Forcible Male Genital Mutilation...The Unkindest Cut of All?

Male Genital Mutilation

Quotes from Internet Resources

In America today, people still have to fight for the right to keep their genitals intact. How can such a thing be true? It's absurd. It sounds like some sort of ethnic joke.

The percentage of American parents who choose to keep their boys' genitals intact is growing and varies according to the region of the US in which they live:

Northeast 32% intact
Midwest 18% intact
South 35% intact
West 62% intact

source: National Center for Health Statistics, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1997

If God had wanted us to be uncircumcised, we'd all be born with foreskins. --J.D. Ahmanson

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Diminished Sexual Pleasure and Other Negative Effects

• If only the entire world could fit in that laboratory and see for themselves the damage that circumcision causes, circumcision would stop overnight. Circ Info Network 940713

• Those circumcised as an adult suffer less trauma because the man has consented to the surgery, the foreskin has already separated from the glans, anesthesia and post-operative pain management are used, and any pain may be rationalized as worth the price paid to accommodate his motivations. Surgical mishap is far more common in infancy than adulthood.Circ Info Network 950123

• During sexual intercourse, the foreskin acts as a moveable self-lubricating sheath, sliding up and down the shaft inside the vagina. This enhances sexual pleasure and comfort for both partners. The circumcised penis on the other hand, has no such advantage, which may explain, in part, why many American men and women rely on artificial lubricants during sexual activity. Also, many circumcised men and their partners complain of painful intercourse, which may be due to the abrasion resulting from the absence of the foreskin.Circ Info Network 940706

• ...gay guys look at each other's penises and they're not afraid to say something's wrong--like extensive scars, skin bridges, curvatures because so much so taken off one side. Like a ball-point pen, if you take the cap off, pretty soon it's going to fail because it dries up.' Circ Info Network 941130

• A 1991 survey of 301 males seeking foreskin restoration revealed that 70% of them hold deep resentment toward their parents for allowing this assault on their body...Circ Info Network 950922

• [The] demonstrators marched from the College of Marin to Marin General Hospital, which was the site of a circumcision accident two years ago that cost a baby the end of his glans, and the hospital that fired NOCIRC founder Marilyn Milos for obtaining informed consent by showing parents videotape of the procedure. Circ Info Network 950805

• ...physicians are not fully informing parents of the pain, risks and potential complications of removing an infant's foreskin. The problems, he said, include scarring and sexual dysfunction. "To impose circumcision on an unconsenting minor without disease or abnormality raises serious questions of ethics and human rights," Hammond asserted. Circ Info Network 950805

• Newborn circumcision also presents ethical and legal questions in the opinion of pediatrician George L. Williams, who stated in an October 1992 presentation to the Second International Childbirth Conference: "Do parents have the right to choose medically unnecessary and harmful cosmetic surgery for their children? I do not believe so." Circ Info Network 950814

• One newspaper article claims that doctors are worried that circumcised men may soon begin to sue them for assault, etc., and that parental consent will not be a valid defense. A strict interpretation of the law, after all, makes circumcision a crime. Circ Info Network 950821

• Being circumcised too tightly was the second commonest physical complaint mentioned in the NOHARMM survey. It affects the sexual enjoyment of both men and women. Some men with this condition suffer from bent erections. Some men circumcised too tightly report painful erections and painful intercourse with bleeding from the scar site or tears elsewhere. Women complain of painful intercourse due to what they interpret as insufficient lubrication. Negative Aspects of Routine Infant Circumcision

• Circumcision started in English-speaking countries as a means of preventing masturbation, doctors knowing full well that amputating the foreskin deprives a boy of a moveable foreskin to play with and erogenous tissue, which might be tempting. Not to mention the fact that masturbation was thought to cause dozens of diseases and conditions. Obviously, circumcision does not prevent masturbation, but it surely takes most of the fun of it. Circ Info Network 941216

• "After 30 years in the intact state, I allowed myself to be persuaded by a physician to have the foreskin removed -- not because of any problems at the time, but because, in the physician's view, there might be problems in the future. That was five years ago, and I am sorry I had it done now from my standpoint and from what my female sex partners have told me. For myself, the sensitivity has been reduced by at least 50 percent ..." Circ Info Network 950814

• At age 7 at boarding school, I saw that most of the other boys had been circ'd but my reaction was not, as is so often said by the mutilators, to accept that we were normal/regular but rather to wonder what had happened to all of us. By then I knew in my mind, even when my gut/my feelings still played the old 'sin-ridden' script, that we had been operated on but I still could not work out what had been wrong with so many of us that this had had to happen. From then to this day, I yearned for a foreskin, and envied those who had one. At age 9, when my parents suggested that I have surgery to correct the worst of the mess left [the bowing, the tags, the skin bridge] I can feel today as acutely as then the feelings of betrayal, of not wanting them to mess me up again; I also can recall with total clarity, to the extent that to-day at age 50 I can 'see' that room and my mother's face as she talked to me, the feelings of shame, anger, betrayal, hate, grief and bewilderment when she told me that my MGM had been a mistake, that there had been no reason for it, that all the scarring etc. was a result and not the reason for it. --from the noharmm mail list