Schoolboy joke – What’s the biggest drawback in the jungle? Answer – the elephant’s foreskin. A controversial subject now and what is wrong with a bit of controversy? Circumcision. I read some weeks ago that staff at John Hopkins in Baltimore are crying “More circumcision!” and I have been meaning to write about it ever since as evidently they are of the somewhat curious belief that circumcision will reduce the spread of venereal disease. I would have thought condoms a better bet but who am I to argue with the medical profession, crazy as the whole idea might seem to an ordinary laymen? I don’t think the hospital staff are actually marching down the street bearing banners with a strange device but maybe they ought to take note of what Paul the Apostle said about those who went around crying more circumcision – “rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, they must be silenced, teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach. They desire to have you circumcised that they might glory in your flesh.” When I did that research on deviation some time back I did notice (have double checked since) that there appear to be more young Americans and Canadians uncut, to use that dreadful expression, whereas years ago you would have expected every American boy to be circumcised and this is obviously worrying the hospitals who evidently stand to lose a great deal of money if American parents come to their senses and give up on this unnecessary practice altogether which is nothing more or less than surgical mutilation. “There has always been an undercurrent of violence and sexual abuse associated with circumcision.” Can’t remember who said that. I see that Bill Gates has contributed $5000000 towards the circumcision of Africans in an attempt to reduce AIDS/HIV on the Dark Continent so he is obviously a disciple of John Hopkins but here is a question. If it is down to circumcision/non circumcision, when aids was rampant amongst American homosexuals thirty and more years ago was this not during a period when virtually all American males (90%) were circumcised anyway? As for Africa, the whole belt above the tropics and more is already a circumcision zone as this is Muslim territory and, in South Africa with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, the Xhosa are circumcised. Does this make them immune to the condition? Somehow I doubt it very much but the illegal circumcision schools have already this year caused three known deaths, possibly more, and filled a few hospital beds. London hospitals I believe are constantly dealing with young Muslims whose circumcision and future sex-life has gone horribly wrong. Evidently you don’t have to be licensed to be a foreskin slicer. I’m afraid Mr Gates’ fifty million would have been much better spent in some more deserving direction like possibly the alleviation of famine or the supply of clean water or the eradication of the mosquito.
I don’t suppose it is at all strange that religious circumcision, Jewish and Muslim all started off in hotspots of the world where water was in short supply and consequently personal hygiene possibly at a bare minimum whereas in countries where water was not in short supply circumcision never took hold. The ancient Greeks laughed at the Egyptians for being circumcised (the Nile apart. a desert country) and the Egyptians laughed at the Greeks for being uncircumcised, (a well watered part of the world). So just what are the advantages of circumcision apart from the relief of a medical condition, phimosis, where the foreskin is too tight and cannot be retracted? And anyway there are sometimes evidently other methods of loosening the constriction that could be tried leaving circumcision as a last resort. Well, firstly, let me see now, parents needn’t be embarrassed by having to teach their offspring how to keep their little wee-wee clean and offspring don’t have to take quite so much care in keeping little willy clean. Yes, smegma can be smelly and a cause of cheesy jokes (ha ha!) but it certainly doesn’t have to be a problem. We’ve mentioned the loss of earnings to the medical profession, millions of dollars a year, but apart from that? Well I can’t offhand think of anything else except that if nine American boys are circumcised and the tenth isn’t, in the showers he’s like to be the butt of jests as being the odd man out. The Victorians of course thought it reduced the incidence of masturbation but the Victorians had very strange ideas about that anyway.
So what are the disadvantages of circumcision? I talk only of male circumcision here and have no personal axe to grind as I am glad to say I am smugly and happily intact. Of female circumcision I can only say I find the whole subject totally repulsive only in that it should never ever be allowed. How mothers who have been through the process as young girls can allow their daughters to suffer the same way is totally beyond me but then there are so many things about human religions and traditions that are way beyond me anyway.
If you look up circumcision on the internet you will find a good many entries that will tell you everything you want to know from the pain and trauma to loss of sensitivity in the penis to surgery that can go wrong in what is after all nothing more or less than deliberate mutilation of a normal condition to make abnormality normal in its place. I have met men who bewail the loss of their foreskins as infants when they had no choice over the matter and I wonder what the outcome would be if one day a young man decided to sue his parents, his doctor, his hospital for something lost that can never be replaced.