Orphans and Handicapped
UK: I believe that it was the norm in Victorian and Edwardian Britain for boys taken into orphanages to be routinely circumcised on admission.
A few years ago there was a 'documentary' program on British TV about children from orphanages in the 1950s being shipped off to the Colonies - Australia and Canada in particular - to help build up the populations there. This showed them all taken to the local hospital to have their tonsils removed before the journey. No mention was made (naturally!) of the fact that the boys were almost certainly also circumcised had this not been done on entry to the orphanage.
Australia: I have a good friend who was brought up in an orphanage, in Australia, and he was routinely cut at 5yrs and he told me that all the other uncut boys of that age were also done.
Jozua
----------------
I had a school friend who was an orphan and was (to my initial surprise) circumcised. I imagine he had been in an up-market sort of orphanage since he was subsequently at a fee-paying school. In other words, I presume his inheritance had left him reasonably well cared for.
One has to remember that orphanages have a duty of care. There will be a doctor who looks after the orphanage and if his advice is that boys should be circumcised (or that children should have their tonsils out) the orphanage isn't going to apply that advice selectively - they are pretty much bound to apply it to all.
James
United States: Routine circumcision of boys entering orphanages was often the case in the United States prior to the 1960's. This was a procedure that was paid for by government insurance. Additionally, these facilities had doctors on call that could easily do a boy's circumcision, if it hadn't already been done at birth. Of course, orphanages are no more. However, the practice of getting boys circumcised when they are orphans continues even to this day.
I personally know of a home that takes in orphan and troubled boys. Most usually the parents are still alive, but incarcerated. They usually have anywhere from 4 - 8 boys between 6 and 16 years of age. The parents who run the home look after the boys until some permanent arrangements can be found. However, some of the boys end up staying with them for several years. Both of these parents are very pro-circumcision and have had any boy who arrives uncut, circumcised within the first three months of his stay. This is done with the State's permission and they even pay for the procedure. I believe every boy has 'agreed' he wanted to be circumcised, and that is all that the social worker that is in charge asks. "Do you agree with this? Do you want to be circumcised?" About 70% of the boys are black or Hispanic, and the circumcision rate upon entry has been only about 50% of all boys. So, they've helped a number of boys get circumcised.
Australia: I have been informally told by staff working at a state caring facility that most of the males have been circumcised after admission. I presume it therefore an informal and unwritten policy, but certainly very much in effect to this day.
United States In High School, there were "retarded" boys who went to our school in a separate class. The rate of cut and uncut was about 50/50. Of these boys, all of the ones who lived at the special home were circumcised. It was the feeling then that automatically circumcising mentally retarded boys was necessary since they will have a much more difficult task keeping themselves clean.
Early removal of their foreskin saves them the problem of trying to learn penile hygiene and the embarrassment of having others check their 'private parts' to see that they have washed properly.
Circumcision of My
Handicapped Son at age 10
I was circ’d at age 19 in the Infirmary at the U of W sport facilities which I
mentioned a couple of weeks ago. After graduating from the U, I became a teacher
in one of the local schools. Even though completely heterosexual, I never
married. When computers began to be a bit more available in the 70s, I stopped
teaching and wrote computer programs for the school district, mostly at our
school bus facility to track bus costs. I could set my own time schedule for
work. My parents had both died and I was living in our Lake Washington
waterfront family home.
I had a friend that was in charge of vocational rehabilitation for Washington
State. He told me there was a group home for boys in Everett, a few miles north
of Seattle that was going to be closed. There was a boy, Ron, that was 8 years
old that had a genetic nerve disease, NF2, that was going to be difficult to
place, would I take him?
I had the time and actually thought it would work out pretty good. Since it was
the middle of the school year I had him home on weekends until the school year
was over. He turned 9 during the school year. This boy had been removed from his
mother and aunt by a court because of child abuse hence his living in the group
home. Let’s say this boy did not have much in the way of good social skills or
knowledge of personal hygiene. Every day was an uphill struggle. It didn’t take
long to see why they couldn’t get anyone to take him. A one word description
would have been incorrigible.
One of the things suggested for taking on a child like this was bonding. Take
the child on a long car trip and then the child would see he had a home when he
returned from the trip. I asked Ron where he wanted to go, he said Disneyland.
Since it is a long drive from the Seattle area to Anaheim, my neighbor’s son,
Mike, who had just turned 16 and had a new driver’s license was willing to go
along. He was tolerant of my very active 9 year old and willing to help in the
long drive there and back, besides he wanted to go to Disneyland himself.
When we were at the Disneyland Hotel while they were changing to go in the pool
I heard Ron talking to Mike. He asked Mike how come they looked different, was
it because Mike was older, would he look like that in a couple of years? Mike
told him, no, it was because I, speaking of himself, was circumcised and you
were not. You would need to be circumcised to look like me. Ask your dad about
it.
Well, Ron never did ask me, but he did not need to, I was going to have him
circumcised as soon as I had the authority. There was a delay in getting the
final adoption papers because his mother, who I never met, did not sign a
release until two weeks before he turned 10. Two weeks after he turned 10, I had
him in our family doctor’s office to make arrangements for being circumcised. I
didn’t talk to Ron about it, this was going to be done, my decision. He did say
a couple of times that he wanted to look like our neighbor who he admired so I
guess he wanted it done.
NF2 is a terrible disease. Small benign tumors form on the nerve linings causing
all sorts of problems depending on the affected nerve. He had lost the sight in
one eye to a tumor on the optic nerve the first year he was with me and had a
tad less than perfect motor control in his arms and hands. There was always a
puddle of urine on the floor around the toilet before his circumcision, a
combination of poor vision, hand motor control, and foreskin. He was used to
being prodded and poked by doctors and having small tumors removed so this pre
circumcision visit to the doctor was about normal for him.
My experience with a rather loose cut was not always satisfactory so I asked to
doctor to do a tight cut for him. When we got to the doctor’s office the next
morning everything was ready and we went right into the back room, I held his
hand while he had a local and the doctor went right ahead. It didn’t take very
long, He used a clamp, I think Gomco, but didn’t know the names of things then.
His cut was indeed tight with the scar not quite half way up the shaft. This
tight cut turned out to be important later. Ron was used to tumor surgeries and
didn’t seemed to have any discomfort with the circumcision, he healed rapidly.
For a 10 year old he was open about talking about it and a couple of weeks later
he told me he really liked it, he looked like Mike and the other boys at school
and he liked how much easier it was to go to the bathroom and not have to clean
up the floor.
Since we lived on the lake, it was not uncommon for him to walk downstairs from
his room in the buff, go out on the back porch, and hop in the lake for a swim.
He didn’t use a swim suit very often and never had a ‘swim suit’ tan. I must say
he was a pretty good looking fellow, not very tall, and not shy at all about
sitting out in the sun for his over all tan when he was in high school and
after. He brought school friends to go swimming all the time during the summer,
they almost always swam in the buff with him, I never saw one that wasn’t circ’d.
One cold winter day when he was a senior in high school and a fully mature 17
year old, out of the blue, he walked into the living room wearing only his
shorts and stood in front of me. He usually walked out to the lake with nothing
on but this was winter time and he wasn’t going swimming. He pulled his shorts
off, standing bare and said, look at this, pointing to his scar, I was really
proud when you had me circumcised when I first came to live here. He said he had
talked to some friends at school about circumcisions that afternoon, about their
circumcisions, and how they all liked the way they were. He wanted to let me
know, and tell me he loved me for being his dad. It was hard to keep a tear from
my eye, how changed he was from the intolerable 8 year old that first came to
live with me 9 years earlier.
Because of his poor eyesight he was unable to drive and did not leave home when
he was out of high school. His NF2 disease begin to take it’s toll. When he was
23 years old, he gradually lost his hearing because of NF2 tumors on both
auditory nerves. Television has close captioning and sign language allowed us to
talk. At 27 his leg motor control worsened, it became difficult for him to walk
and he had to be in a wheelchair. It was at this time the tight circumcision was
wise. When we went out in the car and at night when he was in bed, I had to help
him put a condom catheter on. This was much easier to put on with the tight
skin. We had to keep the hair trimmed because one hair under the condom catheter
hurt. When he needed to go, all he had to do was go, the urine would flow down
into a bag under the wheelchair or bed. With him unable to use his hands very
well by then, I can imagine the cleaning problems we would have had to face had
he not been circumcised.
He finally became too much for me to handle at home by age 30. There was a care
facility about a half a mile from home that took care of 5 young men in a
regular house. They had an opening for Ron, he didn’t like being away from home
at first but he became friends with the other young fellows there and came to
like the place. At the care facility they used a foley catheter, it also is
easier to use when circumcised. The condom catheter could not be used
continually, the foley could stay in for about two weeks at a time. It is a
small tube inserted into the penis and pushed up into the bladder and held in
place by a small balloon inside the bladder. He didn’t like the feeling at first
but got used to it. He did not mind the female nurses putting them in but he
actually preferred me putting them in and out every other week when the foley
needed to be changed.
There was another young fellow in the care facility the same age as Ron that had
a broken neck from a car accident, the same type of injury as Christopher Reeve.
He was RIC and used a foley also. He didn’t like the nurses changing his foley
at all so I did his too when I did Ron’s. The other 3 fellows were younger, 18
to 20, in wheelchairs all RIC with Muscular Dystrophy.
Ron died at age 32 of a brain tumor from the NF2 disease.
I mentioned in later years we used sign language because of his deafness. There
isn’t a sign for every word in American Sign Language, for example snow would be
signed, white and rain, but there is a sign in ASL for circumcision. Make a
loose fist with both hands with the thumbs sticking out. Touch the nail of one
thumb with the tip of the other thumb and circle it around front to back a
couple of times.
Franz Rosín
The wish to possess a circumcised penis is very different from these
boys' obsessive interest in female sex characteristics and functions.
At the Orthogenic school, a ten year old uncircumcised boy, living with a
group of boys who had been circumcised in infancy, wanted the operation very
badly. Eventually we had to arrange for circumcision because of
adhesions. When told about it he was happy but anxious, as was to be
expected. He spoke at great length about his fear of the pain of the
operation. But powerful as were his fears, still more impressive
were, his wish for and, after the operation, his pride in what he called his
'new penis'. As soon as the wound was healed he proudly displayed his
penis to everybody, while before he had always tried to hide it. As soon
as the bandage was taken off he declared: "I think my penis is now very
handsome and elegant." With great pride he told now how much better his
penis functioned. Now he could fully enjoy masturbation, which previously,
because of adhesions, had been partly painful. He summed up his feeling by
saying: "Boy, I can do anything now." Circumcision demonstrated to him the
organ's importance. The freed glans represented a newly won masculinity.
Circumcision indeed had provided him with a better penis and sexual pleasures
previously not available.
Similar observations were made by Nürnberg during the analysis of adults. The patient had experienced circumcision as a reassertion in general and of the importance of the penis in particular: 'The painful sensation around the glans after the operation drew narcissistic libido to the penis. As a consequence, the patient became more aware of his genital than before. The experience of circumcision increased penis consciousness as if it were a demonstration of the organ's importance.'
If not inhibited, boys like show off their penises with what might be called 'phallic pride'. Competition to determine who has the biggest or best penis becomes a matter of great importance. They demonstrate desire to know who is further ahead in development, who is more manly and less childish. Exhibiting the glans freed of the foreskin is part of such efforts to assert manliness, and in this the circumcised boy is at a definitive advantage: his glans always shows, and this is often taken as a sign of greater masculinity. In this respect, too, Nürnberg's observations corroborate those made on our children. He says: "By the circumcision the glans penis is freed... a new penis is born which looks like phallus in erection with retracted foreskin."
Copyright 1992 - 2008, All Rights Reserved CIRCLIST
