Our members respond!
CIRCLIST is a discussion group. Our web site is a collection of our discussions. It is NOT a propaganda site. The discussion - like any good discussion - does indeed yield a lot of useful information and this is why we have collected it and put it up on a web site. To benefit those interested in circumcision.
Sure, some people have different views - some have 'way out' views - but that just makes the discussion more interesting. Sometimes even anti-circ folks like you join our discussion. Now let me respond to some of the specific issues you have raised.
Somewhere on the CIRCLIST web site, it is said that a "redundant" foreskin is a "valid medical reason" to circumcise. I have done some bookwork and asked a couple of urologists in my area about this. They both told me that the only medical reasons for circumcision are phimosis and paraphimosis.
A redundant foreskin (i.e., one that is excessively long) can make successful intercourse almost impossible. If this isn't a medical indication I don't know what is.
My Forum survey showed that most of the men who were circumcised as adults had longer than average foreskins and rather few were unable to retract them. So there was not a true phimosis (or at least not a severe phimosis), in most cases. The urologist may well have put down phimosis on the form, of course. However, they likely had a "redundant" foreskin.
Two of the letters that came in with this survey were from men who found satisfactory coitus impossible prior to circumcision, since the foreskin would not stay retracted, and once it slipped forward all stimulation was lost. A friend who was circumcised as an adult told me exactly the same story when I asked him why he'd had it done.
All the people mentioned above had nothing whatsoever to do with CIRCLIST. The survey was conducted through Forum magazine and the Family Planning Organization, in 1989. So, unless one considers the ability to have sex and procreate irrelevant, redundant prepuce is indeed a valid medical reason for circumcision.
I am aware that there are indeed some who see the ability to have sex and procreate as irrelevant, but one cannot really expect this to become a majority opinion.
Also, cancer of the penis and of the cervix are very, very rare and are no reason for "mass (routine infant) circumcision."
They are very rare in countries where most of the male population is circumcised. If all the 173 million North American males alive today were uncircumcised one would expect around 173,000 to suffer cancer of the penis in their lifetime. All would suffer partial or complete amputation of the penis and about half would die. This might not seem very large as a percentage but it is an awful lot of men.
The figure of 1 in 1000 is a median one. Canadian statistics suggest as high as 1 in 600, Australian ones as low as 1 in 1500.
Nature put the foreskin there, it should remain there, unless it be absolutely necessary for it to be removed.
Nature didn't 'do' anything. The foreskin evolved. It is rather unusual among animal foreskins in that phimosis in humans after puberty is quite common, whereas in other mammals it is just about unknown. It is also unique in that once it has been retracted and the man is sexually active it frequently fails to cover the glans penis. (In my surveys almost half of the uncircumcised men had a partly or totally bare glans, and a British survey found an even higher figure). This has led to a published hypothesis that the human foreskin has evolved into an equivalent of the female hymen - an obstacle to coitus that helps to prevent intercourse in the immediate post-puberty years. Once that barrier has been overcome the foreskin is redundant. (The change to bipedal locomotion removed any need for a foreskin as protection, even before the adoption of clothes).
One could also suggest that circumcision (at puberty, not birth) is as old as Homo sapiens. It is practiced by many of the most primitive peoples on earth, including Australian Aborigines who have lived on this island continent, with relatively little contact with other groups, for a largish part of the known evolutionary history of the species! So our foreskin could actually have evolved to be cut off at the age when sexual activity became permitted.
This is speculation, of course, but there are pictures of, and writings about, circumcision going back 5000 years so it is definitely part of the history and evolution of the human race over a very long time.
Civilized man is not living in a state of primitive nature. We cut our hair and nails, and shave our beards, and wear clothes. If someone contracts TB or pneumonia do we say "This is natural" and let them die? Of course we don't.
Also, most (I would estimate about 85%) of women do not care if a man is circumcised or not. After all, what do they fall in love with, the man or the penis? In my opinion women who seem to prefer circ/pressure their significant other to get circed, are insecure about their femininity and think that circ is a way of leveling the playing field. WRONG!
Well, you said it!
Actually it isn't all-wrong. My survey said that almost 70% of women don't really care much either way. And while those who prefer circumcised men (~20%) outnumber those who prefer uncircumcised men (~10%), this is hardly something to get too excited about. Relatively few women among the 20% who prefer circumcision actually pressure men into getting circumcised, though it certainly does happen. (While putting out forms for my survey at an FPA clinic I got into conversation with a bloke who had been dumped by his girlfriend because he wasn't circumcised). However, among the survey respondents, only one third of those women who preferred circumcised men but had uncircumcised significant others had suggested circumcision to their partners. So it really isn't a big issue.
Last, it is my humble opinion, that 90% of the uncircumcised wanting to be circumcised as adults are very insecure about what they were given. I believe the foreskin is a gift...and would never ever have it cut off unless VALIDLY (phimosis/paraphimosis) medically necessary. I think you all should get some self-esteem and and realize that there's more to a) sexuality, b) security, and c) manliness than having a foreskin or not having a foreskin. Most of you are immature in your reaction to the foreskin, calling it a "dirty piece of worthless skin." Well, you who have had it cut off are missing out on a lot of great sensations.
I must say that in general my surveys, correspondence, etc have shown that while there are lots of insecure people, with and without foreskins, circumcised men come out as being more secure about their wedding tackle than those with foreskins. My survey question asked people how they felt about being cut/uncut and circumcised men were much happier with their lot. They also had better sex lives (intercourse more often, more likely to be in a permanent relationship, etc).
The head of an uncut penis is so much more sensitive than on a cut one.
Both Masters & Johnson and my surveys disagree with that statement. In medical terms there seems to be no significant difference when both types are tested.
There are some 15 square feet or erogenous tissue removed during a circumcision.
My, you must have a big foreskin. Doesn't it trip you up when you walk? Typically one might remove say 2" x 3.5" of skin in an adult circumcision - less in an infant. That's 7 square INCHES! I'm not sure how you came up with your calculation. And most men have no erogenous sensations from the foreskin itself. All the men in my Australian survey who had been circumcised as adults - and had experienced things both ways - said that sex was better for a circumcised man. MUCH BETTER was written in by some!
I ask you, who is missing out? NOT ME. I'm Happy to be Uncut.
Well, something seems to be worrying you! How's your sex life?
With safe sex (condoms, anti-sperm foam), circumcising males to prevent HIV/AIDS is unnecessary. Besides, we still transmit HIV/AIDS by semen... and cut or uncut, we all still have it (semen).
1. Circumcision appears to reduce the risk of female to male AIDS transmission. Women do not deposit semen in men. It has no relevance to male to male transmission, or male to female transmission.
2. Use of a condom is certainly more effective prevention than being circumcised and circumcised men should certainly use a condom for casual sex or when visiting a prostitute.
3. In Africa a condom costs more than a prostitute. Getting condom use universal in the shanty towns is obviously desirable, but probably neither financially or practically possible.
In Africa many men are circumcised. An extension of this practice would save many lives and would furthermore help reduce the wildfire spread of the disease there, since it is spread almost entirely by hetero-sexual transmission. In the long run women and children would benefit too. None of this has any relevance in the USA or Australia, where HIV transmission is mainly by gay sex and needle sharing, and where prostitutes provide condoms and insist on their use.
James Badger (CA, AUS)
What motivates these anti-circumcision activists?
I am rapidly becoming convinced that behind the lunatics and no-hopers there is actually a well funded organization whose real aim is not human rights at all. Is it the neo-Nazis? A lot of what these folks say would seem to point that way. Have you noticed how some pick on Jews and homosexuals - just as the Nazis did.
Another possibility is that these guys are so obsessive in their adoration of the foreskin that they hate the Jews precisely because the Jews as a class practice circumcision, rather than for any of the other reasons usually given for hating Jews. Then they become fellow travelers with all the other Jew-haters.
Vernon (UK)
Although I don't deny that SOME anti-circumcisionists may be anti-semitic, yet it seems to me, having grown up in a country where foreskins were almost totally eradicated (USA), that most anti-circumcisionists are rabidly anti-circ because they idealize and romanticize the foreskin, having had no experience of the problems and complications sometimes incident to it. Hence (it seems to me) the inordinate hostility to circumcision and the peculiar belief in non-circumcision as the answer to a host of supposed problems.
Brad (USA)
It was interesting to hear that all of the routine infant circumcised (RIC) gays at the party we hosted recently felt that circumcision was unnecessary. I think a lot of the RIC guys fantasize about foreskins and have vivid imaginations. The only guys who can really tell the difference between the cut and uncut state are those that were cut as adults. Most of us who were cut as adults are much happier foreskinless than with the "hood" or whatever you want to call it. The "extra sensitivity" and "so much better" attitudes of RIC guys are really so much imagination and fantasy. There is no doubt that the sensations are different cut and uncut. For me, as well as a lot of guys circumcised as adults, the sensations are much better after circumcision. Of course there are a multitude of other benefits as well, and we all know them.
In the gay community "skin is in" these days and I think that is what has happened. I saw several short gay porno movies the other day and ALL of the guys had foreskins- smooth, but they were there. They of course peeled them back for the action shots and in some shots tugged on them, their partner played with them, bit them, and in general made it obvious that they were uncut. I actually wondered where they got all of the actors. Based on the lack of dialog, I would bet they are from poor eastern-European countries It is interesting that most women are pro-circ, according most all surveys, even if the women has an uncircumcised husband. Women also decide in the majority of cases whether the baby boy will be cut or not. So hopefully this will keep circumcision rates going up
Glenn (USA)
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