Circumcision Problems & Opinions from Readers

I was circumcised as an adult as a matter of choice. I had believed that since it was so prevalent there must be some merit to it. Unfortunately, in my case I found a significant loss of intensity of sensation. Had I been aware of this I would never have decided to try this. Pity so many males aren’t given the opportunity to decide for themselves about their body.
– Steve from Canada –

The following was sent to me, it does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Teen Health Secrets.

Unnecessary Circumcision
By George C. Denniston, MD, MPH

In recent years, the debate on circumcision has been conducted on a relatively low plane, with proponents arguing that circumcision may prevent some rare conditions. Opponents of circumcision argue that it simply has no medical benefits, and is a violation of a mans right to grow up with an intact body. Perhaps the subject can be simplified and raised to a higher plane by focusing on the positive value of the foreskin. Before birth, the glans penis is covered with skin. This skin is not loosely attached. Indeed it is as tightly attached to the glans as is the skin on the hand.

At approximately 17 weeks of intrauterine life, cells in the area of separation between the future foreskin and the glans initiate the process of creating the preputial space (the space between the glans penis and the intact foreskin). This process is completed by the age of 3 years in 90% of boys, but it may take as long as 17 years for some boys to have a fully retractable foreskin.

At birth, the separation of the foreskin from the glans has just begun. The newborn’s penis is, of course, not yet fully developed. Not only does circumcision interfere with its development, but it requires that the surgeon tear the skin from the sensitive glans to permit removal. As a result, scarring occurs, the surface of the glans thickens, and the urinary opening often gets smaller.

If physicians would simply leave the newborn’s penis alone, as Dr. Benjamin Spock recommends in the latest edition of Baby and Child Care, the foreskin would be left to fulfill its several functions. In infancy, the foreskin protects the glans from irritation and from fecal material. In adulthood, the function of the foreskin may at first seem obscure. The shaft and the glans of an intact (uncircumcised) man’s penis are covered by skin. Retracting the foreskin reveals the glans and makes the skin on the shaft somewhat loose.

Of what use is this redundant skin? During erection, the penile shaft elongates, becoming about 50% longer. The foreskin covers this lengthened shaft. It is designed to accommodate an organ that is capable of a marked increase in diameter, as well as length.

In addition, the foreskin is the most sensitive part of the penis and can enhance the quality of sexual intercourse. Anatomical studies demonstrate that > the foreskin has a greater concentration of complex nerve endings than the glans. If there were any possibility that the foreskin could contribute significantly to sexual enjoyment, is that not a cogent reason for rethinking our motives for this ritual procedure?

History shows that the arguments in favor of circumcision are questionable. At the beginning of this century, one of the reasons given for circumcision was to decrease masturbation, which was thought to lead to insanity and other “morbid” conditions. We now know that circumcision does not prevent masturbation, nor does masturbation lead to insanity.

More recently, circumcision was promoted as a means of preventing cervical cancer in the man’s sexual partners; this notion has been proved incorrect.

The current excuses are that failure to remove the foreskin may contribute to urinary tract infections and penile cancer, but neither of these contentions has been proved. Even if either were correct, the risk of urinary tract infection in an uncircumcised infant is only one in one hundred. Performing 100 mutilative surgeries to possibly prevent one treatable urinary tract infection is not valid preventive medicine – it is just another excuse.

Penile cancer occurs in older men at the rate of approximately 1 in 100,000. The idea of performing 100,000 mutilating (by definition) procedures on newborns to possibly prevent cancer in one elderly man is absurd. Applying this type of reasoning to women would lead to the conclusion that removing all breasts at puberty should be done to prevent breast cancer.

One thousand years ago, the Jewish sage Maimonides said that the effect of circumcision was “to limit sexual intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible, and thus cause man to be moderate… for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment; the organ necessarily becomes weak when… deprived of its covering from the beginning.”

Who has the right to order or perform such surgery on a newborn infant? I contend that no one does – certainly not the physician who should know better – since there is no proven medical reason to do so, and the procedure is known by many to be harmful. Circumcision can always be performed in adulthood for men who desire it, with fully informed consent.

Physicians who continue to perform routine circumcision are not only harming infants but are also harming the integrity of the medical profession. It is hard to accept that these physicians – many of whom have been circumcised themselves – are using their medical licenses to continue this contraindicated practice. This is tragedy perpetuating itself.

I have comments from other readers that are worthy of posting in order to give both sides of this topic.

• To find out more about Penile Cancer – Go there…

The following was sent to me, it does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Teen Health Secrets.

I would like to make some comments about your circumcision article, as it seems quite biased in favour of circumcision. Your entire Teen Health Secrets web page is so well balanced, that I really would like to see more balance in this article.

I would particularly like to see the inclusion of some reasons AGAINST circumcision to balance all the “other reasons” for. Some reasons I would like to see AGAINST circumcision follow…

1) Give the boy a choice! If a boy or man decides he wants to be circumcised, then I’m not against it one little bit.This is part of the privilege of living in a free society. But these poor boys never get a choice in the matter. They have to wear it. They never get to experience anything but having their foreskin removed. I would hate to lose my foreskin, and I thank God and my parents for not doing it to me. Thank you mum and dad.

What if boys were offered the choice at an age when they were cognizant enough to decide for themselves, and without undue pressures brought to bear on them. Would that be so bad, to give them the choice?

It is harder for a female to empathize with this – the idea is much less personal and threatening to a female, who would not have to go through it herself; but imagine living in a culture where a baby girl’s outer vaginal lips were removed as a matter of course, because it “looked neater”, had always been done this way, and this is what everybody was used to. This would be the norm, a lot of people would argue for it, and not see the harm in it. (BTW – I do know about the practice of female “circumcision” and find it abhorrent). Does the mere thought of having something like that done to you not feel threatening and invasive?

I wonder how many men there are out there who were never given the choice and who wish and perhaps agonize over the fact that they are not completely intact. Have there ever been deaths over circumcisions? Have any men ever committed suicide or suffered depression over it? Even if only one percent of the entire circumcised population who feel this way, (I do not have the stats) that is a lot of needless people suffering.

And how many men will simply never know what they’re missing, because their parents decided what to do to their bodies for them?

Please, give the boys the choice.

2) Sexual Pleasure.
I consider myself lucky not to have been born in a culture where circumcision is automatically, almost unthinkingly accepted as the normal thing to do. I would hate to lose my foreskin, and I can FEEL how good it feels to have one in sex and in masturbation. The feeling of the foreskin sliding up and down his penis is one of the best feelings a man can have in sex, and a completely natural part of it that circumcised men miss out on.

3) Boys are born with a foreskin. It is a natural part of the male body.

One of your reasons FOR circumcision is that it “makes it easy to keep the end of the penis clean and easier for the parents of infant boys to keep them clean “.

I cannot emphasize enough that it is so easy to clean a penis in a shower or bath, just like any other part of the body. Reports of uncleanness of uncircumcised men come from a culture that circumcises and are so completely distorted and exaggerated.

I find this reason to be so tragic, as you truly do seem to be such a “Teen Health Secrets”, and yet you are buying into this argument that has been repeated so many times that it becomes an ingrained and unchallenged belief.

It is not so difficult to clean a penis with a foreskin. Peel it back and wash it in the shower. Use soap and water like you would with any other part of the body. So very easy to do, and yet so many men have lost a sexual part of themselves just because of this silly argument. It may have made sense in older, less sanitary times, but not in this day and age of clean piped water, showers, soap and baths.

How difficult is it to clean the vagina? Would it make sense to mutilate girls’ vaginas just to make it easier to clean them? Or remove the ear lobes to make it easier to clean behind the ears? It seems ridiculous doesn’t it?

IMHO, the unspoken and tribal reasons I see FOR circumcision are…
1) “We already do it, it’s our custom and it’s what we’ve always done. End of story.”
2) “Our religion says so.”

Then any reason that can be found to justify or rationalize it are used in place of these unspoken beliefs … and by not being born with a penis, you really cannot understand the tremendous emotional significance it has to a male human being – in the same way that I could never truly understand what it is like to give birth.

I do, however, suspect that your educational input would probably suggest that the sexual experience is better for the circumcised man; based on the overall pro-circumcision tone of your article. I truly believe that sometimes we just select the arguments that suit our own prejudice or bias, in the same way that a debating team or lawyer will only select arguments that support their case, and reject evidence to the contrary. I wonder if your educational input will indeed suggest that circumcised men have a better sexual experience.

Of course you may prove me wrong here, I am second guessing, well I’ll see. I have to say again that by having a foreskin I *know* how it contributes to my sexual pleasure in the same way that you know how your clitoris contributes to yours. And a woman with no clitoris would only be able to guess.

It is so common to circumcise little boys in the USA, that it is a “culturally normal” thing to do to boys, and uncircumcised boys/men are comparatively rare in the ‘States’.

What tends to happen in a society is that a custom becomes acceptable simply because it is a custom – everybody does it, and people tend to make arguments in favour of what they are used to. This process is similar to justification of our mistakes, and rationalization of our wrongs. As an extreme example of this, slave holders used to claim that their black slaves “didn’t feel pain the same way we do”. This rationalized what they were doing (E.g. whipping them) and made it easier for them to push away any guilt feelings they may have had. An obviously fantastic and false claim, but it did the job!

I have observed by reading literature, fictional or fantasy, written by females from around the USA that an uncircumcised man is not regarded as sexually desirable, and this is peculiar to a culture where circumcision is the norm. It is probably difficult to imagine a culture where the reverse were true, but there are many countries where circumcision is not widely practiced, and the girls are used to uncircumcised men. In fact to me it seems really strange to refer to men as “uncircumcised” – it only makes sense in a culture where the majority of men are circumcised. To me calling somebody “uncircumcised” is like saying that a person is “undecapitated” because they still have their head on!

I am now asking myself, “Why have I spent hours composing this e-mail until 2:30 in the morning?”, and the answer has just occurred to me. In my view your article encourages people to circumcise their young boys, and you are more influential than you may realize, and I wish that you wouldn’t encourage the circumcision of babies so that more boys could grow up with the choice to keep and treasure their foreskin. It is not a dirty organ.

Paul – Sydney, Australia –

Thanks Paul, I reviewed the article and updated it to be more balanced. Thanks for your letter and your opinion, you make some very good points!

• Good Web Resource: ~ Mothers Against Circumcision

More soon…