Pound Pup Legacy

Male Circumcision in the USA:

A Human Rights Primer

Rich Winkel rich@math.missouri.edu
May 18, 2005

”Despite the obviously irrational cruelty of circumcision, the profit incentive in American medical practice is unlikely to allow science or human rights principles to interrupt the highly lucrative American circumcision industry. It is now time for European medical associations loudly to condemn the North American medical community for participating in and profiting from what is by any standard a senseless and barbaric sexual mutilation of innocent children.” Fleiss PM. MD, MPH. Circumcision. Lancet 1995;345:927[1]

”Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.” George Bernard Shaw

”What is done to children, they will do to society.” Karl Menninger, MD

The American medical establishment has promoted male circumcision as a preventative measure for an astonishing array of pathologies, ranging from masturbatory insanity, moral laxity, aesthetics and hygiene, to headache, tuberculosis, rheumatism, hydrocephalus, epilepsy, paralysis, alcoholism, near-sightedness, rectal prolapse, hernia, gout, clubfoot, urinary tract infections, phimosis, cancer of the penis, cancer of the cervix, syphillis and AIDS.[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] But the only rationale which has clear, well established scientific support is the one originally and openly used by the medical establishment when medical circumcision was introduced as a ”public health” measure in the Victorian era. That is, to punish and control the sexuality of male children. Victorian doctors knew something that modern medicine has chosen to ignore: the foreskin is at the heart of male sexuality.

A typical western medical circumcision results in the loss of approximately 1/2 of the total surface area of the penis and between 50 and 80% or more of its erogenous sexual nerves,[8, 9, 10] including:

• The Taylor ”ridged band”, the primary erogenous zone of the male body. This unique, highly specialized and exquisitely sensitive structure is equipped with soft ridges designed by nature to stimulate the female’s inner labia and G-spot during intercourse
• The frenulum, the highly erogenous V-shaped tethering structure on the underside of the head of the penis.
• Between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings of several types, which can feel slight variations in pressure and stretching, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations in texture
• Thousands of coiled fine-touch receptors called Meissner’s corpuscles, which are also found in the fingertips.

Also lost are:

• The foreskin’s gliding action, the non-abrasive gliding of the shaft of the penis within its own sheath, which facilitates smooth, comfortable and pleasurable intercourse for both partners. \
• The ”subpreputual wetness” which protects the mucosa of the glans (and inner foreskin), and which contains immunoglobulin antibodies and antibacterial and antiviral proteins such as the pathogen-killing enzyme lysozyme, a potent HIV killer which is also found in tears and mothers’ milk.
• Estrogen receptors, the purpose of which is not fully understood.
• The foreskin’s apocrine glands, which produce pheromones.
• The protection and lubrication of the erogenous surface of the penis, which is designed by nature to be an internal organ like the vagina.Natural sex involves contact between two internal organs.[11]

In essence, medical male genital mutilation (MGM) is the pathologization and treatment of the ”disease” of male sexuality.[12] ”

Ken McGrath, senior lecturer of pathology at Auckland University of Technology...an internationally recognised researcher on the effects of circumcision...recently simulated circumcision by anaesthetising his foreskin. He describes it as a disturbing experience, going from full sensitivity to almost none.” ”Foreskin’s Lament” Sunday Star-Times (New Zealand) July 29,2001 [13]

”I was quite happy (delirious, in fact) with what pleasure I could experience beginning with foreplay and continuing as an intact male. After my circumcision, that pleasure was utterly gone. Let me put it this way: On a scale of 10, the uncircumcised penis experiences pleasure that is at least 11 or 12; the circumcised penis is lucky to get to 3...” (From a letter to Marilyn Milos, RN, Founder/Director of NOCIRC)[14]

”[Like] wearing a condom or wearing a glove ... sight without color would be a good analogy ... only being able to see in black and white ... rather than seeing in full color would be like experiencing an orgasm with a foreskin and without. There are feelings you’ll just never have without the foreskin.” (Paul Tardiff, circumcised at age 30)[14]

”The 1999 British Journal of Urology Supplement has a study of American women who have experienced sex with both intact and circumcised partners. The results of the survey are truly astonishing. Among other things, the vast majority of surveyed women indicated that they overwhelmingly prefer intercourse with a man with a natural penis (approximately 90%) and that they were significantly more likely to achieve a ’vagina’ orgasm during ’natural’ intercourse. More astonishing is the fact that many women actually rated circumcised intercourse a negative experience when compared to the natural intercourse.” -Kristen O’Hara, Author of ”Sex As Nature Intended”[15, 16] ”

I swore that I would never have sex with an un-circumcised man. The thought of it made me turn up my nose. When I first met my partner, we tended to have sex in the dark. [...] The sex was the best I had ever had. With the unique ’vaginal’ orgasms along with the standard clitoris orgasms. A few months into our relationship, I realized that he was actually un-circumcised. [...] My point in short is, sex is incredibly better with an un-circ’ed man. I never would have thought it, but now, with first hand experience, I know it is. I never had a ’vaginal’ orgasm, until him.” (private correspondence to Stan Emerson, circumcision awareness educator, nocirc47@yahoo.com)

In 1888, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a well respected physician and founder of the Kellogg cereal company, spoke for mainstream Victorian medicine when he wrote: ”A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic as the brief pain [sic, see below] attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.”[17]

Whatever the current rationales for circumcision, the procedure outlined by Kellogg in 1888 is essentially how MGM is practiced today: without anesthesia, without patient consent, without the presence of disease or the statistical likelihood of future disease, and without regard for the human rights of an innocent boy or the man he will become.

Incidentally, Victorian medicine was equally rapacious in its claims on female genitalia. The fact that FGM didn’t follow MGM in becoming nearly universal in this country may be largely 3 an accident of anatomy: the surgical risks are likely higher. Yet American medical journal articles proclaiming the benefits of clitorectomies persisted until at least the 1950’s,[18, 19, 17, 20] and clitorectomies of minors were covered by Blue Cross-Blue Shield until 1977. (Surprisingly, the continuing western practice of episiotomy during childbirth, in the face of its iatrogenic ”indications” and consequences, is not generally recognized as a form of FGM.[21])

In any case, MGM is not without risk either. Even today, partial or total penile amputation or deformity, sepsis, gangrene and even coma and death are well established immediate risks of MGM. While American medicine keeps no systematic record, estimates of US deaths rates range to over 200 per year.[22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31]