As a feminist, I believe in consent and autonomy for all bodies — not just women’s bodies.
When my husband and I looked at the screen in the ultrasound room and saw that we were having a girl, we both breathed a sigh of relief. Not because we didn’t want to have a boy, but because it meant the circumcision debate was off the table.
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We both knew I was steadfast in my opposition to circumcision. Not only would I not change my mind, but it would be a hard discussion to broach with our Jewish families.
Were we to have a boy, we would have been expected to have what is called a bris — a ritual ceremony where a rabbi circumcises and blesses a baby boy on his eighth day of life. Meaning everyone would know if we decided not to circumcise our son.
But if it’s a tradition in our families and religion to circumcise a boy at birth, why am I so against it?
I wasn’t always against circumcision, but I had also never thought much about it. It was the norm within my family and with most of the men I had sexual contact with early on. I’d heard the stories about uncut penises being ‘gross,’ and I didn’t know any better, so I believed them. (Post continues after gallery.)
Pregnant celebs of 2015.
It wasn’t until college, when two things happened that made me reconsider circumcision: the first was that I slept with an uncut guy and found that it wasn’t gross. It was actually kind of awesome.
Top Comments
I'm just rereading this article. I'm confused by where the question "What's your opinion of male circumcision?". Then, there is a picture that's not part of the article. Under that, is a rating system. I thought it was asking for opinions on circumcision, so I clicked "angry". The results that popped up, however, made me think it was asking about the article, instead. I think it's an excellent article!
I've been against it for more than 40 years. I was married to an intact man, raised three intact sons and one circumcised son, and spent hundreds of hours in medical libraries, studying everything I could find about it, back in the 70s and 80s. Back then, American medical literature had very little about circumcision and essentially nothing about foreskin. However, literature from the UK had a great deal and so did the lit from Scandanavia, much of which was published in English. At that time, the UK was still learning, having adopted infant circumcision when we did (although rates never got as high), and abandoning it, mid 20th century, when former beliefs about it were found to be faulty. Scandanavia had never adopted it, nor even considered it. That was where I learned that infant foreskins don't retract and that no attempt should be made to retract them. One of my sons was adopted all ready circumcised. Seeing what it had done to him, especially compared to my three intact sons, took away any vestige of doubt I ever had about the acceptability of the procedure. It's cruel, harmful and has no benefit whatsoever. It is the intact foreskin that has benefits; many of them! American doctors would be locked up if they even made a tiny nick in a little girl's clitoris, to draw blood from it, for a cultural ritual, as they should. Strapping a baby boy down and spending 10 minutes tearing, crushing, and cutting their penises is much, much worse than the vast majority of female circumcision that takes place in the world. The claims made of "prevention" are ridiculous. Tissue that has been cut off and thrown in the garbage can, can never get infected, but there are all kinds of body parts that people can get by without, most of which are much more prone to problems than foreskins, but Americans would never dream of having them cut off of their children. We need to stop making lame excuses and start protecting ALL of our children from the cruelty, pain and harm of circumcision. All we need to do is STOP DOING IT!