Any of you who have been to my book signings know I tend to move back and forth between reading my stuff and doing Q&A.
I do this partly to break up the potential monotony of an hour of straight reading, and partly because I really like to answer questions. Any sort of question, really. That’s part of the reason I became a teacher, I think. And it probably factored into my decision to keep writing my College Survival Guide for about 10 years.
I even, believe it or not, wrote a sex advice column for a while. Under an assumed name.
When I do Q&A at a reading, there are some things that get asked a lot. Things like, “Where do you get your ideas?” or “Do you base your characters on real people?”
Then there are the questions that don’t get asked very often. Like, “Do you like cats?” or “How do you feel about circumcision?”
This last question got asked when I was down in Lexington. Strangely, wasn’t the first time I’d been asked. I actually wrote an column on it back when I was doing the Survival Guide. As luck would have it, I had a copy of that column with me. So I read it.
After the reading when I was signing books, someone said, “You should post that one up on line.”
“I probably should,” I said.
So here it is…
Dear Pat,
I’m in a weird situation. Normally I pride myself in minding my own business. I keep my nose out of my friends affairs (literally) and generally keep my opinions to myself.
But recently I ended up doing some research into circumcision. Not female circumcision, which everyone in their right mind generally admits it barbaric and creepy, but good old fashioned guy circumcision. The type that’s done to almost all newborn boys here in the good old U S of A.
I found out not only is it totally unnecessary, but it’s generally bad for the little kids. Despite the fact that it’s the standard thing here in the US, where almost 90% of guys are circumcised.
My problem is, I have a friend who is about to give birth. Maybe to a little boy. Now that I know all the horrible things that can result from Circumcision, I feel like I should try to tell her about it so she won’t do it.
But isn’t this kinda sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong? I can’t think of a good way to approach her. I mean, I don’t have a penis myself, so I can’t really speak from experience. I have been with guys both cut and uncut, and I was surprised to find out how much I liked the unedited penis. But again, I doubt that’s the right way to approach things with my friend.
How can I mention this to her without offending her for getting in her business?
Student Not Into Penis Slicing.
Your College Survival Guide, the place to go when you really need to learn the finer points of dick discussion etiquette. I’m like Miss Manners with tourettes.
Alright, SNIPS, I’m going to glide right by a few too-obvious jokes about your nose, and get right to the business of answering your question. Back when I was younger I would have taken this as a golden opportunity to make a lot of wang jokes.
But I’ve matured since then. So, instead, I’m going to slide as many innuendo-laden puns into the column as humanly possible. Also, just to make it a challenge, I’m going to use a new euphemism for the male member each time I refer to it.
First I feel like I need to correct one of the statements you made in your letter. Uncircumcised fellas are more common than you make them out to be. Back in the 1960′s about 90 percent of baby boys got the chop, but the circumcision rate these days is closer to 60%, as more and more people get clued in to the situation by helpful folks like you and me.
Secondly, the proper slang term for an gent’s uncircumcised dangle-bob isn’t “unedited,” it’s “director’s cut.” Occasionally it’s even a “special edition director’s cut,” but that’s very rare.
Hmmm. You’re right though. This is a touchy subject. But there’s a big difference between being pushy, and just giving your friend some valuable information. Still, it should be handled delicately. Here are some opening lines you might want to avoid:
“Jenny, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about your baby’s penis.”
“Have you ever thought that hacking a chunk off the end of your newborn’s wing-wang might not be the best way to welcome him into the world?”
“Y’know, if I was going to have sex with your son, I’d prefer him to be uncircumcised.”
The more I think about it, maybe you don’t want to try to get a rise out of her. Instead maybe you could just try to bring it up casually instead.
Maybe quoting a few facts would be the way to go. Don’t be accusatory, just point out why, exactly, chopping someone’s fireman off isn’t cool. Point out that since the foreskin actually has about a third of the penis’ nerve endings on it, cutting it off it pretty much the same as a partial clitorectomy. In plainer terms, it’s like cutting off a good chunk of a little girl’s clit. As you said in your letter: barbaric and creepy.
Think of it guys. You know how you think your Johnson is pretty awesome now? Imagine if it was 33% more awesome. Yeah. I know. It boggles the mind. I expect some manner of radiant light would constantly be emanating from my pants. Most of us would never leave the house. The fact that a piece of my winkie was torn off without my approval leaves me feeling a little bent out of shape. Figuratively speaking.
You could also direct your friend to a good website or two, so she can gather her own facts. www.notjustskin.org has a remarkably well-researched and easy to read FAQ on the subject. Including some information about how the surgery might be seriously traumatic for the newborns involved.
In closing, for all my fellow fellows out there, if your parents gave your special purpose the snip, don’t hold it against them. Because, y’know, that would be pretty weird.
It’s interesting to note that I wrote this a couple years before I became a dad. It was nice, actually, having done this research ahead of time. Because I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to circumcise the baby if it was a boy.
But even if I hadn’t done the research, I probably would have been convinced when I saw The Circumstraint:
That’s really what it’s called. It’s the plastic thing they strap your baby down onto so he doesn’t struggle around too much while they’re trying to cut off a piece of his dick. The nurses thought I was kinda weird for wanting to take a picture of it.
While part of me, the scientific part, can acknowledge the fact that something like this helps keep the baby safe during the procedure. The rest of me is filled with a mute horror at the thought of someone tying my baby down onto this thing so they can cut him. Not because he *needs* it. Just, y’know, because. Tradition. And stuff.
A lot of times when people meet Oot, they say things like, “He’s such a happy baby.” Or “He’s so friendly and trusting.”
Sometimes I want to reply, “Well, we got things off on the right foot by not cutting off a piece of his dick.”
Can you imagine what sort of an introduction that must be to the world? There’s a big, long squeeze, then suddenly everything is really bright and cold. Maybe you get a bit of a cuddle and a taste of breast. Then you’re strapped down and someone cuts off a piece off one of the most sensitive areas of your body. Welcome to being alive, little guy.
[Edit - There has been too much ass-hattery in the comments. So I'm turning them off because I don't want to deal with it.]
That’s all for now, folks.
pat
117 Comments
I think you should circumsize your baby. just because it will get really dirty if you're not. poor child…
dude, you make it seem like they lop the tip of your D off…it's just a little skin that would typically cover the glans…you're not depriving your son and the girls/guys(lol) he hooks up with of "33%". maybe i'm taking what must be a joke post too seriously.
Health benefits smealth benefits. I'm happy my parents approved the 'dixecution' directly after my birth because I think penises that look like wrinkled sock puppets are ridiculous to behold, and because not an iota of deformity or loss of sensitivity developed; if they had–well, it's just a fraction of the heap of bullshit women have to deal with due to their sexual organs, so get the fuck over it, crybabies.
Uncut wangs are the visual-sexual-aid equivalent of a 15th century appendix. Hence the 'append' part. I prefer civilization, thanks.
@Ciceronius: "There's risk involved with getting circumcision done, which isn't a whole lot of risk, and even when there is an error, it's not serious enough to do any sort of permanent damage."
Where did you get that idea? The risk can go all the way to death. (80 youths died of tribal circumcision in Eastern Cape province of South Africa alone last year, and we just don't know how many babies die in the US. Nobody wants to blame circumcision when it happens – they can always blame some birth defect when it's a newborn.)
Less uncommon is severe damage to the penis – even total loss, most famously in the case of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer who was unsuccessfully raised as a girl and eventually committed suicide.
Less uncommon still is damage that causes difficulty with sex, such as too much skin removed, causing tight erections. Or there are the botches that just look terrible, like skin tags, skin bridges, uneven cuts, scarring – and there's more.
@Dan, it's not enough to say that circumcision "reduces this risk" of this or that disease. Penile cancer is one of the rarest of cancers, rarer than breast cancer in men (so should we cut baby boys' breasts off? – they won't be using them), rarer in non-circumcising Denmark than the US. It would take hundreds or even thousands of wasted circumcisions to prevent one case. And the same is true of most of the other things circumcision is supposed to be good for. Your figure of 4% balanoposthitis "and have to get adult circumcision" (one in 25?!) is simply nonsense. In countries where circumcision is not customary and doctors know more about the foreskin than how to cut it off, the lifetime risk of circumcision is one in thousands.
Anecdotes like yours about one man having to get circumcised get far more circulation than the literally billions of anecdotes that could be told about men who go to their graves with their foreskins never having given any trouble at all.
@Anonymous, 33% is conservative. It's more like 50% of the surface area when you unfold it. See this page.
"It truly is a personal choice issue, parental to begin with and individual if not." Except that if parents choose to cut, they take all choice away from the person most concerned. As one man said (more colourfully) "My parents don't [urninate] with my [penis], they don't [masturbate] with my [penis] and they don't [have sexual intercourse] with my [penis] so what right had they to go cutting part off of my [penis]?"
Pat, I think your letter-writer should have minded her damn business. If she's so stridently against male circumcision, she can have a baby boy and decide what happens to *his* dick, as you have. Her informed opinion notwithstanding, there is generally no real difference between circumcising or not, other than whatever cheap-trick infant pyscho-babble-feelings some people ascribe to newborns. It isn't tramautic. If it is, you forget the trauma after latching onto the breast. The likelihood of deformity or loss of anything is about the same as having an uncut penis become infected–know why? Because both generally occur in poorly educated populations with poor don't-give-a-shit doctors and zero hygiene awareness.
Fucking new age hippies are already telling me how evul Western civilization is, I can't smoke OR eat a steak, now you want to diddle with my dick and the dicks of my descendants?
Well…umm…
…no?
hugh7
You obviously have a socio-political rag to squeeze, but I'll ignore that for the moment.
50% of what, exactly? From the image you've directed us to, you're talking about 50% of extraneous, unneccessary skin that serves no real purpose. Are you attempting to convince us that having that useless piece of skin removed somehow effects the true size of a penis, or the pleasure recieved from sex, or…what? "33% less awesome"! Pssssht…whatever. Take that shit somewhere else, and your 50%, hugh7.
If it hurts so much, why didn't 3 of my 5 sons cry? They actually went to sleep afterwards. (I was waiting to comfort them.) Jewish boys aren't restrained. Swaddling has many benefits for infants. Phimosis WOULD be very traumatic for a young man.
You want talk about pain? How about the second day of breastfeeding a new baby? We do it because its a good thing to do :-P
Frankly, I think sandworms are ugly and rockets are beautiful.
I wonder how many of the posters complaining that circumcision is painful have their baby's ears pierced?
Drmom5
Ok… "The Circumstraint". I've never seen Saw (1, 2 whatever…). But that thing looks like something created out of the mind of someone who can come up with a movie like that.
Anyhow, I'm not circumcised. A friend of mine is. Thing is, we discovered, while talking about sex, what good friends do so often, that certain things weren't that "good" for him as they were for me. Apparently, I'm a bit more sensitive, in a good way.
Also funny to read the comments. Being Dutch, circumcision isn't the standard here. I don't hear a lot of complaints about it. Oh, and also the "I think sandworms are ugly and rockets are beautiful"… Thanks for the laugh pall. I just love to hear that from the always so prudish Americans. Guess you're flashing your dick around any time you get the change right?
Never heard any woman complain about my "sandworm" either.
For a small conclusion than: Cultural believes aside, they are hard to discuss, I think that Hugh7 has a point. There are a lot of things that we can directly alter at birth. Some necessary, some not, some maybe a little. I believe in choice. I choose for braces. Someone may feel that is unnecessary. I believe that a lot of the cosmetic surgery that is done these days is unnecessary. Let someone make there own choices. Don't make them for someone. There will always be an reason to do, or not to do it. I'm not judging.
Circumcised infants are less likely to develop urinary tract infections (UTIs), especially in the first year of life. UTIs are about 10 times more common in uncircumcised compared with circumcised infants. However, even with this increased risk of UTI, only 1% or less of uncircumcised males will be affected.
Circumcised men may also be at lower risk for penile cancer, although the disease is rare in both circumcised and uncircumcised males. Some studies indicate that the procedure might offer an additional line of defense against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV.
Penile problems, such as irritation, inflammation, and infection, are more common in uncircumcised males. It's easier to keep a circumcised penis clean, although uncircumcised boys can learn how to clean beneath the foreskin once the foreskin becomes retractable (usually some time before age 5).
The Circumstraint looks like a torture device. I have a feeling of moral revulsion and horror looking at the thing. I feel so sorry for babies who are subjected to circumcision.
Circumcision should be considered criminal assault. It should be banned.
I think this topic has gone way off the rails. Pat has his opinion, other people have their opinions, but a lot of people on here are being real jerks, on both sides of the debate. It’s one thing to be passionate about a subject but entirely another to act like an irrational idiot about it. Personally, I hope this topic is forgotten and banished to the archives as fast as possible.
Your daughter has a 12% (or 1 in 8)chance of getting breast cancer. It is one of the leading causes of death in women over 40. Why does no one recommend performing double mastectomies on their daughters? If it is really about saving lives you should be snipping away their breasts! Men are also more likely to have male breast cancer than penile cancer.
This debate is nonsensical. Your child is more likely to die from a burst appendix than from AIDS in this country, yet it would be illegal to remove their appendix if they were otherwise healthy.
Tonsils are not removed routinely anymore, and if they do need to be removed the person is under anesthesia. Same thing goes for wisdom teeth. A person is in their late teens by the time it needs to be done, and only if it needs to be. Neither I nor any of my sisters had to have our wisdom teeth removed, because they grew in straight and weren’t causing any problems.
In Finland, only 1 in every 16,000 men ever need to get circumcised. The US is extremely uneducated about the foreskin and doctors more often than not just recommend it be removed from something as simple as a swollen glans or infection. Women get a ton more infections than men down there! Have you ever seen the feminine hygiene isle of a grocery store? Washes for that area, creams for itching and burning, scented tampons, disposable scented moist wipes specifically for that area, pee strips that can tell you what kind of infection you have… yet no one recommends chopping parts off to make it easier for us. Trust me, girls have more skin and folds and creases down there than any uncircumcised guy and we manage just fine.
Washing foreskin is easier than shaving, or clipping your nails, or brushing your teeth. Stop insulting your gender by advocating surgery because you can’t handle a 5 second shower routine. Really, it makes us women laugh.
Interestingly enough, in Germany you can make yourself guilty of bodily harm if you order the circumcision of your child without a specific reason. (In any case, circumcision is commonly considered as a barbaric ritual over here…) There is currently a heated discussion about the question, whether religious reasons should be accepted in this context. After all, you are making a decision which is possibly against the will of the child in question. Even as a parent you may only make irreversible decisions against the will of the child, if this is for the greater good of the child – whether this can be said in the case of religiously motivated circumcisions is unclear. In any case, it is not only the parents who could be sued by the child later on, but also the person who does the circumcision, so most doctors would refuse it.
The Circumstraint looks like a torture device. I have a feeling of moral revulsion and horror looking at the thing. I feel so sorry for babies who are subjected to circumcision.
Circumcision should be considered criminal assault. It should be banned.
I think this topic has gone way off the rails. Pat has his opinion, other people have their opinions, but a lot of people on here are being real jerks, on both sides of the debate. It’s one thing to be passionate about a subject but entirely another to act like an irrational idiot about it. Personally, I hope this topic is forgotten and banished to the archives as fast as possible.
Your daughter has a 12% (or 1 in 8)chance of getting breast cancer. It is one of the leading causes of death in women over 40. Why does no one recommend performing double mastectomies on their daughters? If it is really about saving lives you should be snipping away their breasts! Men are also more likely to have male breast cancer than penile cancer.
This debate is nonsensical. Your child is more likely to die from a burst appendix than from AIDS in this country, yet it would be illegal to remove their appendix if they were otherwise healthy.
Tonsils are not removed routinely anymore, and if they do need to be removed the person is under anesthesia. Same thing goes for wisdom teeth. A person is in their late teens by the time it needs to be done, and only if it needs to be. Neither I nor any of my sisters had to have our wisdom teeth removed, because they grew in straight and weren’t causing any problems.
In Finland, only 1 in every 16,000 men ever need to get circumcised. The US is extremely uneducated about the foreskin and doctors more often than not just recommend it be removed from something as simple as a swollen glans or infection. Women get a ton more infections than men down there! Have you ever seen the feminine hygiene isle of a grocery store? Washes for that area, creams for itching and burning, scented tampons, disposable scented moist wipes specifically for that area, pee strips that can tell you what kind of infection you have… yet no one recommends chopping parts off to make it easier for us. Trust me, girls have more skin and folds and creases down there than any uncircumcised guy and we manage just fine.
Washing foreskin is easier than shaving, or clipping your nails, or brushing your teeth. Stop insulting your gender by advocating surgery because you can’t handle a 5 second shower routine. Really, it makes us women laugh.
Interestingly enough, in Germany you can make yourself guilty of bodily harm if you order the circumcision of your child without a specific reason. (In any case, circumcision is commonly considered as a barbaric ritual over here…) There is currently a heated discussion about the question, whether religious reasons should be accepted in this context. After all, you are making a decision which is possibly against the will of the child in question. Even as a parent you may only make irreversible decisions against the will of the child, if this is for the greater good of the child – whether this can be said in the case of religiously motivated circumcisions is unclear. In any case, it is not only the parents who could be sued by the child later on, but also the person who does the circumcision, so most doctors would refuse it.