Circumcision: The Root of Misogyny

By Anne V. Pyterek

I've always thought circumcision was dumb, pointless, idiotic, puritanical, and downright mean! It wasn't until I became the mother of a son that I began to think of it as much, much worse. It wasn't until then that I would wince at the sight of someone who has had that done to him. To me, it looks creepy; it is creepy. It looks bruised , stripped, broken. Mutilated. Unnatural. Painful and numb at the same time.

It wasn't until I became the mother of a son that I thought of circumcision as the root of all evil—or at least the root of misogyny. How could they not grow up and stomp us under their boots after we allow such a hideous, agonizing torture to be inflicted on their freshly born little bodies?

A gestating and newborn person's mother is absolutely everything to him. No matter how much dad talks to the baby in utero, or plays Chopin for him on his violin, no matter how well the baby recognizes other people at birth, mom is still the only one he really knows. Inside out. She is not just the source of life; she is life. Mom is Goddess. Her body is Eden. She is paradise, bliss, and eternity. A minute away from her is an eon of exile and agony. Without her there is no life, only interminable desolation. She looms so large and all-important that he can't see beyond her. And to imagine her as a separate being, or as weak, or as under someone else's influence is unfathomable.

So that's why if something terrible happens, it's mom who allowed it. (In our society, whatever is wrong with a person is usually "their mother's fault.") It is She who betrayed him. There just isn't anybody else. It's Woman who's responsible for Man's fall from Grace—according to the circumcised, Old Testament, patriarchal lot. It doesn't matter who actually does it--they are just pawns, devices, minions, tools, instruments of torture—it's Her Will. It doesn't matter who actually wants it or what the alleged reasons are.

How could a betrayal so huge, so profound, NOT take root in the tons and tons of societal garbage heaped upon the heads of little boys and produce such misogynous crap as wife-beating, witch-hunting, prostitution, pornography, mother-blaming, rape, sexism, endless perversions of every kind, and just general cold, unemotional, not-able-to-talk-about-his-feelings kind of guys? It couldn't.

But one, whole, feeling little boy raised with integrity will grow up to be one whole, feeling man with integrity. He will be horrified when he learns of the atrocity committed by his fellows. He will speak against it. He will have a whole, different outlook on life—one not based on pain, fear of pain, suppression of pain, or administering of pain—and therefore a life that touches others in a whole, different way. This boy will make a difference.

(We are grateful to Jody McLaughlin and The Complete Mother for sharing this personal essay with us.)

Web editor's note. A large research program in Africa to test whether circumcision was effective in reducing the likelihood of being infected with HIV was stopped because circumcision was found to be such a powerful prevention to catching the virus that the researchers didn't want to put the 'control group' at such great risk. This certainly is a reason it was originally adopted in the hot climate of the middle east. It was observed that males who were not circumcised were prone to greater risk of sexually trasnmitted diseases, and also passed them on to their women. See: Circumcision Reference Library.

The Selling of Circumcision

by David Chamberlain, Ph.D.

An excerpt from "Babies Don't Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine" 1997

Circumcision originated at least 6,000 years ago as a tribal and religious identity symbol in Semitic cultures. The ballooning of the practice in 20th century America was the work of pediatricians and obstetricians who gave it new status as a "medical" procedure. Circumcision also received a big lift from a wealthy layman, John Harvey Kellogg, founder of the cereal company, who was obsessed with the evils of masterbation and advocated circumcision as the solution. Kellogg's book, Plain Facts for Old and Young urged parents to have their boys circumcised without anesthesia--because the pain would have a "salutory effect upon the mind"--and was as common in American homes at the time as his corn flakes.

Taking a sharply opposing view, psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause (1991) finds in circumcision one of the numerous acts of genital mutilation and violence perpetrated on infants and children in virtually every culture since the earliest times. Because it involves sexual mutilation in the family circle, DeMause claims it falls into the category of "incest" and should be seen as "an adult perversion." Other modern critics have labeled it a "betrayal of the innocent" and a "breech of trust" (Grimes, 1978; Janov, 1983). Anesthesiologist John Scanlon (1985) simply calls it "barbarism." Nevertheless, a century ago, the medical view held sway and circumcision swept through the male population.

Medical circumcision became a uniquely American phenomenon. About 80% of the world's population never adopted the practice: This includes most of Europe, and populous countries like Japan, China, and Russia. Researcher Edward Wallerstein (1995) refers to circumcision as an American medical "enigma." A urologist estimates that 90% of American males currently living were initiated into life in this violent way. For men, circumcision is where sex and violence first meet. Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller (1983) sees in this kind of cruelty the roots of social violence. In the United States, circumcision has fallen to about 60% meaning that it touches the lives of over one million baby boys each year.

Leading the crusade for circumcision over a century ago, the physician P. C. Remondino (1891) called the prepuce "a malign influence causing all manner of ills, unfitting a man for marriage or business and likely to land him in jail or a lunatic asylum." According to him, "circumcision is like a substantial and well-secured life annuity; every year of life you draw the benefit....Parents cannot make a better investment for their little boys, as it assures them better health, greater capacity for labor, longer life, less nervousness, sickness, loss of time, and less doctor bills" (Cited in Speert 1953:165). Dr. Remondino claimed that circumcision would cure about a hundred ailments, among them asthma, alcoholism, enuresis, and rheumatism (Wallerstein 1985). People were afraid and gullible.

Another physician of the day (Clifford 1893) enumerated the alleged dangers of the intact foreskin. These included penile irritation, interference with urination, nocturnal incontinence, hernia or prolapse of the rectum (from a tight foreskin!), syphilis, cancer, hysteria, epilepsy, chorea, erotic stimulation, and masterbation. This was the flimsy basis for selling circumcision to America--although none of it turned out to be true. In modern times, dire warnings are still dressed in medical language pointing to the normal foreskin as the source of sexual diseases, cancer, urinary infections, and even AIDS. Yet circumcision neither causes nor cures any of these conditions. The medical compulsion to perform the operation--usually without anesthesia--continues this long legacy of pain as many physicians are still turning a deaf ear to rational arguments from within their own profession (e.g. Grimes, 1978; Wallerstein 1985; Winberg et al. 1989; and Ritter 1992). The American record is unique.

Meanwhile, as the trade flourishes, a humane trend is clearly visible in journal publications. Numerous articles have reported empirical measures of stress during circumcision, and compare procedures and anesthetics for pain (e.g., Kirya and Werthmann 1978; Yeoman, Cooke and Hain, 1983; Pelosi and Apuzzio, 1985; Masciello, 1990). In this professional literature, one can see a growing empathy for infants, full acceptance of their pain, serious doubts about performing circumcisions, and strong recommendations for anesthetics which effectively reduce pain (Williamson and Williamson 1983; Holve et al. 1983; Dixon et al. 1984; Stang et al. 1988; and Rabinowitz and Hulbert 1995). Perhaps this is a harbinger of what is to come, and a sign that the century of denial may be ending.

A mix of cultural forces blur the future. In exploring the extent of physician influence on parental choice for circumcision, one study showed that when the doctor was opposed to circumcision, the rate fell to 20%, but when he was in favor, the rate was 100% (Patel 1966). In contrast, when four pediatricians in Baltimore did an educational experiment with pregnant mothers (Herrera et al. 1982), they were surprised at the results. While half had been taught the medical "risks and benefits" of circumcision and half received no information, virtually all the mothers opted for circumcision. The doctors concluded that deep cultural and traditional issues were working against a change in attitude in their group. Surveys examining parental motives for requesting circumcision have revealed these forces at work.

Parents typically care about appearances, yield to pressure from relatives, and misunderstand the medical "benefits." They hold a variety of false notions that circumcision is mandated by hospitals, by public health law, or is required for admission into the Armed Forces (Patel 1966; Grimes 1978). And parents are not warned that their infants will endure severe pain and will be deprived of a functional part of their sexual anatomy for life. (Note: The full paper can now be seen in Robbie Davis-Floyd and James Dumit (Eds.)(1998), Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (New York and London: Routledge.)

Circumcision: Echoes in the Body

By Jeane Rhodes, Ph.D.

Recently, I completed a doctoral research project in which I investigated the possible link between the way children do selected yoga postures for the first time and their individual birth experiences. The body language of 22 children, five to nine years old, was carefully videotaped and analyzed. To learn about the children's birth experiences I interviewed the parents. After analysis of the data, I was able to identify specific elements in the performance of the yoga postures that could be perceived as clues to the child's prenatal and birth experience.

In the course of this research, I made an unexpected observation related to male circumcision. It can only be considered preliminary at this point, as the study was not designed to focus on this issue, and, had it not been so evident in this small sample, I probably would not have noticed it. Asking about circumcision had not been on my original list of questions for the interview with parents. Fortunately, the first father inter-viewed mentioned it, so I included a question about circumcision for all of the boys in the study.

What I observed was that the seven boys in the study who had been circumcised did not place their hips on the floor when doing an abdominal-lying-arch posture (the "cobra" pose for those of you familiar with yoga postures). In contrast, the two boys in the study who had not been circumcised did it easily.

When I mentioned this observation to a colleague who is a body-worker, she said she had noticed that her clients who had been circumcised were much more rigid in the pelvic area than those who had not been circumcised. If this very preliminary observation is confirmed, it would be coherent with a recent finding on the long-term effect of circumcision on pain tolerance. A team at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario (1995) studied the pain responses of children having routine vaccinations four to six months after birth. They discovered that boys circumcised as infants had higher behavioral pain scores and cried longer.

I am in the process of designing follow-up research and would appreciate any feedback you could give me about this "echo" in the body from the trauma of circumcision. Please respond to Dr. Jeane Rhodes.

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