Warning: I will use the words penis, foreskin and genitals in this blog post. If you are uncomfortable with that, feel free to go watch "Leave It To Beaver" and have a nice day :)
Do you know what a circumcision is? Like, do you REALLY know? Up until I was pregnant and faced with the decision of "to cut or not to cut", I was under the impression that circumcision was a very simple procedure where a
teeny tiny piece of skin was cut off from a newborn boy's penis. I assumed that it was only slightly painful and that it was really no big deal, just a quick clip and snip. Well boy (no pun intended) was I WRONG!
I am not going to post videos here, but if you Google around or search on YouTube you will come across videos of the procedure. I believe that if every mother in America would watch one of those videos prior to their son's birth, the circumcision rate would be down to 5%, assuming of course that 5% of women are viably insane. I got through about 30 seconds of a video before the blood curdling screams brought me to tears and I left the room. I'm not going to go into
too great of detail, but the first step of circumcision is strapping a soft, squishy newborn peanut who just spent nearly 10 months in a warm, velvety cocoon near his mother's heart, went through a very long, stressful transition to this world (labor)and strapping him down spread eagle to a cold, hard plastic gurney, so that he cannot move his arms or legs. Every parent knows that when a fresh-out-of-the-oven baby pops out from being in the fetal position for so long, they want to stay that way. That's why we swaddle them into little burritos, because they don't like to have their arms and legs extended right away. So strapping a fresh little bundle to a plastic board spread eagle sounds like torture to me. If I saw my son on one of those, that alone would be enough to make me punch the doctor and run away screaming with my son, and that's the best part of the whole procedure.
The foreskin is attached to the glans the way a fingernail is attached to a nail bed. That separation must occur before the actual cutting of the foreskin begins. HELLO?! Can we say PAIN?! I don't even need to describe how they do that. You can figure that one out. The foreskin is then clamped lengthwise to crush the blood vessels and minimize bleeding. Three clamps are left on for a moment to make sure this occurs. The middle clamp is then removed and scissors are used along the resulting "crush line", splitting the foreskin. A metal or plastic bell is placed over the glans to protect them from the actual removal of the foreskin, the foreskin is pulled over the bell, a clamp goes around it and is tightened to stop all blood flow to it and then it is cut off in a circular motion around the bell with a scalpel or scissors. The clamp is left in place for at least 5 minutes to allow the blood to clot along the cut line. Then the clamp and bell are removed and the penis is wrapped in plenty of Vaseline and gauze to prevent it from sticking to the diaper and/or getting urine and feces in the wound.
Does this sound absolutely barbaric to anybody else?! Well, surely there must at least be anesthetics used for this procedure, right? In the past they believed that infants didn't feel pain, so there was none, but the GENIUSES of the medical world eventually figured out that this is not true and now try to use some type of anesthetic. Most doctors will tell you that your baby will be numb and won't really feel it. This is not really the case. In the research I've done on it, it seems there are 3 options for the pain. One is a topical cream (EMLA) put on about an hour before the procedure to help numb the penis. This method is not very effective at all. We're talking surgery here. Surgery that is akin to ripping off your fingernail. A topical cream isn't gonna do diddly. The other 2 options are an injection of a local anesthetic, either in the foreskin or in the base of the penis to block the major nerve. However, because a 2 day old infant is so tiny, they cannot use an amount that is really going to be effective, for obvious reasons, and the injection itself is painful. To any men reading, would you like a needle stuck in your penis? I didn't think so. Well, your son doesn't either. No pain control method is 100 percent effective. Your baby
will suffer during and after the procedure. But it's okay, because they'll just give him Tylenol...don't get me started on that one.
I remember watching on Oprah years ago about the atrocity that goes on in Africa and the Middle and Far East with female circumcision. The outpouring of anger and disgust at this practice was (is) enormous. Yet, in America we are doing the same thing to our boys and it is just routine. What we actually call female circumcision is genital mutilation. Yet we don't call it this for boys. The definition of mutilate:
–verb (used with object),-lat·ed, -lat·ing.
1.to injure, disfigure, or make
imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts.
2.to deprive (a person or animal) of a limb or other
essential part.
Circumcision should be called mutilation, because that is what it is. We take a
perfect, whole, complete baby boy (the way God intended him to be), and remove an
essential part of his body. Why it is essential? Well, I'm glad you asked.
When a newborn boy's penis is mutilated it seems like such a small piece of skin. But everything on a newborn is small, that's why we marvel at their tiny toes, tiny nose, tiny ears. When that penis is fully matured a foreskin makes up 10-14 square inches of skin! Roughly the size of an index card. It makes up 50% or more of the skin system of the penis. Not only that, but it is filled with between 10,000 and 20,000 nerve endings! The glans, which were intended to be an
internal organ, are now external, and over many years as it is "exposed to the elements" the glans gradually becomes toughened and callused and a lot of the sensitivity that is supposed to be there is lost. Now, if you are a circumcised male, how would you know that?! You wouldn't, because it's gone. There's a lot more info in this area, but I'll keep it PG.
So, why on earth are American parents told this is just a routine procedure with great benefits? Of course we know that for some it is done for religious purposes, but I'm not going into that now. I'm talking medical reasons, which is the reason the majority of parents decide to circumcise. There have been lots of studies done in the past of the decreased risks of foreskin infection, UTI's, HIV, even cancer, but in recent years it has been shown that these studies were fatally flawed, yet no one passed that knowledge on to the public.
I think there is some subconscious fear among American Moms that either they or their son is going to fail to wash him properly, he is going to get some crazy foreskin infection and have to have his penis chopped off. This does not happen. The foreskin needs no more washing than warm water. Every boy figures out how to wash it just like every little girl figures out how to wash herself. It is
extremely rare for infection to occur, and in the unlikely event that it does, we are medically advanced enough to handle such infections these days. It's like saying that giving double mastectomies to every girl will 100% ensure that she will not get breast cancer, so we should do that to every newborn girl. That sounds ridiculous, but in effect that is what is going on.
82% of the world's men are intact. If there were such problems with infections with all the billions (literally) of men worldwide who aren't circumcised, don't you think we would know about it?
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued statements saying that "the data on potential benefits were insufficient to recommend the practice of neonatal non-therapeutic circumcision." This has led to many insurance companies no longer paying for circumcisions because it is seen as an "elective" or "cosmetic" surgery. So, why are we still doing this?
Now that we've see that this is optional surgery, has no real benefits and does much more harm than good to a man's body and sexual relations, I'm going to get to what bothers me the most about it. If someone were to take your daughter, strap her down and mutilate her genitals, the person who did it and all who stood around and watched would be seen as psychotic criminals and be locked away. The public would wish harm and death on them and they would forever be segregated from society. Yet, U.S. parents willingly sign a paper and hand their son off to be mutilated. There is something terribly wrong with this picture. The child is the patient. Neither the doctor nor the parent has the right to remove a perfectly working and essential body part from the patient without their consent. Under international law, a child "has the right to security of the person, freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, and the right to special protection during his minority. The child has a right to be consulted when decisions are made regarding his welfare." It just is so unethical and wrong. I don't get it. I am sad for all the circumcised men that I know who are missing 50% of their manhood, for the trauma they endured and the rights to their own bodies that were taken away. Most men in the U.S. are circumcised but because they do not realize exactly what it is they have lost, and the only other option they have is to express anger at their parents for making that decision, they ignore this issue.
Thankfully, the major trend of circumcising male newborn boys is on the decline. It is down from 80-85% in the 80's to around 60% and hopefully will continue to fall. Mothers should really ask themselves "What would my son want?" I don't believe there is any intact man on this planet who would wish that he was mutilated, but there are many activist groups of men who are extremely angry that they were
not left intact and are trying to spread the word.
Hey, if your son
is circumcised, it's all good. There's nothing you can do about it now so there's no use fretting over it. But at least do what you can to spread the word that male genital mutilation is not beneficial, it is harmful.
Bottom line: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
P.S. Isaac, if one day you read this (which I hope you will), I expect a large bouquet of flowers for this one ;)
