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These are email
correspondence between myself and Marilyn Milos,
and Marilyn and some other chatters on my lists...concerning circumcision. I
thought the information was interesting enough to share.
This response from Marilyn is chopped
up into mini responses to a specific post that was
posted by a mom that posted about her experience in
choosing to circumcise her son. I think Marilyn's
response has a TREMENDOUS amount of very valuable info
in it! Read on!
"L" wrote:
I always appreciate a different opinion. It's been
interesting reading all the arguments against
circumcision.
It was a difficult decision to make, but having
witnessed the pain/discomfort of 3 12-13 yo boys, we
opted to circumcize our DS to save him from that (just
like we immunized him against MMR, Polio,
etc).
Marilyn writes:
We cannot cut off enough parts off our baby's body to
keep him or her from having problems. You didn't let a
doctor perform a tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, or
appendectomy to prevent future problems. Why the
foreskin? And, you witnessed three boys who suffered at
ages 12-13 from circumcision, but what you didn't know
is that the pain is even more excruciating for babies.
Older boys are given an anesthetic, pain medication
following the procedure, and they know what was
happening. A baby has none of those advantages. For the
baby, circumcision is a primal wound that interferes
with maternal/infant bonding, disturbs normal
breastfeeding and sleep patterns, and it undermines the
baby's first development task of establishing trust. The
baby is left with a scar instead of 20,000 specialized,
erogenous nerve endings that allow a male to ride the
wave to orgasm, just like an intact woman does. A
circumcised man ejaculates, he does not have a full body
orgasm --because he doesn't have a whole body and he
can't.
L wrote: We are quite comfortable with our
decision.
Marilyn writes:
Of all the mistakes I made in my years of mothering (my
oldest son will be 49-years old this year, the next 46,
and the youngest just turned 39), they pale in
comparison to not protecting my sons from a painful,
harmful traditional practice. I'll go to my grave
knowing my sons will never know the wholeness of their
body or the fullness of their sexual experience.
Fortunately, we learn, and I now have four intact
grandsons. I hope you'll do more research before you
have any more boys. My good friend, Dr. Dean Edell, has
three circumcised boys, he met me, and his two youngest
are intact. They're now in their early twenties and
grateful to be intact, just as my grandsons are!
L wrote: Who knows in the years ahead, perhaps
he will want to have his foreskin replaced for
cosmetic reasons but we made the decisions with the best
of intentions at the time.
Marilyn writes:
Yes, of course you did. So did I. I just wish someone
had given me this information prior to the mutilation
and ablation of my sons' foreskin, and I wish my doctor
hadn't lied to me about it. As others have said, "When
we know better, we do better."
By the way, you cannot "replace" the foreskin. Men must
undergo tedious, time-consuming maneuvers to stretch the
amputated stump of their foreskin to recover the glans.
More than a million men have already done this in an
effort to reclaim their wholeness (and their power over
those who subjected them to non-therapeutic surgery when
they were too little to consent, resist, or escape) and
to regain lost sensitivity of the glans. The 20,000
nerve endings that encircle the
opening of the foreskin are lost forever. Sadly, many of
the these men have told me how angry they are with their
parents (most often the mother) for allowing someone to
cut off the most sensitive part of their body -- their
manhood! A number of men have asked me to be their
adopted mother because I have apologized to my sons when
their own mother refused to hear or acknowledge their
claim of pain and the harm inflicted upon them, refusing
to apologize for not protecting them. As
one Jewish psychologist, Rima Laibow, said,
"Circumcision is always perceived by the baby as
betrayal by the mother." She was the one who was
supposed to protect her baby. If we were mother lions,
we would eat anyone who wanted to cut off any part of
our offspring!
L wrote: If I had another son today, I would
make the same decision.
Marilyn writes:
I hope, after reading this, you'll be smarter than I
was. I didn't make the same mistake so that my boys
would match, I still hadn't learned about the harm of
circumcision or the pain it caused them
during and afterward -- when the baby urinates and
defecates into a raw wound until the wound heals.
Children can learn to respect individual differences, so
differences within the family are an
opportunity for learning and growing.
L wrote: In my informal poll of all my male
friends, not one of them cared if they were "in tact",
or had problems with sensitivity (and certainly not one
of their SO had any complaints either).
Marilyn writes:
They simply do not know, men and women alike. European
women ask me, "How can American women have foreplay
without a foreskin to play with?" What's more important
is the way circumcision undermines normal sexual
functioning and how it affects the sex life of both
males and
females. Interestingly, the majority of college students
in human sexuality classes understand the information
immediately... Men are relieved to hear that their
premature ejaculation isn't their fault.
Women are relieved to learn that their partner or
husband isn't just inexperienced or not well read, but
that he's just a selfish lover. Rather, someone did
something to him that has created a problem for both.
One French Canadian woman, who had never been with a
circumcised man until she married an American husband
said, "I think this information you have given me will
save my marriage." Evidently, it did.
L wrote: people needed justification of their
action or inaction. Given that most of the "performance"
enhancing drugs don't work, according to reports I had
read. The whole "performance" problem, seemed
manufactured.
Marilyn writes:
You cannot cut off a part of the penis and have more.
Circumcision reduces penile size and sensitivity. The
"performance" enhancing drugs don't work because they're
trying to fix a penis that can't be fixed or function
properly because it's been altered.
L wrote: On another site that I am on, some
argued that cut men were less likely to transfer some
diseases to their partners - apparently there is some
supporting studies for that work.
Marilyn writes:
Every study done to validate medical excuses was
debunked in 1999 by the American Academy of Pediatrics
Task Force Committee on Circumcision. Not one national
or international medical association in the world
recommends circumcision. Some now, recognizing the harm
and the ethics of cutting off a normal part of the body
of a non-consenting minor, have begun to recommend
against it.
L wrote: But aside from a sex is better one
way or other - just doesn't make the decision cut and
dried (pun intended).
Marilyn writes:
It is cut and dried. Parents do not have a right to
consent to the amputation of normal body parts of a
baby. That body belongs to the baby. Parents don't own
their child. They are supposed to love,
respect, and protect them -- all of them, not just this
part or that...depending upon their whim or cultural
fancy.
L wrote: I am constantly offended that there
is an equation of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) to
circumcision. It isn't the same thing nor are the
reasons to do so even remotely the same, that is a
ridiculous stretch to make an argument.
Marilyn writes:
Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, who has written three books on
female genital mutilation, has created a list of excuses
used to promote genital cutting of infants and children.
They are identical: it's cleaner,
healthier, will prevent infections or other problems,
will allow the person to be marriageable, etc., etc.
Circumcision of children is always fear-based and it's
basically done to control sexuality,
whether the perpetrators (uninformed doctors or parents)
realize it or not.
The World Health Organization has categorized female
genital mutilation into four types. Type I is sunna
circumcision, the excision of the clitoral hood, which
is equivalent to male genital mutilation.
Granted, many of the more severe types of FGM are more
serious and have more serious consequences than male
genital mutilation. However, the screams of boys and
girls undergoing the cut are genderless. Both genders
die from genital cutting. So, this is not an issue of
competitive suffering. Just how much of my little finger
can you cut off before it is a human rights violation?
That's what this issue is about: human rights. Does a
person have a right to the body into which
he or she was born or not? The Constitution of the
United States and many universal human rights documents
are on the side of individual rights. Sadly, where FGM
and MGM are traditional practices, the laws are not
implemented because a society is duped by its own
cultural
practices.
L wrote: Unless someone can come up with a
scientific reason better than cosmetic reasons, or for
sex, I will remain comfortable that DH and I made the
best decision for our lovely little boy!
Marilyn writes:
If, what I've already said, haven't been enough to at
least persuade you to continue researching the subject,
perhaps the following are points you have not yet
considered:
Circumcision is where sex and violence meet for the
first time, and it imprints the connection between the
brain and penis with pain instead of the pleasure that
organ is meant to experience.
-
The
foreskin is a normal, protective, sexually
functioning organ.
-
Circumcision is an amputative surgery with inherent
risks, including
hemorrhage, infection, surgical mishap, and death.
-
Circumcision is painful -- even when analgesia is
used, and a baby is
left to urinate and defecate into a raw wound while
the wound heals.
-
Circumcision leaves both physical and psychological
scars that last a
lifetime, even if a man doesn't recognize the
consequences.
-
Circumcision denies a male's right to a fully
functioning penis and
leaves him with decreased sensitivity, pleasure, and
sexual fulfillment.
-
Circumcision denies a male's right to genital
integrity and
self-determination.
Basically,
circumcision is not a nice thing to do to a baby, or the
man he becomes.
Karl Meninger said, "What we do to children, they will
do to society."
Gandhi said,
"If we ever are to have real peace, we must begin with
the children."
I know that none of this is easy to hear or accept.
However, since 85% of the males in the world have all
the penis they were born with without drastic
consequences and circumcision is a
billion-dollar-a-year industry -- and those who are
profiting from it are not educating the
consumer/parents, we should at least be suspicious.
Then, when we learn about the important protective
functions (keeping the urinary tract sterile and the
glans soft and moist) and sexual functions (providing
the tissue to accommodate a full erection and the nerve
endings for full enjoyment and satisfaction) of the
foreskin, we should reconsider a surgery that has only
be in style for the majority of males since WWII. For
how many millenia were boys left intact? How would we
have evolved had there been something wrong with this
part of the body?
Please read the information at:
www.nocirc.org
www.cirp.org (our library)
www.circumstitions.com
www.SexuallyMutilatedChild.org
and Tina's website, too. (
www.fresnofamily.com/pgbirth/circ.htm )
As a regretful mother of three circumcised boys, as an
educated nurse who understands the importance of the
functions of the foreskin and it's impact on normal sex
for males and their partners, and as an avid activist
for genital integrity who has listened to the sadness
and depression of thousands of circumcised men who wish
they had had the choice, I ask you to please continue to
read about the subject until you come to understand why
it is crucial for us to respect the body and rights of
our precious sons. We need to leave this very personal
decision with them.
Sincerely,
Marilyn
Marilyn Fayre Milos, RN, Executive Director
National
Organization of Circumcision Information Resource
Centers
This from a chatter on one of my
groups:
Hi Tina,
I think you're right we need to learn about the
effects of circumcision and that parents need to
make informed decisions. I just have to say I need
to point out your statement though "That's the
legacy of what we've done to our precious husbands,
brothers, and sons..." I think we need to
recognize this isn't about what mothers have done to
their children. I think your statement perpetuates
mother blame and we need to be very careful of that.
Just like many other things that have been done to
in the name of 'health', circumcision is another
medical intervention. Many people were told that men
that weren't circumcised were 'not clean' or if we
didn't have them circumcised as infants they would
only have to have it done as adults because the
likelihood of infections and how much more painful
that would be. I think we need to realize also that
sometimes this procedure was done out of religious
beliefs or
pressures from partners that their son look like
them. I am very much in support of looking all the
'medical' practices that are done in the name of
'better' health and I think all parents need to
educate themselves on all areas and this is just
one. But
lets be careful not to now lay the blame of "our"
father, sons, brothers on the shoulders of women,
let's put it where it belongs on the medicalization
of childbirth and child rearing.
(NOTE:
It was Marilyn's comment, not mine, that she was
referring to.)
Marilyn's response:
My
comment, "That's the legacy of what we've done to
our precious husbands, brothers, and sons..." was
not meant to reflect back on women or mothers as a
source of blame. The "we've" was meant to refer to
us as a "society" not us as a "person."
As I've so often said before, when I first began my
work, after the trauma of witnessing a circumcision,
I told everyone I knew what I'd seen. And, I soon
realized that this is a message no one wants to
hear. What man wants to learn that the best part of
his penis was amputated, probably without analgesia,
when he was too little to consent, resist, or
escape, and thrown into the trash? What mother wants
to learn her son suffered needlessly? And, what
doctor wants to admit he's got blood on his hands? I
couldn't think of how to tell people what was being
done to babies behind closed doors without upsetting
them. Finally, I realized that being upset is the
right response! The only way we can bring an end
to the atrocity is to name it, talk about it, and
condemn it! We need to do this without blame and/or
shame, but, because we have been raised in a
shame-based society, people will still feel guilty,
no matter how the information is presented. Perhaps
that's one of the reasons I'm a good person to do
the work. I didn't know enough to protect my own
sons. I trusted my doctor -- who lied to me!
So, it wouldn't behoove me to sit in judgment. And,
perhaps, because I was lied to, that's why I was so
shocked when I witnessed a circumcision. After all,
I'd been told it "didn't hurt, only took a minute,
would protect" my sons from a myriad of ills that
would befall them if they weren't circumcised. I
began telling parents, or anyone else who would
listen, because I didn't want one more boy to
suffer. I didn't want one more mother to feel like I
did!
What most people (certainly, many feminists) don't
realize is that, in a dominator/patriarchal society,
the male often is the first victim. As Miriam
Pollack says, circumcision disempowers the mother
when her maternal/protective instincts are paramount
because the males take her precious baby to
"perfect" him -- as if she hasn't made a perfect
baby, and it disempowers and victimizes the male
baby by the violence of the act, both aspects
providing the perfect foundation for a dominator
society.
When we, as women, are empowered to protect our
babies, even from their wounded fathers, we are
teaching our husbands about their role as protectors
of their family and, by loving, respecting, and
protecting our sons, they will grow up to be gentle,
loving, protecting men.
So, as gently as we can, we must bear witness to the
truth of pain and harm inherent in circumcision,
which itself is anything but gentle. We must comfort
those parents who didn't know enough to protect
their infants and children, and we must comfort
those men who were victimized by a senseless, brutal
act.
We stand alone, those of us living today with the
profound realization about the torture and
mutilation inherent in circumcision. We -- males and
females alike -- must live with the lifelong
consequences of an unnecessary atrocity. However, we
are also blessed because we are the ones who can
transform our pain of this truth by bringing this
harmful traditional practice to an end.
So, please keep talking. We are making a difference!
In response to
this article, which I asked Marilyn to comment on:
Dear Tina,
The North American researchers who began promoting the
studies and got others on board with their "scientific
theories" were circumcision advocates before they used
HIV/AIDS as their latest excuse to promote circumcision.
The studies themselves are questionable. Stopping the
studies early is an old ploy to get the statistics that
one wants to attain.
Please read my
Letter From the Editor in the 2007 NOCIRC Annual
Newsletter to see what I said about curbing the
spread of HIV/AIDS. It's been done successfully in
Thailand, Senegal, and Eastern Uganda without
circumcision, which is more expensive and less effective
than existing interventions.
The excuses for circumcision always have been consistent
with the dreaded disease of the time: fear of
masturbation, germs, being dirty, penile cancer,
cervical cancer, and spreading STDs. When all those
excuses were debunked by the 1970s, and people began
challenging routine medical procedures, e.g., radical
mastectomy, routine tonsillectomy, episiotomy, and
circumcision, the next excuse was emotional, "You don't
want him to look different in the locker room, do you?"
No one suggested that excuse when circumcision
infiltrated western medicine in the mid-1800s to prevent
masturbation and fathers were intact while sons were
circumcised. It was simply the latest excuse to promote
what had become a billion-dollar-a-year industry. (Watch
out! The price tag just went up as this folly -- which
never worked in the USA to prevent HIV/AIDS -- is being
exported to Africa.) During the 1980s, the excuse for
circumcision was that it would prevent UTIs, which
happen to less than 2% of infants and, when a girl gets
a UTI, she's treated with antibiotics, but, when a boy
gets a UTI, they want to cut off the protective,
sensual, and sexual part of his penis. Why? Finally,
today, the greatest fear is HIV/AIDS, so it has become
our excuse to perpetuate the practice -- and, now, it's
on unsuspecting African men. It's an easy sell when
you're afraid, and what could be more scary than the
AIDS pandemic in Africa?
Sadly, circumcision will not prevent HIV/AIDS, but how
many men will suffer, be maimed, or die because of this
unconscionable push to satisfy the agenda of white,
circumcised males who are busy banking their research
funding? Additionally, following circumcision and the
desensitization of the penis that results from it,
condom use will be resisted. How long will it take
Africans to realize that circumcision won't prevent
HIV/AIDS in Africa any more than it did in the USA? And,
once Africans realize they've been hood-winked (so to
speak), will they ever accept help from the west again?
This is a very serious, if not deadly, situation! It's
all the more disturbing when we recognize that, by the
time babies who are circumcised today to prevent AIDS
become sexually active, there will be a vaccine...and
their sex life will have been compromised for naught.
Marilyn
I received this email
from someone on one of my groups that I posted the
recent
penile desensitivity study on:
I
just want to say that it is completely false any
studies that show that circumcision causes problems
with sensitivity or sex in any way. For every study
that shows it does there are three that are from
more reputable groups that disagree. The sad fact
is that parents are more worried about sex problems
in their sons than the fact that you are by choice
mutilating your son when you agree to a
circumcision. If women had a partial labial
circumcision we could do studies that show we would
be less likely to get yeast infections because of
more air. Would that be a good reason to chop up
your daughter? NO. Please continue to speak out
about this hypocrisy. But the facts are that men
who can't perform in bed have other issues. Many
countries where circumcision is quite rare have the
same complaints about men that women do here in the
US. It is very simple. Cosmetic, elective surgery
on infant males should be banned.
To which I asked
Marilyn to respond, and here it is:
Yes, of
course, the bottom-line of the issue is human
rights. The question being: Do parents have a right
to consent to the amputation of a part of their
son's normal body, or does his body belong to the
boy himself?
That being said, it is impossible to cut off
normal, sexually functioning tissue without
interfering with normal sexual functioning. You
cannot cut off part of a penis and have more.
Circumcision decreases the penis in size and
sensitivity.
Yes, of
course, these are not the basic reasons for
protecting a boy from genital cutting but
the studies we did are accurate. Dr. Dean Edell
called it "...the best study ever done..."
The study demonstrates that the circumcised penis
has less sensitivity than the intact penis. Of
course it does, it has fewer nerve endings. That's a
no brainer -- fewer nerve endings, less feeling --
and the study was an exercise in proving what common
sense makes so obvious.
What is left -- the remnant -- of the foreskin is
more sensitive than the whole of the glans (the
sensitivity of which is likened, by researchers
Taylor and Cold, to be about the same sensitivity as
the heel of the foot).
In most countries of the world, the attributes of
the foreskin are not mentioned, it is simply a
protective and sensual organ that gets normal use.
In just the same way, we don't have to defend and
describe the eye lid -- exalting it's attributes,
it's double-sided structure, its epiderm and mucosal
tissues, and its immunological functions. However,
because we live in a sexually repressed,
foreskin-phobic society, we must illustrate the
advantageous functions of the foreskin, which are
little-known in a society where males have a scar
instead of a foreskin.
So, yes, the reason we are defending the rights of
baby boys is because it is their right to have a
whole body. And, following 150 years of the
maligning and amputation of an important genital
structure, we also have to describe the structures,
functions, development, and care of that structure
-- in other words, educate.
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