Circumstitions

- Anon

- Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves, p183

The variety of reasons given for male genital cutting (and the irrationality of most of them) is amazing. Put them all together and your mind will boggle. When I started collecting them, I thought I'd find about 30 "reasons", and that seemed strange enough. The number has since passed 550.

Here are the major categories, in approximate order of frequency, with some choice examples.

1. Conformity
(but see also non-conformity)

Because "a boy should look like his father"
Because all the nice families are having it done.
Because it is a cultural norm.

2. Medical

To prevent or cure alcoholism, arthritic hips, asthma, balanitis, blindness, boils, cervical cancer, chicken pox, epididymitis, epilepsy, gallstones, gout, headaches, hernia, HIV, hydrocephaly, hydrocoele, hypertension, insanity, kidney disease, kleptomaina, leprosy, moral depravity, paraphimosis, penile cancer, plague, phimosis, posthitis, prostate cancer, rectal prolapse, rheumatism, schistosoma, spinal curvature, stomach infection, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and/or yeast infections.

 

A survey of UK hospitals in 2010 found the following diagnoses given as primary indications for circumcision: Balanitis xerotica obliterans 41 Balanoposthitis 9 Bladder, unspecified 2 Diverticulum of bladder 1 Hyperplasia of prostate 1 Lichen sclerosus et atrophicus 1 Malignant neoplasm of kidney, except renal pelvis 1 Other inflammatory disorders of penis 2 Other specified disorders of penis 4 Penis 2 Prepuce 1 [Those two are normally considered necessary but not sufficent diagnoses.] Redundant prepuce, phimosis and paraphimosis 186 Routine and ritual circumcision 103 Scar conditions and fibrosis of skin 1 Sterilization 1 Urethral stricture, unspecified 1 Vascular disorders of male genital organs 1 Total 358

3. Religious

To draw down the Divine light, bring down the soul of holiness into the body...
Because it is a good Christian thing to do.
Because Mohammed was "born circumcised".
Because a baboon the Egyptians considered sacred is "born circumcised".

4. Sexual

Because his mother and her friends prefer circumcised men for sexual pleasure.
Because it enhances sensitivity.
Because it reduces sensitivity.

5. Aesthetic

Because it makes it uniformly pink.
Because it makes the penis look more modern

6. Irrational

Because the foreskin will fall off if a baby is put into a hot tub of water for a bath.
Because it only seems natural.
To prevent "psychological trauma due to castration anxiety".

7. Instructive

To teach him that the world is a painful place.

8. Submission

Because his master ordered it.

9. Pre-emptive

Because it will have to be done sooner or later.

10. To benefit someone else

To provide collagen for cosmetic surgery on lips and cheeks.

11. Cleanliness

To stop him dribbling when he pees.

12. Control

"Because [my sister's] doctor said having his glans exposed would help calm him down a little".

13. Revenge

Because his mother had an episiotomy. ("I was cut, why shouldn't he be?")

14. Financial

Because a military surgeon "wanted to get back into practice because she could get $100 apiece for them in private practice."

15. Initiation

To prepare him to receive tribal secrets.
To separate him from his mother.

16. Non-conformity

Because he belongs to the upper class.
Because "I kind of think it is 'American'... in the early years of this great nation, we took pride in BEING DIFFERENT thon ether nations".

17. Concealment

To pass as a Muslim.

18. Punitive

To spite his absent/divorced father.
To get even for having been raped as a teenager.

19. Symbolic

To make the penis look like that of a kangaroo.

20. Status

Because he will be prevented from speaking in public if his (Samoan) father is intact.
"If you ain't circumcised, you ain't shit."
Because he's an orphan.

21. Reproductive

To prevent infertility.

22. Reward

To use his foreskin for a dowry.
In exchange for not having to change his diapers.

23. Convenience

Because "we just do it. It's better this way." (to a man being operated on for kidney stones)
Because he is under anaesthetic already for another operation.
Because his mother was having another baby, so they could go in together.

24. Iatrogenic

To treat paraphimosis caused by improper insertion of a catheter.

25. Ignorance

To make his penis bigger.
"...to protect the boy or man from the psychological trauma of an abnormally small penis"
Because it's a law.
Because his mother had never seen an intact penis and thought it was deformed.

26. Mistake

Because of an "accident on medical records..." According to the "paperwork guidelines, I was not supposed to be Circ."

27. Pity

Because the father "just didn't want to argue with her after she'd been through all that suffering."

28. Prudery

Because his mother thought that cleaning him was too much like masturbating him.

29. Sympathetic Magic

To give him the appearance of permanent arousal.
To remove the female element from him.

30. Vague

"She's not even clear on [it]. She just wants it, you know."
"[I] thought [he] might as well be circ'd."

(All of these reasons have been seriously offered, or even led to circumcisions. All spelling and punctuation is sic.)