When our son was born, each day at least one nurse would ask us if we were going to have him circumcised. Daily. Occassionally a doctor would ask, but I am sure it’s just so they would have a rough idea of their workload for their current shift. But the nurses…a different nurse each time, and sometimes several times in the same 5 minute visit she’d be asked if he was going to get ‘the chop’.
Tellingly, each time they asked they made a point of not even looking at me – and I’m the one who may or may not have been snipped in the past! When asked about why we should do it, the closest answer we’d get was “it’s cleaner”.
I don’t know about the people that read this, but I find that hard to believe. It’s hard to clean a small piece of skin that’s constantly in contact with sterile liquid anyway, and just takes a quick wipe in the shower? There has to be more to this than meets the eye, so to speak.
Thinking back over the debates I’ve witnessed and participated in, I remembered that there is no conclusive evidense either way for cutting or leaving the skin au’natural. When I got home the first time after we’d been questioned, I poked around online to see if there had been any new advances in the art of almost-castration. Funnily enough, there hasn’t been any improvement in mankind’s knowledge in this field at all. So to hear these well-educated nurses espouse something so irreversible for something so ill-known was quite a disappointment.
At the very least I can acknowledge that to some people on both sides of the fence that to cut and to not cut carry some aesthetic benefits. A circumcised penis may look good to some people, and to others an uncut penis looks great as well. Medical science tells us that there is no loss of sexual sensation, unlike a female circumcision (usually the euphemism for female castration) where the clitoris is removed as well to prevent sexual pleasure and thus discourage extramarital affairs. This doesn’t matter for male circumcision.
I can’t force circumcision upon somebody else if I’m not sure I like it even being done to me. But I’m a squeamish person, I’m not able to hide from that fact. I cannot even watch something as clinically clean as CSI:Miami; when our son gets his immunisation injections in August I won’t even be there due to my own irrational fear of sharp metallic objects entering my flesh. What gives me the right to force a baby with no sense of self to undergo such an uncomfortable procedure, when I wouldn’t even do it myself? Methinks that some people are unwilling to put themselves in the shoes of the infant boy when this topic comes up.
Without any compelling medical requirements for personal safety now or in the long run, circumcision is still ‘suggested’ on a daily basis to hundreds of babies each day. Is this the way modern society should be run? Although the procedure itself could be considered mundane enough to be run-of-the-mill, it’s comparable to tattooing a red colour onto a baby girl’s mouth in place of lipstick because of the percieved psychological benefits of “it makes her feel better, costs less and doesn’t need to be touched up daily to look nice”.
Circumcision is forever. Leave that decision up to your boy. If medical science comes along and is able to quantifiably tell you that circumcision increases his I.Q. by 400 and grants automatic charm skills – then yes, circumcise. If people are going to just recomend the procedure for basic appearance looks and ‘cleanliness’, then you’re going to have to resign yourself to the fact that your child may want to decide that for himself one day. It is irreversible, and he will love you even more for letting him choose.
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