Last week, I attended my first bris. Given my semi-rigid belief that generally people are born with what they need and we should just accept that bodies are hairy and not typically in need of improvement (e.g. - breast or butt implants), it seems like I should be against circumcision. Oh contraire, mon frere. I'm no connoisseur when it comes to penises, but I do prefer them to be foreskin free. The whole smegma thing just grosses me out too much and I don't trust most guys to be clean enough. Yeah, it makes me a big fat fucking hypocrite. Oh well.
Despite my support for circumcision (not that I am against the uncircumcised), I was a little queasy when I thought about attending a bris. Due to my incompetence (I forget that cars need to be cleared of ice before they are safe to drive and one must budget time for the task), I arrived at the bris a wee bit late. As I was taking my boots off in the hallway outside my friend's parents' apartment, I heard the baby begin to wail. "Oh, I guess I missed it," I thought with a mixture of relief and regret. I was wrong - who knows why the baby was screaming his sweet little head off at that point - and eventually witnessed part of the procedure. Oddly enough, the baby barely cried as his foreskin was removed. He was then given a nice rag soaked with liquor to suck on, and drunk, he slept like, well, a baby. It was interesting.
This past weekend, Brother-in-Law (BiL) and Sister-in-Law (SiL) borrowed our PT Cruiser, Fred the Red, to drive to New Jersey for their new nephew's bris. I'm pretty sure that this was the first bris that BiL attended, other than his own, which I am sure was a very different experience. I don't know exactly what happened at this bris, but BiL must've been either overjoyed at his nephew's pact with God or distraught at the penis chopping, because he had an overenthusiastic encounter with a curb that circumcised Fred' wheel well and prevented him from driving straight. (While none of this was funny on Sunday, the little scenario I postulated here is sure slaying me now.)
My point is that I don't think circumcision really hurts anyone (unless its botched, which is always a possibility), and at the same time, I completely understand why a parent would not circumcise a kid. When I wrote on BlogHer a long time ago about a study that showed some very minuscule health benefits from circumcision, some extremists accused me of being a callous genital mutilating monster.* Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also help kill unborn babies. What can I say? I'm just a bad character all around when it comes to the defenseless.
*It strikes me as hilariously ironic that one women yelled at me about the sanctity of preserving genitals as nature intended and months later emailed me about her scheduled Brazilian wax, but I digress.
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You are totally wrong about the attractiveness of an intact penis, and if your viewpoint is valid, I'd like to hear you explain why there are so many people in China and India. (Oh, those are male supremacist societies, where women have to accept that, and worse. Well, could be.)
ReplyDeleteBut here's a story, from some Jewish source or other, which I enjoyed and found again by remembering that it contains the term "organic carrot". Of course I say it's comical and not sad at all:
Here is one example, which would be comical if it weren't so sad, from "Mothering" magazine:
"Last year a baby boy was born to Jewish parents. The parents wanted to give the child a Bris without inflicting the pain of circumcision. On the eighth day friends were invited to their home. A friend who is a rabbinical student read the appropriate scriptures, blessed the child with a Hebrew name, and at the time of circumcision, a large organic carrot was produced and the tip severed. It was a joyous moment for all involved... Perhaps this is the alternative some of you may have been looking for."
Um, it is called a personal preference. I was pretty fucking clear about that. I'm sorry if you don't like it. I may not be interested in things that you find attractive, either, and lots of people are attracted to things that neither of us find attractive. As a result, there are a lot of people around the world decorating and modifying themselves very differently. And unless there's serious harm done(like, blinding someone or cutting off every part of their genitals so that the person may never know sexual pleasure, only pain), I don't have the right to tell people what to find attractive.
ReplyDeleteI also was pretty clear that I can see why people would not want to circumcise a kid and that there's pretty much no reason to do so. Look past your personal biases and try to understand that, please.
The carrot story is amusing. Thanks for sharing. It's a nice alternative for people who chose to not circumcise, but want to do more than just a baby naming ceremony. If more people opt for it, good for them. If not, so it goes.
i hardly think you can compare an adult shaving their pubic hair, which grows back, and cutting thousands of nerve endings off of an unconsenting infant!
ReplyDeletemany babies appear to be sleeping after a circumcision, but babies cry about everything, they would cry if you pinched them. if you cut off one of the most sensitive parts of their penis, and permanently expose the head of their penis which TRUST me.. is way to sensitive to deal with constant exposure... they would normally cry. babies that seem to be asleep are not in a healthy state. its like a state of shock. read this article:
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9712/23/circumcision.anesthetic/
now, women ALSO develop smegma.. and it develops in more areas with her, between all the folds of labia, and inside the hood of her clitoris. its HARDER for a woman to clean all of that then for a man to simply pull back the foreskin for 5 seconds in the shower.
its not YOUR right to assume a man is incapable of SUCH basic hygiene, and so to subject him to a surgery that will leave him permanently without virtually all of the fine-touch nerve endings in his penis.
the foreskin may not be sensitive in the way that the head of the penis is, instead, it has entirely different types of nerve endings that provide different sensations than anything left on a circumcised penis. it is said a foreskin has about the same amount of nerve endings as all 10 fingertips combined.
so, in MY opinion, your reasons for supporting the procedure just don't make sense to me. perhaps you just didn't realize what the procedure entailed, and if thats the case, who can blame you.
but if you hold onto those reasons after better understanding whats really happening, that is incredibly shallow... and in my opinion, unjustifiable on your part.
im sorry if i offended you in my comment, by the way. i just got worked up.
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