(This contains sexual subjecr matter, anyone squeamish about that stuff should probably not read this)
Imagine you are not from earth. You are an extraterrestrial being,
viewing the earthlings and observing their behavior since prehistoric times.
If you observe the beginning of an individual life,
you would notice some of these curious creatures are very insistent about
surgically removing a piece of the reproductive organ of their newborn male
infants. Why is this? Is the organ inherently defective and needs
to be fixed immediately after birth for the sake of the child’s health?
No, the health of the child is normally unaffected when the organ is kept
intact. As with the other humans you have been observing for hundreds of
thousands of years, the organ functions as the organ is evolutionarily supposed
to without the operation being performed. So the infant is not being operated
on for any sort of immediate medical reason. To you, this action is beginning
to look more and more bizarre and morbid. What reasons do the humans give
for this kind of mutilating behaviour? The proponents of this infant
surgery will give some preventative medical reasons for its practice. But
the medical reasons for it never stand alone. The major reasons for the
macabre mutilation of infants are almost always religious traditions and social
conformity. Herein resides the ultimate reason for circumcision.
Social norms and ancient traditions trump logic and medical science as so
often the case in the complicated world of humanity. Why does this
archaic ritual still remain in common practice in the 21st century?
Many of think of circumcision as the prototypical Jewish tradition and
it very well is. The reasons for the removal of the foreskin of the penis
are given as a supposed covenant between the biblical patriarch, Abraham and
God. The Hebrew bible gives several references for the divine commandment
of circumcision as an order to be followed for all of those believed to be
Abraham’s descendants. Muslims, who follow the Hebrew texts as
official cannon, also perform this birth rite.
Here we have the clear use of body modifications to indicate insiders
and outsiders to Judaism and Islam. But the particular religion of Judaism
is not believed to be originator of the practice. In some more primitive
tribal societies, circumcision is also an apparent phenomenon. The
Agikuyu people of Kenya use both male and female genital mutilation as a rite
of passage from childhood into adulthood. As a consequence,
the practice of circumcision creates a social norm of the image of the ideal
adult for that particular tribe. It creates a closer sense of community
and commonality among the Agikuyu people. The surrounding tribes likely
don’t follow the same rites of passage as the others, so this creates a sense
of xenophobia to people who don’t look as you do. The Jewish tradition
also has the same effect, with a more authoritative reason. In more
primitive groups, the line between religious traditions and practiced social
norms are almost non-existent. So in tribal societies, traditions like
circumcision are most likely practiced without much authority behind them with any
more than the traditional practices and the teachings of the elder members.
In societies with the use of written language at their disposal, reasons
for traditional practice become more concrete and appear to have better
authority to back them up. So when the more sedentary agricultural
societies of the Middle East began to write down their stories, beliefs and
traditions, the concept of foreskin removal began to appear in writing as a
commandment from a deity. This concept of written script gave the social
norm a much more strong foundation to lay its roots. The idea no longer
has to fester in people’s plastic memories, only to be transmitted orally.
This is easily susceptible to be forgotten or misinterpreted in a very
short period of time. Script allowed ideas and traditions to be copied
and performed accurately and reliably for a relatively long time.
I’m fascinated with the concept of “memes”, and the way my analysis of
the prevalence of circumcision is breaking down, is beginning to look like its
influence is starting to seep into my writing. Oxford biologist and
(in)famed atheist Richard Dawkins coined the idea of a “meme” in his book the
selfish gene and expanded upon it as a possible reason for religious
beliefs in The God Delusion. A meme is the idea that human created
concepts can be passed from person to person, very similar to the way genes
behave in evolutionary biology. The idea
of memes is also explained very well in Daniel Dennett’s book Breaking The Spell. Although
Dennett concedes that; “...no one should
anticipate that a new science of memetics would overturn or replace all
existing models and explanations of cultural phenomena developed by the social
sciences”. Nevertheless, the idea is very fun to play
with as a tool to analyze the appearance of irrational practices in society
The Jewish and Muslim tradition is not the only way that circumcision
has been carried on by a religious notion.
The practice as it exists today in North America has more to do with the
dogmas of Christianity than of Judaism or Islam. In the days of Victorian England,
urbanization was a novel concept and the once rural populations poured into
newly developing cities. The fast
expanding cities had no infrastructure to deal with sewage or waste. The cities soon became dirty and disease
ridden places. Medical science was still
largely unaware of viruses or bacteria, and practiced misguided techniques to
deal with illnesses. Unsurprisingly the
main culprit for ailments was just general filth. Daily bathing was not a common hygienic
practice in those days so parts of the body susceptible to harboring “filth”
were considered very unclean. The
foreskin of the penis is a place where filth can accumulate without regular
cleaning. Thus, medical science began
considering removal of the foreskin as an option for better hygiene. Couple the consequences of living in a dirty,
urban area with a Christian hysteria over masturbation and you have the perfect
“host” for the meme of circumcision to thrive.
So rampant was the fear of masturbation, that many diseases were
attributed to its practice. Robert Darby
points out in A Surgical Temptation
that in Britain, diseases were literally invented and attributed to people
masturbating. Spermarorrhea was one such invented illness which caused men to
ejaculate “too much” and the cure for this disease was to practice chastity and
abstain from masturbation[4]. Unsubstantiated claims of blindness and other
sicknesses being caused by masturbation spread for generations. Even when I was growing up, rumors on the
playground were that masturbation caused hairy palms.
It is demonstrably much easier for an uncircumcised male to masturbate
whenever he wants than one who does not have a foreskin. The foreskin is naturally in its place to
have the penis ready for intercourse or manual stimulation at a moment’s
notice. The foreskin is also the home of
a huge percentage of sexual stimulation nerve endings. The removal of it causes a decrease in sexual
pleasure for both men and women.(A circumcised penis has less skin and less
surface area to interact with a woman’s vagina than an intact penis.) With the
emergence of circumcision as a practice no longer that was just a ritual of
Judaism or Islam, it was soon looked upon as a possible solution to deterring
boys of Christian parents from masturbating.
In the mid-late 1800s, a man named John Harvey Kellogg was one of the major influences on the current
practices of circumcision in North America (If the name Kellogg looks familiar
to you, it’s probably because it is. You
might have eaten a bowl of his flakey, corn based invention for breakfast this
morning.) He was a promoter of
circumcision as a measure to deter masturbation as well as to discourage
pre-marital sex. He wasn’t a fan of
sexuality in general because he also encouraged the application of acid to a
woman’s clitoris to decrease her sexual pleasure.
As history rolled on
into the 20th century, science made great leaps and bounds towards
better medical practices, but circumcision remained as a common practice in
America. The virus/meme of circumcision
had piggybacked from oral transmission to written texts to religious dogma’s
and now to medical science. Anti-septic
technology and safe anesthesia decimated the need for necessary amputation
other body parts in medical practice. We
now have excellent hygiene practices like daily (perhaps ritualistic?) bathing
and showering. It eliminates any concern
of foreskin being something unclean. Only in rare cases of serious infection is
circumcision administered as a necessary surgery. Still, circumcision persists as something
some doctors recommend for newborn baby boys.
The only modern rhetoric for medically based circumcision is for the
decreased chance of contracting STIs later in sexually mature life. It is even being promoted as a tool to cut
the spread of AIDS in Africa. This may
have a worse effect on health than it helps it.
Most AIDS ridden places in Africa already have very poor medical
facilities and would have a greater chance of botching the circumcision or the
child contracting an infection afterwards.
But the data used for
supporting this recommendation is barely even statistically significant, in
fact the 1999 statement of circumcision policy by the American Academy of
Pediatrics say “these data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal
circumcision.” Even though in the USA, numbers of circumcised
newborns have fallen to record low rates (54.5% in 2009),
the numbers are still shockingly high for the scant amount of science backing
up the procedure. Plus, the amputation
of a part of the body for the sake of slightly higher rates of disease
prevention would be a ludicrous idea if it were any other part of the body. Would anyone recommend removing woman’s
perfectly healthy breasts in order to decrease her chances of breast cancer? The obvious fact of the matter is that a
circumcision is not a replacement for a condom for stopping AIDS and other
STIs.
As far as the current religious practice of circumcision, there are political battles in some places in the US to ban even its religious practice for health reasons. This resulting partially from the consequences of the traditional procedure of Jewish circumcision (A rabbi will suck the blood off of a freshly cut penis with his mouth). Incidents have occurred where the rabbi infected the infants with herpes and caused their deaths.
The fact that sexuality is such as huge part of people’s lives is
probably why circumcision still remains as a cultural norm in the western
world. Any other discredited medical
idea are usually discarded and replaced without any controversy. But men are very emotionally sensitive about
the looks and size of their penises. A
social trend that has every other man with a different looking penis would be
very hard to buck. I know personally
that as a kid I was in the visible minority in school gym change rooms and I
really did feel like a freak for many years.
Rumors of what a female’s preferences are only worsened that
feeling. But we know that parents always
want what is best for their children, and wanting their sons to feel accepted
with their peers and their sexual partners later in life is a major
factor. As well as fathers wanting their
son’s penises to resemble their own.
This social trend of sexual identity is self-re-enforced, generation
after generation. Well- meaning and
non-religious parents will circumcise their baby boys strictly for social
reasons.
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