1 10 240 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h2>Circumcision and sexual response: The verdict of the centuries</h2> <h3>Philo Judaeus, 1st Century</h3> To these [reasons for circumcision] I would add that I consider circumcision to be a symbol of two things necessary to our well being. One is the excision of pleasures which bewitch the mind. For since among the love-lures of pleasure the palm is held by the mating of man and woman, the legislators thought good to dock the organ which ministers to such intercourse, thus making circumcision the figure of the excision of excessive and superfluous pleasure, not only of one pleasure, but of all the other pleasures signified by one, and that the most imperious. The other reason is that a man should know himself and banish from the soul the grievous malady of conceit. Philo of Alexandria, Of the special laws, Book I (ii), in Works of Philo, trans. F. H. Colson, Loeb Classical Library, 1937, Vol. VII, p. 105 Philo of Alexandria (or Judaeus) was a leading Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria early in the 1st Century. His defence of circumcision was directed against other Jews who argued that the practice was barbaric and ought to be abandoned. <h3>A Greek physician, 2nd Century</h3> If the infant is male and it looks as though it has no foreskin, she [the nurse of midwife] should gently draw the tip of the foreskin forward or even hold it together with a strand of wool to fasten it. For if gradually stretched and continuously drawn forward it easily stretches and assumes its normal length, covers the glans and becomes accustomed to keep the natural good shape. Soranus's Gynecology, trans. and ed. Owsei Temkin, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956, p. 107 Soranus was the author of a famous manual of gynecology that remained in use for many centuries. His advice is consistent with the view of Greek and Roman physicians that a short or inadequate foreskin (one which did not provide ample coverage of the glans) was a physiological defect known as lipodermos. Their concern was to offer advice on how short foreskins could be lengthened. For further details, see <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges1/">Frederick Hodges, Phimosis in antiquity</a>. <h3>A famous saint, 4th Century</h3> Even leaving aside the necessary function of the parts, there is a harmonious congruence between them all, a beauty in their mutual arrangement and correspondence, such that one does not know whether the major factor in their creation was usefulness or beauty. Certainly we see that no part of the body has been created for the sake of usefulness which does not also have something to contribute to its beauty. And this would appear to us all the more clearly if we knew how all its parts are connected to one another and mutually related. Perhaps human ingenuity could discover these relations, if it were given the task of doing so, by observing what appears on the body's surface only. Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book xxii, chap. 24 St Augustine (354-430) was one of the most influential of the Church Fathers and perhaps the single most important source for Christian doctrine. He does not refer specifically to the foreskin in this passage, but his comments are as applicable to the genitals as to any other parts of the body. Elsewhere he is vehement that Christians should not practise circumcision. <h3>Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), 12th Century</h3> With regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible. It has been thought that circumcision perfects what is defective congenitally. This gave the possibility for everyone to raise an objection and to say: How can natural things be defective so that they need to be perfected from outside, all the more because we know how useful the foreskin is for the member? In fact this commandment has not been prescribed with a view to perfecting what is defective congenitally, but to perfecting what is defective morally. The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished. The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and has had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened. The sages, may their memory be blessed, have explicitly stated: "It is hard for a woman with whom an uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate from him." In my opinion this is the strongest of the reasons for circumcision. Who first began to perform this act, if not Abraham, who was celebrated for his chastity. Moses ben Maimon, Guide of the perplexed, Part III, Chapter 49 Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) was an important Jewish physician, philosopher and theologian. <h3>Isaac ben Yediah, 13th Century</h3> [A beautiful woman] will court a man who is uncircumcised in the flesh and lie against his breast with great passion, for he thrusts inside her for a long time because of the foreskin, which is a barrier against ejaculation in intercourse. Thus she feels pleasure and reaches orgasm first. When an uncircumcised man sleeps with her and then resolves to return to his home, she brazenly grasps him, holding on to his genitals, and says to him, "Come back, make love to me." This is because of the pleasure that she finds in intercourse with him, from the sinews of his testicles - sinew of iron - and from his ejaculation - that of a horse - which he shoots like an arrow into her womb. They are united without separating and he makes love twice and three times in one night. The sexual activity emaciates him of his bodily fat and afflicts his flesh, and he devotes his time entirely to women, an evil thing ... But when a circumcised man desires the beauty of a woman, and cleaves to his wife, or to another woman comely in appearance, he will find himself performing his task quickly, emitting his seed as soon as he inserts the crown .... He has an orgasm first; he does not hold back his strength. As soon as he begins intercourse with her, he immediately comes to a climax. She has no pleasure from him when she lies down or when she arises, and it would be better for her if he had not known her ... for he arouses her passion to no avail and she remains in a state of desire for her husband, ashamed and confounded, while the seed is still in her reservoir. She does not have an orgasm once a year, except on rare occasions, because of the great heat and the fire burning within her. Thus he who says, "I am the Lord's" will not empty his brain because of his wife or the wife of his friend. He will find grace and favour; his heart will be strong to seek out God. Quoted in David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From biblical Israel to contemporary America, New York, Basic Books, 1992, p. 94 Isaac ben Yediah was a Jewish philosopher living in France and a disciple of Maimonides. The passage is particularly interesting for its focus on women's sexual pleasure, which Yediah believes to be rare with a circumcised partner, and his assumption that circumcised men have little interest in prolonged sex-play and ejaculate faster. David Biale comments: "Isaac's understanding of the physiology of circumcision differs significantly from Maimonides'. The result is the same, however. Instead of serving as a highly erogenous zone that must be removed, the foreskin is rather a barrier that retards quick ejaculation .... [A circumcised male] expends his sexual desire faster and thus is able to return to his philosophy without exhausting his body" (p. 95). <h3>Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, late 15th Century</h3> Its [penis] highest part is called the glans [acorn] and the head of the penis. There it is compact, hard and dull to sensation so that it may not be injured in coitus. A certain soft skin surrounds this glans, it is called the prepuce, obedient to reversion [pulling back] at any rubbing. This prepuce in the lower part in the middle only along its length is attached the larger part of the glans by a certain pellicular member vulgarly called "the little thread" [il filello]. ... The functions of the prepuce and of the little skin ... are to furnish some delight in coitus and to guard the glans from external harm. The Hebrews do away with the prepuce in circumcisions, thus operating against the intent of nature. Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, A short introduction to anatomy, translated by L.R. Lind, University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 72-3 Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (c. 1460-1530) was the first scholar to publish an illustrated anatomical text. His appreciation that the most sensitive part of the penis was the foreskin and that the glans was relatively insensitive (even hard and dull) was typical of the medical understanding of male sexual physiology prevailing during the Renaissance and much of the seventeenth century. As anxiety about masturbation increased in the eighteenth century, this knowledge was lost, replaced by the erroneous view that the most sensitive part of the penis was the glans and that the main function of the foreskin was thus merely to guard it. Once it became accepted that the foreskin had no significant functions in its own right, it became much harder to mount an effective defence when the circumcisers came along in the nineteenth century. <h3>Gabriele Falloppio, 16th Century</h3> The great Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio (1523-62) observed that in the classical era it was considered shameful and unhealthy for the glans of the penis to be exposed and that Greek and Roman physicians then prescribed treatments for lengthening inadequate foreskins. He added that there were medical as well as aesthetic reasons for having a generous foreskin: What is done for appearance contributes also to generation and to greater pleasure therein; for the part is not itself lubricate if it has no foreskin, and yet in the venereal act it requires notable lubricity. For this very reason circumcision has been prescribed by God, lest the people indulge overmuch in the pleasure of love, and religion, divided by these pleasures, be neglected. Quoted in Alex Comfort, The anxiety makers: Some curious preoccupations of the medical profession, London, Nelson, 1967, p. 17; and in Felix Bryk, Circumcision in man and woman: Its history, psychology and ethnology, New York, Ethnological Press, 1934, p. 106 The modern historian Thomas Laqueur comments: "God ordained circumcision among the Jews, this text says, so that they might concentrate on his service rather than on the pleasures of the flesh. The notion that circumcision reduces pleasure, and thus the chance of conception, is fairly widespread." (Thomas Laqueur, Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, p. 271, n. 75) Comfort's book is not referred to much these days, but it should be: it is an acute and revealing catalogue of medical manias and dead-ends, and the harm done by doctors and other crusaders with moral bees in their bonnets. There is a particularly good chapter of the self-abuse phobia and its contribution to the rise of routine circumcision in the nineteenth century. <h3>William Harvey, 17th Century</h3> The circumcised are affected with less pleasure in coitus because the membrane is thickened and sensation blunted. Quoted in David Gollaher, Circumcision: A history of the world's most controversial surgery, New York, Basic Books, 2000, p. 113 William Harvey (1578-1657) was the English scientist and physician who discovered the circulation of the blood. <h3>Jean de Riolan, 17th Century</h3> The Skin [of the penis] is by itself, has no scarf-skin, and is terminated at the Root of the Nut, being Loose; it is there doubled in manner of an Head-stall, that it may infold the Nut or Head of the Yard and make the Fore-skin, which the Jews and Mahommedans do cut off, out of a Religious Ceremony. Such Circumcised Persons cannot give that delight to Women in their carnal Embraces, as those can who have the Fore-skin entire. And therefore their Women are better pleased with the carnal society of Christians. Jean de Riolan (1580-1657), A sure guide, or the best and nearest way to physick and chirurgery (Translation of Encheiridium anatomicum et pathologicum) (London, Printed by John Streater, 1671), p. 73 <h3>A 17th century divine and metaphysical poet</h3> That one principal reason of the commandment of circumcision was that the mark might be always a remembrance to them against intemperance and incontinency .... That part of the body is the most rebellious part; and that therefore only that part Adam covered, out of shame, for all the other parts he could rule ... ; to reproach man's rebellion to God, God hath left one part of man's body to rebel against him ... not only because all sin is derived upon us by generation, but because almost all other sins have relation to this .... In this rebellious part is the root of all sin, and therefore did that part need this stigmatical mark of circumcision to be imprinted upon it. ... Besides (for the Jews in particular) they were a nation prone to idolatry, and most, upon this occasion, if they mingled themselves with women of other nations: and therefore ... to defend them thereby against dangerous dalliances which might turn their hearts from God, God imprinted a mark in that part, to keep them still in mind of that law, which forbade them foreign marriages or any company of strange women ... lest they should degenerate from the nobility of their race, God would have them carry this memorial about them in their flesh. John Donne, Sermon preached on St Dunstan's Day (Feast of the Circumcision of Christ), 1 January 1624, in The sermons of John Donne, edited by Evelyn M. Simpson and George R. Potter, Berkeley, University of California Press, 10 volumes, 1953-62, Vol. 6, pp. 191-2 (spelling and punctuation modernised) John Donne (1572-1631), the metaphysical poet and preacher, needs no further introduction. As an Anglican divine who regarded it as a degrading mutilation, he was not advocating circumcision in this sermon, but explaining why God had ordained it for the Jews: they needed the physical stigma as a reminder of their moral duty to turn from the flesh and concern themselves with their religious obligations. In his view, Christians did not need this mark because they had been saved from original sin by Christ's sacrifice and, following St Paul, practised a "circumcision of the heart". This meant that they observed devout behaviour by virtue of their inner moral strength and did not require physical aids to continence. For further discussion, see James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews, New York, Columbia University Press, 1996 <h3>A 17th Century sex manual</h3> Giovanni Sinibaldi (or Johannes Sinibaldus) compiled an eccentric collection of folklore and observations on sexual matters, called Geneanthropeiae, published in Rome in 1642. Despite its many absurdities (some of which were jokes), he had a more accurate knowledge of human sexual anatomy and physiology than many doctors over the next 300 years. He understood that the main source of sexual pleasure in women was the clitoris and that its functional equivalent in men was not the glans of the penis, but the foreskin, which he held to be the seat of male sexual pleasure. He also considered that the foreskin contributed to women's pleasure during sexual intercourse, claiming that "the Jewish women, Turkesses and Mauritaniae, their husbands being shorn, make much of it, and most gladly accept the embraces of Christians". Quoted in Alex Comfort, The anxiety makers, p. 26 <h3>John Bulwer, 17th Century</h3> Moreover, that part which hangeth over the end of the foreskin, is moved up and down in coition, that in this attrition it might gather more heat, and increase the pleasure of the other sexe; a contentation of which they are defrauded by this injurious invention. For, the shortnesse of the prepuce is reckoned among the organical defects of the yard, whether it be original or [... ?] by an artificial procision of it. And although neither of these kinds of brevity doth incommode the action of the yard, which is extension and ejaculation of the seed; yet circumcision detracts somewhat from the delight of women, by lessening their titillation. Hence she in the epigram found herself aggrieved at this invention, thinking it had been more reasonable to have added than to have detracted from that organ. Hence also it is thought, these commonly passeth opinions of invitement, that the Jewish women desire copulation with Christians, rather than their own nation, and affect Christian carnality before circumcised venery, as the ingenious examiner of popular errors well notes [i.e., Thomas Browne, in Pseudoxia epidemica]. John Bulwer, Anthrometamorphosis: Man transform'd; or the artificial changeling (London 1650), pp. 213-14 God hath wonderfully, and most artificially framed the body of man. The excellency wherof is such, that the anthropomorphites held that God had such a body, and that ours was but the copie of his, because they knew God to be most excellent, they attributed to him such a body. ... Yet the blind impiety of some hath led them to such a height of presumption, as to find fault with many parts of this curious fabricke, and to question the wisdome of God in the contrivance thereof, upon such blasphemous fancies men have taken upon them an audacious art to forme and new shape themselves, altering the humane figure, and moulding it according to their own will and arbitrement, varying it after a wonderful manner, almost every nation having a particular whimsy as touching corporall fashions of their own invention. In which kind of mutations, they do schematize or change the organicall parts of their bodies into diverse depraved figures. ... ... but whatever is done against the decree of nature, is noxious and inconvenient for the body: yet they who practise this art, conceive that they become thereby more healthfull, strong and gallant. But the midwife ought to reduce to the natural state, and not to draw and force the bodies of infants into fantastick shapes. ... (Bulwer, Second edition, pp. 345-6) <h4>Circumcision "against the honesty of nature"</h4> For any Naturall end therefore, except in case of an Epidemicall disease, or Gangrene, to Circumcise, that is, to cut off the top of the uppermost skin of the secret parts, is directly against the honesty of nature, and an injurious unsufferable trick put upon her. As for Circumcision commanded by God, it was for a moral reason, and had an expresse command; otherwise, as a Grave Divine (Dr Whateley) expresseth it, in the case of Abraham, as a natural man, it would have seemed the most foolish thing in the world, matter of great reproach, which would make him, as it made his Posterity after him, to seeme ridiculous to all the world, it carried an apparance of much indecency and shamefulnesse, to cause all his servants to discover themselves unto him. Much more might have been alleadged against this Ordinance; what good could it do? What was any man the better, because he had wounded himself, and put his body to torture? And indeed, as Lactantius, Eucherius, Irenaeus, and all the Greek and Latin Fathers say, unless this mutilation of the flesh in the Jews did signifie the Circumcision of the heart, or had some figurative meaning in it, as the taking away of Orginall sin, it would have been a most unreasonable thing. For if God would have had only the Fores-skin cut off, he had from the beginning made man without a Prepuce. No little danger of life (also) they incurred in this case; for, the Judaical Circumcision was performed with a sharpe cutting stone, and not with any knife of iron steeled, a thing which was most dolorous, and whereby the young tender Infants sometimes got a Feaver, whereof they after dyed. ... Thevet, and many others, who have voyaged into the Countries where this Circumcision is used, do say, that they have seen store [sic: scores?] of young people dye, grown to indifferent stature, and young Children of eight daies old, only by being Circumcised, which may manifestly be proved by Sacred Histories. The Sons of Jacob, after they had fraudulently Circumcised all the Males of the City of Sichem, situate in the Land of Canaan, they tooke them the third day after their Circumcision and made them passe the edge of the Sword, for they well knew, that they were so sore and tormented with paine, as they could not stand upon their own defence. Bulwer, 3rd edition, 1653, pp. 378-80 The reference to the men of Sichem is to the massacre of the Hivites or Shechemites by the Hebrews, described in Genesis 34, 1-25. <h3>A seventeenth century midwife</h3> The skin of the Yard is long and loose that it may swell or slack as the Yard doth, and the foreskin of that skin sometimes covers the head of the Yard, and sometimes goes so far back that it will not come forward again. This skin in time of the Venerious action keeps the mouth of the womb close that no old air can get in, yet some think the action might be better performed without it; the Jews were commanded to be Circumcised, but now Circumcision avails not and is forbidden by the Apostle. I hope no man will be so void of reason and Religion, as to be Circumcised to make trial which of these two opinions is the best; but the world was never without some mad men, who will do anything to be singular: were the foreskin any hindrance to procreation or pleasure, nature had never made it, who made all things for these very ends and purposes. Jane Sharp, The midwives book. Or the whole art of midwifery discovered, London 1671 (facsimile reprint, New York, Garland, 1985), pp. 31-2 <h3>Aristotle's Master-piece, late 17th Century</h3> The Yard hath a Skin, and about the head thereof it is double, and that men call Praeputium, and this skin is moveable, for through his consecration the Spermatick matter is the better and sooner gathered together, and sooner cast forth from the Testicles: for by him is had the most delectation in the doing. And the foremost part of the head of the Yard before, is made of brawny flesh, the which if it be once lost, it can never be restored again, but it may be well skinned. from Aristotle's Master-Piece, London 1690, Ch. XXXV, p. 184 Yard is an old word for penis. Aristotle's Master-Piece was the most widely read text on sex and reproduction in eighteenth century England. For further information, see Roy Porter and Lesley Hall, The facts of life: Sexual knowledge in Britain 1650â€“1950, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995. In a later edition the description is more precise: The glans, which is at the end of the penis, [is] covered with a very thin membrane, by reason of which it is of a most exquisite feeling. It is covered with a preputium or foreskin, which in some covers the top of the yard quite close, in others not so, and by its moving up and down in the act of copulation brings pleasure both to the man and woman. Aristotle's complete masterpiece, in three parts, displaying the secrets of nature in the generation of man, London, 1749, facsimile reprint, New York, Garland, 1986, p. 13 <h3>A Restoration physician</h3> This Nut is surrounded with a Ring or Hoop, as with a Crown, and is cover'd with the preputium or Fore-skin, which is of a loose texture, for the better covering of the Nut, and furling itself up behind the Ring or Hoop, to uncover it; therefore serves as a Cap to the Nut, and to enlarge the pleasure that attends Enjoyment, for in the act of Coition it flips backwards and forwards, being tied together with a membranous String call'd the Fraenum or Bridle, and causes the greater pleasure thereby, both to the Man and the Woman; also in the act of Copulation it shuts up the Mouth of the Woman's Womb, and hinders the ingress of the cold Air, whereby Conception is the sooner forwarded and secured. The cutting of this Preputium or Fore-skin, is done by the Jews, and call'd Circumcision; by having of which taken away, â€˜tis said those People lose much of the pleasure in the act of Copulation, especially their women, who choose rather, for that reason, to lie with Christians than those of their own Nation. Gonosologium novum: Or a new system of all the secret infirmities and diseases natural, accidental and venereal in men and women, London 1709, Facsimile reprint, New York, Garland Publishing, 1985, p 12 <h3>An English medical dictionary, 1740s</h3> Its [penis] skin ... has a reduplication which makes a hood to the glans, or end of the penis, called praeputium, or the foreskin. The small ligament by which it is tied to the underside of the glans is called fraenum. The use of the praeputium is to keep the glans soft and moist, that it may have an exquisite sense. Robert James, A medicinal dictionary: including physic, surgery, anatomy, chymistry, and botany, in all their branches relative to medicine, 3 vols, London, 1743-45, Vol. II, entry for "Generatio" <h3>A great English surgeon, late eighteenth century</h3> The prepuce is no more than a doubling of the skin of the penis when not erected, for then it becomes too large for the penis, by which provision the glans is covered and preserved when not necessary to be used, whereby its feelings are probably more acute. When the penis becomes erect it in general fills the whole skin, by which the doubling forming the prepuce in the non-erect state is unfolded, and is employed in covering the body of the penis. John Hunter, A treatise on the venereal disease, London 1786, p. 221 Hunter was an acute and down to earth observer, and one of the very few medical writers to notice that the slack or redundancy provided by the foreskin was necessary for comfortable erections, when the penis could increase in size by several hundred per cent. Even today, many circumcising doctors cut off so much skin that, when the penis reaches its full size after puberty, erections are uncomfortable, painful (from splitting of the remaining shaft skin and bleeding) or, in severe cases, impossible. (In a recent Australian legal case, a man was awarded substantial damages when the hospital where he was circumcised admitted liability for the injury and loss of sexual function arising from such a thorough job.) Hunter was possibly the only eighteenth century physicians not to accept the new medical wisdom that masturbation was a major cause of disease. In response to the claim that it induced impotence, he famously commented that he doubted if a conditions so rare could arise from a practice so general. <h3>Nahman of Bratslav, 18th Century</h3> Copulation is difficult for the true zaddik. Not only does he have no desire for it at all, but he experiences real suffering in he act, suffering which is like that which the infant undergoes when he is circumcised. The very same suffering, to an even greater degree, is felt by the zaddik during intercourse. Quoted in David Biale, Eros and the Jews, p. 135. Nahman (1772-1810) was a follower of the highly ascetic branch of Judaism known as Hasidism, established in the eighteenth century as a reaction against liberalising tendencies influenced by the European Enlightenment. Biale comments: "Once again, circumcision stands for the excision of sexual pleasure, but even more it represents genital pain, perhaps, if one may speculate, castration fear." <h3>William Acton, 1865</h3> Many foreign writers maintain ... that the chief source of sexual pleasure resides in the glans penis. That this organ has a considerable share in the sensations experienced is very true, but, from certain cases that have come under my notice, I cannot help thinking that it has less to do with them than is generally supposed. Some time ago I attended an officer on his return from India, who had lost the whole of his glans penis. The patient, completely recovered his health, the parts healed, and a considerable portion of the body of the penis was left. I found, to my surprise, that the sexual act was not only possible, but that the same amount of pleasure as formerly was still experienced. He assured me, indeed, that the sexual act differed in no respect (as far as he could detect) from what it had been before the mutilation. William Acton, The functions and disorders of the reproductive organs in childhood, youth, adult age and advanced life, 3rd London edition, Philadelphia, Lindsay and Blakiston, 1865, pp. 114-15 Circumcision is never likely to be introduced amongst us, and there is no doubt that cleanliness will suffice in most cases to remove all the ill effects arising from the existence of the prepuce; but that the prepuce in man (at least in civilized life) is the cause of much mischief, medical men are pretty well agreed. It affords an additional surface for the excitement of the reflex action, and ... aggravates an instinct rather than supplies a want. In the unmarried, it additionally excites the sexual desires, which it is our object to repress; and although it is possible that it may increase the pleasure derived from the act of sexual congress, there is no evidence that Jews, and those who have undergone circumcision, do not enjoy as much pleasure in the copulative act as the uncircumcised; - at any rate, the former do not complain. In a state of nature the foreskin is a complete protection the glans penis; nevertheless, to the sensitive, excitable, civilized individual, the prepuce often becomes a source of serious mischief. In the East, the ... secretions between it and the glans [are] likely to cause irritation and its consequences; and this danger was perhaps the origin of circumcision. That the existence of the foreskin predisposes to many forms of syphilis, no one can doubt; and ... I am fully convinced that the excessive sensibility induced by a narrow foreskin ... is often the cause of emissions, masturbation, or undue excitement of the sexual desires. Functions and disorders, p. 22 In advanced age the prepuce may be necessary to copulation. Without it there might be difficulty in exciting the flagging powers. Functions and disorders, p. 23 William Acton was the leading authority on male sexuality in mid-Victorian Britain. <h3>A cure for masturbation, 1867</h3> A Jewish surgeon informs us that the practice in question [masturbation] is virtually unknown in Jewish schools. It is well known that the removal of the foreskin diminishes the temptation and the facility. The skin of the glans becomes harder and less sensitive. The learned Dr Copland and many other writers express regret that circumcision was ever discontinued. ... we have known masturbation effected habitually by a sickly child of three; but ... eczema and ascarides were the exciting causes. Nevertheless, the removal of the prepuce effected a complete cure. Medical Times and Gazette (London), 1867 (1), 19 January, p. 79 Considering that circumcision had never been practised in Britain before the 1850s, the reference to its being "discontinued" is puzzling. Ascarides are a type of worm which can inhabit the rectum. <h3>An English scholar, 1870s</h3> The pleasure of the sexual union is greatly increased by the prepuce, for which reason women prefer cohabiting with those who retain it than with the Turks or the Jews. John Davenport, Curiositates eroticae physiologiae, or tabooed subjects freely treated, London, 1875, reprinted as Aphrodisiacs and other love stimulants, edited by Alan Hull Watson, London, 1965, p. 179. He is quoting an authority referred to as Bauer. The original source could be Sinibaldi or Falloppio (see above). <h3>Masturbation again, 1874</h3> I have now under notice four children in one family, varying from seven to twelve years, and each child continues to practise it [masturbation] at every convenient opportunity. ... The treatment I have adopted has been blistering the penis, or the application of a hot iron, so as to render the organ excessively sensitive to the touch; also, I have tried the influence of introducing a sound. Bromide of potassium, I have sometimes thought, has limited the tendency. But I will now speak of the heroic treatment - I mean circumcision: and if you can gain the consent of the friends, the sooner it is performed the better. Removal of the prepuce will cause the glans to become hardened in texture and so limit its sensibility, besides the mortal effect of the operation, which is not readily forgotten. In a large Jewish institution with which I am connected, masturbation is unknown. Letter, British Medical Journal, 1874 (2), 12 December, p. 759 It is typical that the physician writing this letter did not think it necessary to secure the consent of the patients on whom he proposed to operate; apparently, even parental consent was not needed to blister the boys' penises with hot metal rods. <h3>A Jewish surgeon, 1874</h3> That the deprivation of the prepuce induces premature sexual excitement and onanism is quite opposed to experience and fact. On the contrary, the removal of the prepuce reduces in an extraordinary degree the sensitiveness of the glans penis; and, apart from biblical reasons, which have necessarily no place in your journal, I believe that the intention of the rite was to enhance and advance as far as possible the chastity of the race by blunting mechanically the sensibility of the organ of sexual appetite. Letter, Lancet, 12 December 1874, p. 856 The surgeon was responding to a notice in the previous issue of the Lancet about a pamphlet against circumcision by a Jewish physician in Vienna, Dr Levit. <h3>Sir Richard Burton, 1880s</h3> [Female circumcision] is the proper complement of male circumcision, evening the sensitiveness of the genitories by reducing it equally in both sexes: an uncircumcised woman has the venereal orgasm much sooner and oftener than a circumcised man, and frequent coitus would be injurious to her health. From Burton's notes to his edition to the Book of a thousand nights and a night, in Love, war and fancy: The customs and manners of the East from writings on the Arabian nights, edited by Kenneth Walker, London, 1964, p. 107 <h3>A US doctor, 1882</h3> Whether it [circumcision] be curative or not it is conservative, and removes one source of irritation from an exquisitely sensitive organ. I would favour circumcision, however, independent of existing disease, as a sanitary precaution. ... (2) It is acknowledged to be useful as a preventive of masturbation. ... (5) It probably promotes continence by diminishing the pruriency of the sexual appetite. Dr J.M. McGee, "Genital irritation as a cause of nervous disorders", Mississippi Valley Medical Monthly, 1882, quoted in David Gollaher, Circumcision: A history of the world's most controversial surgery, p. 85. Dr McGee also claimed that circumcision alleviated the symptoms of tubercular meningitis and was a complete cure for brass poisoning. <h3>A US professor, 1887</h3> The operation of circumcision, when performed in early life, generally lessens the voluptuous sensations of sexual intercourse, and that even when done in later years the same result sometimes follows. ... The information afforded us by some who have been circumcised soon after puberty, and who have subsequently indulged in sexual intercourse, is to the effect that when there had been a possibility of uncovering the glans during intercourse, the operation had very decidedly diminished the voluptuous feelings afterwards experienced. I believe that nature intended the glans to be habitually nearly covered by the prepuce when the penis is in a non-erect state, and that this is necessary for the preservation of the full degree of sensibility of the glans, and that circumcision, by allowing the glans to be constantly exposed to the atmosphere and to friction from the clothing, has the effect of toughening the membrane covering it and of diminishing its sensibility. It acts just as exposure to all kinds of weather and hard manual labour do on hands that have hitherto been kept gloved .... The skin is rendered thick and rough, and the tactile sensibility of the fingers is greatly lessened. William A. Hammond, Sexual impotence in the male and female, Detroit, 1887, facsimile reprint, New York, Arno, 1974, pp. 272-3 Hammond was Professor of the Diseases of the Mind and the Nervous System at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. <h3>A critic of circumcision, 1890</h3> Although plainly not absolutely essential to the due increase in bulk of the penis, or to the subsequent performance of its functions, it is prima facie obvious that the prepuce must be intended to subserve some useful purpose. That, according to Dr Willard (Keating's Cyclopaedia of the diseases of children) "is to protect the head of the organ, during the years when the penis is but a portion of the urinary apparatus; and later, by its friction over the sensitive corona, to enhance the ejaculatory orgasm". Herbert Snow, The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital abnormality, London, Churchill, 1890, p. 16 <h3>Masturbation yet again, 1891</h3> Dr Vanier ... looks upon the prepuce as the most frequent cause of onanism. "If the prepuce is lax, its mobility produces an irritation to the highly irritable and sensitive nervous system of the child by the titillation in its movements on the glans; if too tight ... it compresses the glans and by its irritation it leads the child to seize the organ". So that in either case he look upon the prepuce, through the sensitiveness it retains and induces in the glans, as the principal cause of masturbation. ... In children who have not yet the suggestions of sexual desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may ... either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the class; neither in infancy are they as liable to priapism during sleep as those that are uncircumcised. P.C. Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance, Philadelphia and London, F.A. Davis, 1891, p. 224 Remondino was one of the most ardent crusaders for universal infant circumcision before Edgar Schoen and Brian Morris, and just as scientific. His lengthy book on the subject, significantly stressing moral as well as physical reasons, was also a diatribe against the foreskin as a "moral outlaw" as well as a pathogenic feature of the male body which nature ought to have abolished. <h3>A US doctor, 1891</h3> In consequence of circumcision the epithelial covering of the glans becomes dry, hard, less liable to excoriation and inflammation, and less pervious to venereal viruses. The sensibility of the glans is diminished, but not sufficiently to interfere with the copulative function or to constitute an objection. ... It is well authenticated that the foreskin ... is a fruitful cause of the habit of masturbation in children. Jefferson C. Crossland MD, "The hygiene of circumcision", New York Medical Journal, Vol. 53, 1891, pp. 484-5 <h3>A pioneering woman doctor, 1890s</h3> A serious warning against the unnatural practice of circumcision must here be given. A book of "Advice to mothers" by a Philadelphia doctor was lately sent to me. This treatise began by informing the mother that her first duty to her infant boy was to cause it to be circumcised! Her fears were worked upon by an elaborate statement but false statement of the evils which would result to the child were this mutilation not performed. I should have considered this mischievous instruction unworthy of serious consideration, did I not observe that it has lately become common among certain short-sighted but reputable physicians to laud this unnatural practice, and endeavour to introduce it into a Christian nation. Circumcision is based upon the erroneous principle that boys, i.e. one half of the human race, are so badly fashioned by Creative Power that they must be reformed by the surgeon; consequently that every male child must be mutilated by removing the natural covering with which nature has protected one of the most sensitive portions of the human body. The erroneous nature of such a practice is shown by the fact that although this custom (which originated amongst licentious nations in hot climates) has been carried out for many hundreds of generations (by Moslems and Jews), yet nature continues to protect her children by reproducing the valuable protection in man and all the higher animals, regardless of impotent surgical interference. Appeals to the fears of uninstructed parents on the grounds of cleanliness or of hardening the part are entirely fallacious and unsupported by evidence. It is a physiological fact that the natural lubricating secretion of every healthy part is beneficial, not injurious to the part thus protected, and that no attempt to render a sensitive part insensitive is either practicable or justifiable. The protection which nature affords to these parts is an aid to physical purity by affording necessary protection against constant external contact of a part which necessarily remains keenly sensitive; and bad habits in boys and girls cannot by prevented by surgical operations. Where no malformation exists, bad habits can only be forestalled by healthy moral and physical education. The plea that this unnatural practice will lessen the risk of infection to the sensualist in promiscuous intercourse is not one that our honourable profession will support. Parents, therefore, should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral health. Elizabeth Blackwell, The human element in sex: Being a medical enquiry into the relation of sexual physiology to Christian morality (1884; 2nd edition, London, 1894), pp. 35-6 Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was born in Britain and emigrated in childhood to the United States, where she became the first woman to take a medical degree. She later practised in both the USA and Britain, where she played a significant role in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act during the 1880s. She also denounced masturbation and fornication but believed they should be controlled by moral willpower. See American National Biography (1999), Vol. 2 <h3>An enthusiast for circumcision, 1893</h3> It is a question whether it is desirable to instruct boys how to withdraw the foreskin in order to keep the inner surfaces clean. As a matter of fact it is rarely if ever done, and hence the secretion, perspiration, dirt and so forth remain .... But if this want of cleanliness does not produce [balanitis] ... the irritation it occasions ... is very liable to give rise to ideas ... in young boys which ... it is to their advantage to be kept in ignorance of. The glans penis is very vascular, and is well supplied with nerves ... and the slightest irritation is sufficient to cause a great deal of discomfort. It is not uncommon to see a child dragging at the foreskin as a consequence. As age advances the habit of masturbation is very frequently to be attributed to it. But after circumcision the glans penis is always dry .... It loses much of its acute sensitiveness, and all unnatural irritation being guarded against, the mind is not directed towards the sexual organs, and a decided check is put to one of the vices only too commonly practised in early manhood. ... The cleanliness and chastity which circumcision undoubtedly promotes is probably the reason why the operation has been performed for so many centuries, and may also account for its acquiring a religious significance. M. Clifford, Circumcision: Its advantages and how to perform it, London, Churchill, 1893, pp. 6-8 It was one of many Victorian myths about sexuality that boys got into the habit of masturbation as a result of discomfort ("irritation") caused by "secretions" under the foreskin, rather than for the more obvious reason that playing with their penises, particularly if they were still covered with the sensitive tissue that was removed by circumcision, was highly pleasurable. It is interesting to note that Australia's leading intellectual champion of routine circumcision today subscribes to this myth, simultaneously admitting his concurrence with nineteenth century arguments for circumcision, yet denying that the desire to discourage masturbation was one of them. Brian Morris writes: "The concept ... that circumcision was used in this era to prevent masturbation is in fact a falsehood that has been promoted by anti-circumcision groups. The real reason was that it prevented smegma, itching and so on, and thus stopped males scratching their genitalia. The fact that such excessive attention to a penis to relieve the irritation might have led to arousal and thus masturbation was purely coincidental. The Victorians cited many of the same medical conditions associated with uncircumcised penises as do people today." Brian Morris, In favour of circumcision, Sydney, UNSW Press, 1999, p. 57 It's almost a paraphrase of Clifford (and dozens of other anti-masturbation fanatics). Professor Morris's reference to "excessive attention to a penis" suggests that he disapproves of masturbation as much as the Victorians themselves. It is strange that he then denies Clifford's conclusion that circumcision promotes chastity. And it's odd how the level of literacy among circumcision advocates has not improved much over the century. <h3>A British doctor, 1900</h3> The only physiological advantage which the prepuce can be supposed to confer is that of maintaining the penis in a condition susceptible to more acute sensation than would otherwise exist. It may increase the pleasure of coition and the impulse to it: but these are advantages which in the present state of society can well be spared. If in their loss increase in sexual control should result, one should be thankful. Jonathan Hutchinson, "Our London letter", Medical News, Vol. 77, 1900, p. 707 Hutchinson (1828-1913) was one of the most distinguished doctors in England, President of the Royal College of Surgeons and knighted in 1908. <h3>Another British doctor, 1900</h3> It has been urged as an argument against the universal adoption of circumcision that the removal of the protective covering of the glans tends to dull the sensibility of that exquisitely sensitive structure and thereby diminishes sexual appetite and the pleasurable effects of coitus. Granted that this may be true, my answer is that, whatever may have been the case in days gone by, sensuality in our time needs neither whip nor spur, but would be all the better for a little more judicious use of curb and bearing-rein. E. Harding Freeland, "Circumcision as a preventive of syphilis and other disorders", Lancet, 1900 (2), 29 December, pp. 1869-70 <h3>Another US doctor, 1901</h3> Another advantage of circumcision ... is the lessened liability to masturbation. A long foreskin is irritating per se, as it necessitates more manipulation of the parts in bathing. ... This leads the child to handle the parts, and as a rule, pleasurable sensations are elicited from the extremely sensitive mucous membrane, with resultant manipulation and masturbation. The exposure of the glans penis following circumcision ... lessens the sensitiveness of the organ. Ernest G. Mark, "Circumcision", American Practitioner and News, Vol. 31, 1901, p. 231 <h3>British Medical Journal, 1902</h3> The third advantage claimed for circumcision is that the sexual appetite is thereby diminished. This, which seems prima facie likely, is supported to some extent by the facts observable among Jews; on the other hand, Mohammedans, who are also circumcised, are credited with very strong sexual passions, although for a fair judgement it would be necessary to compare them with uncircumcised nations of kindred race, and living under the same climatic conditions. It is likely that, of the various advantage supposed to follow circumcision, this diminution of sexual passion was the one which appealed the most strongly to the mind of the Jewish legislators. It is at least noteworthy that this is insisted on by Maimonides, while the Jewish religion attached the highest importance to the prohibition of sexual, and especially of unnatural sexual, vice; and the chapter of Leviticus dealing with this subject has for many centuries been read in the Synagogue on the most solemn holy day of the Jewish year. "The hygienic value of circumcision", British Medical Journal, 1902 (2), 26 July, p. 271 <h3>An Islamic Turkish physician has his say, 1906</h3> The irritation which is caused by the inflammation of the distal part of the [uncut] penis leads to erection and release through ejaculation, to enuresis, to onanism and pederasty with their psycho-pathological reactions, and finally to moral crimes. A wise Moslem writer says: "It is exactly these fundamental effects and their influence upon men that the Moslem lawgivers take into consideration in establishing the strict performance of circumcision." [A pious Moslem told him:] "The reduction of sexual pleasure is just what circumcision aims at. Too great sexual excitement puts man on an equal plane with the lower animals, impels him to wicked moral aberrations and tragic crime. On the other hand, the complete abolition of sexual feelings would make men non-organic beings. We men enjoy coitus just enough." Nuri Bey Risa, "Studien uber die rituale Beschneidung im osmanische Reiche", Sammlung klinischer Vortrage, No. 438, Leipzig, 1906, quoted in Felix Bryk, Circumcision in man and woman: Its history, psychology and ethnology, New York, Ethnological Press, 1934, pp. 102-3 <h3>An American sex-hygienist and sterilization advocate, 1912</h3> The prepuce, or foreskin, is the part of the skin of the organ which is folded over the glans. It is often long or constricted, requiring circumcision. In general, it may be said that the prepuce is a useless, uncleanly and often harmful evolutionary vestige. The history of the Jews proves this. ... Circumcision is a most commendable practice. Whatever religious views one may hold, it must be conceded that Moses, or whoever devised the operation, was a hygienist of no mean pretensions. The Jews are social hygienists in many ways, some of which might well be imitated by the Gentiles, but none of their religious customs is quite so sensible as the rite of circumcision. Circumcision promotes cleanliness, prevents disease, and by reducing the over-sensitiveness of the parts tends to relieve sexual irritability, thus correcting any tendency which may exist to improper manipulations of the genital organs and the consequent acquirement of evil sexual habits, such as masturbation. Last, but not least, early circumcision insures proper development of the parts. It is a matter of common observation among physicians that the Jew is, upon the average, less frequently sexually mal-developed than the Gentile. The admirable custom of circumcision may have had much to do with the extraordinary virility and endurance of the Jews. It is strange that with the experience and example of this great race before him, the Gentile has not generally adopted as a hygienic custom the operation of circumcision. It is the opinion of many eminent physicians that parents who do not have an early circumcision performed upon their boys are almost criminally negligent. In this opinion I fully concur. The prepuce is a structure the function of which evolution of the race has made obsolete. It was once urgently necessary for the protection of the sensitive member of which it forms a covering. Clothing, however, has relieved us of the necessity of a means of protection which primitive man or his prehuman ancestors found very essential. Phimosis, or tight prepuce, is often met with in uncircumcised persons. This condition renders cleanliness impossible and favours infection and inflammation. The irritation produced by a tight prepuce may produce retarded growth, extreme nervousness and irritability, chorea, simple convulsions, or even periodic attacks resembling epilepsy. I have met with cases resembling diabetes, due to phimosis. The fretfulness and crying of young children is often due to preputial irritation - so often that the examination of young children is never complete until the prepuce has been inspected. Circumcision is demanded in all cases of children with nervous diseases. Circumcision should be performed early, the advice of the family physician being the safest guide as to the the time of the operation. Circumcision is often necessary in adults for the cure of venereal or other disease of the sexual organs. Many complication arise in venereal infections which would have been avoided if circumcision had been performed in early life. G. Frank Lydston, Sex hygiene for the male, and what to say to the boy (Chicago: Hamming Publishing Co., 1912), pp. 136, 158-60 G. Frank Lydston MD was Professor of the Surgical Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs and Syphilology at the State University of Illinois. He was the author of many books and articles on sexual pathology and a prominent advocate of both castration of Negroes for sexual offences and of surgical eugenics. This meant sterilization of criminals and other forms of the unfit as a means of controlling "social disease". For further details, see Philip Reilly, The surgical solution: A history of involuntary sterilization in the United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 37-8. Lydston was also a keen supporter of Cesar Lombroso's theories of hereditary criminality and of his belief that character could be determined by skull measurements, the so-called science of craniometry. See G. Frank Lydston, "Studies of criminal crania", in Addresses and Essays, 2nd edn (Louisville, Ky: Renz and Henry, 1892), pp. 65-92. He was frequently cited as an authority by other circumcision advocates, such as Abraham Wolbarst, particularly in his "Universal circumcision as a sanitary measure", Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 62, 1914, p. 95 <h3>An American anti-foreskin agitator, 1914</h3> Prevention of masturbation was the fourth of seven reasons that Dr Abraham Wolbarst gave as to why circumcision was a medico-moral imperative for the twentieth century: "It is a well known fact that the foreskin is a frequent factor in the causation of masturbation, not alone in children but in adults as well. This has been amply proved by the fact that circumcision has become recognised as a most effective remedy in these cases." Abraham Wolbarst, "Universal circumcision as a sanitary measure", Journal of the American Medical Association 62, 10 January 1914, 92-97 N.B. Brian Morris and Co still cite Wolbarst as an authority for the contention that the foreskin should always be removed as a precaution against penile cancer. <h3>Circumcision and masturbation, 1915</h3> There are a hundred arguments in favour of circumcision, but to speak of them all in detail would require a book or at least a good-sized essay. At this time I wish to touch merely upon one point, the relation of the prepuce to masturbation. I am convinced that the prepuce is one of the great factors in causing masturbation in boys, and many cases of masturbation cannot be treated successfully until the prepuce is removed. Here is the dilemma we are in: If we do not teach the growing boy to pull the prepuce back and cleanse the glans there is danger of smegma collecting and of adhesions and ulcerations forming, which in their turn will cause irritation likely to lead to masturbation. If we do teach the boy to pull the prepuce back and cleanse his glans, that handling alone is sufficient gradually and almost without the boy's knowledge to initiate him in to the habit of masturbation. While masturbation is not the terrible calamity that it was once thought to be, and while we recognize the fact now that most children recover from it without permanent effects, still we want to avoid everything possible that may be a factor in the cause of masturbation, and the prepuce unquestionably being such a factor, it should come off. Therefore, once more, off with the prepuce! William J. Robinson MD, "Circumcision and masturbation", Medical World, Vol. 33, October 1915, p. 390 <h3>Yet another US doctor, 1915</h3> Circumcision not only reduces the irritability of the child's penis, but also the so-called passion of which so many married men are so extremely proud, to the detriment of their wives and their married life. Many youthful rapes could be prevented, many separations, and divorces also, and many an unhappy marriage improved, if this unnatural passion was cut down by a timely circumcision. L.W. Wuesthoff, MD, "Benefits of circumcision", Medical World, Vol. 33, 1915, p. 434 <h3>Yet another British doctor, 1935</h3> I suggest that all male children should be circumcised. This is "against nature", but that is exactly the reason why it should be done. Nature intends that the adolescent male shall copulate as often and as promiscuously as possible, and to that end covers the sensitive glans so that it shall be ever ready to receive stimuli. Civilization, on the contrary, requires chastity, and the glans of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. Thus the adolescent has his attention drawn to his penis much less often. I am convinced that masturbation is much less common in the circumcised. With these considerations in mind it does not seem apt to argue that "God knows best how to make little boys". R.W. Cockshutt, "Circumcision", British Medical Journal, 1935 (2), 1935, p. 764 <h3>A US obstetrician, 1941</h3> Those in favour of routine circumcision claim that: (1) It make care of the infant's genitals easier for the mother. (2) It does not necessitate the handling of the penis by the infant's mother, or the child himself in later years, and therefore does not focus the male's attention on his own genitals. Masturbation is considered less likely. ... Those who oppose routine circumcision claim that: ... (3) Circumcision causes some blunting of male sexual sensitivity because in the circumcised the skin on the glans become thicker. However, this supposed disadvantage is often listed as an advantage. ... One nice thing about circumcision is that when it is done it is finished. The foreskin never grows back. Alan F. Guttmacher MD, "Should the baby be circumcised?", Parents Magazine, Vol. 9, September 1941, pp. 76, 78 It is striking how closely Guttmacher's expression "does not focus the male's attention on his own genitals. Masturbation is considered less likely" resembles the words of Mr Clifford back in 1893: "the mind is not directed towards the sexual organs, and a decided check is put to one of the vices only too commonly practised in early manhood". His ghoulish concluding comment reminds one of Professor Morris, who enjoys deriding those who seek foreskin restoration; in his perverse view, that really is genital mutilation. <h3>A different British doctor, 1949</h3> There remain a number of more or less trivial factors which are sometimes mentioned as reasons why infant circumcision is desirable: difficulties in keeping the uncircumcised parts clean, or the supposed aesthetic or erotic superiority of the shorn member. In order to fulfil the intention of this paper an inquiry on these points should have been made amongst a group of uncircumcised men. This was not attempted, although with regard to the last two of the factors mentioned it should be stated that, whenever the subject as been broached in male company, those still in possession of their foreskin have been forward in their insistence that any differences which may exist in such matters operate emphatically to their own advantage. Moreover, if there were sensible disadvantages in being uncircumcised, one would expect that the fathers of candidates for circumcision would sometimes register their feelings in the matter. Yet in interviewing the parents of several hundred infants referred for circumcision I have met but one father who wished his son circumcised because of his disagreeable experience of the uncircumcised state. ... So little did the father's personal experience seem important that one quarter of the mothers did not even know whether their husbands were or were not circumcised. These facts provide some evidence that few uncircumcised men have cause to regret their state. Douglas Gairdner, "The fate of the foreskin: A study of circumcision", British Medical Journal, 1949 (2), 24 December, p. 1437 Before the 1940s there was no scientific study of the anatomy or functions of the penis, and it was wrongly believed that infants with adhesive or constricted prepuces were suffering from phimosis and required immediate circumcision. When Gairdner studied the question he proved that this was the normal condition of the infant penis and found that the foreskin of newborn babies was retractable in only 4 per cent of cases, and in only 20 per cent at six months. He showed that the penis was not fully developed at birth, and that separation of the foreskin from the glans was a gradual process, taking anything from a few months to six years to complete, and sometimes longer. Gairdner also showed that the biological function of the foreskin in babies was to protect the glans and urethral opening from urine, faeces and other forms of dirt and that its own secretions were mild and beneficial. He concluded that true phimosis was very rare (requiring surgery in few cases), and that none of the medical reasons advanced for neonatal circumcision was valid. Gairdner's article had a significant impact in Britain and New Zealand, where the incidence of infant circumcision declined rapidly. It was little read in Australia or the USA, where doctors continued their ignorant and harmful practices. The full text of Dr Gairdner's article is available at www.cirp.org/library/general/gairdner <h3>Two confused and barely literate US doctors, 1953</h3> Those reasons which are rightfully subject to debate include: (a) Circumcision will reduce the incidence of onanism .... (b) Circumcision will increase the male libido. The vast progeny of the Jewish males attest to [sic] the fact that functionally, at least, [sic] performance is not diminished by this operation. ... One of the edicts issued from Rome forbade circumcision on the grounds [sic] that in this way the Hebrew population would thus [sic] be controlled. On the other hand, critics of circumcision flatly state that libido is decreased by the procedure. (c) Longevity, immunity to nearly all physical and mental illnesses, increased physical vigour etc. R.L. Miller and D.C. Snyder, "Immediate circumcision of the newborn male", American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Vol. 65, 1953, p. 3 One can scarcely believe that such illiterate drivel was published in a serious medical journal. The impartial observer might conclude that both the scientific competence and the prose of circumcision advocates was in greater need of drastic repair than the genitals of healthy infants. <h3>A US sex "expert", 1969</h3> Circumcision adds to sexual pleasure in many ways. First, a cheesy, bad-smelling substance called smegma accumulates between the prepuce and glans. The staggering odour of smegma is capable of cancelling the world's most powerful aphrodisiac. With the prepuce gone, there is no place for the smegma to accumulate. Second, the nerve supply of the prepuce is insignificant compared with that of the glans itself. With the head of the organ uncovered and in direct contact with the vagina, far more exquisite sensation is possible. Although the foreskin is designed to retract over the glans during intercourse, it is sometimes adherent and prevents total contact. David Reuben MD, Everything you always wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask, New York, 1969 You would have been better off in blissful ignorance than asking Dr Reuben, since just about everything he wrote about male sexuality in this best-selling book was wrong. His comments on the comparative sensitivity of the foreskin and glans are the exact reverse of the truth: it is the foreskin which is richly supplied with nerves and the glans which is relatively insensitive. Smegma does not have a particularly bad smell, and hardly any smell at all unless the penis has not been washed for several days; in any case, smell is an aesthetic and subjective response: some people find smegma sexy. It is a natural accumulation of dead skin cells, and plays an important role in lubricating the penis and keeping it moist and healthy. It is even possible that, along with the foreskin itself, it helps protect the penis from infections: see P.M. Fleiss, F.M. Hodges and R.S. Van Howe, "Immunological functions of the human prepuce", Sexually transmitted infections, Vol. 74, 1998, pp. 364-7 <h3>Any uncut man to his circumcised mates, 1970s</h3> Oh, but it's so much more sensitive. Heard everywhere. <h3>A circumcision evangelist, 1974, circumcised as an adult</h3> The change in sensation during intercourse a few weeks later was surprising. The sharp pleasurable sensation was noticeably lessened, as it is when topical anaesthetics are used to delay ejaculation. ... The surface of the glans changed slowly but definitely in response to contact with air and clothing. The area around the meatus became less shiny as keratinization of the epithelium occurred. ... The colour of the glans also changed. When the foreskin covered it, the glans had a bright red-pink typical mucosal surface. Cornification has changed this to a gray-pink colour, very skin-like in appearance and texture. ... Over twelve years the superficial tactile nerve endings have become covered with this cornified surface. It is remarkable how much more manual and vaginal stimulation my penis can now receive before reaching "the point of no return" .... The overpowering erotic sensation has been dulled, and with it some of the immediate pleasurable sensation. Initial excitement has decreased. ... [When fully erect the penis presents] a smooth shaft with a piston-in-cylinder-like action during coition. Friction and therefore sensation are diminished. Robert J. Valentine, "Adult circumcision: A personal report", Medical aspects of human sexuality, Vol. 8, January 1974, pp. 32-3 Valentine was the pseudonym of a US doctor. Despite his admission that it greatly reduced sexual sensation, the article is a hymn of praise to the desirability of circumcision, providing an example of a common scenario: one man decides he likes being circumcised and then does all he can to encourage, pressure and finally force others to take the same path, like the poor fox which lost its tail in Aesop's fable. But despite his enthusiastic endorsement of circumcision, Valentine also reports that his surgeon cut too much tissue off: he "did not allow quite enough slack. As a result, there was a disconcerting downward bend of the penis on erection". It is also interesting that such an evangelist still dismisses as unproven and fallacious the common argument of circumcision advocates in the 1970s that the procedure lessened the incidence of cancers of the penis, prostate and cervix: no, he asserts, the only reason to do it is to improve your sex life. He provides no information at all as to what his female partner(s) felt about all this chopping and changing. Valentine's concluding comment left a hostage to fortune which must now be coming back to haunt him: "If it [the foreskin] does have a function, its routine removal in newborns cannot be justified. Perhaps the foreskin does have a rationale that has been ignored or not recognised." <h3>Immigrants to Israel, 1990s</h3> An Israeli research project in the early-1990s sought to measure changes in sexual satisfaction after circumcision among Russian immigrants who got themselves circumcised after immigration to Israel. The research was carried out by Dr Avi Teper and Dr Eliezer Shalev, from the Women's Department, Ha-emek Hospital, Afula. They mailed a questionnaire to 108 males, 76 of whom replied. The circumcised immigrants reported a significant decrease in sexual satisfaction. Before circumcision 54 per cent reported "great sexual satisfaction", but afterwards the number was only 24 per cent. The proportion of those reporting "medium satisfaction" rose from 30 percent to 61 percent. There was no change in the number reporting "small satisfaction". Since 68 per cent of the respondents sought circumcision as the fulfilment of their dream to become full Jews and 10 percent because of Jewish tradition, it is possible that some of them denied they felt any adverse consequences from the operation. The remainder sought circumcision because of social pressure, and one for a medical reason. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin and R. Blustein, "Challenges to circumcision in Israel: The Israeli association against genital mutilation", in George C. Denniston, Frederick Mansfield Hodges and Marilyn Fayre Milos (eds) Male and female circumcision: Medical, legal and ethical considerations in pediatric practice, New York, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999, pp. 343-50 <h3>Another circumcised man, 1993</h3> At age 30, during a physical exam, my doctor, noticing my long foreskin, stated this was an unhealthy situation. That I would likely have problems with it, and advised that I be clipped. Have never studied circumcision on the pros and cons, I consented. He gave me no information on which to base an informed judgment. Neither did he give any information about what style he would employ, or how tight he would cut me, and I did not know enough to ask. ... In a couple of months the sensitivity began to decline and has continued to decline to this day. Sexual pleasure has been reduced by at least 70 per cent, both in intensity and the fact that the whole rage of sensation is completely gone. This is most logical, as two of the structures [foreskin and frenulum] were removed, and the only remaining structure, the head, has been toughened and desensitised by being deprived of the moist natural covering which God intended it to have, and is constantly exposed to the friction of clothing. ... Circumcision has deprived me of much pleasure for the remainder of my life, has caused me physical pain and has been psychologically devastating. I no longer feel like a real man. William E. Krueger, Winston-Salem NC, USA, open letter to newspapers and intact organisations, 12 July 1993 <h3>Canadian pathologists, 1996</h3> The prepuce provides a large and important platform for several nerves and nerve endings. The innervation of the outer skin of the prepuce is impressive; its sensitivity to light touch and pain are similar to that of the skin of the penis as a whole. The glans, by contrast, is insensitive to light touch, heat, cold and ... pin-prick. ... We postulate that the "ridged band" [underside of the foreskin], with its unique structure, tactile corpuscles and other nerves, is primarily sensory tissue and that it cooperates with other components of the prepuce. In this model, the "smooth" mucosa and true skin of the adult prepuce act together to allow the "ridged band" to move from a forward to a "deployed" position on the shaft of the penis. ... It is generally thought that the prepuce protects the glans. However, it is equally likely that the glans shapes and protects the prepuce. In return, the glans and penile shaft gain excellent if surrogate sensitivity from the prepuce. ... The infant prepuce contains muscle bundles, blood vessels and nerves in profusion. J.R. Taylor, A.P. Lockwood and A.J. Taylor, "The prepuce: Specialised mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision", British Journal of Urology, Vol. 77, 1996, pp. 294-5 <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/">Full text (and some revealing images) here</a>. <h3>A normal (uncut) man, 1997</h3> When I get hard, the feeling of the head expanding and moving inside the foreskin, stimulating the inner foreskin nerves, is fantastic. The feeling of the head trying to open the foreskin opening is a very exaggerated and erotic tickle. After erection, pulling the skin back half-way results in a searing tickle, and pulling it back all the way and laying it back along the shaft for the first time is almost blinding. The feeling of my skin being pushed back and forth during intercourse, stretching back over the corona, then being pulled forward, is exquisite. The tip of my skin moving over the head feels like a rubber band rolling over the head. I can ejaculate just by stretching the foreskin back tightly for about ten minutes and letting the frenulum build up its sensation and feeling that wonderful burning tingle that leads to firing off. After my workout at the gym I see cut guys walking up to a hot shower with the water on the sharp setting. If I were to pull my skin back and do that, I would double over from the sensation. If I skin it back under a hot shower it feels like I'm being scalded. We uncut guys know what we have. The unamputated nerve endings of the foreskin and frenulum, and the undiminished nerves of the glans, make the penis during sex the centre of the universe. Cut guys know that when they see a video of an uncut guy: the head expands and turns red and purple and the foreskin locks behind the head and turns crimson from blood flow, putting the ultimate stretch on the frenulum. That guy is experiencing feelings that the cut guy can never imagine. Jim Two88, "I know you don't feel what I feel", posted on Usenet newsgroups by <a class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="e1b5968ed9d9a08d918980a1808e8dcf828e8c" href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a>, December 1997 <h3>The evidence mounts, 1998</h3> The prepuce is a specific erogenous zone. It contains a rich, complex network of nerves and an abundance of mucocutaneous end organs sensitive to motion, touch, temperature and erogenous stimulation. Both the inner and outer folds of the prepuce have a denser distribution of nerve networks than the rest of the penile skin. The rich innervation of the inner prepuce contrasts sharply with the limited sensory investment of the glans penis, which is characterised primarily by free nerve endings, which feel only pressure and pain. The double layered prepuce provides the skin necessary to accommodate the expanded erect organ and to allow the penile skin to slide freely, smoothly and pleasurably over the shaft and glans. One function of the prepuce is to facilitate smooth, gentle movement between the mucosal surfaces of the two partners during intercourse. The prepuce enables the penis to slip in and out of the vagina non-abrasively, inside its own sheath of self-lubricating moveable skin. The female is thus stimulated by moving pressure rather than by friction only, as when the male's prepuce is missing. P.M. Fleiss, F.M. Hodges and R.S. Van Howe, "Immunological functions of the human prepuce", Sexually transmitted infections, Vol. 74, 1998, p. 365 <h3>More cluey pathologists, 1999</h3> The prepuce is primary erogenous tissue necessary for normal sexual function. The complex interaction between the protopathic sensitivity of the corpuscular receptor-deficient glans penis and the corpuscular receptor-rich ridged band of the male prepuce is required for normal copulatory behaviour. ... Amputation of the prepuce causes changes in sexual behaviour in human males and females. Surgical amputation of the prepuce removes many of the fine-touch corpuscular receptors from the penis and clitoris. In males, circumcision is essentially a partial penile mucosectomy. The residual exposed gland mucosa becomes abnormally keratinized, with an increase in the number of cell layers in glanular mucosal epithelium. The urethral meatus is exposed and prone to irritation. Meatal stenosis can be a complication after circumcision. During circumcision the frenular artery may also be cut, depriving the anterior urethra of its major blood supply. C.J. Cold and J.R Taylor, "The prepuce", British Journal of Urology, Vol. 83, Supplement 1 (Circumcision), 1999, p. 41 <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/">Full text here</a>. <h3>An Australian professor and circumcision advocate, 1999</h3> Anecdotal evidence from men circumcised as adults ... say that circumcision did not reduce feelings from the penis when having sex. Independent clinical and neurological testing has not detected any difference in penile sensitivity between men of each category. Sexual pleasure also appears to be the same. Being circumcised will result in better sexual function, on average. Being circumcised will result in a penis that is generally regarded as more attractive. Brian Morris, In favour of circumcision, Sydney, UNSW Press, 1999, pp. 53 and 88 Dr Morris, a professor in the Department of Physiology at Sydney University, is Australia's leading intellectual champion of routine infant circumcision. The "independent clinical and neurological testing" he refers to turns out to be two articles by T.E. Wiswell and others on urinary tract and other bacterial infections in babies. Wiswell is a former US army doctor who has been an ardent crusader for routine infant circumcision since the mid-1980s; even if the studies referred to were about sexual sensation rather than bacteria, he could hardly be regarded as "independent", though anyone who has seen him cut the foreskin from a newborn baby (he does it on TV) could only agree that his manner is indeed clinical, and chillingly reminiscent of something worse. In his assertion that women prefer the circumcised penis (pp. 52-3) Morris relies entirely on a survey of 79 men and 101 women carried out by a certain James Badger and published in Australian Forum, a slightly racy women's magazine, in 1989. Such a small sample cannot mean very much, certainly not ten year later and, as Morris admits, can be criticised for "selection bias", since the survey asked for volunteers. He describes Badger as "a circumcision pen-name for the purposes of the forum survey and the debate in general" (p. 93, n. 168). In real life, he is Dr Guy Cox, Associate Professor and Senior Microscopist at the Electron Microscope Unit, Sydney University College of Sciences and Technology, and thus a colleague of Dr Morris. <h3>An unlucky Italian, 2001</h3> Newsgroups: alt.circumcision Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 01:52:03 +0200 Subject: My circumcision Story (sorry for my English) I've 29 years and I'm an Italian boys. I'm a bisexual boys (active). I'd like man (with large ball and cock) and women. With man I'd like only oral sex and BDSM. Eight month ago I've removed my foreskin in a private clinic for a penis problem. The operation program was that I had a partial circumcision. The doctor have cut my foreskin too much!! Now I'm completely circumcised. I've loose good part of my pleasure!!! The two month after operation I have stop my sexual activity. I've tried to masturbating but with a bad result. After two month I've restart my activity. Now I've a glande (couple?) too much sensitivity!! I've very much problem with sex. I'm too fast with vaginal or anal sex!! (about 20-30 second). Only if I torture my self (ball stretching) I have vaginal sex for about 1 minute. I've tried with more lubricant to reduce my sensibility with bad result. I'm go well only with oral sex. Now I like only to play BDSM and have oral sex with man or woman. I'm thinking to operate me to reduce my sensibility of my penis. Have anyone ideas for me?? How to de-senstivity my penis?? I want to return with my foreskin! I'm trying to restore foreskin with myself procedure but the result is too small!! (I'm trying from two month). I can send my cock picture (only after operation). I'd like to change experience with other man circumcised. Goodbye Franco from Roma (Italy) <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#214753404f424e7e595961494e554c40484d0f424e4c">[email protected]</a> <h3>A contrasting Frenchman</h3> Hi, I am Parisian, not circumcised. It's better to be Uncircumcised for play and have fun with yours hand. The penis with this protection is more sensible. You can play alone without lubricant, just slide the skin. To be circumcised give less sensations during sexual rapport, so you need more effort and time. It's good for have sexual rapport with women, because they need more longer time than men to have orgasmes. Like that the man and his woman have more chance to have orgasme in same time (not the man before and alone). Don't have this skin on, penis touch underwear: after year become more thick. I meet a lot of sexual partner circumcised. It's not a problem, but it's not easy for me to make [them] come with my hand, even with lubricant. But for me, just with a circumcised man hand strongly slide, they make me come esily and fastly. It's an American phobie to be afraid about Uncircumcised dick (not clean). When I was in California many men cruise me just because I am not cut. Somme make an fantasy about that. Message posted to Yahoo group, <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#ddb0bcb1b8b0b8b9b4bebcb1b5a8b0b4b1b4bca9b4b2b39da4bcb5b2b2baafb2a8adaef3beb2b0">[email protected]</a> by <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#a4d4d0cdc6c8cbcae4cacbcbd78ac2d6">[email protected]</a>, 4 November 2001 <h3>At last, the woman's point of view, 2001</h3> (a) I experienced a huge difference between circumcised and uncircumcised men. Until I met my natural [uncut] husband, I thought that the rough, dry circumcised penis was the way it was supposed to be. WOW! I have been missing genuine, naturally satisfying sex and now have the utmost appreciation for the "real thing". There is such a remarkable difference, in all aspects of sex -- from foreplay and fellatio to intercourse. In retrospect I now consider the circumcised penis as a sort of unreal device that made intercourse a not very pleasing experience that often left me sore. I now have orgasms that were very rare with circumcised men. (b) My present husband is circumcised. He is very concerned about pleasing me in any way, but during intercourse the penis feels hard. I experience discomfort, and often I feel like I'm being pounded on. With my natural [uncut] partner, whom I went with before I was married, intercourse felt gentler and more sensuous. I could sense that he got much more pleasure during intercourse than did any of my circumcised partners. He was more passionate, and sex with him was very stimulating and fulfilling. With him I always experienced much more pleasure, and intercourse seemed more loving. I strongly feel that this was the way it was meant to be. (c) With my circumcised partners, just about all the time I had intercourse I experienced discomfort, even pain. I was glad when it was over. Back then I didn't know it could be any better. But when I finally experienced intercourse with an uncircumcised man, I found out that it was more gentle, more enjoyable and less demanding. I could relax and get into it, once I realised it wasn't supposed to hurt. (d) A circumcised man's thrusting is harder. I think that this is due to the fact that the circumcised penis is less sensitive, so circumcised men push harder to compensate for this lack of sensation. Kristen O'Hara, Sex as nature intended it, Hudson, Mass., Turning Point Publications, 2001, pp. 20, 29-30, 66, 67 <a href="http://www.sexasnatureintendedit.com/">Further information</a> Comments from a few of the hundreds of women Kristen surveyed when she was writing this book, the first ever to deal with circumcision from the woman's perspective. Over 300 years later the assumptions of ben Yediah and the insights of Sinibaldi and Bulwer seem to be confirmed. <h3>A Canadian doctor, 2002</h3> Circumcision was the topic of the day for Dr. Gifford-Jones, one of Canada's most widely-read medical columnists. March 4, 2002 Circumcision, the unkindest cut By Dr. GIFFORD-JONES When I researched this column on circumcision, my initial reaction was "wow." I thought the topic would be as easy to write about as rolling off a log, but it took hours. I hadn't realized the male foreskin had triggered so many medical articles and so much controversy. Now I'm convinced that most families make a decision on circumcision without knowing much about this procedure. The question is, has male circumcision increased the sale of Viagra? For some families the decision is easy. They believe circumcision should be performed for religious as well as for sound medical reasons. But if that's not the case, what should you do? A good start is a lesson on anatomy and its sexual implications. First, the foreskin doesn't cover just a small surface of the penis. The skin removed by circumcision measures from three to five inches in length. That's about half of the total skin of the penis. Besides, inside the foreskin, there's a band of tissue that moves in and out like an accordion. This gliding motion triggers sexual reflexes and contributes to sexual pleasure. So shouldn't sensible babies cry out to parents, "you had better think twice before removing such a significant portion of my anatomy. And have you ever considered how this will affect my sex life?" Some might even add in these litigating times, "do it and I'll sue you for a million." Due to the recent research of Dr. John Taylor, male babies now have even greater grounds for being upset. Taylor is a retired pathologist in Winnipeg. In 1996, he and his colleagues published a report describing anatomically 21 foreskins in the British Journal Of Urology. In effect, Taylor claimed medical textbooks of anatomy have neglected the foreskin for hundreds of years. In Gray's Anatomy, the bible of anatomy, there's just one sentence about the foreskin. But Taylor and his colleagues found a "ridged band," 1.25 centimetres (half an inch) in width, that runs around the inside tip of the foreskin, never before mentioned. A detailed microscopic examination of the foreskin revealed it's not merely a piece of skin. Rather, it's loaded with blood vessels and nerves. Remove it and you also amputate a large part of the sexual portion of the penis. That in itself should warrant a class action suit by millions of males! Erectile dysfunction (ER) is due to several causes. But I wonder how much Viagra is being sold today because of too much snipping of the foreskin? So why is circumcision being done? One lame argument claims it prevents cancer of the penis, an extremely rare problem. But you don't amputate breasts to prevent cancer of the breast! Studies do suggest that circumcision decreases the number of urinary tract infections during the first year of life. But is this a valid reason for an amputation that which decrease the pleasures of sex for 75 years? What about complications from the procedure? Luckily, they're rare but there have been some terribly botched jobs. Some have resulted in severe injuries to the penis and urethra (the tube that carries urine through the penis). Other babies have suffered from infections and haemorrhage. So, if you don't have religious views about circumcision, what is the best decision? The Canadian Paediatric Society believes that circumcision of newborns should not be a routine procedure. The Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association has reached the same conclusion. Due to the updated anatomy lesson from Dr. Taylor, saying "thanks but no thanks" to circumcision seems to be a logical conclusion. Surely, nature put the foreskin there for a valid reason and it's rarely prudent to disagree with nature. As Dr. Taylor remarks, "The value of the actual foreskin is often put at zero. But parents should put a value on it because it's a structure in its own right." I'm sure some readers will argue, "I've enjoyed good sex for years and I was circumcised." Maybe so, but they could also be living in a fool's paradise. Have they considered how much better sex would have been without the snipping! And what about the babies' pain? I've heard too many screaming babies not to know it's a painful procedure. As Dr. Margaret Somerville, a lawyer and ethicist at McGill University says, "People have a fundamental human right not to have pain intentionally inflicted on them." Shouldn't that human right include babies? <h3>Biting your elbow: Russian immigrant to the United States bitterly regrets decision to get circumcised</h3> The following letter was sent to this site by a Russian immigrant to the United States who agreed to get circumcised when he was in his mid-20s. As he reports in telling detail, it was the biggest mistake of his life. I'm a 24-year-old man, originally from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine), where circumcision was not practiced (and was discouraged for that matter). When I was a toddler, I had a severe case of phimosis. My mother asked Soviet surgeons to remove my foreskin to cure the condition, but they refused, insisting on topical treatments. Eventually, treatments helped. And so the foreskin stayed. At the age of seven, I attended one of the first Jewish schools in Ukraine. My mother would get visits from Rabbis insisting that I undergo the surgery and offering a myriad of reasons why: health, spirituality, heritage, everyone in the almighty United States of America does it, etc. My mom did not want to aimlessly hurt me and the foreskin survived again. We emigrated to the USA and I came to New York City at the age of 11 and went to a Jewish school again, but being raised in an academic family, I gave little heed to religious dogma and never practiced or cared about religion or anything unscientific. High School ended and I went to college. It was a technical school where social life was limp, but I still manage to date some cute girls and sex was amazing. To summarize, a good orgasm was "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Continuous, prolonged scream, followed by an "all body" sensation that tickled and sent "waves" all over me, leaving me "high" for a while afterward. For a similar orgasmic account, see this <a href="http://www.notjustskin.org/en/Story-Circumcised-as-Adult.html">testimony at notjustskin.org</a>. College passed and I was on route to law school. A few traumatic events happened in my family (funeral). I missed an entrance examination deadline and had to wait a year to reapply. That left me with a lot of free time. I live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, and one day I randomly decided to attend morning synagogue services (out of boredom, I guess). One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was suddenly going about wearing a head-covering, keeping Sabbath and all other laws. I met a nice, charismatic Rabbi who befriended me and I became a frequent family guest at his house for Sabbath and holidays. I also went to Israel and read a bunch of literature aimed at reconciling religion and science, which appealed to me. I fell in love and dated a Jewish girl from a similar background and after she broke up with me, I experienced such intense anguish and grief that in my depressed mind began attributing it to guilt, sin, Divine retribution and a bunch of similar reasons that my pain-stricken brain went through. [1] As a result, I started getting curious about the most fundamental ritual in Judaism -- circumcision. The Rabbis explained it to be the most fundamental and sacred commandment that shows that one has a covenant with G-d. In my foolishness, I had shared with my Rabbi that I was uncut and the brainwashing had begun. His point was that despite being such mark of the covenant, circumcision puts a "stamp" on "that which can take control over us." In other words, it's a symbolic "lock" that we put our animalistic desires unto and learn to channel them in a directed way (only in marriage). Judaism as a whole is aimed at making a "soldier" out of a person, and many people would agree that strict discipline in life often leads to more pleasure than chaotic life of disorderly regime. I'm not mocking that explanation because Judaism is indeed concerned with sexual pleasure, and the Rabbis have many books written on how husband and wife ought to bring each other to ecstasy. Judaism also has marital purity laws where the husband and wife separate for about a week and a half during menstrual cycle. The point is that couples live as friends for some time and the break allows them to renew sexual hunger for each other and decrease desensitization. Furthermore, a lot of emphasis is placed (written since ancient literature) on making sure a woman has an orgasm (talk about modern society finding out what a clitoris is not so long ago). "Look at an average religious woman," my Rabbi would say. "Does anyone look dissatisfied? Does anyone need to find tips in Cosmopolitan about 39 orgasmic tricks? They are more satisfied than secular people who get desensitized with everything, especially through porn." All of these contemplations appealed to me in terms of living according to religion. While researchers have a disagreement as to whether it's true, indeed I have personally noticed that modern secular world seems to make so much emphasis on sex and exposure that people could get desensitized easily. Speaking from experience, porn would often desensitize me to real women to the point of having serious quarrels with ex-girlfriends. (For an interesting book discouraging pornography, see I Love Female Orgasm, By Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller). I looked at many anti-circumcision websites, but most of them pointed to no more than "decreased sensitivity." That definition seemed ambiguous and suggested that it related to sensitivity experienced while thrusting. Who cares, I thought. Condoms diminish sensitivity, but the orgasm is what counts! I spoke to some Russian buddies at a local synagogue who got circumcised as adults, and they favored that explanation. "Yes sensitivity decreases but it won't hurt either you or her," said one. "Idiot, you last longer. What are you waiting for? Go do it!" I also understood that the sliding function would be gone. In a chat with a law school roommate, he once asked me, "Have you heard about this new lube? It lets you bang her in the breasts for a while, and it won't hurt one bit!" "Oh yeah? I don't need to use lube and have never even understood why it's selling, aside from using it on girls to help with vaginal lubrication," I replied. I also told him that I had never fully understood a famous American expression "Get your dick wet", as natural men have normally moist organs all the time. However, that must not have stuck in my head enough. My roommate (who is not religious) replied, "Well dude, but circ is something millions of Americans do. Does anyone seem unhappy?" Why I never capitalized on the point that it's only because they don't know the difference, I don't know. Another factor that got me off-track were these two pro-circ websites: www.circumcisioninfo.com and www.circlist.com. These sites have many alleged reports from men who claim to have experienced an increase in sexual pleasure following circumcision. There are many more anti-circ sites out there with negative reports, but in the mind of a confused, semi-brainwashed person, they did enough to turn the tide to the dark side. Such contemplations finally moved me to do the unreasonable and remove my foreskin. I remember worrying too much about pain, but that was needless. An experienced Jewish surgeon (called mohel) performed everything painlessly, and the wounds healed fast. A big feast was thrown in my honor, and I have become a "hero" in the community; in fact, I'm still proclaimed as such every time someone from my community gets a chance to introduce me to another person, especially a famous Rabbi. Yet, no praise in the world can cure the scar of losing that which I've dreamed about since Bar Mitzvah: Powerful Orgasm. To cut my long story short (no pun intended), orgasm decreased tremendously. The continuous "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" described above turned into "ah ah ah" at most. Masturbation (which I'm not a fan of for personal/desensitization reasons, but I realize many people like it) lost pleasure altogether. Barely a sound comes out. Ejaculatory force decreased, with loss of propelling powerful Orgasm, and indeed the penis is dry and uncomfortable. It's been a year now, and I can't wear boxers because it hurts when my uncovered head rubs against clothing. I bought the <a href="http://manhood.mb.ca/">Manhood protection device</a>, and it does help somewhat. I realize that soon my head will lose all sensation and it won't hurt anymore, but that's not consoling one bit. My grandfather once told me a story about how they used to train them to ride horses without a saddle before World War 2, which hurt a lot and after a while, a layer grew on buttocks that made such riding painless. That's what eventually happens to cut penises. Everyone always made an argument to me that it doesn't matter much for women, and they're (thankfully) not dissatisfied. But as beautiful and wonderful it is that some women like uncut men and experience great pleasure regardless, no one thinks enough about whether the man is satisfied. Even in (American) porn, a woman is the sexual moaning creature that gets "out of this world" multiple orgasms, while a man is someone who just needs to "get off", release, and go home. That may be so, and the foreskin alone doesn't get a man to have multiple orgasms; but as far as INTENSITY is concerned, I used to scream and get such a reaction that made my girlfriends (none of whom had ever experienced a natural man) wonder whether "I'm OK", and "how did I get to have such a powerful reactions that made me keep on moaning with closed eyes after ejaculating"? My only solace now is that had never experienced unprotected sex before and hopefully, at least that new experience would compensate for the loss, though I'm expecting it to be worse than natural sex with a condom as far as orgasm is concerned. Also, it would always keep me wondering what it would feel like to have had natural unprotected sex, as I had always dreamed. Ironically, all the best research came to me when it was too late, such as this short documentary video by Ari Libsker and historyofcircumcision.net. If you're an adult considering circumcision, THINK AGAIN! As the Russian saying goes, "You'll be biting your elbows," meaning you'll be making an irreversible mistake that you could regret for the rest of your life. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Quotes darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h1>Routine circumcision of normal male infants and boys</h1> <h3>Have the circumcision promoters made a convincing case?</h3> What is most interesting about the argument of the circumcision promoters - that all boys should be circumcised soon after birth - is that most of the health benefits they proclaim do not kick in until adulthood or old age. If the "advantages" of circumcision were as overwhelming as the advocates assert, you would think that babies and boys could be left alone and that most rational adults would choose to have the operation done in their late teens or early twenties. Oddly enough, when they get to that age most men prefer to keep their foreskins. In fact, even if it were valid, the "health" case for routine or preventive circumcision never amounted to a convincing argument for circumcising infants or boys. At its best, it was no more than an argument for circumcision in adulthood. Even if all the claims were true, the most you would expect is that a few ultra-nervous adults would elect it for themselves, not that the operation would be inflicted on thousands of babies who had never even inquired. On this page we review the arguments of the circumcision promoters, suggest some reasons for the revival of the old "health" arguments for circumcision since the mid-1990s, and ask why the advocates insist that children must be circumcised even before they are aware of their bodies. <h2> <a id="fate" name="fate"></a>The fate of the foreskin</h2> <img alt="" class="image-right" height="300" src="https://www.circinfo.org/images/peepee.jpg" width="306"/>Between the mid-eighteenth and the late nineteenth century, but only in English-speaking countries, the status of the male foreskin fell disastrously. It was transformed from "the best of your property", as a popular rhyme of the period put it, and an adornment which brought pleasure to its owner and his partners, to "a useless bit of flesh", an enemy of man, and a "harbour for filth", as Dr Remondino and other scissors-happy doctors of the late Victorian period asserted. It is hard to think of any body part whose standing fell so far and so rapidly, nor one which came to be treated with such savage hostility; even today in countries with a history of routine circumcision doctors seem to regard the foreskin as guilty until proven innocent. Yet, as the Canadian pathologists Chris Cold and John Taylor point out, the prepuce has been a prominent feature of the external genitals of all primate species for 65 million years, and the species in which it has developed most luxuriantly is precisely the one which has been most successful in the struggle for existence; despite this, since the nineteenth century it has been "the most vilified normal anatomical structure of the human body" (1). But aside from calling the foreskin nasty names, have the supporters of involuntary circumcision really made much of a case for their favourite surgery? Strictly speaking, it is not the opponents of routine male circumcision who need to make a case against the procedure, but its supporters who must prove its necessity: they need to explain why a natural part of the human body, and one common to all primates, is so dangerous that it must be amputated before a baby can talk, crawl or do anything much except scream. What has naturally evolved must be presumed to be beneficial or harmless unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Here we will consider what sort of a case the anti-foreskin lobby has been able to put up. <h2>What is the foreskin?</h2> The penis consists of several major parts, but one useful way of looking at it is to divide it into an erectile portion (the part that gets stiff) and a non-erectile portion (the part that does not). The foreskin is the non-erectile portion. A more conventional definition would be to describe it as the soft, sensitive double-fold of tissue which covers the lower half of the penis shaft, extends in a sleeve over the head (glans) and usually ends in a tapering nozzle or spout. The outer layer is tender skin, the inner layer a sensitive mucous membrane. There is no agreed anatomical definition about where the foreskin ends and the skin of the penis shaft begins, and hence no exact surgical definition of what circumcision is meant to remove. As a consequence, the amount of tissue cut off by the operation is highly variable (some doctors take more, some less), but a typical circumcision carried out in a western hospital will remove about 50 per cent of the surface tissue of the penis. The foreskin is not just a flap of skin, but a complex web of mucous membrane, muscle fibres, blood vessels and nerves: in fact, it supports one of the densest concentrations of nerves in the whole body. The underside of the penis (just beneath the glans) is called the fraenum, and this carries ridged bands which are densely packed with fine-touch nerve receptors and a very rich blood supply. The main nerve supplying the penis goes down to the end and then doubles back, allowing the foreskin to slide backwards and forwards, and showing that this is exactly what it evolved to be able to do. To operate at its best, the penis is meant to be covered with a mobile sheath of responsive flesh. Further information: <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/normal/">Development of the normal foreskin</a> <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/">Anatomy of the adult penis</a> <h2> <a id="whatis" name="whatis"></a>What is routine male circumcision?</h2> Circumcision is the surgical amputation of this tissue. By routine male circumcision we mean the removal of the foreskin from the penis of normal male babies or boys, on the decision of adults (usually parents or guardians), without the boy's consent, and in the absence of any genuine medical indication, and particularly in the absence of the sort of critical injury, malformation or disease that would be required for the legal amputation of any other part of the body without the subject's consent. In the past the procedure was referred to as Routine Neonatal Circumcision or Routine Infant Circumcision, abbreviated here as RNC. Strictly speaking, RNC is no longer practised in Australia, since most doctors are opposed to the practice and only do it in response to parental insistence. Each case today is thus an individual decision, not a matter of mere routine. In the heydey of circumcision in the 1950s, doctors pressured parents to agree to have their baby boys circumcised and would automatically do it unless they strenuously objected; sometimes they did it without even parental consent. The essential elements of routine (medically unnecessary) circumcision as practised today are (1) decision by adults; (2) absence of medical indication or need; (3) lack of consent on the part of the boy. <h2>The cat which tried to come back</h2> Circumcision was a Victorian medical fad which should have gone out with neck-to-knee bathing costumes, phrenology and the idea that children should be seen and not heard. Instead, a small band of medical researchers and moral fanatics keep coming up with new reasons for doing it. First there was the claim that it would stop masturbation and the imaginary disease of spermatorrhoea. Then it was suggested that it would protect men from syphilis. Then doctors forgot that all baby boys have a tight and non-retractable foreskin (phimosis) and declared that the natural condition of the infant penis was a pathological abnormality requiring urgent surgical correction. After that it was asserted that circumcision would give immunity to cancer of the penis in men and of the cervix in women. Some doctors seriously believed that circumcision would cure various forms of muscular paralysis, brass poisoning and whooping cough; others claimed it would prevent tuberculosis, polio, epilepsy and wet dreams. Then there was a lot of vague talk about hygiene, as though boys and men were too stupid to wash themselves, and ridiculous references to embarrassment in locker rooms. At no time did more than a handful of adult men choose to have themselves circumcised; it was always something to done to babies and boys without their agreement or permission. In the 1990s the myth about syphilis was revived in a new form: that uncircumcised men have a higher risk of catching HIV-AIDS (and that therefore all boys should be circumcised soon after birth). Most recently there has been an attempt to resuscitate the old claim (dating from the 1930s, refuted by studies in the 1960s and 70s) that male circumcision will reduce the incidence of cervical cancer in their female partners. One by one these claims for the harmfulness of the foreskin and the benefits of its amputation have been proven false or misguided, but new reasons keep being invented. <h2> <a id="heritage" name="heritage"></a>The British heritage</h2> Australia inherited circumcision from Britain in the nineteenth century, and by the early 1900s as many as 25 per cent of male infants were already having part of their penis cut off, either soon after birth or in early childhood. Although Britain itself dropped RNC in the late 1940s (and New Zealand in the 1950s), Australia followed United States practice, and the figure rose steadily to a peak of about 90 per cent in 1955, before falling back again: down to 50 per cent by 1975, and only 10 per cent by 1995. Circumcision incidence in Australia <table class="table50pc"> <tbody> <tr> <th class="lightblue">Year</th> <th class="lightblue">Newborn circumcision rate (%)</th> <th class="lightblue">Living males who have been circumcised (%)</th> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1900</td> <td class="grey">25</td> <td class="grey">18</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1905</td> <td>30</td> <td>20</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1910</td> <td class="grey">35</td> <td class="grey">22</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1915</td> <td>42</td> <td>25</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1920</td> <td class="grey">50</td> <td class="grey">29</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1925</td> <td>56</td> <td>32</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1930</td> <td class="grey">61</td> <td class="grey">36</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1935</td> <td>67</td> <td>39</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1940</td> <td class="grey">73</td> <td class="grey">43</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1945</td> <td>79</td> <td>48</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1950</td> <td class="grey">84</td> <td class="grey">52</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1955</td> <td>90</td> <td>55</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1960</td> <td class="grey">80</td> <td class="grey">59</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1965</td> <td>70</td> <td>61</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1970</td> <td class="grey">60</td> <td class="grey">61</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1975</td> <td>50</td> <td>60</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1980</td> <td class="grey">40</td> <td class="grey">60</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1985</td> <td>30</td> <td>57</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">1990</td> <td class="grey">20</td> <td class="grey">54</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1995</td> <td>11</td> <td>51</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="grey">2000</td> <td class="grey">12</td> <td class="grey">48</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> It can be seen from the table that the biggest jump in the rate of RNC occurred in the decade 1910-1920, giving Australia the distinction of being the first modern nation to circumcise half its male babies. This was a period of acute fear of venereal disease, particularly syphilis; the erroneous belief that circumcision would provide protection against syphilis was probably an important reason why more parents were having their boys cut at this time. The year 2000 was a landmark as the first time since 1945 when the total number of uncut males in Australia outnumbered the circumcised. Interestingly, though, despite the hight rate of RNC, the total number of cut males has never exceeded 61 per cent - less than two thirds. The rate of routine circumcision declined steadily in the 1980s and 90s and looked set to fall below 5 per cent nationally, but there has been a slight rise in the frequency of the procedure since 1999, possibly as a response to recent scares over STDs (especially HIV-AIDS), urinary tract infections (UTIs) and most recently HPV (human papillomavirus -- the wart virus implicated in cancer of the penis and cervix). Long-time advocates of RNC have been doing their best to exploit popular fears of these diseases in order to put pressure on the medical profession to revive the procedure as a public health measure, despite powerful criticism of their claims in the medical literature and increasing warnings that the procedure is unethical and potentially illegal (as the <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/QLRC">Queensland Law Reform Commission</a> warned in 1993). <h2> <a id="issue" name="issue"></a>Why is circumcision an issue all of a sudden?</h2> Although Australia largely abandoned RNC in the 1980s, and did so with very little fuss, the issue has suddenly become topical and controversial. A few die-hard circumcision enthusiasts and medical researchers, mainly from the USA and other cultures where routine male circumcision is the rule, are making strident claims for the protective effect of circumcision against a number of diseases which defy normal control strategies, and particularly the one for which there is still no cure and of which everybody is afraid: AIDS. They attempt to exploit this fear by demanding widespread (indeed, universal) circumcision of male infants as a public health measure, on the feeble and misleading analogy that it is just like immunisation, and thus the sort of harmless and effective medical intervention which should be made compulsory. The main objective of this propaganda is to halt the decline of RNC in the USA and to revive it in Australia, Canada and Britain. See pages on <a href="http://www.circinfo.org/cervical.html">cervical cancer</a> and <a href="http://www.circinfo.org/hiv.html">HIV-AIDS</a>. <h3>Cultural conservatism drives revival of health arguments for circumcision</h3> The evidence strongly suggests that the push for mass male circumcision as the answer to AIDS is driven more by culture than by science – or rather, by science in the service of culture. If the genital mucosa is the Trojan horse for HIV and its reduction by various forms of pre-emptive excision decreases a person’s risk of becoming infected, it follows that the genital mucosa of the female (on the clitoral hood and labia, for example) might be as vulnerable as the male foreskin, and thus that certain forms of female circumcision might protect women in the same way as posthectomy is thought to protect men. There is in fact evidence that female circumcision does reduce the risk of HIV infection in women (Stallings and Karugendo 2005), and at least one other study suggests that female circumcision can also indirectly protect women from HIV infection (Yount and Abraham 2007). But so strong is the revulsion from any form of female genital surgery among the Western researchers and agencies that control AIDS policy that it is not considered proper even to ask the question, let alone conduct research into the possibility. Like the obstetricians who shouted Baker Brown down, modern health policy makers prefer female genitals intact, no matter what health advantages might accrue from surgical intervention. If the male genitals were regarded with the same respect as the female, MGC would be held in the same abhorrence as FGC, and experiments involving foreskin removal would be unthinkable. <h3>UN Convention on the Rights of the Child</h3> The sudden resurgence of demands for routine circumcision of boys as a health precaution in some developed countries (notably the United States and Australia) has a similarly cultural explanation. Paradoxically, it can be traced back to developments in the 1980s that sought to improve the legal mechanisms for child protection and reduce all forms of child abuse. These were expressed most dramatically in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Article 24 (3) of which required parties to take “all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children. This looked promising, but a startling procedural fact that Svoboda (2004) unearthed shows that it did not take long for “children” to mean “girls only.” As late as 25 June 1997, one document pertaining to the UN’s work on traditional practices referred to the responsible official, known as a special rapporteur, as “Special Rapporteur on traditional practices affecting the health of women and children” (United Nations Commission on Human Rights 1997a). But by the time the pertinent meeting was nearing its conclusion and had issued its report on the session, the special rapporteur’s mandate had been changed to cover “traditional practices affecting the health of women and the girl child” (United Nations Commission on Human Rights 1997b). There had never been any substantive discussion of this highly significant change, which excluded all male children at the stroke of a pen, nor was the change of title ever alluded to in any known UN document. Other pertinent child protection developments include the rise of a vocal intact rights (anti-circumcision) movement in the only Western country where routine MGC remained common (the United States); a hesitant but visible tendency for secular and reforming Jews to question the necessity for the rite; and, in places where MGC was unusual and abhorred (such as Scandinavia), measures to regulate ritual circumcision as performed by ethnic and religious minorities. Given that the wording of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child protected all children without discrimination, it is curious but symptomatic of assumptions about gender and sexuality that many governments passed legislation to make all forms of FGC unlawful, but none prohibited any form of MGC. Although some jurisdictions (such as the Australian States of South Australia and Queensland) looked seriously into the question of whether circumcision of boys should also be restricted, no current government has moved far in this direction. Sweden has placed mild restrictions on the practice, and the South Africa’s Children’s Act 2007 makes the circumcision of male children under age 16 unlawful except for religious or medical reasons – which are, of course, the two principal categories of justification for the practice. As Smith (1998) had found, however, the Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly referred to genital mutilation of children, without discrimination on the basis of gender, and there could be no valid or effective response, in terms of human rights or medical ethics, to the argument that circumcision of minor was a violation of accepted principles of human rights and medical ethics. <h3>Would female circumcision protect against AIDS?</h3> Since all the arguments deployed against FGC applied just as strongly to MGC (McDonald 2004, Bouclin 2005, Narulla 2007), the persistence of the practice was an anomaly that demanded attention. But the Convention left a loophole in its reference to “practices prejudicial to health”, that is, harmful practices: if MGC could be shown to be not harmful or, even better, beneficial in some way, then Article 24 would not apply to MGC, and those who wanted to continue the practice, whether for traditional or medical reasons, could continue doing so with a clear conscience and little fear of restriction. It was the imperative to save MGC from the human rights experts, lawyers and ethicists that has inspired the resurgence of research and advocacy, not only into the benefits of the procedure (old ones dusted up, new ones found), but a whole new research agenda, defying common sense and the consensus of the ages, aimed at proving that deleting the most densely innervated parts of the penis makes no difference to sexual experience (Morris 1999, 2006). This research flies in the face of reason, common sense and plenty of other research. To defend a customary practice with the discoveries or rhetoric of science is not a new strategy. Back in Roman times the Jewish philosopher Philo sought to discourage his co-religionists from abandoning male circumcision (as some were doing, in the interests of integration) with several arguments, prominent among which was the claim that it conferred immunity against a kind of carbuncle on the penis that he called anthrax (Darby 2003:57). In mid-nineteenth century Germany, a strong movement among reforming Jews sought to drop male circumcision along with many other oppressive observances; their campaign was defeated by the conservative rabbis, who cited new medical evidence from Britain and the United States that male circumcision was an effective defence against syphilis, masturbation and other problems, and thus an example of modern science, not an ancient superstition at all (Efron 2001:189; Glick 2005: chs. 5 and 6). <h3>Defending traditions with the rhetoric of science</h3> But it was in the United States just before World War I that the strategy had its finest flowering. Confronted with evidence that ritual circumcision was infecting babies with serious diseases (including diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis), and with a consequent campaign by paediatricians to ban or at least regulate the procedure (Holt 1913), the physician Abraham Wolbarst had the genius to perceive that the surest way to preserve male circumcision as a religious rite within the Jewish community was to generalize it throughout the whole of society as a necessary health precaution. Accordingly, he did not try to justify it on the culturally relativist ground of ethnic particularity, but on the modern, scientific ground that it was a valid measure of preventive health that should be imposed on every male. Far from spreading syphilis, Wolbarst asserted (and produced statistics showing) that male circumcision conferred high resistance, if not immunity, to syphilis, as well as curing or preventing a great many other problems, including herpes, cancer, and masturbation. He understood that a modern society that respected science needed modern arguments in defence of ancient customs (Wolbarst 1914; Darby 2003). <h2> <a id="burden" name="burden"></a>Burden of proof</h2> Strictly speaking, it is not the opponents of routine male circumcision who need to make a case against the procedure, but its supporters who must prove its necessity: they need to explain why a natural part of the human body, and one common to all primates, is so dangerous that it must be amputated before a baby can talk, crawl or do anything much except scream. But since the operation has become entrenched in the medical culture of English-speaking countries over the past 120 years, it has come to be seen as reasonable, customary or even normal. As the sorcerer's apprentice found to his cost, starting a practice ("seemed a good idea at the time …") is often much easier than stopping it. Advocates of RNC particularly have to <ul> <li> demonstrate (1) that the benefits of the operation significantly outweigh the injury inflicted, the risks of the procedure and the physical and psychological disadvantages of losing the foreskin; and (2) that the operation must be done before the child is able to give legal consent; </li> <li>prove that the boy has a very high risk of incurring a fatal or incurable disease before maturity if he is not circumcised;</li> <li>prove that circumcision will infallibly protect him from any such diseases;</li> <li>prove that there is no other way of reducing the risk of such diseases by the same degree;</li> </ul> <ul> <li> explain how a part of the body which has evolved over millions of years could be pathogenic (disease-producing) and must be removed to ensure a normal level of health. </li> </ul> No such proof has even been attempted, let alone achieved. <h3>Human evolution</h3> Advocates of RNC have never been able to explain why all primates (monkeys, chimps etc) have foreskins, or how humans became the most successful mammal on the planet while carrying this supposedly pathogenic burden. For 99 per cent of the million or so years during which modern humans have prospered, males have lived and died with their foreskins intact, and in that time our species managed to colonise just about every corner of the earth. Perhaps the foreskin was a factor in that triumph. There is good evidence that the human foreskin became longer, more luxuriant and more richly networked with sensory nerves than those of our near relatives, suggesting that it must have conferred a selective advantage: the more foreskin you had, the more offspring you left behind, and the more your extra-foreskin genes spread through the population. (Ref. 1) This could not have happened if the foreskin had been as troublesome as its enemies claim: what has naturally evolved must be presumed to be beneficial or harmless unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Ref. 2) <h2>Trying to come up with the goods</h2> It is this proof that circumcision advocates are obliged to provide, and which they have been struggling unsuccessfully to manufacture since the 1850s (when Jonathan Hutchinson announced that his statistics showed that circumcised men were all but immune to syphilis). The world is still waiting for them to make a convincing case. Although there have been mountains of reports and studies (more than anybody could read in a lifetime), the issue is still, at the most, inconclusive - so inconclusive, in fact, that the most rational and only ethical policy is to leave the choice up to the individual. This has not prevented scaremongering professors and self-interested GPs (who make a lot of money from performing circumcision operations) from flooding the media and Google advertising with claims for the "pros" of circumcision. (Dr Russell's website also claims to discuss the cons, but you will look in vain for a list of those.) But the worst that even these crusaders can come up is a murky statement that that RNC "may reduce the risk of STDs (syphilis, gonorrhoea, herpes and candida) and carcinoma of the cervix in female partners", as well as phimosis, paraphimosis, HIV-AIDS, neonatal UTIs and carcinoma of the penis. (Ref. 3) This is not good enough: "may" is not much different from "may not". Australia's other prominent circumcision promoter, Professor Brian Morris, cites several studies which purport to show a higher incidence of gonorrhoea and syphilis among uncut males and reaches the dithering conclusions that (1) "based on the bulk of evidence it would seem that at least some STDs could be more common in uncircumcised males under some circumstances"; but that (2) "there may be little difference in most STDs between those with and those without a foreskin". (Ref. 4) That's really helpful. <img alt="" class="image-left" height="161" src="https://www.circinfo.org/images/sattouf1_001.jpg" width="180"/>Can these guys be serious? They want to circumcise all boys at birth because retention of the foreskin "may" increase the risk of their getting a few diseases they most likely would not get anyway; most of which are curable; and which, even if they did get them, do not strike until many years later. Except for infantile UTIs (which are usually cured easily by antibiotics), there is plenty of time for a boy to reach maturity and make his own assessment of the risks and choose the best means, for him, of managing them. To make a convincing case for RNC Russell, Morris and Co must do much better than they have done so far: we need proof that that if the foreskin is not cut off urgently the child will get seriously ill or die before he is old enough to make his own health decisions. Nothing like this has ever been achieved by the circumcision lobby, or even seriously attempted. Statistics are not available, but it is quite likely that more boys under the age of eighteen die as a result of circumcision, or its complications, than from any of the diseases circumcision is supposed to protect them against. Certainly this is true in South Africa, where several hundred boys each year die as a result of tribal circumcision. As to why boys must be circumcised in infancy, Morris is quite explicit: if the decision was left to them to make when they reached the age of consent they would make the wrong decision. (Ref. 5) Further information on <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/">complications</a> and on <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/death/">deaths</a> and recent <a href="http://www.cirp.org/news/">news</a> items <h2> <a id="quack" name="quack"></a>Continuities with Victorian quackery</h2> Both Dr Russell and Professor Morris are frequently seen in the media urging parents to have their boys circumcised, and much of their routine is just a long list of nasty diseases, designed to terrify people into seeking urgent medical aid. How different it is from the rantings of a Victorian quack is a matter of personal judgement. In 1891 <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=48">Dr Peter Charles Remondino</a> wrote: The prepuce seems to exercise a malign influence in the most distant and apparently unconnected manner; where, like some of the evil genii or sprites in the Arabian tales, it can reach from afar the object of its malignity, striking him down unawares in the most unaccountable manner; making him a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings and tribulations; unfitting him for marriage or the cares of business; making him miserable and an object of continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other conditions calculated to weaken him physically, mentally, and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail or even in a lunatic asylum." (Ref. 6) Presumably Professor Morris, who has repeatedly stated that the Victorians were "right" about circumcsion, also agrees with the following statement from Dr Remondino: "Circumcision is like a substantial and well-secured life annuity; every year of life you draw the benefit, and it has not any drawbacks … Parents cannot make a better paying investment for their little boys, as it insures them better health, greater capacity for labor, longer life less nervousness, sickness, loss of time, and less doctor-bills, as well as increases their chances for an euthanasian death." (Ref. 7) Drs Russell and Morris are radicals and extremists: most Australian doctors are opposed to RNC or undecided on the issue, and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians has recently issued yet another statement against the practice. The truth is that RNC has never been supported by more than a small fraction of the world's medical establishment and remains a controversial and unproven therapy. Back in the 1890s an early opponent of RNC noted this confusion and uncertainty, not only over the risks and touted benefits of the operation but when and how to do it, how much tissue to excise, how to stop bleeding etc, and asked: "Where doctors differ, who shall decide?" (Ref. 8) There can be only one answer to that question: the owner of the organ in question. <h2> <a id="refs" name="refs"></a>References</h2> 1. J.R.Taylor, A.P. Lockwood and A.J.Taylor, <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/">"The prepuce: specialized mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision"</a>, British Journal of Urology, Vol. 77,1996, pp. 291-295; C.J. Cold and J.R. Taylor, <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/">"The prepuce"</a>, BJU International, Vol. 83, Supplement 1 (January) 1999, pp. 34-44; C.J. Cold and K.A. McGrath, "Anatomy and histology of the penile and clitoral prepuce in primates: Evolutionary perspective of specialised sensory tissue in the external genitalia", in George C. Denniston, Frederick Hodges and Marilyn Milos (eds), Male and female circumcision: Medical, legal and ethical considerations in pediatric practice (New York and London, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999), pp. 19-30 2. The argument holds even if you believe in the creationist account of human origins. If God created men with a foreskin it must be presumed that He intended them to have one. 3. Terry Russell, "Debate: Male circumcision remains a valid procedure - Yes", Australian Doctor, 24 May 1996, p. 54 4. Brian Morris, In favour of circumcision (Sydney 1999), pp. 38 and 39. See the <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=64">scathing review by Basil Donovan</a> in Venereology, Vol. 12 (1999), pp. 68-9. Professor Donovan describes Morris as "a man on a mission to rid the world of the male foreskin" and some of his claims as "so dangerous" that the publishers ought to withdraw the book. 5. Morris, In favour of circumcision, p. 61-2. Morris writes: "It would take a very mature and well-informed adolescent male to make this decision for himself, and to undertake the process of ensuring that it was done. Most males in the late teens and early twenties, not to mention many men of any age, are reluctant to confront such issues, even if they hold private convictions and preferences about their penis. Moreover, despite having problems with this part of their anatomy, many will suffer in silence rather than seek medical advice or treatment." Or in plain English, men prefer to hang on to their foreskins because they like them. Incidentally, contrary to Morris's assertion, there is not a shred of scientific evidence that circumcision must be done in infancy for maximum benefits against later disease. If that were true there would have been no point circumcising those adult men in the African circumcision-HIV experiments. It is equally untrue that circumcision is less risky and less harmful the earlier it is done; on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that the earlier it is done the more risky and harmful it is. All responsible medical authorities recommend that it not be done at less than 6 months of age, and <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/machmouchi2007/">researchers in Saudi Arabia</a> (where circumcision is common as an Islamic custom) have actually found circumcision to be significantly more dangerous if done soon after birth. 6. P.C. Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance (Philadelphia and London 1891), pp. 54-5 7. Remondino, p. 186 8. Herbert Snow, The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital phimosis (London 1890), p. 32 <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=51">Full text of Snow's book available here.</a> <h3>Additional references</h3> Bouclin, Suzanne (2005) <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/Canada/bouclin2005/">An Examination of Legal and Ethical Issues Surrounding Male Circumcision: The Canadian Context</a>. International Journal of Men’s Health 4 (3): 205-222 Darby, Robert (2003) Where doctors differ: The Debate on Circumcision as a Protection Against Syphilis, 1855-1914. Social History of Medicine 16:57-78 Efron, John (2001) Medicine and the German Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press Glick, Leonard (2005) Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press. Holt, L. Emmett (1913) <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/holt1/">Tuberculosis Acquired through Ritual Circumcision</a>. Journal of the American Medical Association 61(2):99-102 McDonald, Elisabeth (2004) Circumcision and the Criminal Law: The Challenge for a Multicultural State. New Zealand Universities Law Review 21: 233-267 Narulla, Ranipal (2007) Circumscribing Circumcision: Traversing the Moral and Legal Ground Around a Hidden Human Rights Violation. Australian Journal of Human Rights 12: 89-118 Smith, Jacqueline (1998) <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/smith/">Male Circumcision and the Rights of the Child</a>. In Mielle Bulterman, Aart Hendriks and Jacqueline Smith (eds.). To Baehr in Our Minds: Essays in Human Rights from the Heart of the Netherlands. Utrecht: Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM Special No. 21): 465-498. Stallings, R. Y., and E. Karugendo (2005) Female Circumcision and HIV Infection in Tanzania: For Better or for Worse?. Abstract of paper given at Third International AIDS Society Svoboda, J. Steven (2004) Educating the United Nations about Male Circumcision. in Flesh and Blood: Perspectives on the Problem of Circumcision in Contemporary Society. G. C. Denniston, M. F. Milos, and F. M. Hodges, eds. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1997a) Forty-ninth session, provisional agenda item 5(a). The implementation of the human rights of women—traditional practices affecting the health of women and children--Follow-up report of the Special Rapporteur on traditional practices affecting the health of women and children, Mrs. Halima Embarek Warzazi. UN Doc. No. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/10 (25 June 1997). (1997b) Forty-ninth session. Report of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities on its forty-ninth session. UN Doc. No. E/CN.4/1998/2, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/50 (29 August 1997). Wolbarst, Abraham (1914) Universal Circumcision as a Sanitary Measure. Journal of the American Medical Association 62:92-97 Yount, Kathryn M. and Abraham, B.K. (2007) Female Genital Cutting and HIV/AIDS Among Kenyan Women. Studies in Family Planning 38(2): 73-88. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The case of circumcision promoters is unconvincing darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Yes, it does make a difference; and men do complain</h3> It is often said that circumcision is OK because babies are too young to remember the pain, and men don't know what they are missing, don't mind, or at least don't complain about it. For much of the twentieth century enthusiasts for routine circumcision have echoed the sentiments of William Acton: Although it is possible that it [the foreskin] may increase the pleasure derived from the act of sexual congress, there is no evidence that Jews, and those who have undergone circumcision, do not enjoy as much pleasure in the copulatory act as the uncircumcised; – at any rate, the former do not complain.[1] The claims are clear: first, that circumcision makes no difference to a male’s experience of sex; second, that even if it did men do not complain about what they are missing. An obvious point to note is that Acton’s first assertion directly contradicts the medical knowledge of his own day; throughout history and up to the end of the nineteenth century it was generally held by authorities on medical and sexual matters that the foreskin made a significant contribution to the sexual pleasure of both men and their partners. Far from there being “no evidence”, there is so much that the problem becomes one of selection: from many possible sources we may cite the early eighteenth century surgeon John Marten as representing the orthodox position: This Nut is … cover’d with the preputium or Fore-skin, which is of a loose texture, for the better covering of the Nut, and furling itself up behind the Ring or Hoop, to uncover it; therefore serves as a Cap to the Nut, and to enlarge the pleasure that attends Enjoyment, for in the act of Coition it flips backwards and forwards, being tied together with a membranous String call’d the Fraenum or Bridle, and causes the greater pleasure thereby, both to the Man and the Woman … The cutting of this Preputium or Fore-skin, is done by the Jews, and call’d Circumcision; by having of which taken away, ‘tis said those People lose much of the pleasure in the act of Copulation.[2] Acton’s statement is even inconsistent with the medical wisdom of the Victorian period, since it was precisely the erotic significance of the foreskin that led the physicians of that “anti-sensual age” to urge its removal.[3] As the prominent surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson expressed it: The only function which the prepuce can be supposed to have is that of maintaining the penis in a condition susceptible of more acute sensation than would otherwise exist. It may be supposed to increase the pleasure of coition and the impulse to it. These are advantages, however, which in the present state of society can well be spared, and if in their loss some degree of increased sexual control should result, one should be thankful.[4] Acton himself acknowledged the contribution of the foreskin to sexual pleasure when he denounced it as “a source of serious mischief” and a constant threat to the strict continence he regarded as essential to both morals and health.[5] Sexual pleasure is a highly subjective thing, and it is doubtful whether it will ever be possible to measure it scientifically. The numerous attempts of the last few years have left such a confusing picture that it is unlikely that a consensus will ever emerge, and inconceivable that the pro- and anti-circumcision forces will ever reach agreement on what are naively called “the facts”.[13] What is clear, however, is that the second of Acton’s claims has been decisively refuted by circumcised men, many of whom have complained loudly about what was done to them. The protests began in Acton’s own lifetime, for when A.E. Housman and his brothers were circumcised in the 1870s their sister recalled that they were not happy about it: "It was severe treatment, mentally and physically, for well-grown boys, and a great mystery at the time to the younger ones who made open complaint, with a mixture of importance and resentment, of the ill-treatment which had befallen them." [14] Whatever Mr Acton might claim, it is evident that some men have voiced objections to their circumcised condition, including such prominent figures as the poet W.H. Auden and the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, who told the biographer of his brother Maynard that he could never forgive his parents for what they did to him.[15] An early critic of circumcision from within the medical profession commented that there could be “little doubt what would be the verdict – could they only give it utterance – upon the immediate results of the operation returned by these inarticulate (if far from mute) victims of hygienic orthodoxy”.[16] In more recent times, the disappearance of routine circumcision in Britain and its decline in the USA and Australia has increased the opportunities for circumcised men to compare their penises with those of their natural peers; resentment has flared to the point where significant protest movements have emerged, and numbers have sought to recover what was taken. In 1996 the British Medical Journal published a letter from twenty men who believed that “we have been harmed by circumcision carried out in childhood”. They argued that it “cannot be ethical for a doctor to amputate normal tissue from a normal child” and suggested that circumcision without informed consent was a violation of agreed principles of human rights: "The European charter for children in hospital states that every child must be protected from unnecessary medical treatment. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have rights to self determination, dignity, respect, integrity, and non-interference and the right to make informed personal decisions. Unnecessary circumcision of boys violates these rights." The authors emphasise that if circumcision is to be a personal choice, it must be the decision of the person who is to bear the lifelong consequences: “The possible future wishes of the patient should be considered”.[17] In the USA the persistence of widespread neonatal circumcision has produced correspondingly more vigorous protest movements. One such organisation distributed questionnaires on the effects of circumcision to some 546 men between 1993 and 1996 and published the findings from the first 313 respondents.[18] Among the most significant physical consequences reported were prominent scarring (33%), insufficient penile skin for comfortable erection (27%), erectile curvature from uneven skin loss (16%), pain and bleeding upon erection/manipulation (17%), painful skin bridges (12%), and other, such as bevelling deformities of the glans, meatal stenosis, recurrent non-specific urethritis (20%). Reported consequences for sexual function included progressive sensory deficit in the preputial remnant and glans (61%), causing sexual dysfunction (erectile problems, ejaculatory difficulties, and/or anorgasmia); extraordinary stimulation required for orgasm (40%), with many respondents reporting that vaginal sex offered inadequate stimulation for pleasure and/or orgasm; and sexual dysfunction resulting from emotional distress. These findings concur with those of Money and Davidson about the erotogenic consequences of adult circumcision, including loss of proprioceptive stretch receptors of the prepuce and frenulum, diminished eroto-sexual response, increased penile pain, and changes in masturbatory technique.[19] Psychological consequences included emotional distress, manifesting as intrusive thoughts about one’s circumcision, included feelings of mutilation (60%), low self-esteem/inferiority to intact men (50%), genital dysmorphia (55%), rage (52%), resentment/depression (59%), violation (46%), or parental betrayal (30%). Many respondents (41%) reported that their physical/emotional suffering impeded emotional intimacy with partner(s), resulting in sexual dysfunction. For some, lack of compassion from parents, siblings or friends fostered bitter interpersonal conflict or alienation. Almost a third of respondents (29%) reported dependence on substances or behaviours to relieve their suffering (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, food and/or sexual compulsivity). Few men were able to find an acceptable outlet for serious feelings about circumcision, and 54% of respondents had not sought help. The reasons given included: thinking no recourse was available (43%); embarrassment (19%); fear of ridicule (17%); and mistrust of doctors (11%). An Australia study conducted study in the mid-1990s reached similar conclusions [20]. The issue has now been brought out into the open by Unspeakable Mutilations - the remarkable and scarifying collection of personal accounts of circumcision harm compiled by Lindsay Watson. It will no longer be possible for the medical profession and the media to ignore the growing chorus of complaint. Despite his title, the mutilations have at last become speakable. REFERENCES 1. Acton, W. The functions and disorders of the reproductive organs in childhood, youth, adult age and advanced life. 3rd edn. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1865, p 22 2. Marten, J. Gonosologium novum: Or a new system of all the secret infirmities and diseases natural, accidental and venereal in men and women. London, 1709; Facsimile reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, 1985, p 12 3. Moscucci, O. Clitoridectomy, circumcision and the politics of sexual pleasure in mid-Victorian Britain. In: Miller AH and Adams JE ed. Sexualities in Victorian Britain. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996 4. Hutchinson, J. The advantages of circumcision. Medical Review 1900;3:642 5. Darby, R. A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. chap 6 13. A recent sample might include: Fink KS, Carson CC, DeVellis RF. Adult Circumcision Outcomes Study: Effect on Erectile Function, Penile Sensitivity, Sexual Activity and Satisfaction. J Urol 2002;167(5):2113-2116; Boyle GJ, Goldman R, Svoboda JS, Fernandez E. Male circumcision: pain, trauma and psychosexual sequelae. J Health Psychology 2002;7(3):329-43; Bleustein CB, Eckholdt H, Arezzo JC, Melman A. Effects of circumcision on male penile sensitivity. Paper read at the American Urological Association 98th Annual Meeting at Chicago Illinois, April 26-May 1, 2003, Abstract ID: 100769; Bleustein CB, Eckholdt H, Arezzo JC, Melman A. Quantitative somatosensory testing of the penis: optimizing the clinical neurological examination. J Urol 2003;169(6):2266-9. Masood S, Patel HRH, Himpson RC, et al. Penile sensitivity and sexual satisfaction after circumcision: Are we informing men correctly? Urol Int 2005;75(1):62-5. Kim DS and Pang M-G. The effect of male circumcision on sexuality, BJU International 2006;99:619-622 Sorrells ML, Snyder JL, Reiss MD, et al. Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. BJU International 2007;99:864-9 <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/sex_function/">All these papers available online from CIRP</a> 14. Graves RP. A.E. Housman: The scholar poet. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. pp 21-22 15. Darby, [ref 5] pp 298-9 16. Snow, H. <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=51">The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital abnormality</a>. London: Churchill, 1890. p 22 17. Warren J et al. Circumcision of children. British Medical Journal 1996;312;377 18. Hammond T. A preliminary poll of men circumcised in infancy or childhood”. BJU International 1999; 83 (Supp 1):85-92 19. Money J, Davidson J. Adult Penile Circumcision: Erotosexual and Cosmetic Sequelae. Journal of Sex Research 1983;19:289-92. 20. Robert Darby and Laurence Cox, “Objections of a sentimental character: The subjective dimension of foreskin loss”, in Chantal Zabus (ed.), Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies around Excision and Circumcision (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009). Full text may be <a href="https://independent.academia.edu/RobertDarby">downloaded from Academia</a>. <h2> <a id="watson" name="watson"></a>“Unspeakable mutilations”: Men now willing to admit the life-long pain</h2> Unspeakable Mutilations: Circumcised Men Speak Out (ed. Lindsay Watson). Create Space Independent Publishing and Amazon-e-book, 2014. It is often said that non-therapeutic circumcision of infants and boys is OK because men don’t mind being circumcised. This claim is now disproved by a collection of personal accounts by men who bitterly recent having been circumcised. In a lengthy, fully referenced introduction the compiler, Lindsay Watson, discusses the harms of circumcision and acknowledges that the men who contributed their stories showed great courage in their willingness to admit their loss, not only to themselves but in a public statement that reveals their feelings of violation, betrayal, grief, anger, resentment, shame, humiliation and despair. Just as women are now able to admit the pain of sexual assault and rape, and children can report sexual abuse and molestation without fear of being called a liar or troublemaker, it is now becoming possible for men to admit the pain of having their foreskin taken away from them. As the cover information states: Circumcision of male infants and boys is a cultural practice that persists within some African, Pacific, Southern Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, and, as a medicalized ritual, in some Anglophone societies, especially the United States. Advocates describe circumcision as a benign snip with religious significance and health benefits. Critics argue that the health benefits are trivial, irrelevant or non-existent, and that parental power over a child's upbringing does not extend to authorizing a procedure that, in other contexts, would be regarded as sexual abuse. Circumcision is painful, causes permanent damage, and violates the right of the child to bodily integrity. Often overlooked in these debates are the adult men whose lives have been adversely affected because they were circumcised as infants or children. The suffering of these men remains cloaked in silence and unrecognized by the medical profession and society at large. In this book, 50 men, of widely differing ages and from varying walks of life, explain how circumcision has harmed their self-esteem, physical well-being and sexual experience. In analyzing these accounts, the compiler demonstrates that the process of grieving for a lost foreskin closely parallels the experiences of those who have suffered amputation, rape, body dysmorphic disorder, the death of a loved-one, or delayed post-traumatic stress. Circumcision advocates assert that the pain of circumcision is trivial and momentary; these accounts show that the pain of foreskin loss may last a lifetime. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unspeakable-Mutilations-Circumcised-Men-Speak-ebook/dp/B00L5FPF2C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1404254718&sr=1-1">Unspeakable mutilations is available from Amazon as a paperback or e-book</a>. <img alt="" class="image-center" height="251" src="https://www.circinfo.org/images/lindsay-watson.jpg" width="169"/> <h2>More reviews of Unspeakable Mutilations</h2> I just finished reading one of the newest books, “Unspeakable Mutilations — Circumcised Men Speak Out” by New Zealand researcher Lindsay Watson. Fifty men from nine countries individually and candidly tell how their circumcisions were botched or left them with skin tags or left indelible damage to their neural wiring and destroyed their sexual wholeness. They can’t forgive parents, loathe doctors and hospitals and live with distrust. Such independent analysis of their own regrets of being circumcised speak volumes for other males who are bitter or yet unwilling to self-address what was done to them. <a href="http://tempelawn.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/its-an-honor-to-serve-with-forces-working-to-bringing-an-end-to-force-circumcision-of-helpless-boys-and-girls/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Templelawn</a> I am reading a new book: Unspeakable Mutilations: Circumcised Men Speak Out. This book is for all those men who were circumcised as an infant or child. It is also for all those who need to know that many men do not like that they were circumcised. <a href="http://celebratingforeskin.com/post/93622711270/i-am-reading-a-new-book-unspeakable-mutilations" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Celebrating Foreskin</a> Men are coerced by society to keep silent if they feel damaged by circumcision. A man complaining about what is essentially a sexual assault will be greeted with statements like “Oh you’ve just got a problem” or “You’ve got a bee in your bonnet”. Almost never will they be greeted with sympathy or any understanding. Watson’s book does an enormous amount to break the silence and to encourage a compassionate view of men who have had an unnecessary procedure forced on them. Watson’s introduction to the book is a neat summary of the well documented harms caused by male circumcision. The papers published by various academics and scientists working in the fields covered by human biology have all concluded that the foreskin which is removed by the act of circumcision is a functional and specialised component of the male anatomy. Academic papers can be a challenge to digest, Watson’s introduction is easy to comprehend and gives excellent references if the reader wants to study the subject of physical harm further. The heart of the book is the light it shines onto the psychological damage caused by non-therapeutic male circumcision. Watson examines what little evidence there is in the the academic sphere and goes on to provide the stories of 50 men, from a wide range of cultures and ages, who tell us about their journeys from the discovery of what has been done to them, to the harm it has caused, and their reaction to that harm. Often men who have taken this path arrive at a positive or at least optimistic place. What can no longer be in doubt, thanks to Watson’s book and the brave men who tell their stories, is that some men do suffer a significant amount of damage as a result of an anachronistic and inappropriate medical practice. Some men may claim to be unharmed and even be happy with their circumcision but the question lingers about how comfortable you are knowing that a large number of men do suffer in silence from the misguided parenting and the unnecessary medical treatment they have received. Surely the prudent course of action is to let the child mature and then make his own decision. <a href="http://www.mendocomplain.com/2014/10/19/unspeakable-mutilations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Men Do Complain</a> <h2> <a id="reports" name="reports"></a>Personal reports of circumcision pain, harm and resentment</h2> <h3> 1. Britain, 1996</h3> The following letter signed by twenty English men was published in the British Medical Journal in 1996. Circumcision of children We are all adult men who believe that we have been harmed by circumcision carried out in childhood by doctors in Britain. We are concerned about the ethics of this surgery on children and that it is commonly carried out when it is not essential. We have read the BMA’s ethical guidelines, which give no guidance to practitioners who are faced with a boy who has been referred for circumcision. [1] The possible future wishes of the patient should be considered. Although it was shown 28 years ago that preputial development continues to the age of 17 and that only three of 1968 boys needed surgery, [2] many British doctors still seem to be ignorant of this research. [3] The European charter for children in hospital states that every child must be protected from unnecessary medical treatment. The United Nations <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/UN-convention/">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> states that children have rights to self determination, dignity, respect, integrity, and non-interference and the right to make informed personal decisions. Unnecessary circumcision of boys violates these rights. A non-retractile foreskin in a boy can be managed conservatively. [4, 5] Circumcision should therefore rarely be necessary. It would be helpful if paediatric urologists could produce guidelines to advise doctors how foreskin problems in boys can be managed. Preferably, circumcision should not be done until the patient is adult or at least old enough to understand what is intended; then he has a right to a full, illustrated explanation of the nature of the operation and the reasons for it in advance, with the opportunity to ask questions, and help in coming to terms with the alteration of his anatomy afterwards. If the patient is not satisfied with the explanations his views should be taken into consideration. It cannot be ethical for a doctor to amputate normal tissue from a normal child. In the case of disease, circumcision should be used only when there is evidence that conservative treatment is unlikely to be effective or when it has failed. Avoiding surgery may even be cheaper for purchasers of health care. Doctors should approach the child's foreskin with a combination of good ethics, a recognition of the rights of children, and advice based on evidence. (Signed) John P Warren, P David Smith, John D Dalton, Graham R Edwards, Marc Foden, Robert Preston, Philip Stewart, Adam Roberts, Philip C Cookson, Joseph Elliott, J S Phillips, James Williams, Matthew Mallinson-Read, Ian Morris, John Bowring, Rob Warburton, James Blazeby, Tony Peters, John Moore, John Stevens 1. BMA. Medical ethics today: its practice and philosophy. London: BMJ Publishing Group, 1993. [Note: This has now been superseded by British Medical Association, Medical Ethics Committee, <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/doctors.html#bma">The law and ethics of male circumcision: Guidance for Doctors</a>, June 2006.] 2. Oster J. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/oster/">Further fate of the foreskin.</a> Arch Dis Child 1968;43:200-3. 3. Griffiths D, Frank JD. Inappropriate circumcision referrals by GPs. J R Soc Med 1992;85:324-5. 4. Wright JE. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/treatment/phimosis/wright/">The treatment of childhood phimosis with topical steroid.</a> Aust NZ J Surg 1994;64:327-8. 5. Cuckow PM, Rix G, Mouriquand PDE. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/treatment/phimosis/cuckow/">Preputial plasty: a good alternative to circumcision.</a> J Pediatr Surg 1994;29:561-3. <a href="http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/312/7027/377/a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=warren&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1132273822128_23242&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=10&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=1">British Medical Journal, Vol. 312, 10 February 1996, p. 377</a>. <h3>2. British men seek compensation for circumcision injury</h3> On 29 October 2005 the British Guardian ran a major feature article, “Sore Point”, on the resentment felt by men who had been circumcised as children: "Circumcision – beloved by the Victorians … can be a cause of great anguish. Richard Johnson meets men finding ways to reverse a cut they wish they’d never had." <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1601712,00.html">Guardian, Saturday October 29, 2005</a> <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Guardian-Sorepoint.html">Read full text of article here</a> In response to a letter agreeing that circumcision was immoral but questioning the comparison with female genital mutilation, the Guardian published the following letter from John Dalton: As a victim of male circumcision and a subject of Richard Johnson’s article (Sore Point, October 29), I have no wish to belittle the suffering of circumcised girls. I would, however, like to respond to Catherine Long’s objection to male circumcision being compared to female genital mutilation (Letters, November 5). Male and female circumcision both remove normal tissue from normal children without therapeutic need or personal consent. The time has come for children to be protected from non-therapeutic circumcision without prejudice in respect of race, religion or gender. John D Dalton Frizington, Cumbria <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1639243,00.html">Guardian Weekend Magazine, 12 November 2005</a> <h3>3. Neil Peterson (USA): Constant pain from infant circumcision</h3> UI [University of Iowa] freshman Neil Peterson grew up convinced that he was no different from other boys even though he spent much of those years in excruciating pain. The Missouri native experienced uncomfortable erections from early childhood until two years ago, when the 24-year-old anthropology student discovered that he suffered from a rare complication after being circumcised too tightly. Since then, he's spoken out about the procedure and formed a local chapter of Students for Genital Integrity, a nationwide support group. "I had to recognize that I was unhappy the way I was," he said. "[Forming the group] was a very un-American thing for me to do, because society normalcy calls for circumcision in men. It has healed me to talk about it." Peterson said his complication was healed after he learned to stretch his foreskin out to alleviate his condition. Although he no longer experiences pain, he is dedicated to speaking out against genital mutilation. Circumcision and other types of bodily mutilation are crimes against human rights, Peterson said. His group contends that children should not be forcibly circumcised, as they now are as infants at their parents' request. The group is dedicated to educating the public and doctors that circumcision is not necessary, in addition to highlighting the dangers of sex-reassignment surgery to distinguish hermaphrodites as male or female.The group will be formally recognized as a UI student organization next week, Peterson said. Peterson is planning to hold fund-raisers and host speakers at the university and write to representatives, expressing the need for a law barring circumcision in the United States. The Circumcision Information and Resource Pages reports that approximately 60 percent of American males are circumcised, down from nearly 90 percent in the 1960s. Edward Bell, a UI professor of pediatrics, said complications such as Peterson's are rare. The American Academy of Pediatrics says 0.2 to 0.6 percent of circumcisions end with complications. Bleeding and infection are two problems that can occur when a boy is circumcised, as well as scarring if the doctor removes too much foreskin. Bell said that circumcision has become an unnecessary procedure for most males. "Circumcision is more of a cultural issue than a medical one," he said. "It would be nice if parents didn't insist upon having their boys circumcised." Many parents don't want their boys to look different from their brothers, peers, or fathers, Bell said. "Circumcision has become cosmetic surgery, and it's really just a matter of personal preference," Bell said. By Paula Mavroudis - The Daily Iowan (USA) 12/5/02 <h3>4. Confessions by Australian parents</h3> "Yes, we had it done" - Juliette Van Outen "We decided to have our son, Jonas, circumcised, because my husband, Conrad, wanted to. He's circumcised, so it's a case of like father like son. We researched it before we had it done, and nothing really bothered me for or against it. However, Conrad's family are doctors and nurses, and they all encouraged us to have it done. "If I had another boy, I would have to have him circumcised too, because you can't have one boy done and not the other. But it was a horrible experience. Jonas was three weeks old when we took him to a doctor's surgery for the procedure. Apparently that's all this doctor does and all you could hear in the surgery was babies screaming. Now, I hear that doctors are doing it later, but I wouldn't have it done that way. At three weeks, Jonas screamed for about 20 minutes -- if they're older, they're more aware that it's hurting. I would recommend having it done earlier. "After the circumcision, his penis was wrapped in gauze while it healed, and it was just so painful for me. We had to bath him in salt water to help the healing process and slowly pull the gauze away. As we were unwrapping it, some of the gauze was stuck to the skin and it was just horrible - hard and heartbreaking. Unless you've got the guts for it, I wouldn't do it. But I don't regret it. There are a lot of people saying to me now that less children are now being circumcised, so I don't know how that's going to effect Jonas as he's growing up. It's starting to worry me that he won't be like everybody else." "No, we didn't have it done" - Vicki Redlich "I always thought I would circumcise any sons I had, because I think a circumcised penis looks nicer, and because my husband, Anton, is circumcised. But when I had Saxon, I realised there was no way I was going to inflict unnecessary pain on my little boy. "Every time I thought about the actual procedure, I'd feel physically sick. When my husband brought up the subject -- he wanted Saxon to be done -- I'd say let's wait until he's six months, which is when babies can be anaesthetised. It was my way of buying time. Saxon turned six months and the subject was casually broached again. I said I didn't want to do it; that I couldn't see the pros outweighing the cons. Anton still said he wanted it done. We left it at that. Just before Saxon turned one, I read an article that confirmed my feelings against getting it done. The article described the pain of the procedure and the fact that uncircumcised men experience greater pleasure during sex. I told my husband that now I was adamantly against circumcision. He just said 'Well, I figured out pretty quickly that, when we didn't do it straight away, we wouldn't do it at all.' It wasn't a big issue between us, thankfully." "I wish I had my old willy back" - Ginni Anderson "Jon was circumcised when he was four. I deliberately chose not to have him (and my other boys) done as babies, but then when he was nearly four, Jon started to scream when he went to the toilet and I knew something was wrong. It turned out that his foreskin wouldn't retract and this was causing him pain when he did a wee. Our doctor convinced me that circumcision was the best option. Jon had a general anaesthetic for the operation and came out of it quite quickly, but he was in lots of pain for weeks after. He screamed whenever he did a wee and he screamed the first time I put him in the bath after the operation. After that he wouldn't go near the bath for two weeks. His penis got infected and he needed antibiotics to clear it up. He kept crying and saying, "I wish I had my old willy back". It was really rough on Jon and created several weeks, if not a couple of months, of crying and pain, but we've had no problems since." Source: "Circumcision: Fore(skin) and against" , Practical Parenting, June 2002 NOTE: It is not unusual for boys to go through a phase during which the foreskin balloons out when they urinate. This is nothing to worry about: it can actually help gently stretch the foreskin and detach it from the glans. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/treatment/phimosis/">Phimosis</a> can now nearly always be successfully treated with steroid cream. It's pretty obvious that the parents who got their boys circumcised inflicted needless suffering and harm: the first case for no good reason at all, the third on the basis of bad medical advice. If your GP tells you that your boy "needs" to be circumcised, make sure you get a second opinion, preferably from a competent paediatrician, before you agree. <h3>3. An English mother regrets ...</h3> "I am an English atheist and my husband is an Egyptian Muslim. My son was born with undescended testicles and at the age of two and a half had an operation to bring them down permanently. Even though I was completely against it as a form of mutilation, my husband was adamant that our son would be circumcised one day - definitely in Egypt when he was older and without anaesthetic. As I thought it would be safer for him in England, under anaesthetic, and to avoid any further family conflict in the future, I thought it better to get it over and done with while he was having his other operation. Not a day has passed since (it's been five years now) that I have not regretted giving in to my dominant husband. The pain my little boy went through with his penis weeping and covered in stitches for days afterwards, the thoughts of how it would affect him psychologically, how he would feel about being different from other boys, how it would affect his sexual pleasure when he grows up, how he might hate me one day for agreeing to this barbaric mutilation, and all these thoughts and more haunt me every day since. To have it done when there was no medical reason, no reason whatsoever for it having to be done - I just cannot live with my conscience without knowing there is any advantage whatsoever. If only I had said no, wait until he's older and can decide for himself - of course he never would have decided 'yes', who would agree to having the most sensitive part of their body mutilated?" Source: <a href="http://www.norm-uk.org/circumcision_unhappy.html">http://www.norm-uk.org/circumcision_unhappy.html</a> <h3>4. American Jewish boy admits agony of circumcision</h3> New York engineer Jonathan Friedman writes that he became aware of the damaged condition of his penis from an early age: “The unsightly scar around the shaft of my penis, halfway along its length. The discolored flesh above the scar which used to be the inside of my foreskin. The scar tissue where my frenulum used to attach to my glans. When I reached puberty, my erections were tight and painful. When I started masturbating, I didn’t understand that I needed to use lubrication, and as a consequence I seriously damaged my penis. The skin was bleeding, chaffed and flaking off. I was in pain. At this point I realized that the skin should be gliding back and forth over the shaft, but this was very difficult to do because my circumcision was so tight. I could only move the skin up towards my glans, pulling more hair-baring skin from my groin up onto my shaft. I couldn’t move my shaft skin downward at all. When I became sexually active, I realized I had virtually no touch-sensitivity. I felt devastated. Not much has changed since. “I also frequently experience lymphedema, where the top of my penis above my circumcision scar fills up with fluid and swells. This happens spontaneously and during arousal. Recently I experienced a lymphedema episode where my penis didn't return to its normal size for over twelve hours. Due to all my issues with pain and swelling, I can only masturbate once or twice per month. Even with copious lubrication, my shaft skin becomes chaffed and bleeds. If I had the choice, I would not be circumcised.” Source: Jonathan Friedman, <a href="http://www.beyondthebris.com/2011/06/on-circumcision-authority-and.html">On Circumcision, Authority and the Perpetuation of Abuse</a> <h3>5. I was circumcised and I want my foreskin back!</h3> by Elwyn Moir I was in kindergarten when I first realised parts of my penis were missing - and it felt horrible. My parents were forthright in explaining my body to me as a child; I have clear early memories of bathing with my Dad and I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know I was circumcised. However, when I saw other preschool boys who had “the whole package” I was taken aback by the contrasts – their penises had interesting parts mine lacked, and the glans (head) of an intact penis looked glossier, smoother, moister and far healthier than mine. <a href="http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/i-was-circumcised-and-i-want-my-foreskin-back/">Read full article at The Punch, 2 October 2012</a> <h3>6. Assaulted and Mutilated: Shane Peterson's circumcision nightmare</h3> Excessive removal of skin and mucosa is one of the most common results of neonatal circumcision, yet the true frequency of this injury and its adverse effects on physical and psychological development have never been adequately documented. In this account, Shane Peterson tells his own story of the lifelong trauma he has suffered as a result of the “routine neonatal circumcision” to which he was subjected soon after birth – an operation in which nearly all the skin of the penis shaft was removed in addition to the skin and mucosa of the foreskin. The horrific results and damaging long term sequelae of this iatrogenic injury distorted Shane’s physical and psychological development, his sexuality, his perceived place in society, and his career. Doctors and psychiatrists were unsympathetic when he complained of pain and disfigurement. Reconstructive surgery to resolve the physical injury yielded such disappointing results that he attempted suicide. Eventually, Shane was able to achieve partial resolution of the psychological trauma through a combination of ongoing counselling, successful litigation against the operator, and an active commitment to public education about the detrimental effects of circumcision. <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=50">Read Shane Peterson's account of his legal and person battles here.</a> <h2> <a id="adult" name="adult"></a>Reports of circumcision as adult</h2> <h3>An English man regrets ...</h3> Alex was circumcised at 25 during an operation to correct a bend in his penis. The surgeon decided - without Alex's consent - to remove the foreskin, an action that other surgeons have subsequently confirmed as unnecessary. "There was a huge reduction in erogenous tissue," says Alex, now 29, a systems analyst from Oxfordshire. "The feeling of pleasure has changed so much that I haven't been able to achieve orgasm since the operation. It had a disastrous effect on my relationship: my partner wondered whether it was her fault, and that contributed to the end of our relationship. Since then I've found it hard to get into a new relationship. I am conscious of how I look, and girlfriends have given me quizzical looks. They are not used to seeing circumcised men. I haven't had the confidence to go into a public changing room since the operation." Source: Simon Crompton, "The unkindest of cuts", Times (London), 13 January 2003 <h3> ... so does an Australian ...</h3> Dr David Nunn - Worst mistake of my life" I was circumcised when I was 19 because I wanted to be "normal" like other young men. I am now many years down the track from 19 and I consider it to be the biggest and worst mistake of my whole life. The first time I masturbated after being circumcised it was an absolute let-down because the feeling was about one third the intensity of my pre-circumcision and has been ever since. By removal of the prepuce (foreskin) quite a large amount of nerve tissue is destroyed, and hence the wonderful feeling associated with the glans moving in and out of the prepuce. All doctors should be compelled to explain to the parents of innocent baby boys and to adults seeking circumcision the destructive effects of such a mutilation. (Sent to Canadian site offering special underwear to help protect penis and restore sensitivity in circumcised men: <a href="http://www.manhood.mb.ca/nunn.jpg">http://www.manhood.mb.ca/nunn.jpg</a>) <h3>... Queenslander's "horrendous loss" from circumcision ...</h3> David Louis, a 37 year old Aussie man living on the Gold Coast, got the idea that circumcision would improve his sex life. He had the operation, but the result was a disaster: "I had disgust with the surgeon for failing to warn me, and disgust with myself for letting this happen, and an overall feeling of bitter bitter disappointment of the loss of sexual feeling. Now, 30 months on, the foreskin removal is a horrendous loss to me and my sexual enjoyment." <a href="http://davidlouis77.wordpress.com/">Read David's full account of adult circumcision at his blog</a> <h3> ... and a Russian immigrant to the U.S.A.</h3> I’m a 24-year-old man, originally from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine), where circumcision was not practiced (and was discouraged for that matter). When I was a toddler, I had a severe case of phimosis. My mother asked Soviet surgeons to remove my foreskin to cure the condition, but they refused, insisting on topical treatments. Eventually, treatments helped. And so the foreskin stayed. But he got circumcised in his twenties, after he had moved to the United States, and soon realised that it was the biggest mistake of his life. <a href="https://www.darboninstitute.org/circumcised_as_adult_one_man_s_account" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Read the full account here</a>. <h2> <a id="betrayal" name="betrayal"></a>“A sense of total betrayal”</h2> British judge recalls horror of his double circumcision On the first page of his autobiography the eminent British judge Lord Hailsham reports his birth in 1907 and what happened next: My mother, who had strong views on certain subjects, saw to it that I was immediately circumcised. One would think that even then [1907] this was a fairly simple operation, but for some reason it was not completely or immediately successful. It had to be done again when I was nearly ready for my private school. I was not told that it was going to be done; no anaesthetic was administered; I was just laid across the doctor’s knees and recircumcised. … I can still remember the pain, the blood, and my sense of total betrayal by the adult world. Lord Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight: The Memoirs of Lord Hailsham (London: Collins 1990) p. 17. The fact that, writing 80 years later, Hailsham opens his memoirs with the agony and shame of his circumcision drives home how deeply he was wounded by this “betrayal”. It is clear that his mind, as much as his body, was indelibly scarred by the experience. <h2>“The only circumcised boy in the world"</h2> Australian historian Russell Ward reports his distress at finding that his childhood playmates had something that he lacked As a boy in rural north Queensland in the 1910s, “we spent many happy hours playing an outdoors game, unknown to grown-ups and, as far as I know, to the whole world outside Queensland. It was a kind of treasure hunt having at its core an additional, exciting, sexual element. A dozen or so boys of all shapes and ages would pick sides and then toss up a coin to decide which team would be the hunters and which the hunted. As with hide-and-seek the former group had to close their eyes for quite a time while the latter hid themselves and the treasure or talisman which the hunters must seek. The cardinal rule was that one member of the hunted side, which one being a closely guarded secret, had to secrete on his person a note giving directions for finding the treasure. The note was written in as small writing as possible on a tiny scrap of folded paper which could be secreted anywhere - in the lining if its bearer’s trousers, in his hair or even a nostril. Thus, every boy on the hunted team, when discovered, was subjected to a body search by all the hunters of the other side until the note was found. Then it changed hands and the hunters became the hunted. Usually, though not always, the clue was hidden under the captured boy’s foreskin. Much handling and minute examination of the genitals, strangely enough, seldom produced an erection; though with me it always did. As i was one of the very few boys in the whole World who had been circumcised, I was never entrusted with the note. Russell Ward, A Radical Life: The Autobiography of Russell Ward (Melbourne: MacMillan 1988), p. 9. Which goes to show that the foreskin has many valuable uses beyond the old cliche of “protecting the glans”, even in childhood. See also <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">Historical quotes on circumcision, foreskin and sexual function on this site</a>. <h2> <a id="underwear" name="underwear"></a>Dutch boy regrets circumcision, tries to overcome loss of sensitivity by designing special underwear</h2> The following account was sent to Circumcision Information Australia by Rinke Feenstra, an architect/designer in the Netherlands who was circumcised as a toddler for “medical reasons” (<a href="https://www.circinfo.org/phimosis.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">phimosis</a>). As he grew up he regretted the loss of his foreskin and found that the friction of clothes on his penis was uncomfortable and reduced sensitivity. Some men in this situation try foreskin restoration, but Rinke decided on a different approach by applying his design skills to the development of special underwear that would reduce chafing and help restore sensation. We do not normally post advertising material, but in this case we feel that Rinke’s personal story not only reinforces the lesson that circumcision reduces sexual sensation and functionality, and is best avoided, but also offers hope to men who have been harmed by circumcision, particularly those who are daunted by the effort required to achieve restoration. While we have confidence in Rinke’s sincerity, we make no endorsement of the product. <h3>Rinke’s story</h3> Growing up in the rural north of Holland, I was the only circumcised boy on my soccer team. In general circumcision is rare in the Netherlands, but around the cities it’s a bit more common because of different cultures. At age three, the procedure happened to me. It was done for medical reasons: I was diagnosed with phimosis, a condition where the foreskin is too tight to be pulled back over the head of the penis. As a teenager and as a student, I read things online that made me realise that my sensitivity might have been affected by my circumcision. I also realised that I was part of a much larger community of circumcised men. I was doing a lot sports like cycling, and experienced the friction of rough fibres on my penis - a very logical result, because the exposed mucous membrane is not your ordinary skin, but is more <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">like the tissue of the lips and mouth</a>. These delicate tissues become calloused and lose sensitivity when exposed to rough fabrics. Conversely, calloused hands become smoother without exposure to rough surfaces. In a similar way, the membranes of the glans soften and become more sensitive when protected from rough friction. I started to focus on my condition as a problem to be fixed, but in doing so I grew more frustrated. The whole experience brought me to a turning point, and I decided that it’s better to focus on the positive and make the best of it. I was educated as an architectural engineer, developing a critical view of things I see in my surroundings. As a child I also grew up with very health-conscious parents. I think that this combination led me to think about finding a natural, nourishing, and protective solution. Back then I didn’t know that I was going to create a brand that focusses on genital health. That thought grew during the years after because I wanted to give men the opportunity to use my designs and feel the difference. The idea of making protective sleeve concepts already started in 2007, and I began distributing some test designs in 2014. Through the years, I researched and tested the most skin-friendly fabrics and silk gave the best results. But it’s not just your regular silk, but an animal friendly, certified organic, and top-quality silk that’s treated carefully and chemical free throughout the entire process. What’s also important about that is that on average, the genital skin is about 90% more absorbent than other skin areas, leaving it extremely vulnerable to toxins and other irritants. What silk does to our skin is really interesting. Silk is a protein fibre, and the protection it gives helps to repair and nourish the intimate skin. When rethinking the design of underwear, we integrated the most important comfort and health aspects and the special protective elements for circumcised men. You can imagine that it is also very nice for intact men. Silk boosts a man’s comfort and sensitivity naturally. In general, our silk is a nourishing, soft fabric that prevents irritations. For example, if a guy shaves or trims his pubic hair, then he will benefit from the interior softness of our underwear. Silk is also a very good temperature-regulating fibre, combined with the extra space pouch which supports a man’s reproductive health too. Our products are ethically handcrafted in Belgium, and our designs have been sold across 12 countries on five continents in 2016. What’s really pleasing is that preliminary scientific tests conducted in the US have proved an increased sensitivity and a better skin structure as a result of wearing our designs for two months, so we’re really motivated to do more research on this next year. On the other hand, as a young company it’s still quite a challenge to get men interested in the products. Circumcision is a taboo subject here in Europe, and many man don’t see the point of my focus. Also, men aren’t used to being open about personal matters or their feelings. There’s still a lot of ego hidden in a man’s pants. Would you like to help us in making a change? Ynside is offering its product to circumcised men all around the world. Our crowdfunding campaign helps to pre-finance the next stage. The improved collection is ready to send into production. Worldwide shipping is no problem and delivery will be made in March 2018. Your patience will be rewarded. There are also gift cards available as a perfect Christmas gift. <a href="https://igg.me/at/ynside/x/17413368" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ynside Underwear</a>, a health first men’s underwear startup that naturally creates a softer genital skin for increased sensitivity and pleasure. You can also contact Rinke at <a href="https://ynsideunderwear.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Yinside Underwear</a>. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Personal stories from circumcised men darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Russian immigrant to the United States bitterly regrets decision to get circumcised</h3> The following letter was sent to the History of Circumcision site by a Russian immigrant to the United States who agreed to get circumcised when he was in his mid-20s. As he reports in telling detail, it was the biggest mistake of his life. I’m a 24-year-old man, originally from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine), where circumcision was not practiced (and was discouraged for that matter). When I was a toddler, I had a severe case of phimosis. My mother asked Soviet surgeons to remove my foreskin to cure the condition, but they refused, insisting on topical treatments. Eventually, treatments helped. And so the foreskin stayed. At the age of seven, I attended one of the first Jewish schools in Ukraine. My mother would get visits from Rabbis insisting that I undergo the surgery and offering a myriad of reasons why: health, spirituality, heritage, everyone in the almighty United States of America does it, etc. My mom did not want to aimlessly hurt me and the foreskin survived again. We emigrated to the USA and I came to New York City at the age of 11 and went to a Jewish school again, but being raised in an academic family, I gave little heed to religious dogma and never practiced or cared about religion or anything unscientific. High School ended and I went to college. It was a technical school where social life was limp, but I still manage to date some cute girls and sex was amazing. To summarize, a good orgasm was “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Continuous, prolonged scream, followed by an “all body” sensation that tickled and sent “waves” all over me, leaving me “high” for a while afterward. For a similar orgasmic account, see this testimony at notjustskin.org. [NB: while the notjustskin.org URL still functions this is not the same website anymore] College passed, and a few traumatic events happened in my family (funeral). I missed an entrance examination deadline and had to wait a year to reapply. That left me with a lot of free time. I live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, and one day I randomly decided to attend morning synagogue services (out of boredom, I guess). One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was suddenly going about wearing a head-covering, keeping Sabbath and all other laws. I met a nice, charismatic Rabbi who befriended me and I became a frequent family guest at his house for Sabbath and holidays. I also went to Israel and read a bunch of literature aimed at reconciling religion and science, which appealed to me. I fell in love and dated a Jewish girl from a similar background and after she broke up with me, I experienced such intense anguish and grief that in my depressed mind began attributing it to guilt, sin, Divine retribution and a bunch of similar reasons that my pain-stricken brain went through. [1] As a result, I started getting curious about the most fundamental ritual in Judaism -- circumcision. The Rabbis explained it to be the most fundamental and sacred commandment that shows that one has a covenant with G-d. In my foolishness, I had shared with my Rabbi that I was uncut and the brainwashing had begun. His point was that despite being such mark of the covenant, circumcision puts a “stamp” on “that which can take control over us.” In other words, it’s a symbolic “lock” that we put our animalistic desires unto and learn to channel them in a directed way (only in marriage). Judaism as a whole is aimed at making a “soldier” out of a person, and many people would agree that strict discipline in life often leads to more pleasure than chaotic life of disorderly regime. I’m not mocking that explanation because Judaism is indeed concerned with sexual pleasure, and the Rabbis have many books written on how husband and wife ought to bring each other to ecstasy. Judaism also has marital purity laws where the husband and wife separate for about a week and a half during menstrual cycle. The point is that couples live as friends for some time and the break allows them to renew sexual hunger for each other and decrease desensitization. Furthermore, a lot of emphasis is placed (written since ancient literature) on making sure a woman has an orgasm (talk about modern society finding out what a clitoris is not so long ago). “Look at an average religious woman,“ my Rabbi would say. “Does anyone look dissatisfied? Does anyone need to find tips in Cosmopolitan about 39 orgasmic tricks? They are more satisfied than secular people who get desensitized with everything, especially through porn.” All of these contemplations appealed to me in terms of living according to religion. While researchers have a disagreement as to whether it’s true, indeed I have personally noticed that modern secular world seems to make so much emphasis on sex and exposure that people could get desensitized easily. Speaking from experience, porn would often desensitize me to real women to the point of having serious quarrels with ex-girlfriends. (For an interesting book discouraging pornography, see I Love Female Orgasm, By Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller). I looked at many anti-circumcision websites, but most of them pointed to no more than “decreased sensitivity.” That definition seemed ambiguous and suggested that it related to sensitivity experienced while thrusting. Who cares, I thought. Condoms diminish sensitivity, but the orgasm is what counts! I spoke to some Russian buddies at a local synagogue who got circumcised as adults, and they favored that explanation. “Yes sensitivity decreases but it won’t hurt either you or her,“ said one. “Idiot, you last longer. What are you waiting for? Go do it!” I also understood that the sliding function would be gone. In a chat with a law school roommate, he once asked me, “Have you heard about this new lube? It lets you bang her in the breasts for a while, and it won’t hurt one bit!” “Oh yeah? I don’t need to use lube and have never even understood why it’s selling, aside from using it on girls to help with vaginal lubrication,” I replied. I also told him that I had never fully understood a famous American expression “Get your dick wet”, as natural men have normally moist organs all the time. However, that must not have stuck in my head enough. My roommate (who is not religious) replied, “Well dude, but circ is something millions of Americans do. Does anyone seem unhappy?” Why I never capitalized on the point that it’s only because they don’t know the difference, I don’t know. Another factor that got me off-track were these two pro-circ websites: www.circumcisioninfo.com and www.circlist.com. These sites have many alleged reports from men who claim to have experienced an increase in sexual pleasure following circumcision. There are many more anti-circ sites out there with negative reports, but in the mind of a confused, semi-brainwashed person, they did enough to turn the tide to the dark side. Such contemplations finally moved me to do the unreasonable and remove my foreskin. I remember worrying too much about pain, but that was needless. An experienced Jewish surgeon (called mohel) performed everything painlessly, and the wounds healed fast. A big feast was thrown in my honor, and I have become a “hero” in the community; in fact, I’m still proclaimed as such every time someone from my community gets a chance to introduce me to another person, especially a famous Rabbi. Yet, no praise in the world can cure the scar of losing that which I’ve dreamed about since Bar Mitzvah: Powerful Orgasm. To cut my long story short (no pun intended), orgasm decreased tremendously. The continuous “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” described above turned into “ah ah ah” at most. Masturbation (which I’m not a fan of for personal/desensitization reasons, but I realize many people like it) lost pleasure altogether. Barely a sound comes out. Ejaculatory force decreased, with the loss of the previously powerful, propelling Orgasm, and indeed the penis is dry and uncomfortable. It’s been a year now, and I can’t wear boxers because it hurts when my uncovered head rubs against clothing. I bought the Manhood protection device, and it does help somewhat. I realize that soon my head will lose all sensation and it won’t hurt anymore, but that’s not consoling one little bit. My grandfather once told me a story about how they used to train them to ride horses without a saddle before World War 2, which hurt a lot and after a while, a layer grew on buttocks that made such riding painless. That’s what eventually happens to cut penises. Everyone always made an argument to me that it doesn’t matter much for women, and they’re (thankfully) not dissatisfied. But as beautiful and wonderful it is that some women like uncut men and experience great pleasure regardless, no one thinks enough about whether the man is satisfied. Even in (American) porn, a woman is the sexual moaning creature that gets “out of this world” multiple orgasms, while a man is someone who just needs to “get off”, release, and go home. That may be so, and the foreskin alone doesn’t get a man to have multiple orgasms; but as far as INTENSITY is concerned, I used to scream and get such a reaction that made my girlfriends (none of whom had ever experienced a natural man) wonder whether “I’m OK”, and “how did I get to have such a powerful reactions that made me keep on moaning with closed eyes after ejaculating”? My only solace now is that had never experienced unprotected sex before and hopefully, at least that new experience would compensate for the loss, though I’m expecting it to be worse than natural sex with a condom as far as orgasm is concerned. Also, it would always keep me wondering what it would feel like to have had natural unprotected sex, as I had always dreamed. Ironically, all the best research came to me when it was too late, such as this short documentary video by Ari Libsker and the history of circumcision website. [NB: the history of circumcision website referenced was one of Robert Darby's websites, the content of which is now accessible in this archive] If you’re an adult considering circumcision, THINK AGAIN! As the Russian saying goes, “You’ll be biting your elbows,” meaning you’ll be making an irreversible mistake that you could regret for the rest of your life. Please contact me if you have any questions: <a class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="4605333207350722332a3206212b272f2a6825292b" href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection">[email protected]</a> Note: I never grew up as one of those popular teenage boys who are successful with girls and used to get overly emotionally attached to whatever relationship I would acquire -- thousands of “socially inept” men (inspired by some best-selling motivational authors like Neil Strauss ) have formed a vast online “seduction” community where men share tips/strategies on how to become natural at attracting ladies - e.g. www.fastseduction.com. It would have paid better to spend the time and effort improving my “game” rather than falling into religion. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circumcised as adult: One man's account darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h1>Male circumcision is a feminist issue</h1> <h3> Why women should be just as concerned with male genital mutilation (circumcision) as with female genital mutilation</h3> Activists against female genital mutilation and Western feminists have traditionally sought to draw a radical distinction between male genital cutting (male circumcision) and female genital cutting (female genital mutilation). In their polemics, MGM was a mild adjustment, the alleged harmlessness of which was deployed to highlight the horrors of FGM as an abomination that must be eradicated. It was not that such writers had enough knowledge of MGM to be able to speak with authority on the subject, or even really believed these claims, but that they were writing in societies (mainly the United States) where circumcision of boys was accepted as a social norm, and only the lunatic fringe claimed that it was in any way harmful, and even fewer that it was a human rights violation. The FGM activists feared that any comparisons between MGM and FGM would have the effect of lessening the sense of horror that attached to the latter, and thus weakening the fight against it. The fact that this double standard left boys at the mercy of the circumcisers seems not to have concerned them at all. Times have changed. Women from places (particularly Africa) where female genital cutting is traditionally performed along side male circumcision have been far less discriminatory in their approach to the issue, and willing to regard both types of surgery as comparable, neither downplaying the harm of circumcision nor exaggerating the harm of FGM. More recently, feminist scholars in the west have questioned the double standard and argued convincingly that the arguments against FGM apply just as strongly to circumcision of boys, and that there are more similarities than differences between the two types of procedures. In a recent article in Australian Feminist Studies, Marie Fox and Michael Thomson have gone so far as to argue that foreskin is a feminist issue – that is, that feminists should be just as concerned with male circumcision as with FGM. Meanwhile, there is evidence that male circumcision reduces women’s enjoyment of sex and leads to rougher and less sensuous lovemaking. And in Africa, a recent study has found that women are not at all happy with the focus of AIDS control on male circumcision, and suggests that male circumcision is bad for women. <h2>Male circumcision and female sexual enjoyment</h2> There is good evidence that male circumcision affects female sexual pleasure - and for the worse, not the better. Circumcision promoters are putting a lot of effort into trying to persuade people that circumcised men make better lovers, or at least that women "prefer" circumcised men. It may be true that in societies where circumcision is widespread, some women say they prefer what they are accustomed to; but it is equally true that in societies that practise female circumcision, men prefer circumcised women because that is what they are accustomed to. It is also true that some women who experience uncircumcised sex for the first time never want to go back. In any case, the imagined sexual preferences of adults are not a valid reason for interfering with children's genitals. Kristen O'Hara (with Jeffrey O'Hara), Sex as Nature Intended It (Hudson USA, Turning Point Publications, 2001) See Kristen's website: <a href="http://www.sexasnatureintendedit.com/">www.SexAsNatureIntendedIt.com</a> O'Hara K, O'Hara J. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/ohara/">The effect of male circumcision on the sexual enjoyment of the female partner</a>. BJU Int 1999;83 Suppl 1:79-84. Bensley GA, Boyle GJ. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/sex_function/bensley1/">Effects of male circumcision on female arousal and orgasm</a>. N Z Med J 2003;116(1181):595-6. <h3>Czech women more likely to experience good orgasms than women in the United States</h3> A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine has found that Czech women have more a satisfactory experience of sexual intercourse than women in the United States. The researchers conclude that this is because the key factor in whether a woman has an orgasm is the duration of intercourse, and that the average duration intercourse in Czechoslovakia was more than double that in the United States: 16.2 minutes among the Czechs, compared with only 7 minutes among the Americans. As the authors of the study comment, the results could reflect “a greater appreciation of intercourse and sensuality by Europeans than by Americans.” Since Czech men are generally not circumcised and American men are, they may also reflect the harmful effect of male circumcision on women’s sexual enjoyment. These results are in complete contradiction with the story usually told in the popular U.S. media, that circumcised men “can last longer” before climaxing. The study did not consider this factor, but since circumcision is extremely rare in Czechoslovakia (a factor in the popularity of Bel Ami Video) we can be confident that vast majority of the partners of the Czech women were not circumcised. By contrast, given the high incidence of circumcision in the United States, we can also be confident that most of the partners in the U.S. studies were circumcised. The inevitable conclusion is that circumcised men climax sooner, probably because the reduced sensitivity of their penis limits the pleasure they derive from intercourse so severely that their pleasure is pretty much limited to the orgasm itself. For uncircumcised men, on the other hand, there is as much fun and enjoyment in getting there as there is in arriving – a happy situation that clearly benefits women as well. Source: Petr Weis and Stuart Brody, Women’s partnered orgasm consistency is associated with greater duration of penile-vaginal intercourse but not of foreplay, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.01041.x/full">Journal of Sexual Medicine, Vol 6 (1), January 2009</a> <h2>African study finds that male circumcision as AIDS control strategy is bad for women</h2> Several focus groups were set up in east Africa to determine women’s attitudes and perceptions to medical male circumcision. Nearly all the findings came out negative. Women were afraid that: <ul> <li>the assumption that a circumcised man was by definition HIV-free would lead to an increase in unsafe sex and make it more difficult for women to insist that he wears a condom;</li> <li>women’s negotiating position in sex would be weakened;</li> <li>there would be greater stigma attached to women who were HIV-positive and to women living with an HIV-positive partner;</li> <li>promotion male circumcision would lead to more female genital mutilation and undermine the programs against it.</li> </ul> Overall, male circumcision as an AIDS control strategy was seen as bad for women. The following are extracts from the report: “Women are excited for medical male circumcision because they’re desperate for new prevention options, but they lack detailed factual knowledge of its benefits and risks,” says Cebile Dlamini of Swaziland for Positive Living. “For example, the fact that it only provides partial protection can be overlooked and some women and men believe once a man is circumcised, he is by definition HIV-negative.” In total, nearly 500 women in HIV-affected communities completed a questionnaire, developed and administered by the women-led WHiPT teams in five countries. Almost 40 focus groups provided additional information about women’s attitudes about medical male circumcision. In each country, research took place in different locales, selected to reflect a diversity of circumcision practices, including communities that practice traditional male circumcision and those that do not circumcise, as well as those practicing female genital mutilation. The Kenyan WHiPT team surveyed women in settings where male circumcision was evaluated in a clinical trial and subsequently introduced. Reports from women reached by the Kenyan WHiPT team underscore women’s fears that male circumcision may lead to changes in men’s behaviors and perception of risk. “The women reported their partners either adapting or continuing risky behavior after ‘the cut’”, says Carol Odada, from Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya. The report documents women’s concerns that medical male circumcision might lead to an increase in heightened stigma for women living with HIV. This would be a result of circumcised men’s misperceptions that they could not be HIV positive and/or could not transmit the virus. Thus sex and or safer sex would be less negotiable than before circumcision, putting women at greater risk for gender-based violence and HIV. The report also highlights perceptions of male circumcision for HIV prevention in the context of traditional practices. Specifically, it underscores the need for communications campaigns that directly address the distinctions between medical male circumcision, traditional circumcision and female genital mutilation. “Some women report the concern that the promotion of circumcision for men would increase the promotion of female genital mutilation,” says Allen Kuteesa from Health Rights Action Group in Uganda. The myths and misunderstandings identified by WHiPT teams — such as the misperception that male circumcision is directly protective of women [1] — underscore the urgent need for adequate education campaigns directed at women. [1] Wawer et al, <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/Circumcision_HIV_doubts.html">Male circumcision does not protect women against HIV</a>. Further details at <a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/avac-nrp121310.php">Eureka Alert</a> and <a href="http://scienceblog.com/41060/new-report-provides-womens-perspectives-on-medical-male-circumcision-for-hiv-prevention/">Scienceblog.com</a> <a href="http://www.circumcisionandhiv.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">See also Circumcision and HIV</a> <h2>“Foreskin is a feminist issue”</h2> The following paper by Marie Fox and Michael Thomson was published in Australian Feminist Studies in 2009. <h3>Introduction</h3> When I spoke out against infant male circumcision, one response that I encountered was an angry reaction from some feminists. They accused me of detracting from the horror of female genital mutilation and weakening the case against it by speaking about it and infant male circumcision in the same context. (Somerville 2000, 241) Debate on the ethics and legality of non-therapeutic infant male circumcision has grown in prominence in recent years. These discussions have tended to be dominated by heavily contested cost-benefit analyses of male genital cutting. It is recognised increasingly that the procedure involves quantifiable health risks, although these continue to be downplayed by proponents of circumcision. Following a distinctive discursive pattern, mainstream commentary typically concludes that the medical evidence is inconclusive, and hence, given the social, cultural and religious value of circumcision to some communities, that the decision can ethically and legally be entrusted to the child’s parents (see Fox and Thomson 2005a). In this paper we contend that the focus on current medical rationales is problematic and marginalises important concerns. Firstly, it serves to obscure an instructive history: [L]eaving it almost exclusively within a medical context . . . may make us forget that what we are discussing here is a historical tendency to look for rationalizations that allow us to practice genital mutilation in one form or another, across geographical, cultural, and religious boundaries. (Hellsten 2004, 249-50) Secondly, it serves to corral the issue within the domain of bioethical inquiry, with a concomitant emphasis on risks, rights and consent, that is rarely informed by feminist scholarship or multidisciplinary studies of embodiment. While this may stem partially from hostility to such approaches within bioethics (Diprose 1995; Wolf 1996), we would suggest that a peculiar reluctance also exists within feminist scholarship to interrogate the practice of male circumcision. Where there is consideration of this issue it is often ‘muted’ (el Salam 1999). Consequently, whereas other interventions – ranging from female genital cutting to cosmetic surgery – figure prominently in feminist accounts of body modification, this literature rarely addresses male circumcision or does so only in passing (Meyers 2000; Ehrenreich with Barr 2005; Pedwell 2007). Strikingly, analyses of female genital cutting that adopt what Carolyn Pedwell calls the analogue approach (which seeks to highlight cross-cultural similarities in practices) tend to draw parallels with cosmetic surgery (Sheldon and Wilkinson 1998; Sullivan 2007), intersex surgery (Chase 2002) or even abortion (Njambi 2004, 299) or anorexia (Davis 2004) but not male circumcision. The construction of male circumcision as radically different because its cultural prevalence is common to the jurisdictions we discuss below. Thus, Kirsten Bell recounts how when she attempted to encourage students taking a gender course in the United States to draw comparisons between the procedure and female circumcision: [T]he reaction of the students was both immediate and hostile. How dare I compare the innocuous and beneficial removal of the foreskin with the extreme mutilations enacted against female bodies in other societies! As far as my students were concerned, there was no comparison. (Bell 2005, 125) A similar hostility typifies feminist reactions to academic attempts to compare genital cutting practices performed on female and male bodies, exemplified in Margaret Somerville’s quote above. In our view, this hostility, coupled with a wider indifference to the issue of male circumcision, contributes to the impoverished nature of contemporary ethico-legal discourse on male genital cutting, and serves to reify the binary drawn between male and female genital cutting. In some feminist work this is explicit. For instance, Martha Nussbaum argues that "The male equivalent to clitoridectomy would be amputation of most of the penis. The male equivalent of infibulation would be removal of the entire penis its roots of soft tissue, and part of the scrotal skin" (1999, 119). Drawing this clear dichotomy between practices which, as Bell has demonstrated, display wide variance (Bell 2005; see also Njambi 2004), seems antithetical to a feminist philosophy concerned with challenging binary divides (Lim 1999). Pedwell, however, has argued compellingly that, in feminist analyses of various forms of body modification, the desire to disrupt boundaries by foregrounding particular cultural similarities across practices can result in inadvertent reification of other boundaries (Pedwell 2007, 51). She suggests that, as feminists privilege similarities of gender and sex, differences of class and race tend to be obscured in this process. In the case of male circumcision, we would contend that the blindness to harms inflicted on boys’ bodies indicates instead a failure to interrogate differences along lines of sex and gender. Thus, notwithstanding its commitment to equality and justice, we suggest that in treating comparable practices as conceptually distinct there is a tendency in feminist scholarship to signal that certain bodies matter more than others. In line with the aims of this special issue, our intention is to highlight the relevance of routine neonatal circumcision for studies of the body and feminist theory. We argue that meaningful analysis of infant male circumcision needs to acknowledge that the practice is more deeply rooted in society than its portrayal as a religious or cultural conflict over the body of the child suggests. Consequently, it is necessary to add to bioethical debate an understanding of what circumcision means in terms of embodied practices and initiation into masculinity. In our view it is the connection to ideologies of masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) which underpins a deep-rooted cultural preference for male circumcision in the Anglo-American world. Thus, our focus is on the place of masculine ideals in the history and practice of male genital cutting and the ways in which circumcision has functioned as a marker of masculine belonging. By literally inscribing particular identity/ies on the infant male body, circumcision can be understood as a normalising technology which validates particular forms of body modification; in this case the removal of tissue which comes to be coded as excessive, redundant, polluted or feminine. Our project aims to denaturalise and problematise a practice that has become accepted and routinised in particular Western cultures, and valorised within their systems of medico-legal governance. To date, most studies have concerned the United States, where male circumcision remains the most commonly performed surgical procedure. Our focus, however, is on Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, three jurisdictions where the historical origins of the practice are similar, as is their history of professional education and clinical governance. Having briefly outlined the historical and contemporary incidence of male circumcision in these jurisdictions, we elaborate on the tendency within feminist scholarship to depict routine neonatal circumcision as a non-issue. Specifically, we explore how this procedure is located in opposition to (or at least positioned as conceptually different from) female genital cutting. We detail our case for a greater sensitivity within feminism to the issue of routine circumcision, whilst recognising the far from unblemished history of much scholarship on female genital cutting (see Mohanty 1991; Abusharaf 2001). We discuss briefly studies which have mapped male genital cutting practices, and their role in marking the male body and fixing masculine identity. Finally, we consider the extent to which aspects of the relationship between genital cutting and masculinity can be traced in the establishment of contemporary circumcision practices in the economic North. While our focus is on how genital cutting serves to differentiate the sexes, we also point to its role in managing sexuality, a function more readily discerned and condemned in oppositional discourses concerned with other genital cutting practices. <h3>Routine Practice in Australia and New Zealand</h3> Exploring the history of circumcision in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Robert Darby notes: "The rise and fall of circumcision in the British dominions . . . has yet to be studied in detail, but the pattern broadly follows that of the mother country. Circumcision appeared later in the dominions, became far more widespread, and endured longer than in Britain." (2005, 314) As in the United States, in the early decades of the last century, the majority of newborn males in the United Kingdom were circumcised. The overall incidence – medical and social – of circumcision was clearly stratified along class lines. Thus, based on army records, it has been estimated that before the Second World War 50 per cent of working class and 85 per cent of upper class men in England were circumcised (Gollaher 1994, 25; Gairdner 1949). In the early 1930s, 35 per cent of these procedures were for medical reasons (Rickwood and Walker 1989). Whilst US rates remain (unevenly) high, in the United Kingdom the numbers, though significant, are now comparatively small. The National Health Service (NHS) began to provide operations in 1948. Following publication of Douglas Gairdner’s influential report questioning its necessity (Gairdner 1949) the incidence of neonatal circumcision declined sharply (Rickwood and Walker 1989), reportedly falling to an annual rate of 6 per cent by 1975 (British Medical Journal 1979). A survey of 7,990 British men in 1990 found that 21.9 per cent of all men in the survey were circumcised (Johnson et al. 1994). As already noted, in Australia the rise of circumcision followed the British pattern, but endured longer and affected a greater proportion of boys. Darby argues that since most doctors were educated in Britain or trained in Australia by British medics, ‘it is not surprising that they reproduced the orthodoxies of their colleagues and mentors’ (Darby 2005, 314; see also Haberfield 1997). As elsewhere, in Australia the incidence of circumcision rose sharply between 1910 and 1920 as the First World War intensified fears of syphilis. By the 1920s most doctors and child-care manuals advocated early circumcision as part of responsible parenting (Darby 2005, 314). Yet whilst the incidence of circumcision in the United Kingdom declined sharply following Gairdner’s paper, in Australia the practice persisted, reaching its peak at over 80 per cent in the 1950s (2005, 314). Although Gairdner’s paper was discussed approvingly as early as 1953, it made no real impact until the late 1960s. In 1971 the Australian Paediatric Association recommended against routine circumcision (Australian Paediatric Association 1971), a recommendation tentatively endorsed in the Medical Journal of Australia in the same year. This marked the start of a decline in routine neonatal circumcision rates and by 1996 the Australasian Association of Paediatric Surgeons described the practice as ‘inappropriate and unnecessary’. It stated: We do not support the removal of a normal part of the body, unless there are definite indications to justify the complications and risks which may arise. In particular, we are opposed to male children being subjected to a procedure, which had they been old enough to consider the advantages and disadvantages, may well have opted to reject the operation and retain their prepuce. (Leditschke 1996, n.p.) Figures from 2004 indicate that between 10 and 20 per cent of male neonates are circumcised annually in Australia (Royal Australasian College of Physicians 2004, n.p.). A more dramatic pattern is evident in New Zealand where circumcision ‘rose suddenly to near universality and later fell to vanishing point even faster’ (Darby 2005, 315). With an incidence of less than 2 per cent, it now has one of the lowest rates in the world. Hypothesising about this trajectory, Darby suggests that because New Zealand lacked a professional association separate from the British Medical Association until the 1960s, it may have been influenced more by Gairdner’s paper (Darby 2005, 315). In the United Kingdom itself, although recorded rates vary and the accuracy of statistics is difficult to verify, recent estimates confirm an incidence rate in single figures. In 1993 it was suggested that approximately 30,000 procedures were performed annually in the United Kingdom, most on young children (Williams and Kaplila 1993). By 1995 the incidence was estimated to be ‘less than 10%’ (Rangecroft 1995, 816). In 2000 one study suggested that approximately 12,200 circumcisions were performed in England in 1998 for medically indicated reasons (Rickwood, Kenny, and Donnell 2000). Although the authors note that this signals a significant drop in procedure levels since 1992-1993, they argue that two-thirds of the procedures were unnecessary and resulted from the misdiagnosis of phimosis (Rickwood, Kenny, and Donnell 2000). With an incidence of 6.5 per cent, this assertion is in line with the 2 per cent circumcision rate in New Zealand and Scandinavia (Rickwood, Kenny, and Donnell 2000). A study by Cathcart et al. (2006) charting the declining incidence of male circumcision over the period 1997-2003 suggests that approximately 3 per cent of British boys aged 15 are circumcised. In New Zealand, it is worth noting that while statistics indicate that the rate has fallen dramatically, one in three operations remain medically unnecessary. In all three jurisdictions it remains true that the procedure has been normalised. <h3>Feminism on (Some) Flesh</h3> Against this backdrop, one aim of our earlier work has been to situate male circumcision on a spectrum of non-consensual, non-therapeutic genital surgeries on children. Specifically, we have challenged the process of distancing male circumcision from female genital cutting and non-therapeutic surgeries on children born with intersex conditions (Fox and Thomson 2005b,c). In this paper, by arguing for the relevance of male circumcision for feminist thought and activism, we want to extend our analysis by suggesting that male genital cutting can be understood as a gendering practice tied to masculinity and the management of male sexuality. This parallels the ways in which feminist scholars have argued that female genital cutting serves to fix gender in women (Silverman 2004). Most feminist considerations of female genital cutting, as we noted above, either omit to consider male genital cutting or deem it a matter of scant ethico-legal concern. In the broader academic literature, the nexus between different forms of genital surgery on children has been noted in passing, but then downplayed (Chau and Herring 2002, 353- 54). Exceptions do exist, of course, and a number of critical voices have originated from Australia (see, for instance: Richards 1996; Boyle et al. 2000; Mason 2001; Bates 2001). Arguably, this has been prompted by the greater visibility of the issue, as a result of litigation in St Margaret’s Hospital for Women (Sydney) v. McKibbin (Australian Torts Reports 1987). Although the case concerned a claim for damages for a negligently performed circumcision, it highlighted the risks and potential harms entailed in the procedure (Bates 2001). In addition, those opposing circumcision have been (perhaps naively) encouraged by the ruling in Re Marion’s Case, where clitoridectomy was identified as an example of a medical treatment that is prohibited by law, irrespective of parental consent (Secretary, Department of Health and Community Services (NT) v. JWB and SMB 1992). Undoubtedly, male circumcision has eluded critical scrutiny owing to its construction as a common and acceptable practice, which is ‘almost part of the mainstream’ (Bridge 2002, 284). In other words, as Nikki Sullivan argues, in exploring the asymmetry in legal regulation of female ‘circumcision’ and cosmetic genital surgery, the location of non-therapeutic circumcision within a specific time and culture renders it largely invisible through our culturally specific way of seeing (Sullivan 2007, 395). Indeed, as Dena Davis observes, the very use of the term ‘circumcision’, which carries ‘vaguely medical’ connotations, serves to normalise the practice of male genital cutting (Davis 2001, 489 citing Goldman 1998, 5). Conversely, it is worth noting the erasure of the term ‘female circumcision’ from academic, legal, and -- to some extent -- popular discourse, following the World Health Organization’s re-designation of the practice as ‘FGM’ (female genital mutilation) at its 1990 Addis Ababa conference. Its justification was that the new terminology carried ‘heavier moral weight’ (Mason 2001, 58). Such terminology, coupled with the differential constructions of the practices we have outlined above, serves to shield male genital cutting from the critical scrutiny that other practices, notably female genital cutting, attract. This asymmetry is evident even in the more reflective explorations of genital surgeries on children. For instance, having traced similarities in arguments invoked by opponents of intersex surgery and female genital cutting, Nancy Ehrenreich observes that ‘male circumcision does not seem to enforce patriarchal gender norms, as I argue female genital cutting and intersex surgery do’ (Ehrenreich 2005, fn. 9; emphasis added). Yet as anthropological studies remind us, in Africa, female and male genital cutting co-exist in the communities that practise them. In our view, both forms of genital cutting are equally implicated in enforcing gender norms, by serving to demarcate the sexes and to manage sexuality. As Janice Boddy notes, many peoples: "perform circumcisions to complete the social or spiritual definition of a child’s sex by removing anatomical traces of ambiguity . . . Thus Sudanese remove the ‘masculine’ clitoris and labia in the case of girls and the ‘feminine’ foreskin’ in the case of boys." (Boddy 2007, 60) Given this commonality, it is interesting that excision of male genitalia eludes similar critique, prompting some commentators to query whether the ‘unequal treatment of male and female circumcision demonstrate[s] hypocrisy, ethnocentrism, or unjustifiable limits to the tolerance granted ethnic minority groupings in the United States and European nations?’ (Shweder, Minow, and Markus 2002, 1). It seems clear that this asymmetry extends to very different understandings of genitalia and human tissue. As Boddy notes, in the ‘West’ we are heavily invested in the clitoris, to the extent that its excision heralds ‘serious personal diminishment’ (Boddy 2007, 58). As she queries: We [i.e. USA Americans] customarily amputate babies’ foreskins, now with some controversy but little alarm . . . yet global censure of these practices is scarcely comparable to that leveled at female circumcision . . . is it because these excisions are performed on boys, and only girls and women figure as victims in our cultural lexicon? (Boddy 2007, 58) The coding of the foreskin as worthless, in stark contrast to the valorisation of the clitoris, is illustrated graphically by Bashir’s contention that ‘FGM would only be similar to male circumcision if the penis was amputated’ (Bashir 1996, 420). Her claim is also pertinent to an argument that Ehrenreich makes regarding male sexual function. Attempting to distinguish between forms of genital cutting, she asserts that ‘intersex surgery has a much more serious negative impact on physical well-being and sexual function than male circumcision usually does’ (Ehrenreich with Barr 2005, 71). Implicitly this assumes that male sexual pleasure is not an issue provided the penis is adequate for penetration, thus privileging one popular understanding of male sexual function and pleasure. By narrating this particular model of male sex acts, Bashir and Ehrenreich are both able to ignore the loss of sensory and other possibilities that flow from circumcision (Cold and Taylor 1999). Similar understandings inform Bell’s account of her students’ reaction to male circumcision. She notes that they ‘did not think that carving up male genitalia had any damaging effects on male sexuality as long as the penis remained largely intact’ and bought into ‘popular perceptions that circumcised men ‘‘last’’ longer during sexual intercourse’, a view perpetuated by pro-circumcision websites (Bell 2005, 131). The sensitivity protected by the foreskin, the erogenous nature of the foreskin itself, and sexual practices relying on an intact penis – docking, for example – are all erased in these characterisations (Harrison 2002). As Bell points out, a mirroring of the justifiable feminist outrage at the idea that female genital cutting could be justified on the basis of enhancing the pleasure of male partners is strikingly absent in this context. Such factors fuel our concern about drawing distinctions, as Ehrenreich does, rooted in the patriarchal justifications for female circumcision. Certainly, if the notion of ‘patriarchal gender norms’ is to retain any purchase as a critical framework for understanding these practices, then it would seem to require that we pay much closer attention to the way in which the concept of patriarchy often functions to allow men’s experiences to remain unquestioned. We contend that male circumcision is implicated equally in differentiating the sexes and upholding gender norms. Indeed, as Carol Delaney notes in her attempt to untangle how religious myths are woven into the moral fabric of our society, the story of Abraham, with its interrelated narratives of circumcision and child sacrifice, is the ‘most patriarchal of stories’, and one which is ‘inextricably entangled with the meanings of masculinity’ (Delaney 1998, 12, 18). In the next section, we draw on some studies that have mapped male genital cutting procedures, and consider the role of these practices in distinguishing between the sexes and helping to define masculinity. <h3>Identity and Distancing</h3> ([N]on-circumcision involves signs separating an ‘us’ from a ‘them’ entangled in various discourses of identity and distancing … It marks off Muslim Indonesian from Hindu-Balinese Indonesian, but not from ‘Hindu Javanese’ or Tengger Indonesian. Generally, it can differentiate any Muslim from any Hindu man … Un/circumcision has divided Paulien precepts from Christ, Christian from Jew, unmedicalized laggard from medicalized modern; and now demedicalized post-modern from still-surgicalize establishmentarian. (Boon 1994, 561) Although considerable disagreement exists about the origins and developmental trajectory of circumcision, it clearly has a long and rich history (Wallerstein 1983). It has been practised in the Near East, tribal Africa, among Muslim peoples of India and Southeast Asia, and by Australasian Aborigines since prehistory (Dunsmuir and Gordon 1999). Egyptian mummies dating from 2300 BC were circumcised and Egyptian wall paintings attest to its presence as a customary practice several thousand years earlier (Dunsmuir and Gordon 1999). Theories seeking to explain the emergence and evolution of the procedure have varied widely, as has the nature of the procedure (its timing, the extent of excision, etc.). Commenting on nineteenth-century historical literature, Dunsmuir and Gordon note a belief in circumcision as emblematic of Church power: ‘The ritual is a warning and the timing dictates who is warned; for the new-born it is the parents who accede to the church; ‘‘We mark your son, who belongs to us, not you’’’ (Dunsmuir and Gordon 1999, 1). Alternatively, historians have proposed that circumcision was an incident of slavery. Captured warriors in Egypt were often mutilated before being condemned to slavery. Such mutilation resulted in a high morbidity and ‘circumcision was just as degrading and evolved as a sufficiently humiliating compromise. Eventually, all male descendants of these slaves were circumcised’ (Dunsmuir and Gordon 1999, 1). Jews, at that time a largely enslaved people, adopted and ritualised the procedure, which was later incorporated into Judaic practice and teachings (Dunsmuir and Gordon 1999). It has also been argued that circumcision evolved as a mark of cultural identity or belonging, in the same vein as scarification, tattooing, body piercing, and other body modifications. As Dunsmuir and Gordon conclude: ‘Although the true origins of circumcision will never be known, it is likely that the truth lies in part with all the theories described’ (1999, 2). For our purposes, the most interesting suggestion in some of these studies points to how circumcision functions not only to differentiate the sexes but also to affirm particular masculinities. Thus, Hellsten observes: [I]n East Africa . . . men of the Masai tribe see uncircumcised men as adolescent, spineless and timid cowards who do not have full male qualifications . . . Within the Cameroonian Nso tribe the three main rationalisations for male circumcision have been firstly, the belief that circumcision prepares the penis, puts it in readiness for coitus and procreation, secondly that it tests the courage and endurance of a boy at the threshold of adulthood, and thirdly . . . to tame and moderate the sexual instinct thereby helping a man to act more responsibly. (Hellsten 2004, 251) Such work posits an association between circumcision and culturally desired markers of masculinity, including maturity, courage, and sexual readiness (Turner 1967, chap. 7). Conversely, uncircumcised men are seen as undeveloped or immature and inclined to poor sexual or reproductive performance (Hellsten 2004, 251). Therefore, whilst routine male circumcision is often distinguished from female genital cutting on the grounds of its perceived neutrality, in fact it clearly inscribes masculine idea(l)s on the infant male. The parallels with female genital cutting are noted by Fran Hosken, who observes that in various African communities: "Excision . . . is practiced to affirm the sex of the individual, because it is believed that the clitoris represents a male element in a female, and that the prepuce of the penis represents femininity in a boy. Hence, the girls are excised and the boys circumcised in order to establish their sex in society". (Hosken 1994, 55) <h3>Circumcision and Masculine Sexuality</h3> An estimated one-sixth of the world’s men are circumcised (Denniston and Milos 1997). The majority of these procedures have been justified on the basis of religious observance, which, as just noted, can have a secular origin that becomes overlaid with sacred signification. Njambi (2004), 294) points to a pervasive ‘Judeo-Christian assumption that circumcised male bodies are normal and acceptable and even that painful passage to manhood is desirable’, which contrasts sharply with attitudes to female genital cutting. The history of the emergence of circumcision as a routine secular practice -- a ‘surgicoreligious’ (Darby 2005, 311 citing Parker 1950) or ‘secularised religious practice’ (Dozor 1990, 820) -- demonstrates the interconnection of sacred and secular justifications, particularly those that originate in concerns with cleanliness and sexual temperance (Chapman 1882, 317). Similarities in the historical trajectory of circumcision across much of the English-speaking world chime with these studies in suggesting a history structured by aesthetic ideals, anxieties about hygiene, and a desire for sexual restraint. Such concerns and the nexus between them and culturally validated forms of masculinity prefigure and co-exist with religious justifications for circumcision. Hence, we argue that any analysis of these literal inscriptions on the body needs to be located in studies of masculine corporeality and its many idea(l)s (see also Gilmore 1990; Gilman 1999). In a related paper (Fox and Thomson forthcoming) we have explored a different aspect of this relationship between a privileged male imaginary anatomy and the persistence of non-therapeutic circumcision. There we focused on the place of the imagined (phallic) anatomy of the body politic, the requirement that social bodies be analogues of that body and related notions of the sacrificial male body, in explaining the persistence of male genital cutting. Specifically, we questioned the place of pain in the creation of a sacred/secular covenant. Linked to that analysis, here we explore the place of efforts to manage male sexuality and the role of aesthetics in understanding circumcision practices and their enduring nature. It may seem counter-intuitive to propose that a man’s circumcision status – rather than his penis per se – is a marker of difference between the sexes. As noted above, however, anthropological and other studies question the absoluteness of this binary and suggest a more complicated relationship. The routinisation of male circumcision in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1890s served to mark sex differences in a similar way. This process is illustrated by how the foreskin was feminised in pro-circumcision discourses that relied on and played into myths of female disease, contagion and uncleanliness. In such accounts, the foreskin is either analogised to the clitoris or labia, [1] or it is more generally characterised as a permeable and dangerous interior space. [2] Such depictions connect to broader understandings of the foreskin as feminised flesh, representing what Judith Butler refers to as ‘bodily permeabilities unsanctioned by the hegemonic order’ (Butler 1993, 132). On such readings the foreskin represents an inner sensitised world that appears incompatible with – and disrupts the aesthetic of – the culturally privileged model of masculine embodiment. William Goodwin offers a clear illustration of how circumcision, when it originally emerged as a prophylactic, was understood in aesthetic terms. He wrote of the surgery as a ‘beautification comparable to rhinoplasty’. For him, the circumcised penis ‘appears in its flaccid state as an erect uncircumcised organ – a beautiful instrument of precise intent’ (Miller 2002, 544-45 citing Goodwin). Within Goodwin’s visual framework, the circumcised penis complements the ideal of the phallic body, its closure and impenetrability (Race 1997). In its circumcised state, the penis is also imagined as erect; ready for penetration, a clear signifier of masculinity. Similarly, and corroborating the earlier assertions by Boddy and Hoskens, in a 1954 study Bruno Bettelheim posits linkages between the uncovered glans and ideals of enhanced masculinity (Bettelheim [1954] 1971). It should be noted, however, that Sander Gilman contests such readings, contending that circumcision in fact marked circumcised males as ‘effeminate’; in possession of ‘damaged and dishonorable masculinity’ which requires surgical intervention to restore the foreskin or de-circumcise (Gilman 1999, 137-38). Indeed, he even posits that ‘circumcision remove[s] the essence of masculinity’ (1999, 142). Yet, interestingly, the religious justifications on which Gilman relies seem, in fact, to highlight the role of circumcision in ‘completing’ the body: ‘much as grinding makes wheat usable as flour’ so man is born with a duty to perfect himself (1999, 137). [3] In terms of aesthetics, contemporary studies continue to find a preference for the circumcised penis within US culture (Sandovsky 2002), [4] with the ‘uncut’ positioned as a fringe or fetish interest. Thus, a scientific review of circumcision in the United States in 1997 observed that ‘a certain stigma . . . is attached to the uncircumcised penis in the white population’ (Laumann, Masi, and Zuckerman 1997, 1057). [5] The notion of stigma, derived once more from ideas of uncleanliness, as well as racial and class prejudice, is central to the recognition of circumcision status as a marker of racial (and other) differences. As Gollaher summarises, in a US context: So it happened that the foreskin, despised by the medical profession, came to broadly signify ignorance, neglect, and poverty. As white middle-class gentiles adopted circumcision, those left behind were mainly recent immigrants, African Americans, the poor, and others at the margins of respectable society. (1994, 22-23) This recurring motif of uncleanliness also emerged from the association, noted above, between the uncircumcised penis and a feminised interior. [6] This aligned the foreskin with negative biomedical and popular understanding of female genitalia, with professional and lay publications constructing the foreskin as diseased and polluted. Victorian doctors such as Jonathan Hutchinson deploys imagery of interior spaces of fluidity and disease to assert that the foreskin constitutes ‘a harbour for filth’ (Hutchinson 1890). Such notions were even more fully articulated in the writing of another late nineteenth century syphilis expert, E. Harding Freeland: [A]nyone who has taken the trouble to compare the dry, pink-parchment-like, cleanly appearance of the glans of the circumcised with the sodden, swollen, uncleanly structure which is frequently presented to view when the prepuce of the uncircumcised is retracted cannot fail to have been struck by the contrast. In the latter case the space between the prepuce and the glans forms the very beau ideal of a place for the implantation and multiplication of bacteria of all kinds. (1900, 1870) Significantly, such associations still recur, notwithstanding contemporary awareness of the prepuce as a complex tissue. Thus, in a recent medical journal, the foreskin is characterised as a ‘piece of prehistoric human culture that now only exists as a reservoir of infection’ (DeHovitz 2000, 64). <h3>Cutting it Out</h3> R.W. Cockshut remarked in 1935 that ‘it does not seem apt to argue that ‘‘God knows best how to make little boys’’’ (1935, 764). We suggest that this bold claim, offering a rather different perspective on the interplay of the sacred and the secular, should be read against a backdrop in which circumcision was promoted as a deterrent to masturbation and consequently a cure for its associated ills (Miller 2002). Circumcision was seen to desensitise the glans and hence curb male sexuality: "I suggest that all male children should be circumcised . . . Civilisation . . . requires chastity, and the glans of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. Thus the adolescent has his attention drawn to his penis much less often." (Cockshut 1935, 764) These proponents argued that the procedure ‘promotes continence by diminishing the prurience of the sexual appetite’ (Gollaher 1994, 11 citing McGee 1882, 105). Moreover, the potential improvement in ‘moral hygiene’ was seen as more likely where the pain associated with touching the penis was clearly imprinted. As J.H. Kellogg argued, ‘the pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect on the mind, especially if it is connected with the idea of punishment’ (1888, 295). This rationale for surgery occurred, of course, during a period of grave concern regarding masturbation, which was believed to be the cause of insanity and the general weakening of the male population. Of particular concern was the health of a white middle-class population increasingly regarded as enfeebled and challenged by more ‘robust’ immigrant communities. As a racist discourse of pollution and contagion emerged, in response to growing immigration to the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe, circumcision was adopted by the white middle classes as a prophylactic. Inevitably it became a marker of social status, differentiating the white middle classes from immigrant populations (Gollaher 1994, 22-23). The general tenet of the pro-circumcision/anti-masturbation discourse is ably demonstrated in Freeland’s work: It has been urged as an argument against the universal adoption of circumcision that the removal of the protective covering of the glans tends to dull the sensibility of that exquisitely sensitive structure and thereby diminishes sexual appetite and the pleasurable effects of coitus. Granted that this may be true, my answer is that . . . sensuality in our time needs neither whip nor spur, but would be all the better for a little judicious use of curb and bearing-rein. (Freeland 1900, 1869) These justifications recurred throughout the English-speaking world, fuelling the rise of routine circumcision. As Darby has noted, in Australia in the late nineteenth century the primary justification for circumcision was as a cure for spermatorrhea (nocturnal emissions) and a means of discouraging masturbation and nervous complaints in the young (Darby 2005, 314). Thus, the management of male sexuality became an early and prominent justification for male genital cutting. Indeed, it has been argued that this rationale was the primary driver for the routine adoption of the procedure. This focus on managing sexuality serves to align the procedure with popular justifications for female genital cutting -- an alignment, which, as we have shown, is frequently denied by feminist commentators. [7] <h3>Conclusions</h3> Aware of the ‘copiousness of significations still devolving on circumcision and uncircumcision’ (Boon 1994, 562-63) and in striking contrast to the literature on female genital cutting which privileges the role of sexuality and gender, most commentators on male genital cutting foreground the place of race, religion and medicine. Generally, there is a failure in this scholarship to recognise the relationship between masculinity and circumcision practice and status. Yet, as we have aimed to demonstrate, circumcision discourses articulate particular understandings of the male body and masculinity. Moreover, the promotion of genital cutting on the basis of its potential to assert or affirm desirable forms of masculinity, while simultaneously taming male sexuality and its attendant ills, reveals remarkable parallels between practices and histories that the West shares with non-Western communities. As a medical expert in one US case observed: The reasons cited by families for altering the genitalia of their children is nearly identical whether it is a girl in Africa or a boy in the United States . . . cleanliness, preventing illness, religion, looking like other children or like their parents, fear of promiscuity, and acceptance of the altered genitalia as more attractive to the opposite sex. (Hernlund and Shell-Duncan 2007, 19 quoting Dr Van Howe in the 1996 case of Fishbeck v. the State of North Dakota) In endorsing such claims we are mindful of Pedwell’s insightful analysis of the dangers which accompany attempts to highlight similarities between Western and non-Western cultural practices, and the real risk of collapsing important distinctions in such a process (Pedwell 2007, 2008). However, our contention in this paper is that important links between different forms of genital cutting, and their roles in producing sexed bodies, have been obscured by academic work, which for various political ends has sought to deny these similarities. The notable discursive overlaps between male and female genital cutting practices render the differential responses of global civil society to the practices particularly striking. As Dena Davis has noted, in querying depictions of male and female circumcision as unitary and distinct procedures: When one begins to question the normative status of the male newborn alteration in the West, and when one thinks of female alteration as including even a hygienically administered ‘nick’, one begins to see that these two practices, dramatically separated in the public imagination, actually have significant areas of overlap. (Davies 2001, 488) In this paper, the areas of overlap we have focused on are the mechanisms by which genital cutting functions to mark and define bodies in ways which clearly demarcate the sexes*both by managing sexuality and by coding bodies and particular body parts as masculine or feminine. Through an exploration of these technologies of cutting we have sought to highlight the relevance of routine neonatal circumcision for feminist objectives, and to participate in Wairimu˜ Njambi’s call for dialogue about the cultural meanings of embodied practices (2004, 299). <h3>Notes</h3> The authors would like to thank Richard Collier, Samantha Murray, Carolyn Pedwell, Nikki Sullivan, and the journal referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts and for reading suggestions. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the AHRC Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality. 1. Whilst it is questionable to ‘pick and choose’ across the vast anthropological data that are available, it is interesting to note the practice of the Ndemu of north-western Zambia. Here the glans of the uncircumcised penis is understood as ‘wet’ and filthy whilst the circumcised is ‘dry’ and desirable (Miller 2002, 535). 2. This argument is given greater currency when we explore historical understandings of the physiologies of the sexes (Laqueur 1990). 3. Boddy notes the prevalence across cultures of the belief that ‘humans are born unfinished’ (2007, 58). As Zabus observes, however, opposition to various forms of circumcision has been grounded in religious notions of the ‘Perfection of Creation’, which have been invoked by Islamic and Christian scholars to support bodily intactness (Zabus 2007, 97-101). 4. Although Gilman does point to sub-cultural variations within this preference, arguing (seemingly anecdotally) that ‘circumcision defines the ‘‘exotic’’ male body, at least in gay culture. Whereas it is ‘‘in’’ to be ‘‘cut’’ among gay circles in Germany, it is ‘‘in’’ to be ‘‘uncut’’ in gay circles in New York City’ (Gilman 1999, 288). 5. Gilman criticises this study for perpetuating stereotypes about the hypersexuality of Jews and argues that it ‘places the circumcised male in an anomalous position’ (1999, 290). 6. It is worth noting the racial differences in US rates for circumcision: 96 per cent Jewish men, 81 per cent of non-Hispanic white men, 65 per cent of black men, 54 per cent of Hispanic men (Gilbert 1997). 7. Of course, such accounts have rightly been criticised for this focus on gender and sexuality, at the expense of other axes of difference such as race and ethnicity; however, our point is that this contrasts sharply with analyses of male genital cutting. <h3>References</h3> ABUSHARAF, ROGAIA MUSTAFA. 2001. Virtuous cuts: Female genital circumcision in an African ontology. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 12 (1): 112-40. AUSTRALIAN PAEDIATRIC ASSOCIATION. 1971. Letter. Medical Journal of Australia, 22 May: 1148. AUSTRALIAN TORTS REPORTS. 1987. 80-130. BASHIR, L.M. 1996. 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SOMERVILLE, MARGARET. 2000. Altering baby boys' bodies: The ethics of infant male circumcision. in The ethical canary: Science, society and the human spirit. Toronto: Viking/Penguin. SULLIVAN, NIKKI. 2007. ‘The price to pay for our common good’: Genital modification and the somatechnologies of cultural (in)difference. Social Semiotics 17 (3): 395-409. TURNER, VICTOR. 1967. Forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. WALLERSTEIN, E. 1983. Circumcision: Ritual surgery or surgical ritual? Medical Law 2 (2): 85-97. WILLIAMS, N, and L KAPLILA. 1993. Why are children referred for circumcision? British Medical Journal 306 (6869): 28. WOLF, SUSAN. 1996. Introduction: Gender and feminism in bioethics. In Feminism and bioethics: Beyond reproduction, edited by Susan Wolf. New York: Oxford University Press. ZABUS, C. 2007. Between rites and rights: Excision in women’s experiential texts and human contexts. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press Fox, Marie and Thomson, Michael “Foreskin is a feminist issue”, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 24 (60), 2009, 195-210 Marie Fox and Michael Thomson are Professors in the School of Law, Keele University, UK. They are currently working on a monograph on the ethics and legality of male circumcision. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Male circumcision is a feminist issue darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Does circumcision have a history?</h3> There is no single history of circumcision. A number of pre-literate societies adopted cutting procedures on the genitals of males and females (usually as children), at different times and for different reasons. At the end of the nineteenth century Britain (followed by its white colonies) and the USA took it up as a "health" measure for infants and young boys. Today the most likely reason for a male to be circumcised is because his parents are Muslims or Americans: together, these two categories account for the vast bulk of the 25 per cent or so of the world's male population who are circumcised. The two sorts of circumcision - ritual and medical - thus have different histories, though in recent times they have influenced each other. Defenders of ritual circumcision point to the health benefits claimed by those who perform it for medical reasons; while those who perform it for medical reasons try to justify it as an ancient operation, performed by many different cultures. The whole thing ends up rather circular. When doubt is thrown on the medical benefits of circumcision, supporters of the operation stress its cultural importance; when its cultural necessity is questioned, they stress the alleged health benefits. Although circumcision is not mentioned in the Koran and the prophet Mohammed did not name it as a pillar of the faith, Muslims inherited the custom from the tribal ritual of the desert Arabs. A boy born to Muslim parents may be circumcised any time between the ages of a few days and twelve years, though the traditional age is eight years. Yet Islam places no obligation on parents to circumcise their children: the prophet described circumcision as meritorious in both men and women, though required for neither; and he said nothing about parents having to do it to their sons or daughters, though these days many do it. Some Islamic societies (Egypt, the Sudan, Somalia, parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, for example) also practise circumcision of girls, though this is far less frequent than the operation on boys. For a boy born to American parents, the reason he is circumcised is because the USA, alone among English-speaking countries, has retained the nineteenth century practice of neonatal male circumcision as a heath precaution. Medically justified circumcision arose in the Anglo-American world in late Victorian times; but while Britain lost faith in the procedure in the 1940s and dropped it in the 1950s, to be followed by the British dominions (Australia, Canada and New Zealand) at a generation's delay, the incidence of circumcision in the USA continued to rise until the 1970s, when it affected as many of 90 per cent of males. Since then the rate has declined to between 50 and 60 per cent, but it has been a very slow process, despite repeated advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics that there is no significant medical benefit to be gained. How did this strange situation come about? <table border="1" cellpadding="9" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> Sovereignty of the individual ... every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body but himself has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. - John Locke, An essay concerning the true, original extent and end of civil government (Second treatise on government), Book II, Chapter V </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h2>The demonisation of the foreskin</h2> To overturn millennia of tradition, both religious and secular, in favour of the normal and unaltered body was a slow and laborious process. The odd medico (usually a surgeon) can be heard muttering about the "benefits" of amputating the foreskin as early as the mid-eighteenth century, but it was not until the Victorian age - notorious for its anti-sexual impulses - that the mutterings grew to a chorus. The crucial step in forcing the acceptance of preventive circumcision (that is, the amputation of a normal body part in the absence of any medical indication or problem) was to blacken the reputation of the foreskin and blame it for the most feared diseases of the period. As <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/miller1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Geoffrey Miller has pointed</a> out, the essential precondition for routine circumcision was the demonization of the foreskin as a source of moral and physical decay. Between the mid-eighteenth and the late nineteenth century, but only in English-speaking countries, the status of the male foreskin fell disastrously. It was transformed from "the best of your property", as a popular rhyme of the period put it, and an adornment which brought pleasure to its owner and his partners, to "a useless bit of flesh", an enemy of man, and a "harbour for filth", as Dr Remondino and other scissors-happy doctors of the late Victorian period asserted. It is hard to think of any body part whose standing fell so far and so rapidly, nor one which came to be treated with such savage hostility; even today in countries with a history of routine circumcision doctors seem to regard the foreskin as guilty until proven innocent. Yet, as the Canadian pathologists <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Chris Cold and John Taylor point out</a>, the prepuce has been a prominent feature of the external genitals of all primate species for 65 million years, and the species in which it has developed most luxuriantly is precisely the one which has been most successful in the struggle for existence; despite this, since the nineteenth century it has been "the most vilified normal anatomical structure of the human body". But aside from calling the foreskin nasty names, have the supporters of involuntary circumcision really made much of a case for their favourite surgery? It is not, after all, the opponents of routine male circumcision who need to make a case against the procedure, but its supporters who must prove its necessity: they need to explain why a natural part of the human body, and one common to all primates, is so dangerous that it must be amputated before a baby can talk, crawl or do anything much except scream. As both <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/history_and_biology_evolutionary_perspectives_on_the_foreskin.html">William Paley and Charles Darwin</a> appreciated, what has naturally evolved must be presumed to be beneficial or harmless unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. <table border="1" cellpadding="9" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> In all cases [of masturbation] circumcision is undoubtedly the physician's closest friend and ally, offering as it does a certain means of alleviation and pronounced benefit .... Those cases in which the glans presents a moist, semi-oily appearance ... long thickened foreskin, pliant and giving, large and often tortuous dorsal veins, go to make up a picture that is exceedingly tempting to the surgeon's scissors. - Dr Edgar Spratling, "Masturbation in the adult", Medical Record, Vol. 48, 1895, p. 443 </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h3>What is the foreskin?</h3> The penis consists of several major parts, but one useful way of looking at it is to divide it into an erectile portion (the part that gets stiff) and a non-erectile portion (the part that does not). The foreskin is the non-erectile portion. A more conventional definition would be to describe it as the soft, sensitive double-fold of tissue which covers the lower half of the penis shaft, extends in a sleeve over the head (glans) and usually ends in a tapering nozzle or spout. The outer layer is tender skin, the inner layer a sensitive mucous membrane. There is no agreed anatomical definition about where the foreskin ends and the skin of the penis shaft begins, and hence no exact surgical definition of what circumcision is meant to remove. As a consequence, the amount of tissue cut off by the operation is highly variable (some doctors take more, some less), but a typical circumcision carried out in a western hospital will remove about 50 per cent of the surface tissue of the penis. The foreskin is not just a flap of skin, but a complex web of mucous membrane, muscle fibres, blood vessels and nerves: in fact, it supports one of the densest concentrations of nerves in the whole body. The underside of the penis (just beneath the glans) is called the fraenum, and this carries ridged bands which are densely packed with fine-touch nerve receptors and a very rich blood supply. The main nerve supplying the penis goes down to the end and then doubles back, allowing the foreskin to slide backwards and forwards, and showing that this is exactly what it evolved to be able to do. To operate at its best, the penis is meant to be covered with a mobile sheath of responsive flesh. Further information: <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/normal/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Development of the normal foreskin</a> <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Anatomy of the adult penis</a> <h3>What is routine male circumcision?</h3> Circumcision is the surgical amputation of a some or all of this tissue. By routine male circumcision we mean the removal of the foreskin from the penis of normal male babies or boys, on the decision of adults (usually parents or guardians), without the boy's consent, and in the absence of any genuine medical indication, and particularly in the absence of the sort of critical injury, malformation or disease which would be required for the amputation of any other part of the body without the subject's consent. In the past the procedure was referred to as Routine Neonatal Circumcision or Routine Infant Circumcision, abbreviated here as RNC. Strictly speaking, RNC is no longer practised even in places where it was once common, since most doctors are opposed to the practice and only do it in response to parental insistence. Each case today is thus an individual decision, not a matter of mere routine. In the heydey of circumcision in the 1950s, doctors pressured parents to agree to have their baby boys circumcised and would automatically do it unless they strenuously objected; sometimes they did it without even parental consent, as still occurs in the United Sates from time to time. The essential elements of routine (medically unnecessary) circumcision as practised today are (1) decision by adults; (2) absence of medical indication or need; (3) lack of consent on the part of the boy. <h3>Why is it an issue all of a sudden?</h3> Although Britain abandoned RNC in the 1950s, New Zealand in the 1960s, Australia in the 1980s (with very little fuss or controversy), and Canada in the 1990s, the issue has suddenly become topical and controversial. A few die-hard circumcision enthusiasts and medical researchers, mainly from the USA and other cultures where routine male circumcision is the rule, are making strident claims for the protective effect of circumcision against a number of diseases which defy normal control strategies, and particularly the one for which there is still no cure and of which everybody is afraid: AIDS. They attempt to exploit this fear by demanding widespread (indeed, universal) circumcision of male infants as a public health measure, on the feeble and misleading analogy that it is just like immunisation, and thus the sort of harmless and effective medical intervention which should be made compulsory. The main objective of this propaganda is to halt the decline of RNC in the USA and to revive it in Australia, Canada and Britain. Recent extravagant claims that circumcison is the long-desired "silver bullet" against AIDS are mainly wish fulfilment: they reflect the wish for an effective means of halting the spread of AIDS, and they express the wish of circumcision enthusiasts to have an unanswerable reason to circumcise as many boys as possible. <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/south_africa_circumcision_not_a_silver_bullet.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">In South Africa, experts in public health cast doubt </a>on the first hope, and question the ethics of the second. <h3>The cat which keeps coming back</h3> Circumcision was a Victorian medical fad which should have gone out with neck-to-knee bathing costumes, phrenology and the idea that children should be seen and not heard. Instead, a small band of medical researchers and moral fanatics keep coming up with new reasons for doing it. First there was the claim that it would stop masturbation and the imaginary disease of spermatorrhoea. Then it was suggested that it would protect men from syphilis. Then doctors forgot that all baby boys have a tight and non-retractable foreskin (phimosis) and declared that the natural condition of the infant penis was a pathological abnormality requiring urgent surgical correction. After that it was asserted that circumcision would give immunity to cancer of the penis in men and of the cervix in women. Some doctors seriously believed that circumcision would cure various forms of muscular paralysis, brass poisoning and whooping cough; others claimed it would prevent tuberculosis, polio, epilepsy and wet dreams. Then there was a lot of vague talk about hygiene, as though boys and men were too stupid to wash themselves, and ridiculous references to embarrassment in locker rooms. At no time did more than a handful men choose to have themselves circumcised; it was always something to done to babies and boys without their agreement or permission. In the 1990s the myth about syphilis was revived in a new form: that uncircumcised men having unprotected intercourse with an infected partner have a higher risk of catching HIV-AIDS (and that therefore all boys should be circumcised soon after birth). Most recently there has been an attempt to resuscitate the old claim (dating from the 1930s, refuted by studies in the 1960s and 70s) that early male circumcision is necessary so as reduce the incidence of cervical cancer in any female partners they may later consort with. One by one these claims for the harmfulness of the foreskin and the benefits of its amputation have been proven false or misguided, but new reasons keep being invented. <table border="1" cellpadding="9" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> Personal freedom The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient arrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. ... The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mid, the individual is sovereign. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h3>Burden of proof</h3> It is not the opponents of routine male circumcision who need to make a case against the procedure, but its supporters who must prove its necessity: they need to explain why a natural part of the human body, and one common to all primates, is so dangerous that it must be amputated before a baby can talk, crawl or do anything much except scream. But since the operation has become entrenched in the medical culture of English-speaking countries over the past 120 years, it has come to be seen as reasonable, customary or even normal. As <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/the_sorcerers_apprentice.html">the sorcerer's apprentice</a> found to his alarm and cost, starting a practice ("seemed like a good idea at the time ...") is often much easier than stopping it. All you need is to get a majority of males over two generations circumcised, and the circumcised penis will come to be seen as both <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/USA/waldeck1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">normal and normative</a>. The main reason for circumcision of children is a population of circumcised adults. Advocates of RNC particularly have to <ul> <li>demonstrate (1) that the benefits of the operation significantly outweigh (a) the risks of the procedure; (b) the injury inflicted; (c) the disadvantages of being deprived of the normal anatomy of the penis; and (2) that the operation must be done before the child is able to give legal consent;</li> <li>explain how a part of the body which has evolved over millions of years could be pathogenic (disease-producing) and must be removed to ensure a normal level of health.</li> </ul> <h3>Human evolution</h3> Advocates of RNC have never been able to explain why all primates (monkeys, chimps etc) have foreskins, or how humans became the most successful mammal on the planet while carrying this supposedly pathogenic burden. For 99 per cent of the million or so years during which modern humans have prospered, males have lived and died with their foreskins intact, and in that time our species managed to colonise just about every corner of the earth. Perhaps the foreskin was a factor in that triumph. There is good evidence that the human foreskin became longer, more luxuriant and more richly networked with sensory nerves than those of our near relatives, suggesting that it must have conferred a selective advantage: the more foreskin you had, the more offspring you left behind, and the more your extra-foreskin genes spread through the population. [1] This could not have happened if the foreskin had been as troublesome as its enemies claim: what has naturally evolved must be presumed to be beneficial or harmless unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. [2] <table border="1" cellpadding="9" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> An individual choice The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h3>Trying to come up with the goods</h3> It is this proof that circumcision advocates are obliged to provide, and which they have been struggling unsuccessfully to manufacture since the 1850s (when <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/the_crotchets_of_sir_jonathan_hutchinson.html">Jonathan Hutchinson</a> announced that his statistics showed that circumcised men were all but immune to syphilis). The world is still waiting for them to make a convincing case. Although there have been mountains of reports and studies (more than anybody could read in a lifetime), the issue is still inconclusive. The most that even a scaremongering evangelist like the Queensland GP Terry Russell can say is that RNC "may reduce the risk of STDs (syphilis, gonorrhoea, herpes and candida) and carcinoma of the cervix in female partners", as well as phimosis, paraphimosis, HIV-AIDS, neonatal UTIs and carcinoma of the penis". [3] These are the traditional Victorian excuses, but they are not good enough: "may" is not much different from "may not". Nor is it enough to claim that circumcision will reduce the risk if the risk is non-existent or infinitesimal in the first place. The issue is not whether circumcision can or might offer protection against these disease, but whether it is a necessary measure of protection, and so necessary that it must be performed without consent. It's pretty ridiculous, after all, to amputate part of the penis merely in the hope of reducing the risk of a minor infection, such as chlamydia, when the infection can be cleared up with a single pill. Further information on <a href="http://www.circinfo.org/hiv.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">HIV-AIDS</a> and <a href="http://www.circinfo.org/cervical.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">cervical cancer</a>. Australia's other prominent crusader for RNC, Professor Brian Morris, cites several studies which purport to show a higher incidence of gonorrhoea and syphilis among uncut males and reaches the dithering conclusions that (1) "based on the bulk of evidence it would seem that at least some STDs could be more common in uncircumcised males under some circumstances"; but that (2) "there may be little difference in most STDs between those with and those without a foreskin". [4] That's really helpful. Can these guys be serious? They want to circumcise all boys at birth because retention of the foreskin "may" increase the risk of their getting a few diseases they most likely would not get anyway; most of which are curable; and which, even if they did get them, do not strike until many years later. Except for infantile UTIs (which are usually cured easily by antibiotics), there is plenty of time for a boy to reach maturity and make his own assessment of the risks and choose the best means, for him, of managing them. To make a convincing case for RNC Russell, Morris and Co must do much better than they have done so far: we need proof that that if the foreskin is not cut off urgently the child will get seriously ill or die before he is old enough to make his own health decisions. Nothing like this has ever been achieved by the circumcision lobby, or even seriously attempted. Statistics are not available, but it is quite likely that more boys under the age of eighteen die as a result of circumcision, or its complications, than from any of the diseases circumcision is supposed to protect them against. Certainly <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/ritual_circumcision_in_south_africa.html">this is true in South Africa</a>, where scores of boys each year die as a result of tribal circumcision and hundreds are seriously injured. There are no proven cases of an infant, child or adult becoming sick or dyng because he had not been circumcised; but here are thousands of recorded cases where infants, children and men have been seriously injured, become sick or have died as a direct result of circumcision. Further information on <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">complications</a> and <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/death/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">on deaths </a>and <a href="http://www.cirp.org/news" rel="noopener" target="_blank">recent news items</a> <h4>Medical scaremongering</h4> Both Dr Russell and Professor Morris are frequently seen in the media urging parents to have their boys circumcised, and much of their routine is just a long list of nasty diseases, designed to terrify people into seeking urgent medical aid. How different it is from the rantings of a Victorian quack is a matter of personal judgement. In 1891 <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/dr_peter_charles_remondino.html">Dr Peter Charles Remondino</a> wrote: <div>"The prepuce seems to exercise a malign influence in the most distant and apparently unconnected manner; where, like some of the evil genii or sprites in the Arabian tales, it can reach from afar the object of its malignity, striking him down unawares in the most unaccountable manner; making him a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings and tribulations; unfitting him for marriage or the cares of business; making him miserable and an object of continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other conditions calculated to weaken him physically, mentally, and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail or even in a lunatic asylum." [5]</div> Drs Russell and Morris are radicals and extremists: most doctors the world over (except for Islamic countries and parts of the USA) are opposed to RNC or undecided on the issue, and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians has recently issued <a href="http://www.circinfo.org/doctors.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">yet another statement</a> against the practice . The truth is that RNC has never been supported by more than a small fraction of the world's medical establishment and remains a controversial and unproven therapy. Back in the 1890s an early opponent of RNC noted this confusion and uncertainty, not only over the risks and touted benefits of the operation but when and how to do it, how much tissue to excise, how to stop bleeding etc, and asked: "Where doctors differ, who shall decide?" [6] There can be only one answer to that question. <h4> References</h4> 1. J.R.Taylor, A.P. Lockwood and A.J.Taylor, <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">"The prepuce: specialized mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision"</a>, British Journal of Urology, Vol. 77,1996, pp. 291-295; C.J. Cold and J.R. Taylor, <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">"The prepuce"</a>, BJU International, Vol. 83, Supplement 1 (January) 1999, pp. 34-44; C.J. Cold and K.A. McGrath, "Anatomy and histology of the penile and clitoral prepuce in primates: Evolutionary perspective of specialised sensory tissue in the external genitalia", in George C. Denniston, Frederick Hodges and Marilyn Milos (eds), Male and female circumcision: Medical, legal and ethical considerations in pediatric practice (New York and London, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999), pp. 19-30 2. The argument holds even if you believe in the creationist account of human origins. If God created men with a foreskin it must be presumed that He intended them to have one. 3. Terry Russell, "Debate: Male circumcision remains a valid procedure - Yes", Australian Doctor, 24 May 1996, p. 54 4. Brian Morris, In favour of circumcision (Sydney 1999), pp. 38 and 39. See the <a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/brian_morris_reviewed.html">scathing review by Basil Donovan</a> in Venereology, Vol. 12 (1999), pp. 68-9. Professor Donovan describes Morris as "a man on a mission to rid the world of the male foreskin" and some of his claims as "so dangerous" that the publishers ought to withdraw the book. 5. P.C. Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance (Philadelphia and London 1891), pp. 54-5 6. Herbert Snow, The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital phimosis (London 1890), p. 32 <h4>Why does this Victorian invention persist?</h4> The reasons for the persistence of routine circumcision (that is, medically unnecessary circumcision of normal infants or boys at the request of parents) have been much debated. Only a few old fashioned fanatics seriously believe the various "health justifications", and the tendency is to see the operation as a cultural practice, not very different from a tribal ritual, which needs to be explained by sociologists and cultural theorists rather than doctors. As a result of US influence after the Korean war, circumcision also became prevalent in South Korea, though performed on boys between the ages of ten and thirteen rather than at birth. The continuing popularity of circumcision among American doctors is also connected with strong financial incentives for performing it, with the result that the USA remains a kind of centre for infection: American medical journals continue to publish articles extolling the health advantages of circumcision and minimising the adverse effects, and these are eagerly quoted by crusaders for circumcision in other countries. The vast weight of the American medical industry ensures that its cultural values have far more influence than their scientific value warrants. The strongest focus of this website will be on the medically rationalised variety of circumcision in Anglophone countries, as it emerged in the late nineteenth century, and as it faded away towards the end of the twentieth, but it will also offer leads on the other forms. <h3>Myths of smegma</h3> Despite the importance of avoiding smegma so frequently stressed by enthusiasts for routine circumcision, there is no evidence at all that smegma is harmful. Why would it be? It's just a natural secretion like saliva, found in the genitals of both males and females. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/vanhowe2006/">The carcinogenicity of smegma: Debunking a myth</a> RS Van Howe,* FM Hodgesâ€¡ *Department of Pediatrics, Michigan State University School of Human Medicine, Marquette, MI and â€¡Berkeley, CA, USA, in Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, Vol. 20, 2006, pp. 1046-1054 Abstract Background: Smegma is widely believed to cause penile, cervical and prostate cancer. This nearly ubiquitous myth continues to permeate the medical literature despite a lack of valid supportive evidence. Methods: A historical perspective of medical ideas pertaining to smegma is provided, and the original studies in both animals and humans are reanalysed using the appropriate statistical methods. Results: Evidence supporting the role of smegma as a carcinogen is found wanting. Conclusions: Assertions that smegma is carcinogenic cannot be justified on scientific grounds. Extract from the conclusion The evidence does not support the theory that smegma is a cause of genital cancer. The smegma theory of disease was best stated by Boczko and Freed: "Smegma, a sterol, produced by Tyson's glands in the epithelium of the retroglandular sulcus, has been implicated as the causative agent. It may be converted to a carcinogen by the action of the Mycobacterium smegmatis." [69] From the medical literature we have found that smegma is not a sterol, that there are no Tyson's glands, that smegma is not converted to a carcinogen by M. smegmatis, and that M. smegmatis is not part of the normal genital flora. The myth is sustained only by its popularity among circumcision advocates. Some have extrapolated the smegma theory by hypothesizing that men with inadequate circumcisions may be at risk for cancer because smegma can accumulate under any foreskin remnants. [70] In similar fashion, Abraham Ravish expanded the smegma theory to indict smegma as the cause of prostate cancer by travelling upstream through the urethra to invade the prostate gland. [71] Davis-Daneshfar and Trueb speculated that chronic infection with M. smegmatis is the cause of plasma cell (Zoon's) balanitis, [72] but Yoganathan et al. could not isolate the organism in any of their cases. [73] Some have shown an unwillingness to abandon the smegma theory. When it was postulated that sperm proteins caused cervical cancer, it was the smegma mixing with the sperm proteins that were to blame. [74] When diaphragm use was found to decrease cervical cancer, it was postulated that it provided a barrier to contact with smegma. [75] When it was clear that cervical cancer resulted from a viral infection, some still postulated that smegma was a necessary part for the viral exposure to be carcinogenic. [45] Those promoting the â€˜cocoon' theory prefer to think of smegma as a cofactor in the development of penile cancer. There are two reasons to dismiss this speculation. First, there is no scientific evidence to support the assertion. Second, it is analogous to declaring saliva a cofactor in the development of lip cancer in those who chew tobacco. Both saliva and smegma are bodily fluids that serve a function and, like any other bodily fluid, are present in organs than can develop a malignancy. The purpose of the scientific method is to distinguish between wishful thinking, strongly held pinion, and provable fact. The smegma theory of disease, which began as wishful thinking on the part of circumcision zealots such as Abraham Wolbarst and Abraham Ravich, has evolved into irrefutable dogma, but as modern physicians, we need to recognize that, until proved otherwise, smegma is harmless. References 69. Boczko S, Freed S. Penile carcinoma in circumcised males. N Y State J Med 1979; 79: 1903â€“1904. 70. Culp D. Penile cancer. J Iowa Med Soc 1973; 63: 201â€“202. 71. Ravich A, Ravich RA. Prophylaxis of cancer of the prostate, penis and cervix by circumcision. N Y J Med 1951; 51: 1519â€“ 1520. 72. Davis-Daneshfar A, Trueb RM. Bowen's disease of the glans penis (erythroplasia of Queyrat) in plasma cell balanitis. Cutis 2000; 65: 395â€“398. 73. Yoganathan S, Bohl TG, Mason G. Plasma cell balanitis and vulvitis (of Zoon). A study of 10 cases. J Reprod Med 1994; 39: 939â€“944. 74. Sandler B. Sperm basic proteins in cervical carcinogenesis. Lancet 1978; 2: 208â€“209. 75. Sandler B. Contraceptives and cervical carcinoma. Br Med J 1969; 1: 356â€“357. <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/vanhowe2006/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text available from CIRP.</a> <h4>Why mice don't live in the foreskins of horses</h4> The article by Boczko and Freed relied heavily on an eccentric experiment from 1947 in which A. Plaut and A. C. Kohn-Speyer tried to induce cancer in mice by doses of smegma harvested from horses. Despite persistent applications, it appears that they were successful in producing cancerous lesions in only about 60 of 400 victims, and I say "appears" because the presentation of their results is so confusing that it is very difficult to work out just what the results were. They also reported that up to 500 days the smegma-treated mice actually fared better than those who missed out: a survival rate of 47% and 30% respectively. Had they stopped the experiment at that point they would have been forced to conclude that horse smegma boosted mouse health. The most one can say about this preposterous exercise is that it explains one of the great puzzles of zoology: why mice don't live inside equine prepuces. Plaut A, Kohn-Speyer AC. Carcinogenic action of smegma. Science 1947; 105: 391â€“392. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Does circumcision have a history? darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h1>Male and female genital mutilation</h1> <h3>Is gender-neutral classification possible?</h3> Considering the similarities between the male and female genitals, the nature of the surgery, the justifications offered, and the support (in Western societies) for the principle that the genders should be treated equally, it may at first seem surprising that male and female circumcision enjoy such strikingly different reputations, at least in Anglophone countries. The first is regarded as a mild and harmless adjustment that should be tolerated, if not actively promoted, the second as a cruel abomination that must be stopped by law, no matter how culturally significant to its practitioners. Although the term “genital cutting” has been introduced in the hope of calming the debate, and while some culture-focused feminist critics have sought to “challenge western polemics,” [1] it is still generally true that not to call circumcision of women or girls female genital mutilation results in accusations of trivializing the offence, but to call circumcision of boys male genital mutilation is likely to elicit accusations of emotionalism, even by those who agree that routine circumcision of males is unnecessary and should generally not be performed. [2] <h2>WHO double standards</h2> While the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations and other international agencies devote substantial resources on programs to eradicate female genital cutting (FGC), they have been conspicuously silent about the circumcision of boys. Indeed, WHO shows acute schizophrenia on the issue, since it funds expensive programs to eradicate FGC while simultaneously funding even more expensive programs to promote and enforce male circumcision. For all the rhetoric about the science behind such programs, it is really no more than an expression of the nineteenth century assumption that circumcision of boys is health-giving while circumcision of girls or women in a mutilation. It was only in the current decade that male circumcision has been raised as a human rights issue at the United Nations, and to date no serious discussion of the topic has occurred, let alone any action. [3] Double standards reign. It might be thought that the reason for this double standard lies in the greater physical severity of FGC, but this is to confuse cause with effect. On the contrary, it is the tolerant or positive attitude toward male circumcision and the rarity of female circumcision in Western societies that promote the illusion that the operation is necessarily more sexually disabling, and without benefit to health, when performed on girls or women. A second reason for the double standard is that, while circumcision of males is mistakenly thought to designate a single surgical procedure, the term “female circumcision” is expansive, referring to any one or more of several different procedures. <h2>WHO classification of female genital mutilation</h2> These procedures have been defined by the WHO (1996) as follows: Type 1: Excision of the prepuce with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris; Type 2: Excision of the clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora; Type 3: Excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation); Type 4: Unclassified (includes a wide variety of mutilations not falling into Types 1 through 3). This classification has been modified since 1996 but still retains the basic division into four types, as set out in a WHO “Fact Sheet” of May 2008: Female genital mutilation is classified into four major types: <ol> <li>Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, rarely, the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris) as well.</li> <li>Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are “the lips” that surround the vagina).</li> <li>Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, and sometimes outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.</li> <li>Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.</li> </ol> <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/print.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">See WHO Fact Sheet 241, May 2008</a> The severity of female circumcision depends on which of, as well as how crudely, these operations are performed, and it is true that the most extreme forms (involving the amputation of the external genitalia, with or without infibulation) are significantly worse than even the most radical foreskin amputation. But it should be remembered that the most extreme forms of female circumcision are comparatively rare, and that male circumcision in general is far more common on a world scale than female: about 13 million boys, compared with two million girls annually. [4] Quantity is not the whole story, but the vigorous efforts to protect the two million girls contrast sharply with the absence of interest in protecting the larger number of boys. <h2>Unpredictable effects of male circumcision</h2> But the effects of male genital cutting (MGC) are also highly unpredictable, depending on how much penile tissue is removed, on the skill of the surgeon, on the precise configuration of penile blood vessels and nerve networks, on the genetically determined length of the foreskin, and on the eventual size attained by the penis at puberty and maturity. The more tissue excised, the greater the damage to the penis and the greater the effect on sexual functioning and capability. Although equivalent quantities of tissue may be lost, outcomes will be worse in cases where the penis grows larger in maturity, where the infant or boy has only a short foreskin, or where the unpredictable locations of blood vessels and nerves mean that important connections are severed. Because the slack (“redundant”) surface tissue is needed to accommodate the enlarged penis when tumescent, a severe circumcision will render erections painful or even impossible. [5] A further common outcome among boys circumcised in infancy, especially when the operation excises a large quantity of penile shaft skin (as is the American norm, particularly when the Gomco clamp is used), is that scrotal skin gets pulled up onto the penis shaft as the wound heals, and even more when the penis enlarges at puberty. Such men often present both sebaceous glands and pubic hair on their penis, sometimes growing as far up as the line of the former frenulum. [6] <h2>Attempts to classify the types of male genital cutting</h2> Selecting appropriate terminology to discuss genital alteration may at first appear a straightforward task, but, while much effort has gone into categorizing the types of female genital alteration, surgeries on the penis are classified by a single term. Because MGC, even when non-therapeutic, is construed as harmless, there have been few efforts to provide male circumcision with a classification system similar to that constructed for female circumcision; yet in principle such a project should be no more difficult than devising a scale to measure damage to female genitals. Some attempts have already been made: <a href="http://www.boystoo.com/fgm&mgm.htm">Hanny Lightfoot-Klein</a> (1989) has set out the similarities, and Swiss/Palestinian authority Dr Sami Aldeeb has offered the following: Type 1: This type consists of cutting away in part or in totality the skin of the penis that extends beyond the glans. This skin is called foreskin or prepuce. Type 2: This type is practiced mainly by Jews. The circumciser takes a firm grip of the foreskin with his left hand. Having determined the amount to be removed, he clamps a shield on it to protect the glans from injury. The knife is then taken in the right hand and the foreskin is amputated with one sweep along the shield. This part of the operation is called the milah. It reveals the mucous membrane (inner lining of the foreskin), the edge of which is then grasped firmly between the thumbnail and index finger of each hand, and is torn down the center as far as the corona. This second part of the operation is called periah. It is traditionally performed by the circumciser with his sharpened fingernails. Type 3: This type involves completely peeling the skin of the penis and sometimes the skin of the scrotum and pubis. It existed (and probably continues to exist) among some tribes of South Arabia. Jacques Lantier describes a similar practice in black Africa, in the Namshi tribe. Type 4: This type consists in a slitting open of the urinary tube from the scrotum to the glans, creating in this way an opening that looks like the female vagina. Called subincision, this type of circumcision is still performed by some Australian aborigines. [7] Dr. Aldeeb deserves credit for venturing into terra incognita, but such a mixture of broad and specific categories fails to include the full range and variety of circumcision procedures, yet also identifies operations that are vanishingly rare. The vast majority of circumcision procedures today, especially those performed in hospitals and clinics, fall under none of these headings, while Types 3 and 4 are confined to a very few traditional (tribal) societies and are little more than anthropological curiosities. If the intention was to include all types of penile mutilation, mention should have been made of infibulation, piercing and the various “enhancements” found in southeast Asia. [8] <h3>Weaknesses of this typology</h3> The classification also leaves out the relatively mild forms of penile mutilation, such as slitting of the foreskin without excision of tissue, that are (or were) found in the Philippines [9] and certain Pacific islands, such as Samoa and Fiji. We write “were found” because as these procedures are medicalized (no longer performed as a traditional rite, but as minor surgery in a clinic by trained medical personnel), it is apparent that they are becoming more severe: no longer a mere dorsal slit, but a full-scale foreskin amputation on the United States model – that is, tearing or otherwise separating the foreskin from the glans, stretching it to a lesser or greater degree, and cutting roughly at the line of the corona. Although the setting may be more hygienic and complications such as bleeding and infection reduced, the effect of medicalization is a more damaging surgical outcome. In the developed world, the great diversity in surgical outcomes is the result of the differing techniques applied, the instruments used and the preferences of the surgeon or other operator. More seriously, Aldeeb’s classification neglects the vital fact that there is no precise definition of the foreskin and thus no precise definition of what is removed by MGC. The foreskin is not a discrete organ like a finger or pancreas, but a double-layered extension of the surface tissue of the penis; where the foreskin starts and the rest of the penis ends is a matter for judgment. The foreskin is generally described as a cap that fits over the glans, but the foreskin often extends beyond the glans (always in juveniles), and the point at which the doubling of the tissue begins can be anywhere along the penis shaft and shifts according to the degree of tumescence. On average, the doubling of tissue begins well beyond the corona of the glans, as the position of the circumcision scar on cut men (usually seen at about half an inch to an inch below the glans) testifies. Moreover, the length of the foreskin varies enormously from one individual to another, meaning that the same “standard” cut will be more severe on a boy with a short foreskin than on one who had more tissue to begin with. Since the severity and harm of the surgery depends primarily on how much of the loose penile tissue is removed, and whether it is mainly the outer (skin) layer or the inner (mucous membrane) layer, MGC Types 1 and 2 listed above can easily be broken down into an indefinite number of divisions (10, 20, 30 per cent, etc., of the foreskin), with both the visible damage and the impact on sexual sensation and sexual function increasing at each step. The severity of the operation is also affected by whether it removes the frenulum, the sensitive “bridle” on the underside of the penis, adjoining the cleft in the glans. This is now known as the frenular delta and is understood to support one of the body’s densest concentrations of fine-touch nerve receptors, whose specific function is to detect and transmit pleasurable touch. [10]Because the ridged band is also uniquely ridged or corrugated, retraction and stretching of this accordion-like structure may play an important role in penile reflexes, including urination, erection, and ejaculation. [11] Where the foreskin is still adherent, as it is in nearly all infants and commonly in boys up to the age of about eight, forcibly tearing it from the glans adds a further dimension of both pain and injury (including skin bridges and adhesions). The damage often extends to the parts of the penis that remain, and the pain is severe. [12] Nor is it just a matter of losing nerve endings: the destruction of the sliding mechanism of the foreskin back and forth over the glans, and thus of the stimulation and lubrication it affords, is another serious effect of MGC. Yet it is a harm that cannot be picked up by the sort of “sensitivity studies” that have appeared in the wake of Masters and Johnson’s much cited but deeply flawed study (1966). [13] <h2>A new classification of male genital cutting</h2> In order to assist the development of an objective measuring stick for MGC damage we suggest the following provisional five-point scale: Type 1: A nick to or slitting of the foreskin; or premature or forcible separation of the prepuce from the glans, without amputation of tissue. Type 2: Amputation of the portion of the foreskin extending beyond the glans. Type 3: Amputation of the foreskin at a point partway along the glans; some foreskin and all of the frenulum left; some sliding functionality retained. Type 4: Amputation of the foreskin at or below the corona of the glans. Type 5: Other forms of penis mutilation, including meatotomy, subincision, infibulation, piercing and implants. Type 2 corresponds to the original Judaic operation of bris (before the institution of periah — tearing the foreskin from the glans — in the Hellenic period) [14] ; most of the foreskin and all of the frenulum left; a fair degree of sliding functionality retained. When this procedure is performed after infancy, after separation of prepuce from glans, more of the preputial tissue and some of the frenular tissue tends to be cut. Because there is no agreed understanding of circumcision and the results are highly variable, depending on the quantity of tissue removed, the degree to which the foreskin is stretched during the operation, and the instruments used, it is useful to break Type 4 into three subtypes. Type 4A: Amputation of the foreskin at the corona of the glans, leaving glans fully exposed, but retaining frenulum; little or no sliding functionality; frenular nerves retained. Type 4B: Amputation of the foreskin at the corona of the glans, also excising frenulum; little or no sliding functionality; no frenular nerves left. Type 4C: Amputation of the foreskin beyond the corona of the glans, at any point along the penis shaft; all foreskin and variable quantities of shaft skin excised; all frenular nerves lost; zero sliding functionality; high risk of insufficient slack tissue for accommodating tumescence. It would be interesting to know the proportion of MGC operations falling into each of these categories. The vast majority would probably be the most severe, Type 4, and possibly Types 4B and 4C, particularly in the United States, where the ‘high and tight’ look is favored by the obstetricians and urologists who perform most of the procedures, and whose preference is facilitated by the infamous Gomco clamp, a device that ensures maximum loss of tissue, as well as a slow and painful operation. [15] <h2>Conclusion</h2> With respect to FGC, it is also possible to break the WHO’s definition down more precisely into at least seven procedures: a nick to the clitoris; separation of the clitoral hood or prepuce, without amputation of tissue; removal of the clitoral hood; excision of part or all of the labia minora; excision of part or all of the labia majora; excision of part or all of the clitoris; stitching up the vaginal orifice. The main difference between female and male genital cutting can now be seen to consist in the fact that the severity of FGC increases as the number of procedures rises, thus bringing more parts of the genitals under the knife; while the severity of MGC primarily depends on how much of a single element of the genitals is amputated. It is the variety of the procedures constituting FGC, in contrast with the unitary nature of MGC, which promotes the illusion that the first is a cruel and injurious form of torture called mutilation, while the second is a mild surgical adjustment called circumcision. <h2>References</h2> 1. Stanlie M. James and Claire C. Robertson, eds., Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood: Disputing U.S. Polemics (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 2. Robert Nye, “Review of Robert Darby, A Surgical Temptation,” Journal of the American Medical Association 294 (7 Dec. 2005):2771–2772 3. See J. Steven Svoboda, “Male Circumcision,” Paper submitted to the Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, August 9, 2001, United Nations Document No. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/1 (March 23, 2002); and “Educating the United Nations about Male Circumcision,” in Flesh and Blood: Perspectives on the Problem of Circumcision in Contemporary Society, ed. G. C. Denniston, M. F. Milos, and F. M. Hodges (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2004). 4. George C. Denniston, Frederick Hodges, and Marilyn Milos, eds., Understanding Circumcision: A Multi-disciplinary Approach to a Multi-dimensional Problem (London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press, 2001), p. v. Since accurate statistics on circumcision are not kept, these figures are the roughest of estimates, though it can be said that the vast majority of these boys are from Muslim families, most of whom probably undergo the operation between the ages of four and eight. 5. J. G. Boyle, R. Goldman, and J. Steven Svoboda, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/boyle6/">Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae</a>,” Journal of Health Psychology 7: 3 (2002):329–343; Tim Hammond, “<a href="http://www.noharmm.org/bju.htm">A Preliminary Poll of Men Circumcised in Infancy or Childhood</a>,” BJU International 83 (Suppl. 1, January 1999):85–92; Shane Peterson. “<a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=50">Assaulted and Mutilated: A Personal Account of Circumcision Trauma</a>,” in Denniston, Hodges, and Milos (eds), op. cit., pp. 271–290; John Warren, et al, “<a href="https://www.circinfo.org/account.html#british">Circumcision of Children</a>,” British Medical Journal 312 (1996):37; N. Williams and L. Kapila, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/williams-kapila/">Complications of Circumcision</a>,” British Journal of Surgery 80 (1993):1231–1236. 6. Such men experience further discomfort with erections and find particular difficulty using condoms. The hair can also inflict abrasion and discomfort on sexual partners. For graphic illustrations of just how much damage routinely circumcised penises commonly sustain, and how different they look from uncircumcised penises, see the images of <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/Botched1.html">damage</a> and <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/comparison.html">difference</a> at Circumstitions. If a man presented at his GP with these sorts of injuries – scarring, granulated tissue, skin bridges where raw tissue surfaces have fused, distortion – on any part of his body other than his penis, he would be referred, urgently, to a plastic surgeon. But so normal are these results that many of the images have been taken from pornographic magazines and personal ads on sexual contact websites. See C.J. Cold and J. R. Taylor, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/">The Prepuce</a>,” BJU International 83 (Suppl. 1, January 1999):34–44; John Money and Jackie Davison, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/money/">Adult Penile Circumcision: Erotosexual and Cosmetic Sequelae</a>,” Journal of Sex Research 19 (1983):289–292; J. R. Taylor, A. P. Lockwood, and A. J. Taylor, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/">The Prepuce: Specialized Mucosa of the Penis and Its Loss to Circumcision</a>,” British Journal of Urology 7 (1996):291–295; G. Zwang, “Functional and Erotic Consequences of Sexual Mutilations,” in Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy, eds. G. C. Denniston and M.F. Milos (New York: PlenumPress,1997). 7. Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Male and Female Circumcision among Jews, Christians and Muslims: Religious, Medical, Social and Legal Debate (Warren, PA: Shangri-La Publications, 2001), p. 9;<a href="http://www.fgmnetwork.org/authors/samialdeeb/"> full text available from FGM Network</a>; Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, “Male and Female Circumcision: The Myth of the Difference,” in Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf (ed.) Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 60-61. 8. See Terence Hull and Meiwita Budiharsana, “Male Circumcision and Penis Enhancement in Southeast Asia: Matters of Pain and Pleasure,” Reproductive Health Matters 9 (2001):60-67. It is an interesting sidelight on Anglophone attitudes that while anthropologists have devoted much time and ink to the origins and meaning of genital cutting rites, they have neglected the equally (and possibly more) numerous societies that practiced various forms of foreskin elongation or otherwise sought to conceal rather than uncover the glans – anything from the penis sheaths and gourds of New Guinea and Melanesia to the infibulation of slaves in classical Rome and the modesty-preserving kynodesme in ancient Greece. See Eric Dingwall, Male Infibulation (London: John Bale, 1925); and Frederick Hodges, “The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration and the Kinodesme,” <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/">Bulletin of the History of Medicine</a> 75 (2001): 375-405. 9. Romeo B. Lee “Filipino Experience of Ritual Male Circumcision: Knowledge and Insights for Anti-circumcision Advocacy.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 8:3 (2006): 225–234. 10. See C. J. Cold and J. R. Taylor, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/">The Prepuce</a>,” BJU International 83 (Suppl. 1, January 1999); Ken McGrath, “The Frenular Delta: A New Preputial Structure,” in Denniston, Hodges, and Milos, eds. Understanding Circumcision, op. cit., 199-206; and J. R. Taylor, A. P. Lockwood, and A. J. Taylor, “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/">The Prepuce: Specialized Mucosa of the Penis and Its Loss to Circumcision</a>.” British Journal of Urology 7 (1996):291–295. 11. See J. R.Taylor, “The Forgotten Foreskin and its Ridged Band.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 4 (2007):1516. 12. See A. Taddio, J. Katz, A. L. Ilersich, and G. Koren. “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/taddio2/">Effect of Neonatal Circumcision on Pain Response during Subsequent Routine Vaccination</a>.” Lancet 1997 349:9052: 599–603. 13. For critiques of Masters and Johnson, see John M.Foley, The Practice of Circumcision: A Revaluation (New York: Materia Medica, 1966); Frederick Hodges and Paul Fleiss, “Letter,” Pediatrics 105:3, Part 1 (2000):683–684; <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">available on Quotes page</a>; M. L. Sorrells, J. L. Snyder, M. D. Reiss, et al., “<a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/sorrells_2007/">Fine-Touch Pressure Thresholds in the Adult Penis</a>,” BJU International 99 (2007):864–869, and the incisive deconstruction by Hugh Young, <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html">The Foreskin, Circumcision and Sexuality</a>. 14. See Leonard Glick, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 31 & pp. 43–45. 15. See Leonard Glick, Marked in Your Flesh, op. cit., 196–197; R. L. Miller and D.C. Snyder, “Immediate Circumcision of the Newborn Male,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 65 (1953):1–11; and Julian Wan, “Gomco Circumcision Clamp: An Enduring and Unexpected Success.” Urology 59 (2002):790–794. <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=52">Further information on Gomco clamp</a>. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Classification of male and female genital mutilation darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h3>Despite what the circumcision promoters claim, prevention of masturbation was a principal reason for the introduction of male circumcision in Victorian Britain and America. Circumcision of male infants and boys cannot be understood except in relation to the 19th century anti-masturbation crusade.</h3> In 1895 a leading American medical journal published an article by a prominent MD who asserted that in all cases of masturbation: circumcision is undoubtedly the physician’s closest friend and ally, offering as it does a certain means of alleviation and pronounced benefit …. Those cases in which the glans presents a moist, semi-oily appearance … long thickened foreskin, pliant and giving, large and often tortuous dorsal veins, go to make up a picture that is exceedingly tempting to the surgeon’s scissors. … To obtain the best results one must cut away enough skin and mucous membrane to rather put it on a stretch when erections come later. There must be no play in the skin after the wound has thoroughly healed, but it must fit tightly over the penis, for should there be any play the patient will be found readily to resume his practice, not begrudging the time and extra energy needed to produce the orgasm. It is true, however, that the longer it takes to have an orgasm, the less frequently it will be attempted, and consequently the greater the benefit gained.” Edgar Spratling, “Masturbation in the adult”, Medical Record 48, 28 September 1895, 442-3 The importance of articles such as this one by Dr Spratling – one of hundreds along these lines – is that they demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that prevention of juvenile sexual activity (masturbation and other forms of pleasurable touching and manipulation) was a primary reason for the introduction of circumcision in the second half of the nineteenth century and one of the main advantages that doctors cited when selling the surgery to parents. They also show just how avidly surgeons such as this one relished the thought of taking a pair of scissors to other men’s penises; all that luxuriant overhang was just begging to be trimmed into insignificance. Despite the overwhelming evidence – hundreds of articles in medical journals and baby and child care manuals from the 1860s until the 1930s – prominent figures in today’s pro-circumcision lobby refused to accept the truth and insist that the claim is a mere invention or falsehood of the so-called anti-circumcision movement. Typical of their approach is (1) to cite the one or two articles or textbooks that appear to agree with their position and ignore the dozens that do not; and (2) to gloss over the careful distinctions made by genuine scholars. They also claim that modern studies of sexual behaviour (such a surveys by <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/richters1/">Richters et al in Australia</a> and <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/general/laumann/">Laumann in the United States</a>) do not find much difference in the incidence of masturbation between cut and uncut adults. Both of these responses are unscholarly, irresponsible and evasive of the three crucial issues. <h2>Circumcision and masturbation: The real issues</h2> Frequency: The real issue is not whether sexually mature circumcised men masturbate less than uncut men, but whether cut men have to work harder and get less pleasure from masturbation than uncut men. This was the finding of <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/sex_function/kim2006/">Kim and Pang’s study of Korean men</a>, and it is also a common statement in <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/account.html">personal testimony</a>. Children: For the Victorians, the issue was not whether circumcised men masturbated less than men with foreskins, but whether circumcision could reduce the incidence of masturbation among infants, children and adolescents (when it was regarded as particularly dangerous, since they were supposed to need all their energy for growth). Adult men were presumed to be satisfied by their wives, mistresses and prostitutes. Fact or belief? In relation to the Victorians, the issue is not whether circumcision actually did reduce the incidence of masturbation among children and adolescents, but whether doctors believed that it did, and whether they acted on that belief. On these points the evidence is overwhelming that the majority of the medical profession up until the 1930s did believe that circumcision reduced the frequency of masturbation in childhood and that they did act upon it by advocating and performing widespread circumcision. They did not carry out any quantitative surveys (<a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=51">Jonathan Hutchinson</a> explained that the subject was too distasteful), but there is any amount of comment from clinical observation in British and US medical journals from the 1860s until the 1940s, all assuming that masturbation was a bad thing and that circumcision could help to limit it. These questions are discussed in great detail and with massive reference to contemporary sources in the only scholarly studies of the history of circumcision, published by leading university presses after a rigorous process of peer review: <ul> <li>Robert Darby, A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain (Chicago University Press, 2005)</li> <li>Leonard Glick, Marked in your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2005).</li> </ul> Both scholars establish beyond any shadow of doubt that discouragement of masturbation among children and adolescents was one of the three prime motivations for circumcision from the 1860s until the 1910s (the other two being protection against syphilis and prevention of “congenital phimosis”), and a significant motivation until the 1930s (and in the case of the USA, until the 1950s). Professor Brian Morris is fond of referring to the “avalanche of evidence” as to the health benefits of circumcision; in the nineteenth century and up to the 1930s much of that avalanche was made up of claims for the effectiveness of circumcision against the scourge of masturbation. The studies by Richters and Laumann are not relevant to this question because they deal with the behaviour of adults and cover only the frequency of masturbation. They ignore the far more important question question of whether uncut men get more pleasure from the activity: libido (driven by testosterone) and psychology can explain the frequency of sexual activity such masturbation, but more frequent masturbation does not mean that the activity is more pleasurable or rewarding, merely that the person is feeling horny. As to methodology, both studies rely on self-reporting (in Richters case, from telephone interviews), meaning that this evidence is of the sort that circumcision promoters such as Brian Morris contemptuously dismiss as “anecdotal” (equals unreliable) if it runs against them. If they are willing to accept the validity of these figures arising from anecdotal evidence, they should also be willing to accept the personal testimony of men who say that circumcision has reduced the pleasure they get from masturbation and other forms of sex. Neither Richters nor Laumann gives the circumcision lobby much joy on their central contention, however, that uncircumcised men are far more liable to STDs; on the contrary, Richters found little difference in the incidence of both STDs and HIV-AIDS between cut and uncut men, <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/newsindepth.html#nsu">and in a later study</a> actually found that circumcised men were more vulnerable to some STIs. Laumann actually found STDs more common among the circumcised. The fact that circumcision as a remedy for masturbation was not mentioned in absolutely every medical text from the period proves nothing. Nobody has suggested that the contention was universal, merely that is was very common and very much part of the mainstream. The fact that some medical texts of the period did not discuss circumcision must be set against the fact that dozens of others – in fact, the majority – made much of it. This is what is known as weighing all the evidence: something that circumcision enthusiasts seem notoriously unable to do. <h3>Circumcision as pornography</h3> Among the texts the circumcision lobby cite as a reliable survey of circumcision practice that rejects the circumcision-to control-masturbation connection is a book published in the 1930s, Felix Bryk’s Circumcision in Man and Woman. This is certainly not a “major” text, if “major” is intended to mean intellectually respectable. Bryk was merely an amateur anthropologist, and the book was published by the American Ethnological Press, a far from respectable publisher, belonging to that class of publishers that liked to dress up soft core pornography as ethnological research so as to get it past the censor. The book is as much fantasy as research, but even Bryk (whatever his own opinion) quotes sources that do claim that a major motivation for circumcision was to reduce sexual pleasure. (See quotation from Nuri Bey Risa on <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">the Quotes page</a>.) Another of Bryk’s efforts along these lines was Voodoo-Eros: Ethnological Studies in the Sex Life of the African Aborigines, published by the United Book Guild in an edition “limited to 500 copies sold only by subscription to physicians and adult students of sexology and anthropology”. Highbrow pornography, in other words. Bryk’s book on circumcision is actually less reliable than the notorious History of Circumcision (1891) by <a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=48">Peter Charles Remondino</a>, a fully qualified physician and a somewhat more serious researcher than Bryk. Professor Morris and friends fail to mention this book because Remondino was both an equally fanatical crusader for universal circumcision and a firm believer that one of the most important reasons for circumcision was that it would reduce the incidence of masturbation. He was sure that the prepuce was the most frequent cause of onanism and quoted the opinion of Dr Bernheim, surgeon to the Jewish community in Paris, that the irritation “it produces through the sebaceous secretion is a frequent cause of masturbation which nothing short of circumcision will remedy” (p. 225). The origins of ritual circumcision lay in the desire of ancient Judaic lawgivers first to discourage the idolatrous debaucheries practised among their free-spirited neighbours in the Middle East, and masturbation specifically; and secondly to encourage procreation. Referring to the story of the circumcision of Abraham and the impregnation of Sarah, he writes: “Here we have suggestions of a preventive to onanism, and a cure to male impotence when due to preputial interference” (p. 201). For that very reason, Remondino was convinced that universal male circumcision was a bio-medical imperative for the twentieth century. A stormy blast against "<a href="http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=75">the opponents of circumcision</a>" from Dr Remondino in 1902 shows that anti-foreskin activists were just as dogmatic and intolerant of criticism then as their counterparts today. Turning to the sources that the circumcision lobby always ignores, the most important are: <ul> <li>Robert Darby, A Surgical Temptation, especially chapter 9, but including many other references to the circumcision-masturbation nexus throughout</li> <li>Leonard Glick, Marked in Your Flesh, chapter 6</li> <li>David Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery (NY: Basic Books 2000).</li> <li>Robert Darby, “The masturbation taboo and the rise of routine circumcision”, Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, Spring 2003.</li> </ul> This is a peer reviewed article on precisely this subject in a leading social history journal, and (as well as citing numerous contemporary authorities, such as William Acton, G. Frank Lydston, Charles Beard, Abraham Wolbarst etc) it cites numerous other scholarly articles that have found a strong link between the rise of circ and the desire to control masturbation and other expressions of sexuality, especially in children. <ul> <li>Frederick Hodges, The anti-masturbation crusade in antebellum American medicine, Journal of Sexual Medicine, Vol. 2, 2005, 722-31</li> </ul> <h2>Circumcision to control masturbation in infants, children and adults</h2> <h3>An avalanche of evidence in favour of circumcision</h3> Here is a random selection of quotes from the 1870s to the 1970s, showing that for over a century the medical profession cited discouragement of masturbation as one of the major reasons for circumcision. Athol Johnson, "An injurious habit occasionally met with in infancy and early childhood", Lancet, 7 April 1860, 345 In such cases [i.e. masturbation] we must, I believe, break the habit by inducing such a condition of the parts as will cause too much local suffering to allow of the practice being continued. For this purpose, if the prepuce is long, we may circumcise the male patient with present and probably future advantage; the operation, too, should not be performed under chloroform, so that the pain experienced may be associated with the habit we wish to eradicate. In the female, Dr Gros has advocated, in like manner, complete or partial extirpation of the clitoris; this, however, would seldom seem to be necessary, except, perhaps, in those cases where furious masturbation is associated with congenital malformation of the organ. ... [Such measure] are most likely to be called for in boys, for in female children, with the exception of the congenital cases I have alluded to, the practice seems to be more easily checked by surveillance than it is in males. Medical Times and Gazette (London), 1867 (1), 19 January, p. 79 A Jewish surgeon informs us that the practice in question [masturbation] is virtually unknown in Jewish schools. It is well known that the removal of the foreskin diminishes the temptation and the facility. The skin of the glans becomes harder and less sensitive. The learned Dr Copland and many other writers express regret that circumcision was ever discontinued. … we have known masturbation effected habitually by a sickly child of three; but … eczema and ascarides were the exciting causes. Nevertheless, the removal of the prepuce effected a complete cure. M.J. Moses, “The value of circumcision as a hygienic and therapeutic measure”, New York Medical Journal 14, October 1871, 368-74 From time immemorial medical men have been consulted by parents and desired to prescribe for children whose haggard faces and extreme nervous irritability have caused them alarm and anxiety. The practised eye of the surgeon sees beyond the veil which shadows the case and recognizes the ravages which solitary vice is making upon the nervous system of the little sufferer. Examination of the case most frequently reveals a long, contracted and irritated prepuce, the presence of which accounts for the initial cause of the trouble. … I refer to masturbation as one of the effects of a long prepuce; not that this vice is entirely absent in those who have undergone circumcision, though I never saw an instance in a Jewish child of very tender years, except as the result of association with children whose covered glans have naturally impelled them to the habit. Letter from a Jewish surgeon, Lancet, 12 December 1874, p. 856 That the deprivation of the prepuce induces premature sexual excitement and onanism is quite opposed to experience and fact. On the contrary, the removal of the prepuce reduces in an extraordinary degree the sensitiveness of the glans penis; and, apart from biblical reasons, which have necessarily no place in your journal, I believe that the intention of the rite was to enhance and advance as far as possible the chastity of the race by blunting mechanically the sensibility of the organ of sexual appetite. The surgeon was responding to a notice in the previous issue of the Lancet about a pamphlet against circumcision by a Jewish physician in Vienna, Dr Levit. Dr J.M. McGee, "Genital irritation as a cause of nervous disorders", Mississippi Valley Medical Monthly, 1882, quoted in David Gollaher, Circumcision: A history of the world's most controversial surgery, p. 85. Whether it [circumcision] be curative or not it is conservative, and removes one source of irritation from an exquisitely sensitive organ. I would favour circumcision, however, independent of existing disease, as a sanitary precaution. … (2) It is acknowledged to be useful as a preventive of masturbation. … (5) It probably promotes continence by diminishing the pruriency of the sexual appetite. Dr McGee also claimed that circumcision alleviated the symptoms of tubercular meningitis and was a complete cure for brass poisoning. Alexander Davidson, “Genital irritation in boys”, The Practitioner, Vol. XLII, 1889, 350-56 [In uncircumcised boys] the mucous membrane and glands [sic: read glans] are unnaturally excited, while secretions increase and are pent up by adhesions. Thus the irritation is not only maintained, but intensified. The boy is in a condition of frequent irritation, and seeks to relieve it by purely physical means … He rubs himself, but quickly discovers that tugging on the prepuce is much more effectual. Continued pulling elongates it, its orifice contracts … till finally in severe cases … the prepuce balloons out during micturation, straining weakens the abdominal walls, and hernia may result. … But the fact I am anxious to emphasise is that continued irritation of the genitals induces a habit of manipulation which may persist long after the irritation ceases, and which if retained till puberty leads to the practice of masturbation in its most odious sense Case I. Aged seven years. Been ailing for a year, and under medical treatment. Previously active, intelligent and healthy. Now he is apathetic and unable to stand or walk; “plays with himself”, and suffers from nocturnal enuresis. Prepuce long, orifice contracted, with inflamed edges, and very excitable. Circumcised. Nocturnal enuresis at once ceased; in a few days he tried to walk, and within a month walked a mile without support. Former intelligence had then returned. Case II. Aged three years. Double hernia; cannot stand or walk; always “in doctor’s hands”. “Plays with himself”. Circumcised. In a week or two he began to “walk on the grip”, and withina month could walk alone. Case IV. Aged five years, Paraphimosis with superficial sphacelation. Has often been flogged for “bad habits”. Circumcised. Parents believe that he has ceased to manipulate, and his health has greatly improved. … But it may be asked, “What is to be said of the origin of masturbation during adolescence?” This is not nearly so common as is supposed, and in the great majority of cases is due to the contamination of early manipulators. … As with infant and child, the same means of relief are sought, but the results are the more serious, because now we have to contend with a developing sexual instinct. Here again it would seem that if remove purely physical causes we might reasonably hope to greatly diminish the practice, and the only method which seems to me safe and unobjectionable, simple and complete, is circumcision. Jonathan Hutchinson, "A plea for circumcison", Archives of Surgery, Vol. II, 1890, p. 15; reprinted in British Medical Journal, 27 September 1890, p. 769 It is surely not needful to seek any recondite motive for the origin of the practice of circumcision. No one who has seen the superior cleanliness of a Hebrew penis can have avoided a very strong impression in favour of removal of the foreskin. It constitutes a harbour for filth, and is a constant source of irritation. It conduces to masturbation, and adds to the difficulties of sexual continence. P.C. Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance (Philadelphia and London: F.A. Davis, 1891), p. 224 Dr Vanier … looks upon the prepuce as the most frequent cause of onanism. “If the prepuce is lax, its mobility produces an irritation to the highly irritable and sensitive nervous system of the child by the titillation in its movements on the glans; if too tight … it compresses the glans and by its irritation it leads the child to seize the organ”. So that in either case he look upon the prepuce, through the sensitiveness it retains and induces in the glans, as the principal cause of masturbation. … In children who have not yet the suggestions of sexual desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may … either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the class; neither in infancy are they as liable to priapism during sleep as those that are uncircumcised. Jefferson C. Crossland MD, "The hygiene of circumcision", New York Medical Journal, Vol. 53, 1891, pp. 484-5 In consequence of circumcision the epithelial covering of the glans becomes dry, hard, less liable to excoriation and inflammation, and less pervious to venereal viruses. The sensibility of the glans is diminished, but not sufficiently to interfere with the copulative function or to constitute an objection. … It is well authenticated that the foreskin … is a fruitful cause of the habit of masturbation in children. M. Clifford, Circumcision: Its Advantages and How to Perform it (London: Churchill, 1893), pp. 6-8 “The glans penis is very vascular, and is well supplied with nerves … and the slightest irritation is sufficient to cause a great deal of discomfort. It is not uncommon to see a child dragging at the foreskin as a consequence. As age advances the habit of masturbation is very frequently to be attributed to it. But after circumcision the glans penis is always dry …. It loses much of its acute sensitiveness, and all unnatural irritation being guarded against, the mind is not directed towards the sexual organs, and a decided check is put to one of the vices only too commonly practised in early manhood. … The cleanliness and chastity which circumcision undoubtedly promotes is probably the reason why the operation has been performed for so many centuries, and may also account for its acquiring a religious significance.” Compare Brian Morris: “The concept … that circumcision was used in this era to prevent masturbation is in fact a falsehood that has been promoted by anti-circumcision groups. The real reason was that it prevented smegma, itching and so on, and thus stopped males scratching their genitalia. The fact that such excessive attention to a penis to relieve the irritation might have led to arousal and thus masturbation was purely coincidental. The Victorians cited many of the same medical conditions associated with uncircumcised penises as do people today.” Brian Morris, In Favour of Circumcision (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999), 57 Edgar Spratling, “Masturbation in the adult”, Medical Record 48, 28 September 1895, 442-3 In all cases [of masturbation], taken as they come, circumcision is undoubtedly the physician’s closest friend and ally, offering as it does a certain means of alleviation and pronounced benefit …. Those cases in which the glans presents a moist, semi-oily appearance … long thickened foreskin, pliant and giving, large and often tortuous dorsal veins, go to make up a picture that is exceedingly tempting to the surgeon’s scissors. … To obtain the best results one must cut away enough skin and mucous membrane to rather put it on a stretch when erections come later. There must be no play in the skin after the wound has thoroughly healed, but it must fit tightly over the penis, for should there be any play the patient will be found readily to resume his practice, not begrudging the time and extra energy needed to produce the orgasm. It is true, however, that the longer it takes to have an orgasm, the less frequently it will be attempted, and consequently the greater the benefit gained. Jonathan Hutchinson, "The advantages of circumcision", Medical Review, Vol. 3, 1900, p. 641-2 It is an open question whether the removal of the prepuce tends appreciably to increase the power of sexual control. Its influence, so far as it has any, must be in that direction. The only function which the prepuce can be supposed to have is that of maintaining the penis in a condition susceptible of more acute sensation than would otherwise exist. It may be supposed to increase the pleasure of the act and the impulse to it. These are advantages, however, which in the present state of society can well be spared, and if in their loss some degree of increased sexual control should result, one should be thankful. Ernest G. Mark, “Circumcision”, American Practitioner and News 31, 1901, 231 Another advantage of circumcision … is the lessened liability to masturbation. A long foreskin is irritating per se, as it necessitates more manipulation of the parts in bathing. … This leads the child to handle the parts, and as a rule, pleasurable sensations are elicited from the extremely sensitive mucous membrane, with resultant manipulation and masturbation. The exposure of the glans penis following circumcision ... lessens the sensitiveness of the organ. G. Frank Lydstone, Sex Hygiene for the Male (Chicago 1912), 158-9 Circumcision is a most commendable practice. … Circumcision promotes cleanliness, prevents disease, and by reducing over-sensitiveness of the parts tends to relieve sexual irritability, thus correcting any tendency which may exist to improper manipulations of the genital organs and the consequent acquirement of evil sexual habits, such as masturbation. Abraham Wolbarst, “Universal circumcision as a sanitary measure”, Journal of the American Medical Association 62, 10 January 1914, 92-97 It is a well known fact that the foreskin is a frequent factor in the causation of masturbation, not alone in children but in adults as well. This has been amply proved by the fact that circumcision has become recognised as a most effective remedy in these cases. N.B. Morris and Co still cite Wolbarst as an authority for the contention that the foreskin should always be removed as a precaution against penile cancer. William J. Robinson MD, “Circumcision and masturbation”, Medical World 33, October 1915, 390 There are a hundred arguments in favour of circumcision, but to speak of them all in detail would require a book or at least a good-sized essay. At this time I wish to touch merely upon one point, the relation of the prepuce to masturbation. I am convinced that the prepuce is one of the great factors in causing masturbation in boys, and many cases of masturbation cannot be treated successfully until the prepuce is removed. Here is the dilemma we are in: If we do not teach the growing boy to pull the prepuce back and cleanse the glans there is danger of smegma collecting and of adhesions and ulcerations forming, which in their turn will cause irritation likely to lead to masturbation. If we do teach the boy to pull the prepuce back and cleanse his glans, that handling alone is sufficient gradually and almost without the boy’s knowledge to initiate him in to the habit of masturbation. While masturbation is not the terrible calamity that it was once thought to be, and while we recognize the fact now that most children recover from it without permanent effects, still we want to avoid everything possible that may be a factor in the cause of masturbation, and the prepuce unquestionably being such a factor, it should come off. Therefore, once more, off with the prepuce! Nuri Bey Risa, “Studien uber die rituale Beschneidung im osmanische Reiche”, Sammlung klinischer Vortrage, No. 438, Leipzig, 1906, quoted in Felix Bryk, Circumcision in man and woman: Its history, psychology and ethnology, New York, Ethnological Press, 1934, 102-3 The irritation which is caused by the inflammation of the distal part of the [uncut] penis leads to erection and release through ejaculation, to enuresis, to onanism and pederasty with their psycho-pathological reactions, and finally to moral crimes. A wise Moslem writer says: “It is exactly these fundamental effects and their influence upon men that the Moslem lawgivers take into consideration in establishing the strict performance of circumcision.” [A pious Moslem told him:] “The reduction of sexual pleasure is just what circumcision aims at. Too great sexual excitement puts man on an equal plane with the lower animals, impels him to wicked moral aberrations and tragic crime. On the other hand, the complete abolition of sexual feelings would make men non-organic beings. We men enjoy coitus just enough.” R.W. Cockshutt, “Circumcision”, British Medical Journal, 1935 (2), 1935, 764 I suggest that all male children should be circumcised. This is “against nature”, but that is exactly the reason why it should be done. Nature intends that the adolescent male shall copulate as often and as promiscuously as possible, and to that end covers the sensitive glans so that it shall be ever ready to receive stimuli. Civilization, on the contrary, requires chastity, and the glans of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. Thus the adolescent has his attention drawn to his penis much less often. I am convinced that masturbation is much less common in the circumcised. With these considerations in mind it does not seem apt to argue that “God knows best how to make little boys”. Alan F. Guttmacher, “Should the baby be circumcised?”, Parents Magazine 16, September 1941, 26, 76-78 “It [circumcision] does not necessitate handling of the penis by the infant’s mother, or the child himself in later years, and therefore does not focus the male’s attention on his own genitals. Masturbation is considered less likely.” Compare Brian Morris: “The fact that such excessive attention to a penis to relieve the irritation might have led to arousal … ” M.F. Campbell, “The male genital tract and the female urethra”, in M.F. Campbell and J.H. Harrison (eds), Urology, 3rd edn (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1970), Vol. 2, 1836 “Parents readily recognise the importance of local cleanliness and genital hygiene in their children and are usually ready to adopt measures to adopt measures which may avert masturbation. Circumcision is usually advised on these grounds.” <a href="https://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">See also Quotes on foreskin and sexual function on this site</a> <h2>Circumcision and prevention of AIDS</h2> It is likely that the persistence of the masturbation taboo in the United States is a factor in the obstinate survival of routine (preventive) circumcision of newborn boys there. At a time when every variety of sexual expression is discussed on television and most may be viewed on DVD, the topic of masturbation still arouses nervous titters, if not choleric outrage. As recently as 1994 President Clinton dismissed his Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, for stating at a United Nations conference on AIDS that masturbation was “a part of human sexuality and … something that perhaps should be taught” (Lancet, Vol. 344, 24 Dec. 1994, p. 1714). Like the bishops of southern Africa, who believe it is more sinful to wear a condom than to infect another person with a fatal and incurable disease, Clinton and the bible-bashing Republicans he was trying to appease seem to think that the only acceptable form of safe sex is continence. The Lancet, Britain’s oldest medical journal, condemned Clinton’s action and praised Elders for speaking the truth, but it acknowledged that the medical profession was itself to blame for its own mighty contribution to the phobia about masturbation, originally whipped up by purity campaigners in the eighteenth century, which raged like an epidemic during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which is evidently far from extinct even today. This is unfortunate because, as the Lancet acknowledged, masturbation is safe sex. In a moral environment that encourages promiscuity and an ever-younger onset of sexual activity with others, any policies or practices that discourage safe sex activity must be regarded as increasing the risk of STDs and AIDS. It follows that if circumcision reduces the pleasure and incidence of masturbation, it increases the incidence of penetrative sex, and thus the likelihood of disease transmission. The Victorians looked upon masturbation as the “solitary vice”, but it is a simple truth that all sexual activity, either alone or with others, involves manual fondling and manipulation; masturbation and penetrative sex are not a dichotomy, but phases of a continuum. By radically simplifying the penis, circumcision greatly reduces its versatility and the range of fun and games to be had with it, thus steering men away from fondling and other forms of safe sex and towards penetrative and other forms of potentially unsafe sex. Circumcised men complain that wearing a condom reduces sensitivity to the point where they can’t feel a thing, and in Africa there are <a href="http://www.circumstitions.com/news/news35.html#unsafe">increasing reports</a> that victims of the American-funded World Health Organisation circumcision programs drop condom use the moment their wound heals. The facts is that the uncircumcised penis offers vastly more scope for safe sex than the simplified and stripped-down variety, however “armour plated” it may have become as a result of the surgery. The fact that the USA has both the highest incidence of neonatal circumcision in the developed world (apart from Israel) and one of the highest incidences of HIV-AIDS infection does not suggest that circumcision is a particularly effective AIDS prevention strategy. Maybe they need to fondle more and cut less. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circumcision and "moral hygiene" darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h2>A timeline of the foreskin and circumcision</h2> <table border="1" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="4" style="border-style: solid; width: 100%; border-color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff;" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="22%">Year</td> <td width="78%">Event</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">300 million BCE</td> <td width="78%">Reptiles evolve internal fertilization, using a retractable penis.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">100 million BCE</td> <td width="78%">A proto-mammalian species evolves the foreskin, which becomes a genital feature in most mammals.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">5 million BCE</td> <td width="78%">Australopithecus (hominid ape): penis has foreskin</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">400,000 BCE</td> <td width="78%">Homo sapiens: complete with foreskin</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">130,000 BCE</td> <td width="78%">Modern humans: complete with foreskin</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">10,000 (?) BCE</td> <td width="78%">Aboriginal tribes in central and desert regions of Australia introduce circumcision of boys as puberty rite</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">6000 (?) BCE</td> <td width="78%">Circumcision (male and female) practised as puberty rite by tribes in north-eastern African and Arabian peninsula</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">3100 BCE</td> <td width="78%">Egypt invaded from the south, perhaps by African tribes bringing circumcision with them.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2300 BCE</td> <td width="78%">Egyptian bas-relief which may show some form of genital mutilation being performed. The relief is eroded and hard to interpret. More commonly seen as modern reconstruction. One interpretation is that it just shows the pubic hair being shaved. Contrary to some reports, no circumcised mummies have been found, but some statues show what may be a superincision (cutting a slit in the upper side of the foreskin, or dorsal slit).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">600 BCE</td> <td width="78%">First five books of Hebrew Bible (Torah) compiled, including Genesis with its reference to Yaweh's command to Abraham to circumcise himself, his sons and his slaves and servants. Circumcision enforced by priests among Jewish people as sign of the Covenant.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">450 BCE</td> <td width="78%">Greek historians note prevalence of circumcision and other penile mutilations among the Arabs and other Middle Eastern tribes. Herodotus (485-420 BCE) observes and deplores circumcision among the Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Macrones, as well as the Egyptian priestly caste. He criticises the fanatical ritual cleanliness of the Egyptian priests: "They [even] practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be clean than handsome" - a perverse sacrifice in Greek eyes. (The context is things Egyptians do that are the reverse of what other, more sensible, people do.) He reports that the salutary influence of Greek culture led the Phoenicians to abandon circumcision. (See <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/">Frederick Hodges, "The ideal prepuce"</a>, including excellent illustrations from Greek art and sculpture).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">170 BCE</td> <td width="78%">The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-165 BCE) consolidates Alexander's empire, and attempts to impose Greek civilization, including a ban on ritual circumcision. Some Jews seek foreskin restoration.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">ANNO DOMINI or Christian Era</td> <td width="78%">Jesus born and circumcised in accordance with Jewish practice.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">43</td> <td width="78%">St Paul convinces a meeting in Jerusalem that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Xy.html">circumcision is not required</a> for Christian converts.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">45</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">Philo</a> (c.15 BCE to c.50 CE), a Jewish philosopher in Alexandria, defends circumcision on the ground that it is a valuable curb on sexual indulgence: "The legislators thought good to dock the organ which ministers to such intercourse, thus making circumcision the symbol of excision of excessive and superfluous pleasure." </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">132</td> <td width="78%">Roman Emperor Hadrian (98-138 CE) extends a previous ban, by Emperors Domitian (81-96) and Nerva (96-98), on the castration of citizens or slaves throughout the Roman Empire, to include circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">140</td> <td width="78%"> Mishnah (commentary on Torah) first written down. Gives details of Periah, or radical circumcision, involving tearing back the foreskin and ripping it from the glans, (not just cutting off the tip, as done previously.) Thought to be instituted then to prevent Jews who did not like being circumcised from stretching the remnants of their foreskin so as to cover up the glans and thus being able to pass as uncircumcised and take part in Greek athletic contests and other Graeco-Roman social life. Emperor Antoninus Pius lifts the legal prohibition on circumcision, but only for Jews, not their slaves, servants or other non-Jews (as prescribed by Genesis and Jewish law).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">170</td> <td width="78%">Galen (131-201) describes methods of foreskin restoration.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">320</td> <td width="78%">Emperor Constantine renews the ban on Jews circumcising non-Jews (such as their slaves, as was their practice).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">533</td> <td width="78%">The Digest of Justinian restates the ban of Constantine.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">550</td> <td width="78%">Christian church begins celebrating 1 January as the Feast of the Circumcision (of Christ).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">570</td> <td width="78%">Mohammed born "already circumcised" supposedly giving rise to the rule of circumcision among Moslems, the largest group of circumcised men in the world today. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/ethics.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">7th-11th century</td> <td width="78%">Islamic armies overrun much of Middle East, central Asia, northern Africa and Spain. Indigenous cultures swamped and rule of circumcision enforced on local populations by Moslem conquerors. Some Christians excused because they are "people of the Book". Islam eventually reaches India, Malayan peninsular and Indonesian archipelago, bringing circumcision in its wake.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">12th century</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">Moses ben Maimon</a> (Maimonides, 1135-1204), Jewish physician, writes Guide for the perplexed, in which he explains that circumcision was test of faith, the main purpose of which was injure the penis and discourage sexual indulgence.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1350</td> <td width="78%">Polynesian voyagers reach Aotearoa (New Zealand) and abandon supercision. Maoris never practise circumcision or any other form of genital mutilation and regard foreskin as sacred.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">15th century</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/quote.html">Jacopo Berengario da Carpi</a> (1460-1530), Italian anatomist, identifies the most sensitive part of the penis as the foreskin.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">16th century</td> <td width="78%">Gabriele Falloppio (1523-62) describes function of the foreskin to provide lubrication and increase pleasure during sex.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">17th century</td> <td width="78%">William Harvey (1578-1657), the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, states that circumcised men have less pleasure in sex. Giovanni Sinibaldi identifies the clitoris as the functional equivalent of the foreskin and as each the main source of sexual pleasure for women and men respectively.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1650s</td> <td width="78%">During English revolution some extreme Puritan sects turn back to Old Testament and decide that Christians are subject to Law of the Covenant. One woman is gaoled for circumcising little boys in obedience to this belief.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1685</td> <td width="78%"> Aristotle's Master-piece, a popular sex manual throughout the eighteenth century, states that the main source of male sexual pleasure arises from the friction of the foreskin moving back and forth over the glans.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1716</td> <td width="78%">Publication of Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution, and all its frightful consequences in both sexes in London, giving rise to the irrational phobia about masturbation which persisted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which still survives among members of the US Congress. For the next 250 years doctors insist it is a scientifically proven medical fact that masturbation is physically and mentally harmful and must be stopped at any cost.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1740s</td> <td width="78%">Improvements in surgical technique allow amputation of diseased tissue from the penis in advanced cases of syphilis. Because syphilitic sores were often found on the foreskin, some physicians got the idea that circumcised men might be less vulnerable to infection.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1758</td> <td width="78%">Publication of Onanism, or a treatise on the disorders produced by masturbation, by Swiss physician Simon-Andre Tissot, further spreading the theory of masturbatory disease throughout Europe.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1786</td> <td width="78%">English surgeon John Hunter observes that the foreskin was necessary to provide the slack skin to accommodate the penis in its erect and enlarged state.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1830s (France)</td> <td width="78%">French physician Claude-Francois Lallemand introduces circumcision as treatment for masturbation in boys and "spermatorrhoea" (involuntary loss of semen) in men. Suggests widespread circumcision of young boys as preventive of masturbation. Ideas not taken up in Europe, but catch on in Britain and USA.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1840s (Britain)</td> <td width="78%">English physicians invent the idea that a tight and non-retractable foreskin in male babies is a congenital abnormality which ought to be corrected by surgery.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1850s</td> <td width="78%">James Copland, in Dictionary of practical medicine, popularises the idea of circumcision as a means of discouraging masturbation among boys.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1855</td> <td width="78%">Jonathan Hutchinson, English physician, writes influential article, based on observations of a few Jewish and non-Jewish VD cases, that circumcised men are less likely to contract syphilis. Urges widespread circumcision in infancy. ("On the influence of circumcision in preventing syphilis", Medical Times and Gazette, NS Vol. II, 1 December 1855, pp. 542-3)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">late 1850s</td> <td width="78%">Clitoridectomy introduced as a treatment for hysteria, epilepsy, masturbation and other nervous diseases in women. On the relevance of this to male circumcision, see <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://cirp.org/library/history/moscucci/">research by Ornella Moscucci</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1860</td> <td width="78%">Athol Johnson practises and urges circumcision to cure masturbation in boys. ("On an injurious habit occasionally met with in infancy and early childhood", Lancet, 7 April 1860, pp. 344-5)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1860s</td> <td width="78%">Circumcision as means of curing or preventing masturbation in boys becomes widespread medical dogma in Britain. For the next 100 years (and in the USA 150 years) doctors insist it is a scientifically proven medical fact that the foreskin is harmful to the physical and moral health males and must be surgically removed before they even become conscious that it was ever there.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1865</td> <td width="78%">William Acton, in the many editions of Functions and disorders of the reproductive organs, condemns foreskin as "source of serious mischief" because of its sensitivity and responsiveness to touch. Rejects emerging medical dogma that glans of penis is most sensitive part. Considers foreskin necessary to sexual performance in old age. Condemns masturbation and treats spermatorrhoea by cauterising urethra with silver nitrate.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1867</td> <td width="78%">British medical profession rejects and effectively bans clitoridectomy because it is an irreversible mutilation and often performed without informed consent.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1870 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">In the USA Lewis A. Sayre applies theories of Lallemand and announces that circumcision cures "paralysis" (polio), epilepsy and masturbation, setting off the medical craze for "therapeutic" circumcision. Calls for universal circumcision of male infants.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1870s (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">George Beaney, Melbourne doctor, popularises the theories of Acton on the harmfulness of masturbation and urges curative and preventive circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1874 (Austria)</td> <td width="78%">Eugen Levit, a Jewish doctor in Vienna, publishes pamphlet urging Jews to abolish circumcision and replace it with non-injurious rite.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1877 (USA)</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Kellogg.html">John Harvey Kellogg MD</a> (1852-1943) publishes the first edition of Plain facts for old and young, in which he promotes circumcision as a cure for masturbation. He writes that the operation was to be performed "without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment."</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1882</td> <td width="78%">Norman H. Chapman, Professor of Nervous and Mental Disease at the University of Kansas City, writes: "It is always good surgery to correct this deformity [a long and contracted foreskin] ... as a precautionary measure, even though no symptoms have as yet presented themselves", thus ushering in routine or "preventive" circumcision. (Medical News (Philadelphia) Vol. 41, p. 317)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1885</td> <td width="78%">Dr Samuel Newman of New York advocates the circumcision of newborn boys. One of the advantages he claimed was that it could be done without anaesthetic, and he borrowed the idea of strapping the baby to a board from the Indians. This became the modern circumstraint, still used in many hospitals to immobilise the baby while the doctor cuts off part of his penis.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">late 1880s</td> <td width="78%">The newly formed American Academy of Pediatrics supports Lewis Sayre's call for routine neonatal circumcision. Determined to lower the nation's infant mortality rate by reducing often-lethal diarrhoea, the AAP argues that the foreskin irritates the penis, which irritates the nervous system, which hampers digestion, which causes diarrhoea. Simultaneously, the AAP also condemns <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Nursing.html">breast milk</a>, claiming it is a leading cause of infant diarrhoea. This is the nineteenth century version of the urinary tract infection scare (UTI), the only surviving justification for infant circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1890 (Britain)</td> <td width="78%">Herbert Snow, a London doctor, publishes The barbarity of circumcision, in which he deplores the rapid spread of the practice. Jonathan Hutchinson publishes article "Circumcision as a preventive of masturbation", in which he regrets that public opinion would not allow the introduction of castration as well in severe cases.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1893</td> <td width="78%">Publication of P.C Remondino, History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present: Moral and physical reasons for its performance. Dr Remondino was one of the most ardent crusaders for universal infant circumcision before Terry Russell and Brian Morris, and just as scientific. His lengthy book on the subject, stressing moral as well as physical reasons, was a diatribe against the foreskin as a "moral outlaw", as well as a pathogenic feature of the male body which nature ought to have abolished. He claimed that the foreskin caused and circumcision could cure just about everything from syphilis and tuberculosis to night terrors and bed wetting.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1900 (Britain)</td> <td width="78%">Jonathan Hutchinson delivers widely reported lecture in which he urges universal male circumcision as a preventive of syphilis. ("The advantages of circumcision", Medical Review, Vol. 3, p. 641) E. Harding Freeland publishes article in which he claimed that universal male circumcision would reduce the incidence of syphilis by 49 per cent. (Lancet, 29 December, pp. 1869-71)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1900 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Richard Arthur, purity campaigner and later Minister for Health in New South Wales, urges parents to adopt circumcision as cure for and preventive of masturbation in boys. Australian newborn circumcision rate estimated at 25 per cent.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1901 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">H.G.H . Naylor publishes "A plea for early circumcision" in Australasian Medical Gazette </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1903 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Popular medical writer Philip Muskett urges circumcision in his widely read Illustrated Australian Medical Guide </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1914 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Abraham Wolbarst, Jewish doctor in New York, urges universal male circumcision as a preventive of syphilis, cancer and masturbation. (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 62, 1914, pp. 92-7)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1916 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Conference organised by Workers Educational Association of New South Wales recommends circumcision as preventive of syphilis and masturbation.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1920s-50s</td> <td width="78%">Most Australian baby and child care guides recommend routine circumcision. Some suggest circumcision of girls in cases of persistent masturbation, though this is rarely done. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Circ.html">Photos of procedures</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1920</td> <td width="78%">Australian routine circumcision rate reaches 50 per cent</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1928 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">In the USA Dr Thomas Bolling Gay recommends routine infant circumcision to prevent phimosis and hence masturbation. (Journal of the American Medical Association, 21 July 1928)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1932</td> <td width="78%">Abraham Wolbarst claims that smegma causes and circumcision prevents cancer of the penis.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1934</td> <td width="78%">Hiram S. ("Inch") Yellen, MD (1894-1969) and Aaron A. Goldstein (1899-1945) invent the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Glossary2.html#gomco">Gomco clamp</a>,a particularly cruel device for separating boys from their foreskins.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1935</td> <td width="78%">Dr R.W. Cockshutt states that all boys should be circumcised as an incentive to chastity. (British Medical Journal, 1935 (2), p. 764)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1941</td> <td width="78%">Alan Guttmacher writes (approvingly) that some US doctors circumcise routinely without even consulting parents, and that 75 per cent of boys born in urban hospitals are circumcised. ("Should the baby be circumcised?", Parents Magazine, Vol. 16, pp. 26, 76-8)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1942</td> <td width="78%">Battle of Guadalcanal. Mass circumcision of US soldiers in the Pacific in response to "an outbreak of phimosis and paraphimosis"! Military circumcisers Eugene A. Hand and Abraham Ravich promote circumcision to the masses through medical and popular journals after the war.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1942</td> <td width="78%">Battle of El Alamein: allied offensive begins in Egypt. Some British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers are forcibly circumcised concurrently with widespread skin infections, giving rise to "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/sand.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">sand under the foreskin</a>" myth. Italian and German soldiers (all uncut) mysteriously unaffected by this problem.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1946-7</td> <td width="78%">British National Health Service set up, putting hospital doctors on salary and paying family doctors a flat rate per patient on their books. Circumcision not included in schedule of free procedures. Incidence of circumcision in Britain falls from about 35 per cent to less than 10 per cent.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1949</td> <td width="78%">Joseph Lewis publishes In the name of humanity, an eloquent condemnation of infant circumcision on rational and humanitarian grounds. You may be able to get a second hand copy from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.abebooks.com/">abebooks</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1949</td> <td width="78%">Douglas Gairdner publishes article "The fate of the foreskin", finally correcting the medical profession's misunderstanding of infantile phimosis and showing that a phimotic condition is normal and healthy in infants and boys. (British Medical Journal, 24 December 1949, pp. 1433-7). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/general/gairdner/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1950</td> <td width="78%">US troops land in South Korea. Under subsequent US occupation and influence, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Korea.html">South Korea</a> adopts universal boyhood circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1955 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Australian routine circumcision rate peaks at 90 per cent.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1962</td> <td width="78%">National Women's Hospital opens in Auckland, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/NZ.html">New Zealand</a>, as a publicly-funded, foreskin-friendly zone. This leads to a dramatic fall in the rate of circumcision in NZ.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1965</td> <td width="78%">W.K.C. Morgan publishes "The rape of the phallus", the first criticism of circumcision's murky psychology to appear in a US medical journal. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/general/morgan/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1965 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Australian circumcision rate declines to 70 per cent. Total number of circumcised males reaches all-time peak of 60 per cent; proportion falls from now on.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1966 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Excessively severe circumcision (involving amputation of entire penis) of "John Thiessen" (Bruce, now David, Reimer) in Winnipeg leading to sex-reassignment surgery and failed attempt to bring him up as a girl.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1970</td> <td width="78%">In the USA Van Lewis and his brother Ben carry four signs saying "Infant Circumcision is a Sex Crime. Abolish it." "Sex Criminals for Hire? Inquire Within" "Abolish Infant Circumcision", "Men's Liberation" and "QUIT" outside the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, Tallahassee, Florida, and are arrested. They are charged with disturbing the peace and spend the day in gaol. Van Lewis was not intimidated and continues to fight for genital integrity: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://stopinfantcircumcision.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">further details here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1971</td> <td width="78%">American Academy of Pediatrics finds "no valid medical indications for routine infant circumcision."</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1971 (April)</td> <td width="78%">The Australian Pediatric Association recommends that "newborn male infants should not, as a routine, be circumcised". (Medical Journal of Australia, 22 May 1971, p. 1148)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1975</td> <td width="78%">Australian circumcision rate declines to 50 per cent. Canadian Pediatric Society issues policy on circumcision and calls it an "obsolete" and "mutilitive" operation which should not be routinely performed. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/cps1975/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1983</td> <td width="78%">Australian College of Paediatrics issues <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/doctors.html">statement on circumcision</a> which states: "1. The ACP should continue to discourage the practice of circumcision in the newborn male infant."</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1985 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Commonwealth Minister for Health (Neal Blewett) announces that Medicare will no longer pay for medically unnecessary circumcisions from taxpayers' healthcare funds. Decision reversed after intervention by Prime Minister Hawke, bowing to pressure from Jewish and Moslem religious leaders.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1985 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">In the USA nurse Marilyn Milos is fired for advising parents against circumcision and founds NOCIRC (the National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centers).</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">Late 1980s</td> <td width="78%">Demands from circumcision advocates for mass circumcision as a means of controlling AIDS. At this time USA has highest proportion of circumcised men and highest incidence of AIDS cases in developed world. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1988</td> <td width="78%">California Medical Association declares circumcision "an effective public health measure" on a voice vote, at the instigation of long-time militant circumcision advocate, Aaron Fink.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1989</td> <td width="78%">Canadian Paediatric Society <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/cps1975/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">reaffirms its stand</a> against routine circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1989 (World)</td> <td width="78%">United Nations adopts Convention on the Rights of the Child. Section 14 guarantees children their own freedom of belief and religion, and Section 24.3 requires signatories to "take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children", meaning circumcision among other cruel or harmful customs. Ratified by Australia, December 1990.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1989</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/index.html">First International Symposium on Circumcision</a>, at Anaheim, California adopts a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.nocirc.org/declare.html">declaration of bodily integrity</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1989</td> <td width="78%">American Academy of Pediatrics proposal that its 1971 position against routine circumcision be re-examined is widely misreported as a reversal of its position.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1990 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Australian circumcision rate declines to 20 per cent</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1991</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/index.html">Second International Symposium</a> on Circumcision, San Francisco, California. John Taylor describes the ridged band of the foreskin.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1992 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">In the case of "Marion", an intellectually handicapped girl whom her guardian wished to sterilise, the High Court held that where a significant medical intervention was not needed for the immediate health of a minor, the permission of the Family Court was required.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1992</td> <td width="78%">More than 20 nurses at St Vincent Hospital, Santa Fe, New Mexico, refuse to assist with circumcisions.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1993</td> <td width="78%">Claim that uncircumcised men had significantly higher rate of cancer of the penis exposed as a myth, yet again.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1993 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Queensland Law Reform Commission suggests that circumcision of minors without consent is probably unlawful under the Queensland criminal code.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1993</td> <td width="78%">Important paper by Williams and Kapila on risks and complications of circumcision published in British Journal of Surgery. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/williams-kapila/">Full text here</a>. Photos of typical but not so aesthetically pleasing circumcision outcomes are <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Botched1.html">available here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1994</td> <td width="78%">David Gollaher publishes landmark article on history of medically rationalised circumcision in Journal of Social History. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/history/gollaher/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1995</td> <td width="78%">Two of the nurses of St Vincent (see 1992), Mary Conant and Betty Katz Sperlich, found Nurses for the Rights of the Child.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1996 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Female circumcision (female genital mutilation, or FGM) banned by US federal government</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1996 (Britain)</td> <td width="78%">R. Taylor's paper on the prepuce as specialised mucosa of the penis published in the British Journal of Urology. It describes the uniquely dense innervation of the ridged bands of the foreskin. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1996 (Canada)</td> <td width="78%">Canadian Paediatric Society, Foetus and Newborn Committee, issues new policy on circumcision in which it states that "circumcision of newborns should not be routinely performed." <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/FN/fn96-01.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text of policy here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1996 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">The Australasian Association of Paediatric Surgeons states that it "does not support the routine circumcision of male neonates, infants or children in Australia. It is considered to be inappropriate and unnecessary as a routine to remove the prepuce". Australian College of Paediatrics waters down statement against circumcision in response to AIDS scare and religious pressure.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1996</td> <td width="78%">Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations, Lausanne, Switzerland, adopts the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/fourth/prescott.html">Ashley Montagu declaration</a> and submits it to the World Court.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1997</td> <td width="78%">Paper by A. Taddio on circumcision pain shows that pain of circumcision heightens fear and pain of subsequent vaccination and other procedures. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Pain.html">Further information on pain</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1997</td> <td width="78%">Paper by Edward O. Laumann et al on circumcision, sexual practice and STDs shows circumcision does not prevent STDs, and that higher STD rate correlates with more varied (stimulation-hungry?) sexual practices. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/general/laumann/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1997</td> <td width="78%">Paper by J. Lander et al proves the pain of circumcision to be excruciating. Circumcision without anaesthetic was discontinued in the study for ethical reasons. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/lander/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1997</td> <td width="78%"> Rolling Stone blows the whistle on Dr John Money's attempt at surgical sex reassignment in the "John/Joan/John" case.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1997 (Egypt)</td> <td width="78%">Egyptian High Court overturns a government attempt to ban female circumcision. The Islamic cleric who led traditional opposition to the ban not only thanked God for preserving a religious custom and requirement handed down by mothers and grandmothers for fourteen centuries, but stated that the operation protected the nation from AIDS by reducing promiscuity. (Los Angeles Times, 25 June)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1998 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Highly publicised death of baby Dustin Evans Jnr in Cleveland, Ohio, under anaesthetic during attempt to repair damage arising from circumcision complications. Doctors were at pains to distance his death from his circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1998</td> <td width="78%">Study of UTIs by To et al shows that it would take 195 circumcisions to prevent one UTI. You can <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/References.html#To">see a graphic illustration</a> of this figure.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999</td> <td width="78%">In a standard textbook, leading paediatrician refers to circumcision as a mutilation: "it is fundamentally illogical that mutilating someone might be beneficial." (N.R.C. Roberton, "Care of the normal term newborn baby", in Janet M. Rennie, N.R.C. Roberton (eds) Textbook of neonatology (3rd edn, Edinburgh 1999), pp. 378-379.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">The American Academy of Pediatrics issues <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.aap.org/policy/re9850.html">new policy</a> on routine male circumcision which states that the potential medical benefits of circumcision do not warrant performing it routinely, but that paediatricians may perform it at the parents' behest for "cultural, religious, and ethnic" reasons, but that analgesia is essential. You can compare that policy with their <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/AAP.html">policy on female genital mutilation</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999</td> <td width="78%">Medina General Hospital, Ohio, settles with parents who had sued for $10,000,000. Their son had the tip of his penis amputated during a "routine" circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999 (Britain)</td> <td width="78%">An English judge rules that a Muslim father may not have his son circumcised contrary to the mother's wishes, even though they had originally agreed to raise the child as Muslim. The ruling is upheld in the Court of Appeal, which stated: "a newborn child does not share the conceptions of the parents" and "it [is] not in the best interests of the child to be circumcised, with its risk of pain and psychological damage which the boy would find hard to understand." Further information. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/ethics.html">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999</td> <td width="78%">The Lancet publishes editorial by Halperin and Bailey calling for mass circumcision in Africa to prevent spread of HIV-AIDS. Media in USA interpret this as a call for mass circumcision everywhere. Halperin tells the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco: "If I were a top [insertive partner in anal sex], and didn't like to use condoms, I would consider getting circumcised" - contradicting his own advice in the editorial, leaving the false impression that circumcision conferred immunity against infection, and seeming ignorant that most American males are already circumcised. AIDS continues to spread in Africa even though more than half the adult male population there is also already foreskin-free.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">1999 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">In Perth, WA, Shane Peterson sues the doctor who circumcised him as an infant for disability, pain and suffering arising from the operation. In an out of court settlement the physician admitted liability and agreed to a payment of $A360,000. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/account.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Further details</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000</td> <td width="78%">Australian circumcision rate stabilises at 12 per cent nationally - but higher in New South Wales and much higher in Queensland. Total number of circumcised males falls to 48 per cent.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000</td> <td width="78%">Article by G. Boyle, J.S. Svoboda and C. Price, "Circumcision of healthy boys: Criminal assault?" published. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/boyle1/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000</td> <td width="78%">Parents of Jacob Sweet, brain damaged after infection arising from circumcision in Anchorage, Alaska, settle <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Law.html#Sweet">medical malpractice suit</a> against doctors after 13 years.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000</td> <td width="78%">The American Medical Association issues a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/AMA.html">policy statement</a> on circumcision, calling it "non-therapeutic" and recommending anaesthesia, but still endorsing the 1999 statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/AAP-ana.html">Further discussion</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000</td> <td width="78%">Publication of The ethical canary by Margaret Somerville, including a chapter disputing the ethics of circumcising male babies. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.intact.ca/canary.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000 (Australia)</td> <td width="78%">Sixth International Symposium on Genital Integrity in Sydney, Australia. Ken McGrath (from NZ) first describes the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Glossary.html#delta">frenular delta</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2000 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">William Stowell, aged 18, feeling pissed off, injured and ashamed of being cut, sues the doctor who circumcised him and the hospital where it was done. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.arclaw.org/">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001 (Canada)</td> <td width="78%">Ontario Human Rights Commission reviews its policy on male circumcision, recognises the reality of harm, and moves its position closer to its policy on female genital mutilation.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001</td> <td width="78%">The Association for Genital Integrity in Toronto applies for public funding under the government's Court Challenges Program to file a court challenge to extend the Canadian Charter to include males in protection against genital mutilation. Application is refused. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.courtchallenge.com/">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Marilyn Milos wins Nurseweek award for patient advocacy. Nocirc issues <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.nocirc.org/statements/hiv_statement2001.html">statement on Circumcision and AIDS</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001</td> <td width="78%">Important article by K. Bonner argues that circumcision is not a "natural condom". <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/bonner1/">Full text here</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001 (Sweden)</td> <td width="78%"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Sweden.html">Sweden</a> passes a law setting rules for infant male circumcision, including mandatory use of anaesthetic. Jewish and Moslem organisations protest and threaten to take Swedish Government to the European Court of Human Rights.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001 (Africa)</td> <td width="78%">Approximately 100 southern African boys reported to have died as a result of tribal circumcision. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circumstitions.com/Complic.html">Further information</a>. You can <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.cirp.org/search.html">search for news articles</a> here.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2001</td> <td width="78%">Medicaid North Carolina ends public funding of routine circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2002 (April)</td> <td width="78%">Revival of old claim that male foreskin increases risk of cervical cancer in women makes headlines round the world. One of the researchers demands universal male circumcision. The shonky statistical manipulations and ethical bankruptcy of the researchers pass unnoticed by the media. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/cervical.html">Further information</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2002 (July)</td> <td width="78%">At Barcelona conference, World Health Organisation rejects circumcision as element of strategy in control of AIDS in Africa. Endorses continued reliance on proven methods of control, including sex education, promotion of human rights and gender quality, and provision of condoms. (See Stover J, Walker N, Garnet GP, et al, "Can we reverse the HIV/AIDS pandemic with an expanded response?" Lancet Vol. 360, 2002, pp. 73-77.)</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2002 (USA)</td> <td width="78%">Medicaid Arizona stops public funding of routine circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2002</td> <td width="78%">Medicaid Missouri stops public funding of routine circumcision.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%">2002 (September)</td> <td width="78%">Royal Australasian College of Physicians issues new statement on circumcision which states that there is "no medical indication for routine male circumcision" and "no evidence of benefit outweighing harm for circumcision as a routine procedure". The full statement is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.racp.edu.au/hpu/paed/circumcision/index.htm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">available on the RACP website</a>. Further information available from <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.circinfo.org/doctors.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Circumcision Information Australia. </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%"> 2002 (Denmark) </td> <td width="78%"> Articles in Danish magazine Politiken compare male circumcision to female genital mutilation and call for a ban on circumcision of boys. They should have the same protection from unnecessary genital alterations as girls. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.courtchallenge.com/news/politik1.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Article by Uffe Hastrup, 20 November 2002</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.courtchallenge.com/news/politik2.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Article by Lau Sander Esbensen</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="22%"> 2002 (December) </td> <td width="78%">Chairman of Danish Council of Medical Ethics calls for ban on circumcision of boys before the age of consent; he states that "no adult is entitled to carry out irreversible surgery on a child, unless it is for health reasons"; and that "prior to eighteen years of age, Danish children have a right to be protected from ritual interventions which can cause pain or permanent damage". <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.courtchallenge.com/news/dagmed1.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text of article translated here.</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> 2003 (February)</td> <td>Medical Journal of Australia publishes three important articles showing that too many circumcisions are being performed in Australia and that the foreskin plays an important role in sexual function. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210724205733/http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_04_170203/contents_170203.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text of the articles</a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Circumcision chronology darby Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Darby Subject The topic of the resource Circumcision history Description An account of the resource Archive of the work published by Robert Darby Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robert Darby Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived circinfo.org historyofcircumcsion.org Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document <div class="intro" id="intro"> <h4><img alt="" height="289" src="https://assets.nationbuilder.com/darboninstitute/pages/437/attachments/original/1751335183/Robert_Darby_aged_5.jpg?1751335183" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="212"/></h4> Robert Darby, aged five, about to set off on the long journey that would demonstrate the truth of Ecclesiastes 1.18: "For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." With feminine intuition, his sister looks doubtful. <h1>Robert Darby BA, B Litt, PhD</h1> I am an independent historian and freelance writer with degrees from La Trobe University (BA 1975), the Australian National University (B Litt 1985) and the University of New South Wales (PhD 1989). I live in Canberra, Australia, and do most of my research at the National Library and the Australian National University - where I was a Visiting Fellow in the School of Social Sciences in 2004. I am also a frequent visitor to the wonderful History of Medicine Library maintained by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Sydney. I first became interested in male circumcision in the late 1990s as part of a wider interest in the history of male sexuality, and of the various ways in which it has been viewed and managed by different societies. I began to study circumcision because it seemed a useful guide to how a society perceived and valued masculinity and how it judged or categorised sexual behaviour; it provided a particularly sharp focus on the point where culture and biology, society and nature, steel and flesh, came together so fatefully. As I read more deeply into the literature on this topic I quickly realised that there was a serious imbalance in sex and gender studies - all too often seen as the history of women, and all too often focused on the mind rather than the body. I have thus been particularly concerned to redress what I saw as the imbalance in sex and gender studies - too often seen as the history of women - by bringing men into the picture; and to correct the tendency in studies of masculinity to concentrate on the mind and downplay the importance of the body. Many studies of masculinity, and even of the penis - particularly those written by Americans - seemed completely unaware of the fact that most penises all over the world and throughout history have included the foreskin with which it came into the world. Ignoring the fact that the biologically - and on a world scale, numerically - normal penis was not circumcised seemed a dangerous example of cultural blindness that ought to be countered. It soon became apparent from my study of circumcision in Britain that many of the early beneficiaries/victims of the operation were not happy with the result; I therefore wanted to tell something of their story and to arouse some sympathy for the indignities and cruelties inflicted on men and boys in the name of controlling disease and curbing sexual desire, especially in the nineteenth century, when masturbation was seen as such a crime that forcible surgery seemed an acceptable response. The historical literature on the masturbation scare offered plenty of information, often written in a tone of justified indignation, about surgery on women, such as clitoridectomy; but such texts were usually silent about the fact that similar surgery on men's genitals had been introduced first and was always far more common. When I began my research I was of course aware that routine male circumcision was still common in the USA, and that Australia had a past history of the practice, but I thought that it was pretty much a thing of the past. Since Australian paediatric bodies had been discouraging the procedure since the early 1970s, and I had observed that the boys of all my same-age relations and friends were growing up (very happily) with normal and unaltered penises, I assumed that the fad was dead as a doornail. Nobody with any medical knowledge or scientific understanding would ever try to revive the old Victorian stories about the "health benefits" of pre-emptive amputation - or so I thought. Imagine my astonishment when I found that a few vocal evangelists from the fringes of the medical world were trying to do just this, and, what was more, that they were getting a lot of coverage in the popular media. It seems that whenever a new and incurable disease involving the genitals appears, some people always jump to the conclusion that the solution is to cut part of them off. The reason for this is to be found in the fact circumcision emerged as a valid medical treatment at a time when the causes of most diseases were poorly understood, children were not regarded as having any independent human rights, no meaningful standards of medical evidence had been established, and medical ethics were rudimentary or non-existent. History is thus needed to explain the persistence of the practice into an age which should know better. Although this site does not intend to take issue with contemporary claims for the "advantages of circumcision", I hope that the historical perspective it provides will encourage people to take a sceptical view of reports that it should be enforced on children as a preventive of AIDS, cervical cancer, urinary tract infections etc, and show them to be not so far removed from nineteenth century assertions that circumcision should be enforced to prevent or cure masturbation, syphilis, epilepsy, bed-wetting, hip-joint disease, hernia, pimples and other disorders too numerous to mention. And also to wonder whether it was ethically acceptable to inflict such a mutilation on helpless children even if such therapeutic claims were true. <h2>My publications</h2> "A source of serious mischief: The demonisation of the foreskin and the rise of preventive circumcision in Australia", in George Denniston, Frederick Hodges and Marilyn Milos (eds) Understanding circumcision: A multi-disciplinary approach to a multi-dimensional problem, London and New York, Kluwer Academic Publishers and Plenum Press, 2001. <a href="https://www.darboninstitute.org/a_source_of_mischief_part_1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text available on this site</a> "Been there, done that: Thoughts on the proposition that yet more circumcision can save the world from AIDS", Australian Quarterly, Vol. 74. No. 5, Sept-Oct 2002 "<a href="http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_04_170203/contents_170203.html">Medical history and medical practice: Persistent myths about the foreskin</a>", Medical Journal of Australia, Vol. 178, 17 February 2003 "<a href="http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_11_020603/contents_020603.html">Treating phimosis</a>", Medical Journal of Australia, Vol. 178, 2 June 2003 "Circumcision as a preventive of masturbation: A review of the historiography", Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, Spring 2003. "An oblique and slovenly initiation': The circumcision episode in Tristram Shandy", Eighteenth Century Life, Vol. 27, Spring 2003. "Where doctors differ: The debate on circumcision as a preventive of syphilis, 1855-1914", Social History of Medicine, Vol. 16, Spring 2003 "Captivity and captivation: Gullivers in Brobdingnag", Eighteenth Century Life, Vol. 27, Fall 2003. <a href="https://www.darboninstitute.org/christian_attitudes_to_circumcision" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text available on this site</a>. "A post-modernist theory of wanking", review article of Thomas Laqueur, Solitary sex: A cultural history of masturbation, in Journal of Social History, Vol. 38, September 2004. "William Acton's antipodean disciples: A colonial perspective on his theories of male sexual (dys)function", Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol 13, April 2004 "Male circumcision and risk of HIV-1 infection", The Lancet, Vol. 363, June 12, 2004, p. 1997 "Pathologising male sexuality: Lallemand, spermatorrhoea and the rise of circumcision", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 60, July 2005, pp. 283-319 "The sorcerer's apprentice: Why can't we stop circumcising boys", Contexts magazine (USA), Vol. 4, No. 2, Spring 2005. <a href="https://www.darboninstitute.org/the_sorcerer_s_apprentice_2005" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Expanded version available on this site</a>. "The riddle of the sands: Circumcision, history and myth", New Zealand Medical Journal, Vol. 118, 15 July 2005 Abstract Although many nineteenth century misconceptions about the foreskin have been dispelled since Douglas Gairdner showed that infantile phimosis was not a congenital defect, other old ideas have proved more persistent. Among the most ubiquitous are the proposition that ritual or religious circumcision arose as a hygiene or sanitary measure; and the related idea that allied troops serving in the Middle East during the Second World War were subject to such severe epidemics of balanitis that mass circumcision was necessary. Both these claims are medical urban myths which should be firmly laid to rest. <h3>New book</h3> A surgical temptation: The demonization of the foreskin and the rise of circumcision in Britain (Chicago and London: <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3534612.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">University of Chicago Press</a>, 2005) What the critics say: "an extremely worthwhile topic that adds considerably to our knowledge of sexual attitudes and medical practices". -- Dr Lesley Hall, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine "exceptional detail and sound judgment. ... A very interesting study." -- Professor Peter Stearns, George Mason University. "Left to its own devices, the male foreskin goes on its merry way, but Victorian England would have none of that. The uncircumcised penis was blamed for the "moral and physical decay of syphilis and masturbation", while doctors characterised the emission of sperm as "a life-threatening illness that demanded drastic treatment if there was to be any hope of a cure". Medical historian Robert Darby, a visiting fellow at ANU, brilliantly records the rise of circumcision as "a miracle working cure-all for many ills", including hysteria." -- Tony Maniaty, Weekend Australian, 10 September 2005, p. R14 "... this book should be required reading for American physicians in particular, especially those who continue to perform an operation seldom practiced in the rest of the world and who might not know why it was originally begun." -- <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/294/21/2771">Journal of the American Medical Association</a>, 7 December 2005 "Surgical temptation: A chance to cut is a chance to cure?", American Sexuality Magazine, November 2005 <h3>Review articles</h3> "AIDS and society in Tanzania", review article of Philip Setel, A plague of paradoxes: AIDS, culture and demography in northern Tanzania, in Archives of Sexual Behaviour, December 2005. <a href="https://www.darboninstitute.org/aids_and_society_in_tanzania_2000s" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Full text available on this site</a><a href="https://www.historyofcircumcision.com/templates/pages/aids_and_society_in_tanzania.html">.</a> "Fortifying medical ethics with human rights and conscience", Review of Thomas Alured Faunce, Pilgrims in Medicine: An Allegory of Medical Humanities, Foundational Virtues, Ethical Principles, Law and Human Rights in Medical Personal and Professional Development. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005. H-Net Reviews, June 2006 In his stress on the importance of incorporating "international human rights" into medical ethics, Faunce takes the familiar list of grounds on which people should not be subject to unequal treatment (sex, race, color, religion, disability, perhaps age and sexual preference) very seriously, but these are social rights, exercised as members of a community, not rights relating to a person as a biological or corporeal entity. Does or should the body itself have rights? The constant emphasis on the right to autonomy and physical integrity suggests that it does, but the book does not delve deeply enough into the problem of possible collisions among the various rights. Faunce is aware that the right to physical integrity may conflict with other principles (such as the right of parents to follow practices authorized by their culture or religion), but the awareness is expressed in disappointingly partial (not to say discriminatory) terms. There are several references to female genital mutilation as a harmful cultural practice, and thus one that ethical doctors should not perform, but what about boys? Do they not also have rights to physical integrity and to construct their personal life narrative that might protect them from genital mutilation? Or which might at least discourage doctors from performing such procedures? The author's apparent blind spot here is surprising given the flood of literature on the question of "routine" (that is, medically unnecessary) circumcision of minors over the past decade, and all the more remarkable considering that he cites one of the texts that contains a seminal essay on this very issue--Margaret Somerville's "Altering Baby Boys' Bodies: The Ethics of Infant Male Circumcision," in her collection The Ethical Canary (2003) It is all very well to appeal to the authority of international instruments requiring observation of named rights, the promotion of non-discriminatory policies in medical care and the supply of health services, but what does a doctor do when confronted by Somali or Sudanese parents who bring their little girl and boy along, and request that their genitals be altered in accordance with the traditions of their original home culture? Or Australian or American parents wanting their baby boy done because they had seen a newspaper article or TV program in which it was suggested that, if he was not circumcised, he would be sure to get phimosis and urinary tract infections as an infant, STDs and probably AIDS as an adult, and (in the unlikely event that he lived that long) would die an agonizing death from cancer of the penis in middle age? (The medical excuses for circumcision of minors make many of the cultural reasons seem rational by comparison.) <a href="http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=19181153409834">Full text available at H-Net Reviews</a> "American Psycho: Another Surgical Temptation", Review of Andrew Scull. Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. xiii + 360 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-10729-6. H-Net Reviews, July 2006 In a long and distinguished career, few historians of medicine have done more to expose the fads and fallacies ruling the treatment of mental disorder than Andrew Scull, especially when they have involved therapies, such as confinement or surgery, that we would now regard as barbaric. Like a medieval priest or tribal sorcerer casting out demons, an astounding number of modern physicians, all boasting of their scientific credentials, seem to have worked on the assumption that the human body is its own worst enemy, and thus to have concluded that the road to health lay through the extraction or amputation of whatever body part could be held responsible for the dysfunction. In Madhouse, Scull excels with a detailed account of the appalling career of Dr. Henry Cotton, superintendent of the Trenton, New Jersey hospital for the insane from 1907 until his death in 1933. The story is, as he comments, a Gothic nightmare in which masked and white-gowned jailers drag terrified and often screaming patients from their cells to a well-appointed operating theater where various bits of their anatomy are surgically removed. The only features which distinguish Trenton from a torture chamber or a horror movie, such as Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), is that it all really happened, anaesthetics were usually administered, and the operations were performed solely for the benefit of the patients. And if these procedures were carried out with a benevolent and therapeutic intent, there was as little need for informed consent as there could be reason to regard the result as mutilation. Not that there was much evidence of benefit. Walking the wards of Trenton in 1928, a newly appointed Swiss staff member "felt sad, seeing hundreds of people without teeth.... While in hospital they suffer from indigestion ... not being able to masticate their food. At home, recovered, these poor people have the same troubles, not being in a position to choose food which they would be able to eat without teeth. In addition, they are ashamed of being without teeth, since in their communities it is known to be a token of a previous sojourn at the State Hospital. They abstain from mixing with other people, refuse to go out and look for a job.... Thus, many of those recovered develop a reactive depression" (p. 255). To describe how this tragic situation came about, and explain why all attempts to curb Cotton's exuberance failed, are the twin objectives of Scull's study. An impressive feat of archival research stretching over two decades, including interviews with surviving players in the drama, Madhouse is at once a gripping narrative, a muckraking expose of medical fraud and professional vanity, and a sobering cautionary tale for our own times. <a href="http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=136101159738062">Full text at H-Net Reviews</a> Male and female circumcision compared: "A Rose by any other Name: Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting" (with J. Steven Svoboda) Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 21, September 2007, pp. 301-323. ABSTRACT This paper offers a critical examination of the tendency to segregate discussion of surgical alterations to the male and female genitals into separate compartments - the first known as circumcision, the second as genital mutilation. It is argued that this fundamental problem of definition underlies the considerable controversy surrounding these procedures when carried out on minors, and that it hinders objective discussion of the alleged benefits, harms and risks. The variable effects of male and female genital surgeries are explored, and a scale of damage for male circumcision to complement the World Health OrganizationÂ´s categorisation of female genital mutilation is proposed. The origins of the double standard identified are placed in historical perspective, and a brief conclusion makes a plea for greater gender neutrality in the approach to this contentious issue. <a href="http://ucpressjournals.com/journal.asp?j=maq">MAQ Homepage</a> | <a href="https://assets.nationbuilder.com/darboninstitute/pages/437/attachments/original/1751335850/rd-rose07.pdf?1751335850">Download PDF here</a> <h3>New book</h3> Round the Red Lamp and Other Medical Writings by Arthur Conan Doyle <a href="http://www.valancourtbooks.com/">Valancourt Books</a>, 2007 When Round the Red Lamp appeared in 1895, reviewers were appalled. Expecting tales in the style of Conan Doyle's popular Sherlock Holmes stories, readers were shocked to find instead harrowing medical stories involving childbirth, venereal disease and botched amputations. Before he became famous as a prolific writer, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) had trained as a medical doctor, practised as a GP in Portsmouth, tried his luck as an eye specialist in London and written a number of non-fiction articles and other contributions on medical subjects. For this edition, Robert Darby has collected not only the original stories compiled for Round the Red Lamp and three other stories with a medical theme, but also the full range of Conan Doyle's medical non-fiction. As he argues in a comprehensive introduction, these writings provide a rare glimpse into the world of a provincial GP at the moment when old style medicine was dying and the modern medical profession was emerging. The stories are further illuminated by detailed explanatory notes and references. <h3>More on Isaac Baker Brown and Victorian genital surgeries:</h3> "The benefits of psychological surgery: John Scoffern's satire on Isaac Baker Brown", Medical History, Vol. 51, October 2007 <h3>Two papers in new book on male and female genital cutting</h3> "A rose by any other name: Symmetry and asymmetry in male and female genital cutting" (with J. Steven Svoboda) ABSTRACT The human body, and the genitals specifically, are characterized by bilateral symmetry; both male and female sets develop from the same embryonic tissue, and the male genitals are anatomically homologous with the female: glans penis, foreskin, scrotum and testicles correspond to clitoris, clitoral hood, labia and ovaries. This biological symmetry is not, however, reflected in Western cultural discourses on the genitals, which tend to be extremely asymmetrical, regarding and evaluating the male genitals (and especially the part of the penis known as the foreskin) very differently from the female genitals. The asymmetry is most strikingly expressed in the contrasting discourses on surgical alterations to these organs that have evolved since the mid-nineteenth century. In this article we make a critical examination of the tendency to segregate discussion of such genital modifications into separate compartmentsâ€”the first known as male circumcision, the second as female genital mutilation. It is argued that this fundamental problem of definition underlies the considerable controversy surrounding these procedures, especially when carried out on minors, and that it hinders objective discussion of the alleged benefits, harms, and risks. The variable effects of male genital cutting (MGC) and female genital cutting (FGC) are explored, and a scale of damage for MGC to complement the World Health Organization's categorization of FGC is proposed. The origins of the double standard identified are placed in historical perspective, and there is a discussion of the respective roles of science and culture in promoting or discouraging these practices. We conclude by urging greater gender neutrality in the approach to this contentious issue. "Objections of a sentimental character: The subjective dimension of foreskin loss" (with Lawrence Cox) ABSTRACT Proponents of routine circumcision of male minors tend to downplay or ignore the adverse effects of circumcision on male sexual experience and to assert that only an insignificant minority of circumcised men are unhappy about their condition. We present evidence dating back to the nineteenth century that significant numbers of men have been sufficiently concerned to complain, and we particularly consider three attitude surveys carried out in Britain, the United States and Australia in the 1990s. We argue for the relevance of ethical, biological and subjective factors in decision-making about routine circumcision of minors, and conclude with a discussion of the implications of these considerations for medical policy. both published in Chantal Zabus (ed.), Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies around Excision and Circumcision (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009) </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource About Robert Darby darby