Circumcision, Continued

[queerbychoice]

I find that many circumcised males have a tendency to get huffy when anyone speaks out against the institution of routine nonconsensual unanaesthetised circumcision, feeling that their own dicks are being judged inferior. Considering the fact that most anti-circumcision websites speak of circumcision with words like "male genital mutilation," I do think this reaction is understandable so I wish to address it here.

I do not think it is polite or healthy or civilized to try to convince someone who is happy with their genital configuration that they should start viewing themselves as "mutilated." Just as I would not try to tell a happy post-op MTF transsexual that she had "mutilated" herself, so also I would not try to tell a happy circumcised male that he had been "mutilated." The word "mutilated" is an aesthetic judgment which cannot be objectively justified. Objectively speaking, we can say that a body modification has taken place, and we can say whether it took place with or without consent. But we cannot judge, objectively speaking, whether that body modification is aesthetically pleasing or not, "mutilation" or "art" (and yes, even art can be unwanted, painted upon someone who did not consent to be a canvas for it). And it does not make good sense to me for a movement supposedly aimed at "helping" the victims of forced circumcision to promote derogatory aesthetic judgments about the victims of such violence.

So it was not by accident that in my last post I used the phrase "sexual assault" rather than "mutilation." A person who has been sexually assaulted does not become an inherently uglier, less attractive person for having been assaulted. They are not doomed to live a "mutilated" life of inferiority and incompleteness. They are simply a person who has had something done to them without their consent, and when I speak out to say that they should have been asked for consent, that does not imply that they are now ugly because they were not asked. I have a much deeper and more complex sense of aesthetics than that. Often it is precisely though surviving victimization that people become most beautiful.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't the full extent of it, though. As difficult a procedure as circumcision is, it is far, far worse when performed in adulthood. In infancy, any pain is forgotten with all other memories of early childhood. There's no active sex life for the surgery to interfere with. And, most importantly, the cortex of the brain can still reorganize itself to compensate for the lack of sensitive tissue.

Unless you are willing to make a major sacrifice, circumcision is not an option once you are an adult. Parents who choose not to circumcise their infants are also making a decision which their sons will have to live with permanently.

Mine made the choice I would have wanted.

-Mike

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

"And, most importantly, the cortex of the brain can still reorganize itself to compensate for the lack of sensitive tissue."

Lovely. But I'd prefer, myself, not to be deprived of any sensitive tissue in the first place. And no amount of brain reorganization can wholly make up for nerves that are missing.

[illscientist.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you, so this is just a thought: the word" mutilate" just means, from an etymological standpoint, "change," right? I mean, mute- only means to change something, like in the word "immutible." Now, I realize that doesn't take into account general-usage connotation, and I'm not really going anywhere with it- it's just a thought. the end.

[illscientist.livejournal.com]

Wait- never mind. I suck at etymology.

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

I have a foreskin because my father wasn't given the decision, and I'm thankful that he realized how wrong that was.

I read in an article somewhere that a study seemed to indicate that circumcised babies had more trouble relating to their mothers, the reasoning being that they subconsciously blamed the person who was supposed to protect them. And I've also read that the early connection with your mother is necessary to your ability to connect to other, unrelated people, later in life. If the interpretation of the study is correct, it would explain a lot about my father, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

I think psychological studies can prove virtually anything. That particular one is a bunch of hooey, if you ask me.

-Mike

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Mike, I think most psychological studies are a bunch of hooey, and if taken to any kind of extreme that one would be too. However, on a much more basic level than that, it seems perfectly obvious to me that holding down a baby and forcibly retracting and chopping off his foreskin without anaesthetic is going to be traumatic for him. and it seems equally obvious to me that parents with a healthy level of concern for their baby's emotional health should want to avoid traumatising him that way. Why is something so obvious so hard for you to acknowledge? Why are you so terribly invested in convincing yourself there's not the slightest thing wrong with holding a baby down and performing unanaesthetised surgery on his very most sensitive body parts, that no one would ever DREAM of performing without anaesthetic upon an adult, Mike?

[lintilla.livejournal.com]

>>Unless you are willing to make a major sacrifice, circumcision is not an option once you are an adult.>>

If you aren't willing to make a major sacrafice for something like that, I don't think you'd really want it to begin with.

Re:

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Well, whatever. I'm still grateful for my foreskin. nyeah nyeah.

[(Anonymous)]

> Why is something so obvious so hard for you to acknowledge?

I could just as easily ask why you don't acknowledge that there is legitimate reason for dissent.

It is not obvious, Gayle. I think any lasting trauma associated with the event is fabricated by unstable adults who are only too happy to blame their parents for anything and everything that comes to mind. The immediate trauma is undeniable, but infants are just as undeniably capable of getting over it quickly.

Get a grip, people. I'm sure you're convinced you're right, but when you start turning the question into why I'm really "deluding" myself into holding an opposing viewpoint, you lose a lot of credibility.

-Mike

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

So Mike, why is "immediate trauma" not important to you? Would it really be so incredibly difficult for you to speak out and say simply, "You're right, there's no sensible reason for refusing to anaesthetize babies during surgery, and I want the practice of not using anaesthetic banned immediately"?

Would even that be an unaccepable concession for you?

Let me put this very plainly, Mike: you are absolutely right, I do not in fact believe that there is legitimate justification for involuntary circumcision. I will never consider it anything other than sexual assault of a very violent kind. But don't tell yourself that I'm sticking to this viewpoint only because I don't believe the claims you have made here, because it's actually more than that: even if I did believe every single claim that you've made here, even if I did believe there was not the slightest risk of loss of sensitivity ever for any male circumcised in infancy, even if I did believe that men with foreskins had three or fifty or nine million times as much risk of being infected with HIV as men without them, . . . I still would not want to be circumcised. I'd rather wear condoms and keep my foreskin, thank you very much.

Why? For a lot of reasons. Because in anything other than an absolute life and death situation where the only way to save me is to do surgery, I don't like the idea of any permanent modifications being made to my body without my consent. Because the personal aesthetic theme I've developed a personal taste for practicing with my own body just happens to be one of unmodified natualness whenever possible. I've never had any body part pierced or tattooed, never dyed or bleached or curled or straightened my hair, never worn makeup, I don't shave my legs. It's not the only possible aesthetic to strive for, certainly, but it's mine and I like it and if anybody else interfered with my ability to practice it, it would just really annoy me, that's all. I did have my teeth straightened as a kid, not really with my consent either, and I also note that American dentists make an awful lot of money off of trying to force everyone's teeth into an extremely narrow preconception of what teeth "ought" to look like, and no other country in the world puts so many of its citizens through teeth-straightening rituals as America does, and I think it's ridiculous to promote an idea about what teeth "ought" to look like which conflicts with what the majority of human beings' teeth actually grow like.

When I was six, my orthodontist said I had an overbite, and an overbite was a Bad Thing. He set about correcting it, and after 13 years with a huge variety of different orthodontic appliances in my mouth, I was pronounced Cured of the Overbite. You know what happened next? Well, now every time I go into a dentist's office they get all fixated about the clicking noise my jaw makes when I open my mouth wide. Why does it make that clicking noise? Because my jaw was realigned drastically further forward than it would have been if I'd kept the overbite, so now the back parts of my jawbone click against each other in a way they weren't meant to. What are the ramifications? Well, gradual wear and tear of my jawbone hinge, jaw and cheek pain that will increase continually with age, possibly requiring surgery to break and realign my jaw yet again. Isn't that lovely? All because they found my naturally occuring overbite to be aesthetically displeasing. I'd be perfectly happy to have my overbite back.

Medical skills can correct occasional rare flukes and environmentally caused illnesses or injuries; but any time that doctors start trying to "correct" a body configuration which the majority of human beings have been born with, I believe that those doctors are just turning to unethical ways of making $$$$.

[(Anonymous)]

> Would even that be an unaccepable concession for you?

Certainly not. But you do not offer it as a compromise, only as a (false) example of how unreasonable I am being. I would strongly prefer that the procedure only be practiced under anesthesia. Further, I don't think it should be done for religious purposes outside a setting where medical care is immediately available -- that's a terrible accident waiting to happen.

Anyway, that's a distraction from the other legitimate questions, such as the question of consent. Which, I reiterate, is irrelevant. By the time a male is old enough to consent to be circumcised, he is old enough for the loss of sensitivity to be permanent -- and the decision has, again, been made for him. You merely argue that the decision should always be against circumcision rather than for. And even though you have a principle at stake, that you categorically refuse to modify your own body, someone else's worldview can easily be such that circumcision is preferable. I'm living proof of that.

On the question of trauma...everything is traumatic to children, particularly medical procedures. No one has wondered whether we ought not give children innoculations, even though they are clearly very painful and can cause swelling and sometimes dangerous reactions. In the end, I don't think it matters in the slightest whether infants undergo one more procedure like that. (And if anesthesia were used as it should be, the trauma objection would have no weight at all.)

I think we're beginning to repeat ourselves.

-Mike

[frankie-f.livejournal.com]

thanks for that post. I went to sexuallymutilatedchild.org the other day and was very disturbed. I thought of all the men who were happily, or at least contentedly, circumcised who would see that and think, "oh my god- I'm a freak" I certainly agree that the label "mutilated" should'nt be forced on people. I have known circumcised and uncircumcised men and none of them seemed particularly mentally unbalanced in their heads or their relationships due to having or lacking a foreskin.

All the same, After going to that site, I wouldn't circumcise my male child if I had one.