The Guide to Getting It On (64 page)

CHAPTER

27

Fun with Your Foreskin

“
Cut to the chase: I am an RN and have seen hundreds of uncircumcised males. No turn on. But when my most recent lover happened to be such it was so totally unexpected that my sexual arousal rate went up 200%. I am very turned on by stroking him to expose the head, kissing and licking it and then covering it again by pulling the foreskin back up. Sucking ever so gently with the skin covering the head gives him pleasure, but pulling it down near the base of his penis completely exposes him and his reaction is amazing. All it takes is tender gentle swirls to drive him crazy.... The wanton horny bitch that resides within myself has now been released and owes you all at the Goofy Foot Press gratitude and the author the best blow job ever!”
female age 27

Drive south on I-5 until you reach the Corvallis exit, go west...

Medically speaking, routine circumcision makes about as much sense as removing a child’s eyelids or cutting out the labia of a baby girl. So why are so many American boys routinely circumcised?

During the 1880s, a few influential men like John Harvey Kellogg, physician and founder of a famous American cereal company, claimed that boys masturbate because the foreskin rubs on the head of the penis. Until that time, most American men were not circumcised. As a leading anti-masturbation fanatic, Dr. Kellogg believed that boys who were circumcised at birth would be less likely to masturbate. Swell guy that he was, Dr. Kellogg also recommended that girls who masturbate have their clitorises burned out with acid.

Dr. Kellogg’s influence helped circumcision to become a routine operation in America—one that has lined the pockets of American physicians for more than a century. What’s startling is that a number of today’s proponents of circumcision are just as fanatical and irrational as Dr. Kellogg was.

There is clearly something about the foreskin that creates religious and medical fanaticism. Is it because the foreskin is attached to the genitals? Is it because so much money can be made from chopping it off? No one knows.

There is No Medical Need for Circumcision

America’s medical establishment has tried to justify its hand in circumcision by saying that it prevents cancer of the penis, cancer of the cervix and now AIDS.

Cancer of the penis is extremely rare—more men get breast cancer. In Sweden, where few men are circumcised, cancer of the penis is just as rare as in the circumcision-happy United States. As for cervical cancer, women have no higher rate of cervical cancer who live in European countries where the men aren’t circumcised.

The idea that circumcision is protective against HIV is the brainchild of pro-circumcision advocates in America. Until recently, a large majority of adult males in America have been circumcised, yet America has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the industrialized world—higher than in a number of European countries where the vast majority of men are not circumcised. In the United States, blacks have the highest rate of circumcision, yet they also have the highest rate of heterosexually transmitted HIV. America itself has the highest rate of circumcision among the developed nations, yet the highest rate of heterosexually transmitted HIV. If circumcision truly decreased the spread of HIV by 8% to 60% as the pro-circumcision fanatics claim, America would have one of the lowest rates of heterosexually transmitted HIV, not one of the highest.

Perhaps the men in America weren’t circumcised well enough. Maybe we need to be circumcised a second time!

Gold Standard or Fool’s Gold?

Circumcision proponents frequently cite three studies from Africa as being the gold standard to bolster the case for circumcision. It’s interesting that none of these studies were carried out in the United States. Perhaps that’s because it would not be as easy to hide poorly designed and poorly executed studies in America where there would be outside observers. The same is true for studies where there might be selection bias, lead-time bias, attrition bias and duration bias—effects that may have plagued the African circumcision studies.

If circumcision helps prevent the spread of HIV, how is it that men who are circumcised are more likely to have HIV than men who not circumcised in several countries in Africa? Competent analysis of the HIV data from Africa reaffirms that circumcision is not an effective means of preventing the spread of HIV:

“Given what is known at the individual level, one would have expected HIV incidence or prevalence in circumcised groups of men to be consistently about 20% lower than in uncircumcised groups. This was not the case according to the results of this study. Until this discrepancy between demographic evidence and expectations from epidemiological evidence is resolved, is it wise to recommend mass circumcision? Once more, the dynamics of generalized HIV epidemics in Africa appear more complex than originally thought. Male circumcision appears only as a minor factor amid many others contributing to the spread of HIV, such as the complex web of social, cultural and economic interactions surrounding sexual behaviour, especially among adolescents and young adults.” “
Long-term population effect of male circumcision in generalized HIV epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa,” African Journal of AIDS Research [2008, 7(1): 1–8]

When pro-circumcision advocates get funding to carry out research, science appears to take a backseat to politics.

The Latest Study to Question the Effectiveness of Circumcision

One week before this edition of the
Guide To Getting It On
went to press, two fascinating articles were published. First were the findings from a study on circumcision and HIV infection done in the Carribean that were published in
the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
:

“Circumcision did not confer significant protective benefit against STI/HIV infection. The findings suggest the need to apply caution in the use of circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy...”

The second article appeared a few days later in the
New York Times:

“Cholera Epidemic Envelops Coastal Slums in West Africa. In both countries, about two-thirds of the population lack toilets. Aid workers said the number of cases of the highly contagious disease continued to increase, particularly in Freetown, where most live in slums and children swim in polluted waters.”

What, you might ask, do circumcision and the lack of sanitation have to do with each other? Millions of dollars are being spent to circumcise African males that could be spent on sewer systems in Africa that would truly save lives. Sanitation and water systems will make an important impact in the lives of Africans. Circumcision will not.

The Risks of Circumcising

For those of you who are concerned about your infant son’s health, why not consider a danger that is more immediate than dubious studies from Africa? It is called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). This infection can be a serious problem in newborn nurseries. Its most frequent infant victims are circumcised boys, although more research on this is needed. The infection gets into the body through the circumcision wound, and it can cause impetigo, staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome, bacteremia, cellulitis, pneumonia, arthritis, osteomyelitis, pustolosis, pyoderma, empyema, and sometimes death.

Why Do They Keep Doing It?

A physician in the US makes between $150 and $300 per circumcision. Doing one circumcision per day, five days per week, at a fee of $150 each for 46 out of 52 weeks a year nets a physician an extra $34,500 annually for a procedure that takes less than ten minutes. One circumcision a day at the higher rate brings in almost $70,000 a year. No wonder pediatricians and obstetricians have a history of fighting over who does the circumcisions!

Another reason for doing circumcisions is medical bias. Until recently, physicians in this country have had a long-standing bias that hysterectomies are good for women and circumcisions are good for men. Is this really true?

How They Do It

During male circumcision, physicians stick a prodding instrument into the foreskin to tear it away from the head of the penis. One-third to one-half of the skin on the penis is then cut off. Traditionally, male circumcisions have not been done with anesthesia, but even when anesthesia is used, there is still extreme pain from the raw scar on the penis.

Religious Considerations

Some people will say, “But circumcision is done for important religious and cultural reasons.” The same is true for female circumcision, which we refer to as genital mutilation. Some people say this is being disrespectful of an important ritual in the Jewish faith. This is true. We are also disrespectful of the Catholic Church’s ban on birth control and masturbation. If Jewish men want to be circumcised as an expression of their faith, why not let them wait until they are 18 years old and able to call the Mohel themselves? That would be a far greater expression of faith than having the end of your penis cut off when you are only a few days old and can’t tell the Torah from a telephone book.

According to psychologist Ronald Goldman, Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, did not allow his own son to be circumcised. Even Moses did not circumcise his son, and circumcision was not done during the forty-year period in the wilderness. It is quite possible that this custom arose out of the Egyptian practice to circumcise their Jewish slaves. Over time, this became a ritual or custom, and eventually became associated with the Covenant. The ultimate goal of circumcision, according to ancient rabbis and Jewish scholars from Philo to Maimonides, was to decrease sexual pleasure for both men and women. This would give men more time to study the Torah, and result in women receiving less sexual pleasure from a man who was circumcised.

In 1843, Reform-Movement leaders in Frankfurt, Germany started a mini-house revolt against circumcision. This group argued that 1) Circumcision had not always been practiced among Jews; 2) It was not commanded to Moses; 3) It’s not unique among Jews, given how Muslims do it as well; 4) It is only discussed once in the Mosaic law and not repeated in Deuteronomy; and 5) There was no comparable practice for females. Perhaps the most interesting of all is for the first 2,000 years of the practice, only the tip of the foreskin was cut. This was called Milah. Only then, after the first 2,000 years of Milah, did they start whacking off the entire foreskin. Resource:
Questioning Circumcision—A Jewish Perspective
by Ronald Goldman, Ph.D., Vanguard.