Although only 37% – 39% of boys worldwide are circumcised, according to statistics from World Population Review[i], 71.2% of young boys are circumcised in the USA.
This number is apparently dropping as more and more parents decide to leave their children intact, but it’s still 71.2 percentage points too high.
Although circumcision is performed on girls (which is also referred to as female genital mutilation, or FGM) in some parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, it is rare (and illegal[ii]) in the USA, so this article will focus primarily on the routine circumcision (aka MGM, or male genital mutilation) of male infants.
What is circumcision?
Circumcision is a surgical operation that removes the most sensitive part of a boy’s penis (i.e., the foreskin), even though:
- The foreskin is a perfectly normal part of the male anatomy and is not a birth defect.
- The foreskin is healthy.
- Circumcision is medically unnecessary.
- The procedure violates the right to bodily autonomy, which is the fundamental birthright of every person –including babies who are only an hour or two old.
If you want to know how the process typically works, then these are the steps:
- They strap the helpless infant into a circumstraint device.
- The foreskin is completely fused over the entire shaft and glans so they shove a metal probe up into the baby’s penis and swirl it around to rip open the tissue. (When you shove something into a child’s genitals with no medical need, that’s child rape.)
- After the foreskin is ripped open, a crushing device like a Gomco clamp or Plastibell is tightened around the bleeding penis so the doctor can take off much more tissue and get a more even scar (the dark ring around the penis) than if it was a freehand procedure.
- Then they take a knife and carve off the most sensitive part of his body.
Note that your infant is fully awake when they start this procedure, although infants frequently scream so loud and so much that they may vomit or defecate before passing out (and can even stop breathing) – but they do not sleep through it as medical professionals will often tell you.
Why do parents choose to have their son’s penis mutilated?
There are a number of reasons that are usually given, either by doctors or parents, including:
- perceived health benefits, such as the unsubstantiated claim that circumcised males have fewer UTIs and a reduced risk of STIs later in life (which is odd given that men in Europe, who are rarely circumcised, do not suffer from these conditions significantly more than American men do)
- religious practices, which is the case with many Jews and some Christians and Muslims
- cultural practices
- family tradition (e.g., because the father wants his son’s penis to look like his)
- maternal preference (e.g., because the mother prefers having sex with circumcised men, usually because that’s the only experience she’s had)
- so the son won’t be shamed, bullied, or made fun of at school because he looks different, though there’s very little evidence that this actually happens
- hygiene, because of the myth that a circumcised penis is easier to keep clean
- prevention of phimosis, which is an inability to retract the foreskin but which can be treated with less drastic measures than amputation
- prevention of paraphimosis, which is an inability to return the foreskin to its original location but which can also be treated with less drastic measures than amputation
- prevention of various conditions in men and their partners, though all such claims have been refuted
- social norms
- the myth that it will discourage your son from masturbating (which was the main reason John Harvey Kellogg, yes, the cornflakes guy, gave when he popularized this barbaric procedure in the late 1800s)
- parents are told it’s “only a quick snip” to hide the fact that it is barbaric, incredibly painful, and causes life-long problems (see below), as though that makes it OK
- parents are told it’s “just a tiny piece of skin”, which is a lie because the foreskin has over a dozen functions (see below), is larger in adulthood than most Americans realize, and is not just skin but mucosal membranes, nerves, blood vessels, and muscle
- the greed and/or ignorance of medical professionals who make a lot of money from this unnecessary operation and are more than willing to mislead parents or even outright lie about why it should be performed
Why none of the above matters
That’s right – none of those “reasons” are sufficient to justify mutilating your son’s penis.
Why not?
Because it violates his right to bodily autonomy, his right to determine what he will and will not allow to be done to his body.
Bodily autonomy is THE fundamental birthright of EVERY person, and that includes, of course, newborn babies.
Although this right is not unambiguously specified in the US Constitution, it is collectively affirmed by several international agreements, including the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right, emphasizing its importance in achieving gender equality, reproductive health, and overall human dignity.
The website Attorneys For The Rights Of The Child[iii] states that:
“No medical association in the world recommends routine infant circumcision. Medical associations from cutting cultures tend to view circumcision as having slight benefits, whereas medical associations from non-cutting cultures tend to recognize circumcision as a human rights violation and take active stances against the practice.”
Given that the benefits of routine male circumcision are dubious at best, and outrageously fabricated at worst, and given the fact that there are many risks and negative effects (see the next section), there is no reason whatsoever to deny your son the right to make this decision when he is an adult and old enough to understand those “benefits”, risks, and negative effects.
It’s his body and his choice – not yours (even though you are his parents), and not the doctor’s. As a parent, your job is to protect your children, and that does not include subjecting him to an intensely painful and unnecessary medical procedure that will haunt any of them to an intensely painful and unnecessary medical procedure that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
The rule is simple: if it’s not your penis, you should leave it the hell alone.
What are the risks of circumcision?
These include:
- haemorrhaging immediately after the circumcision
- infection
- pain
- penile injuries, including amputation of the glans penis
- buried penis
- urethral injuries
- adhesions
- phimosis (which is the inability to retract the foreskin)
- meatal stenosis (which is an abnormal narrowing of the urethral opening)
- urethrocutaneous fistula
- permanent scarring
- loss of sensitivity
- painfully tight erections
- curvature of the erect penis
- psychological trauma, including a feeling of betrayal by the parents
- disrupted breastfeeding
- erectile dysfunction
- less satisfying sex, both for him and for any of his sexual partners (who may experience pain)
- the loss of your relationship with your son when he finds out the truth about circumcision and realizes you violated his right to bodily autonomy
- and death
Some of the items on this list are things that only happen in some cases, (according to a study called “Rarely seen complications of circumcision, and their management”[iv], “In developed countries, complication rates differ between 0.2, and 5%.”) but other items on this list have a 100% chance of happening in every case (including loss of sensitivity and less satisfying sex).
Doctors sometimes refer to “botched” circumcisions, but all circumcisions are botched, even when they go as planned, because they remove a perfectly healthy part of the human body that serves many purposes. To cut that off is always a botched job.
Functions of the foreskin
Some of its functions include:
- Protection: the glans is meant to be an internal organ, but removal of the foreskin transforms it into an external organ that, over the course of time, becomes keratinized and desensitized
- Erogenous sensitivity: the foreskin is as sensitive as your lips and contains a greater concentration of nerve receptors than any other part of the penis
- Lubrication: the foreskin provides a natural lubrication during intercourse and helps a woman achieve orgasm by replacing the ineffective friction provided by circumcised men with changes in pressure to sensitive places on and in the woman’s body
- Immunological defence: mucous membranes that line all body orifices are the body’s first line of immunological defence
You can find a list of at least 16 functions that are lost during circumcision here. (If that link is broken, try this archived version instead.)
FGM vs MGM
Widely practised in Africa and Asia, female genital mutilation can be performed in several ways[v]:
- Type I: Partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the prepuce (clitoridectomy).
- Type II: Partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (excision).
- Type III: Narrowing of the vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and appositioning the labia minora and/or the labia majora, with or without excision of the clitoris (infibulation).
- Type IV: All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example: incising, scraping and cauterization.
FGM can also consist of pricking or piercing of the genitals.
It’s widely recognized that there are no health benefits of FGM (though, in the cultures where it’s common, it is widely erroneously claimed that there are health benefits, just as with male circumcision in the cultures where it’s common), but there are immediate health risks, including long-term complications to women’s mental, physical, and sexual health, and overall well-being.
This is what the WHO has to say on the subject:
“The practice is recognized internationally as a violation of human rights of girls and women and as an extreme form of gender discrimination, reflecting deep-rooted inequality between the sexes. As it is practiced on young girls without consent, it is a violation of the rights of children. FGM also violates a person’s rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.”
In summary, then, almost nobody in the Western world objects to this female version of circumcision being referred to as mutilation.
So why is it that so many people, including men who were circumcised as infants, refuse to accept that MGM is a form of mutilation?
This is how Merriam-Webster defines mutilation: “an act or instance of destroying, removing, or severely damaging a limb or other body part of a person or animal” and “an act or instance of damaging or altering something radically“.
If you’re removing a healthy, functioning part of the human body and causing lifelong scarring (both physical and mental) and loss of function, what else can you reasonably call it?
And why are girls in the USA protected against FGM by law when it’s still commonly practised and legal for boys?
Surprisingly, perhaps, US courts do not uphold equal rights regardless of gender in all cases.
The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment has been interpreted to provide some protections against sex and gender discrimination by stating that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Unfortunately, this clause is often disregarded, and the protection is further compromised by the fact that the medical profession in the USA still claims there are health benefits to routine infant circumcision, regardless of the fact that their claims have been debunked and that infant circumcision violates the child’s right to bodily autonomy, as discussed above.
Care of the foreskin
Since one of the claimed benefits of circumcision is that it will make the penis easier to keep clean, let’s address this myth.
One of the biggest causes of problems with intact boys is when their parents, doctor, or others forcibly retract the foreskin to clean it and the glans underneath.
The foreskin should never be forcibly retracted because it can cause pain, bleeding, infection, and other complications.
The foreskin is meant to be fused to the glans until he is older – anywhere from five years old to whenever he hits puberty. At that time, the foreskin will naturally detach from the glans.
And all you need to use to clean the foreskin is soap and warm water, just like with any other part of the body. (For an intact male, only water should be used on the glans because it’s an internal organ.)
Claiming that removing the foreskin will make the penis easier to keep clean is just as absurd as claiming that removing the eyelid will make the eye easier to keep clean.
What about having sex?
The foreskin has many functions, one of which is to provide natural lubrication during sex. Another is to protect the glans and keep it sensitive.
The foreskin contains more nerves than any other part of the penis.
Loss of the foreskin results in less satisfying sex for both the circumcised man and his partner.
Although many men who were cut as children like to say that their sex life is fine, they have no basis for comparison. However, those men who chose to be circumcised as adults generally say that sex is much less enjoyable after having their foreskin removed.
What do women think?
Well, 85% of American women who have had sex with both circumcised and intact men said they preferred intact men.
Sex with men who had been circumcised was associated with dryness, pain, and difficulty in achieving orgasm. Another study found that women were twice as likely to reach orgasm with intact men.
In summary
- Infant circumcision has no benefits but plenty of risks, harms, and lost functions.
- You should never forcibly retract the foreskin.
- It’s his or her body and therefore it must always be his or her choice.
[i] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/circumcision-by-country
[ii] https://equalitynow.org/fgm_in_the_us_learn_more/
[iii] https://www.arclaw.org/medical-and-ethical-positions
[iv] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4791075/
[v] https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/statements_missions/Interagency_Statement_on_Eliminating_FGM.pdf