a woman with no clitoris would only be able to guess.

It is so common to circumcise little boys in the U.S.A. that it is a "culturally normal" thing to do to boys, and uncircumcised boys/men are comparatively rare in the States.

What tends to happen in a society is that a custom becomes acceptable simply because it is a custom--everybody does it, and people tend to make arguments in favor of what they are used to. This process is similar to justification of our mistakes and rationalization of our wrongs. As an extreme example of this, slave holders used to claim that their black slaves "didn't feel pain the same way we do." This rationalized what they were doing (e.g., whipping them) and made it easier for them to push away any guilt feelings they may have had. An obviously fantastic and false claim, but it did the job!

I have observed by reading literature--fictional or fantasy, written by females from around the U.S.A.--that an uncircumcised man is not regarded as sexually desirable, and this is peculiar to a culture where circumcision is the norm. It is probably difficult to imagine a culture in which the reverse were true, but there are many countries where circumcision is not widely practiced and the girls are used to uncircumcised men. In fact, it seems really strange to me to refer to men as "uncircumcised"--it only makes sense in a culture in which the majority of men are circumcised. To me, calling somebody "uncircumcised" is like saying that a person is "undecapitated" because he still has his head on!

I am now asking myself, “Why have I spent hours composing this email until 2:30 in the morning?”, and the answer has just occurred to me. In my view, your article encourages people to circumcise their young boys, and you are more influential than you may realize, and I wish that you wouldn't encourage the circumcision of babies so that more boys could grow up with the choice to keep and treasure their foreskin. It is not a dirty organ.

Paul--Sydney, Australia

Thanks Paul. I reviewed the article and updated it to be more balanced. Thanks for your letter and your opinion; you make some very good points.