Foreskins : "put 'em on the block, chop 'em off, said the butcher, merry merry men are we...": "
The middle-class, worried well of America have always had a phobia about foreskins. “Chop it off” as early as possible was the usual approach and it is still unusual to see an adult American male who has not been circumcised. There was also (? still is) a widely held belief in the USA that boys who were circumcised were less likely to masturbate. This sort of silly propaganda, coupled with subtle,
sotto voce suggestions that American women
preferred circumcised men, had the predictable effect. Parents insisted on circumcision and doctors, or many doctors, did not refuse. Would they have refused if there were no fee involved? After much effort from some of the medical profession, common sense was beginning to have an effect and more new born babies were escaping the knife.
At the same time as the worried-well, middle class Americans were continuing to inflict surgery on their new born boys, a campaign was started by adult males who had been circumcised at birth and resented it:
The inalienable body ownership rights of infants and children continue to be addressed within the U.S. legal system in lawsuits asserting that the only person who can legally consent to a circumcision is a person making this personal decision for himself. The reports of dissatisfaction with parental circumcision decisions by circumcised men help to illustrate this point. Performed on their penises without their consent, thousands are now undergoing foreskin restoration, either medical or surgical, to reconstruct what they consider was violently taken from their bodies early in their lives. The Declaration of the First International Symposium on Circumcision acknowledges the unrecognized victims of circumcision and, in support of genital ownership rights of infants and children, states: 'We recognize the inherent right of every human being to an intact body. Without religious or racial prejudice, we affirm this basic human right.''
Due to the lifelong consequences of the permanent surgical alteration of children's genitals, it becomes imperative that children have the right to own their own reproductive organs and to preserve their natural sexual function.
Human sexuality
Despite the protests, middle America still does not like foreskins and so some new research in the
New England Journal of Medicine has been warmly welcomed:
Male circumcision significantly reduced the incidence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection among men in three clinical trials. We assessed the efficacy of male circumcision for the prevention of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and syphilis in HIV-negative adolescent boys and men.
NEJM March 2009
There are further articles to be found in the NEJM.
Prevention of Viral Sexually Transmitted Infections -- Foreskin at the Forefront. NEJM 360: 1349-1351.
An engaging pun. Foreskin at the Forefront. Ho, Ho. This article was written by Drs Golden and Wasserheit. Hmmm. Golden and Wasserheit. Might one or both of them be Jewish, I wonder?
Then in
Infectious Diseases there is an article entitled
Male Circumcision and STI Prevention: More Good News (sic)
We can see immediately where this article is coming from. Why is it “good news”? Must have been written by a women. If routine cicumcsion were to be re-introduced, most males would call this bad news. This article concludes
Studies conducted in Africa have shown that male circumcision decreases the rates of several STIs in men and in their female partners. Such benefits should guide public health policy for neonatal, adolescent, and adult male circumcision programs in areas such as Uganda, where prevalence of HIV infection is high. Whether circumcision confers similar benefits in other settings is unclear.
Source
Quite. A study conducted in Uganda has little relevance to Middlesex and Massachusetts. There is a more important point.The main cause of sexually transmitted diseases is casual or careless sex. Even if it were proven beyond doubt that foreskins might facilitate the transmission of bacteria and viruses (and you could make an argument that a foreskin might
protect against the transmission of bacteria) that in itself is not a reason for chopping them off. Exactly the same argument could be applied to the labia majora, minora and the whole vulva. Which of those should we remove?
Dr Colm O'Mahony, a sexual health expert from the Countess of Chester Foundation Trust Hospital in Chester, said the US had an 'obsession' with circumcision being the answer to controlling sexually transmitted infections.
He said: 'Sure, a dry skinned penis is a bit less likely to contract HIV, herpes and possibly genital warts but it will get infected eventually.'
Dr O'Mahony also said pushing circumcision as a solution sent the wrong message.
'It suggests that it is women who infect innocent men - let's protect the innocent men. And it allows men who don't want to change their irresponsible behaviour to continue to sleep around and not even use a condom.'
BBC
Why inflict this procedure on babies who
do feel pain and who cannot consent? The logic would be to leave the decision about circumcision until the child had reached the age of 16 and could then make up his own mind. Always remember that this odd, obsessive belief that foreskins are intrinsically dirty comes from a nation who are so prudish that they have to call a lavatory a “rest room”. Mind you, Mrs Crippen’s mother still likes to “pop round the corner” and she is not American.
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