My Boy and His Penis
Circumcision’s grip on America
By Britteny Perry
We were having a boy. It really wasn’t that big of a surprise. I mean, there’s a fifty percent chance and our first child was a girl. But it meant thinking about circumcision.
My first introduction to circumcision was in Catholic school. We were watching a documentary on Abraham in the fourth grade. For those who might not know, Abraham’s covenant with God marks the beginning of circumcision in the Jewish religion.
The video wasn’t graphic, but understandably the class was confused and more than a little concerned. God want’s him to cut off the tip of his what now? The teacher paused the video after realizing the collective reaction and explained that the foreskin wasn’t really the tip of his penis, so much as it was skin that covered the head of the penis and it was cleaner to remove it anyway. He reassured the boys in the class that they were most likely already circumcised when they were babies. It was normal and cleaner.
Just like that, horror had turned in to acceptance. It was easier to believe that we continued a scientifically sound practice, historically done since the times of Abraham, than it was to question that norm. We were living in a rational, modern civilization. We did things for reasons, right? It was Normal. Cleaner. Those were the words associated and I didn’t even question if there might be anyone uncircumcised in that classroom feeling suddenly abnormal and dirty.
My second brush with the concept didn’t come until high school. One of my close friends enjoyed a good cause and circumcision was one of his favorites. He himself, was circumcised, but he was never one to accept the status quo. He was always ready with a heated argument about the benefits of the foreskin and the importance of bodily autonomy. “Circumcision makes sex drier!” he would tell anyone who was interested in listening. Not many people were.
All those little memories came back to me as I drove home to tell my husband we were having a boy. I didn’t want him circumcised, I realized. I’d never had a particularly strong opinion before, but suddenly it was real. He was real, a little person with a future opinion on the matter. I wanted to protect him and that opinion. But my husband had a say too.
My husband was circumcised for medical reasons around the age when the foreskin typically begins to separate and pull back, somewhere between the age of five and seven. There might have been other treatments, but the doctors believed this would permanently solve the problem. It was cleaner, after all. So in a touching (and very male) show of solidarity, my husband, his father and his brother all went in together to have the operation done.
When I told him I was against circumcising our son, he was hesitant to dismiss his own experience. He believed, along with his family, that it was easier to perform the operation on an infant and get it out of the way, than to have something go wrong and need the operation (circumcision) later.
This made sense, except I didn’t exactly agree that it was easier on an infant. True, they heal faster. And they don’t get inconvenient erections. But I remembered how aware my daughter had been. I couldn’t reconcile the idea of allowing my son to go through a stressful, possibly painful operation on the chance that he wouldn’t remember it at an adult age.
My research was frustrating. The history was easy to find, but the modern motivation for circumcision was less conclusive. The AAP or the American Academy of Pediatrics reviewed their official viewpoint and recommendation in 2005, stating that the benefits outweighed the risks, but were too few even then for them to recommend routine circumcisions. (Although there are still considered enough benefits for it to be covered by insurance.) They stressed that the decision be left to the parents, allowing for cultural and religious viewpoints to weigh in, and that the doctors remain neutral. It made no sense. I’d looked into the benefits. There were very few. The risks mentioned in their carefully worded statement, were risks from the operation that would not exist at all without it. The numbers for instances like my husband’s were very low. There was no denying the proof that the foreskin did, in fact, have a function. So why was America so set on promoting the practice of cutting it off?
My in-laws were strongly in favor of circumcision. They believed it was cleaner. There that word was again. Said so simply, like it didn’t imply an age old belief that we were born dirty, in need of cleansing. Our mouths harbor bacteria and also play a role in the exchange of bodily fluids, and yet we don’t cut off our lips.
On top of that, I couldn’t shake the belief that it wasn’t my call to make. I wanted both my children to feel secure in the knowledge that their bodies were theirs even from the beginning. I knew there would be grey areas, but unless going uncircumcised severely compromised my son’s safety, I couldn’t justify taking his decision away.
My parents humored me for a while. They listened to my research, the back and fourth arguments. But the more I learned, the stronger I felt. The stronger I felt, the more my family pulled back. I couldn’t understand it.
My mother expressed her exhaustion on the topic, saying she didn’t think we needed to focus so much on my boys genitals. It was just a penis, and I didn’t have one. I should respect my husbands wishes whatever he decided to do. The irony there of course is that I absolutely agreed. Why were we so focused on our sons’ genitals that we needed to modify them at birth? And no, I do not have a penis and while I agreed that my husband’s sex granted him more insight than I had, I didn’t think it negated our child’s physical autonomy or my right to my own opinion.
When I still didn’t take the hint, my mother got quieter, before gradually expressing some doubt. It’s silly that I didn’t catch it sooner, but that’s when it hit me. She was thinking about my brother. Whether she had hurt him, by not questioning the decision to circumcise. I hadn’t thought about that. I was so focused on my baby, that I hadn’t understand her reluctance to listen to my argument. She kept repeating that she was neutral on the topic or that she didn’t think it mattered either way.
My father stepped into the conversation, finally deciding to give his two cents, I think, to spare my mother. He was also circumcised at birth and told me it had never bothered him. He had never missed a silly bit of skin from the tip of his penis. The foreskin had no purpose.
Talk about an uncomfortable conversation. I of course, informed him that he was wrong. The foreskin had nerves as well as a role in protecting and lubricating the head of the penis. He came back at that by saying, he was doing just fine without it anyway. He had never needed any more sensation than he had.
O.K. gross, Dad. But I guess I kind of deserved that. I was the one picking the topic here, and apparently insensitively. I felt guilty for not realizing sooner how they would take the topic. For not considering their background.
Suddenly it was clear, why the AAP tiptoed around their opinions on circumcision. For my parents and likely many others like them, the topic of circumcision wasn’t just about a decision for the future, but also about their past. The more I proved my point, the more my parents wondered, if circumcision was wrong, what did that say about them? Was my mother wrong for not questioning the cultural norm to circumcise my brother? Was my father left with the scars of an outdated barbaric practice? I wondered if my husband was questioning what his circumcision said about him?
The thing was I didn’t think it said anything about him. I didn’t think my father’s said anything about him, either and I didn’t think my brother’s said anything about my mother. I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with a circumcised penis, only the act of circumcising itself. I don’t look at circumcised men as carrying a sign of trauma or loss, so much as culture. We all carry with us inner and outer marks of our culture and our generation. They shouldn’t prevent us from moving forward.
We had no religious reasons to circumcise, no evidence that it would be significantly beneficial physically and a strong desire to protect our childrens understanding of their own choices.
When the nurse asked us if we wanted our son circumcised, I shook my head, silently looking to my husband for his response. He’d kept me in suspense, those last few months as he read over the information I had left for him. He is very dedicated to being logical, so I trusted that he would be ok with my decision. Still, I felt releaved when he finally told the nurse, no, we would not be circumcising our son. When his family asked us why we hadn’t gotten our boy circumcised, he simply answered with the truth. There was just not enough data supporting it’s necessity.
