A. E. Housman, poet A Shropshire Lad
When shall I be dead and rid
of the wrong my father did?
Housman and his brothers were circumcised in 1873,
when Alfred was 14, at the command of his father, who had recently
remarried. His brothers "made open complaint...of the ill-treatment
which had befallen them" according to his sister. Housman's own
reaction is not recorded, but several facts are suggestive. His poetry
is preoccupied with "lads" (who would virtually all have been intact)
and their death by violence, he was fascinated by Greek and Roman
antiquities, especially nude male statues, his work was the restoration
of incomplete and mutilated texts, and he told an enquirer his poetry
was the result of a physical condition.
Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes Surgeon, scholar, bibliophile
Both were circumcised in childhood (Geoffrey at
three; if at
the same time, Maynard was seven) to stop them from masturbating.
Geoffrey never forgave their parents.
While in his early twenties [~1920], Capra
contacted a raging case of gonorrhoea
after a one-night stand with a woman he met at a party in San
Francisco.
He sought treatment at an underground "clap-shack" and appeared to have
the problem under control until - wham! - another anonymous sexual
encounter left him with with a maddeningly itchy penis once more. This
time, the quack doctor Capra consulted suggested a radical remedy:
adult
circumcision.
"This guy wants to make a Jew out of me," Capra
groused to a
friend, before agreeing to undergo the procedure, which was conducted
in a makeshift operating room with a shot of alcohol as the anesthetic.
To
Capra's dismay, the make-believe mohel proved a little too aggressive
with
the scalpel, removing not only his foreskin but every inch of flesh
around
the head of his phallus. [De-gloving]
"The son of a bitch cut everything off!" Capra
later wailed. The operation left Capra hunched over in agony, bleeding
into a rag -- and sexually crippled for the rest of his life.
"That
finished women for me," he later admitted. "It practically wrecked my
life." As a consequence of the botched surgical procedure, Capra had to
endure excruciating pain with every erection.
He also ejaculated
prematurely. "I became a lousy lay," the director confessed. "I just go
in
and bang bang bang - there it goes. I can't hold back. No woman likes
to
be fondled and then have somebody squirt all over her."
Over the years, Capra consulted numerous doctors
to try and overcome his sexual
dysfunction. With some effort (and the saintlike presence of his second
wife, Lucille) he was finally able to become "Master of his domain" so
to
speak.
"I finally learned how to do it and hold back," he
said. "It took a
lot of brainwork." By the time he was in his late eighties, he declared
himself cured, telling interviewers that he never failed to perform in
the
bedroom. Better late than never.
- Robert Schnakenberg, Secret
LIves of Great Filmmakers,
(Quirk Books, 2010), p51
Alan Matheson Turing, mathematician The Computer
Enigma
Alan told his friend [Fred Clayton] how much he
resented having being circumcised, and also of his earliest memories of
playing with the gardener's boy..., which he thought had perhaps
decided his sexual pattern.
Source: Alan
Turing: the Enigma of Intelligence
by Andrew Hodges, p. 77
Hodges maintains an extensive Turing homepage
W. H. Auden, poet Stop all the Clocks
At the age of seven, in 1914, about the time that
he went to boarding school and his father went away to war, he was
circumcised. ...
Auden's operation remained an unpleasant memory.
Auden
by R. Davenport-Hines, p31
Rock Hudson, actor Pillow Talk
Magnificent Obsession
And his last lover, Marc Christian
Source:
second-hand personal communication
James K. Baxter, poet (New Zealand), 1926-72
Not
too far from the Leith water
My mother saw the mandrake grow
And pulled it. A professor's daughter,
She told me some time after how
She had been frightened by a cow
So that the birth-sac broke too soon
And on the twenty-ninth of June
Prematurely I looked at the walls
And yelled. The Plunket nurse ran in
To scissor off my valued foreskin,
But one thing staggered that grimalkin:
Poets are born with three balls.
Letter to
Robert Burns (1963)
John F. Kennedy
JFK was
circumcised for "tight foreskin problems" (that is, unnecessarily) at
the age of 21 in the Mayo Clinic
in February 1938 while he was a student at Harvard.
Although he
wrote to his gay confidante and roommate K. LeMoyne ("Lem") Billings,
"... as for
your rather unnatural interest in my becoming circumsized [sic],
J.J. has never been in
better shape or doing better service"
this is put in
context by a more detailed comment:
"When you're
circumcised at a much later age like that, you think of it as a kind of castration, a threat
to manhood, so you have to keep on proving 'IT' is o.k. by any means
possible."
...suggesting
that if JFK had had a more foreskin-friendly doctor, Marilyn Monroe
might have gone on to become a distinguished old character actress like
Katherine Hepburn.
Joseph Kallinger, "the Shoemaker"
At the age of six, Joseph Kallinger, an abandoned
orphan later taken in by a Catholic couple in Philadelphia, had to go
into hospital for a hernia operation. When he came home his father
Stephen, a poor German immigrant working as a shoemaker, explained what
the doctor had done.
'He fixed your hernia ... but he also fixed ...
your little bird.'
In the Kallinger home, 'bird' was the euphemism for penis.
'What's wrong with my little bird?' Joe asked.
'An evil spirit ... a demon makes your bird get hard and stick out so
you do bad things with it. Then your soul goes to the Devil when you
die ... but you won't have no demon, because your bird will always be
small, small, small!'
-
Christiane Olivier Jocasta's Children: The Imprint of the Mother
Routledge, London and NY, 1989
For the rest of his life Joseph Kallinger ... was
to suffer ... violent, overwhelming anxieties about the size and
performance of his penis, with recurring episodes of impotence. ... the
terror, and the rage against the terror, of being a 'No-Dick' set
Kallinger's feet on the trail of the series of hideous sexual murders
with which 'The Shoemaker' terrorised a 1960s America drunk on dreams
of peace and love.
...this perfumed water attenuates the pain
which I suppose to be nil and infinite, and I can still feel it, the
phantom burning, in my belly, irradiating a diffuse zone around the
sex, a threat which returns every time the other is in pain...
...the crime of my circumcision...
- strongly suggest that he resented it, as does the fact that he left
his sons intact, despite being Jewish.
Auberon Waugh, essayist
1939- 2001
My first memory? A first memory of violence, being
circumcised at the age of three. There were good medical reasons for
it, of course. [Perhaps.]
Nevertheless, I remember it vividly - it was very unpleasant!
"... I am
circumcised, and I tell you something, I despise it. I despise it. I
despise it."
"... I dread [rue]
the day my parents mutilated me."
"You know, my
mother is so into 'natural'. Everythi- , 'The body is beautiful,' you
should hear the rap. 'The body is beautiful, we should leave things
natural...' So, she wouldn't get me braces. My teeth were as crooked as
a four-way intersection in Washington DC, and green, and bu-bu-bu-
wouldn't get me braces, My teeth were so wrecked because 'naturally the
body will heal itself.' She's like a Christian
Scientist. ... but the penis? Right out the window!"
"I am
completely pissed off that I'm circumcised."
"I know my
penis was mutilated and I called my mother ... I said to my mother the
other night, 'I'm really freaked out by this circumcision thing.' I
think that I was mutilated. I think my penis would have a lot more
sensitivity. ... I'm talkin' to my mother and I said, 'Why did you have
me circumcised, exactly?'
"She goes 'You
know, at the time I didn't even know why. They took my baby from me and
they said you know, "This is something you gotta do."'... caught up in
the whole tradition, cause my, y'know, my father was was like, 'Hey,
he's gotta be circumcised, he's gotta look like me.'
"And my mother
goes, 'I just remember being so out of it that, I knew it was the wrong
thing, I knew it shouldn't be done, somewhere in the back of my mind,
but how dare I buck the system?' I go 'Well Gee! You're such a
loudmouth on everything else, why weren't you a loudmouth on this?'"
[While Stern's heart is in the
right place, his facts are often astray, especially figures.]
Genital
Crab And Other STD Discussions. September 4, 2003. 7:50am
A listener
called in and said he had had genital crabs at
one time and they were embedded in his foreskin. He
claimed that he had to be circumcised because of it. [Isn't he lucky the crabs weren't
embedded in his scrotum! Crabs (pubic lice, P[h]thirus pubis)
infest only hairy parts of the body, not the foreskin: the call may
have been a hoax.] He
was only 19 years old at the time. Since he had
had sex both before and after his circumcision, Howard
asked him which was better. The man told Howard that
sex was better after being circumcised. Howard was
surprised to hear that, because he thought it would be
better with the extra
skin [not
actually extra - standard equipment]. Howard
bailed out on that
call and said he didn't want to hear any more about
that stuff. He took a break shortly after that.
Wink Musselman, Comedian/musician
"I may have foreskin-reattachment surgery.
I’ll either come back as a woman
or with my foreskin reattached."
Dear Chuck and Chip and Gang:
I have a circumcised cock and I could
kill my parents and their parish priest at the time for cutting my
foreskin without asking me....
George G.
New York
Dear George:
I happen to feel the same way you do. I
am Catholic and curious as to how many inches I lost in that hospital
back in the 30s....
_C[huck] E[dwards]
I lament the circumcision of my foreskin. A
circumcision removes about 70 percent of genital nerve endings. That
sounds like a party in my pants. There is no telling what lingering
psychological effects I’ve suffered as a result of the pain experienced
during my neonatal circumcision.
It’s vexing that the medical community allows the
removal of a body part we could actually find useful. Why not
circumcise my appendix at birth instead of my foreskin? My appendix
could potentially kill me one day if it bursts and I don’t receive
medical attention swiftly.
My foreskin posed no such diabolical threat. ... I
say, save the foreskins.
Ben Affleck was reportedly circumcised after
suffering an injury. Jon Stewart brought it up briefly on the Daily Show of September 19,
2006 (4'45" in), and Affleck said,
"I hate the circumcisions! Get enough in me,
and I'll tell you how much I hate them!" (5'20")
Brad Roberts
former lead singer of the Crash Test Dummies
I can testify to the truth of the sentiments
expressed in this recording, having been circumcised, unnecessarily (if
I knew then...) at the age of 16, 26 years ago, following bad advice
from an ignorant doctor and surgeon. The sensations possible with a
foreskin are widely varying, intensely exciting, deeply satisfying and
exquisite, just as nature intended. Without a foreskin? sex is dull,
uncompelling, disappointing, and frankly, hardly worth the effort.
Circumcision is a damaging mutilation.
Louis Kirstein, deciding his first born son should
be circumcised, calls in the family doctor instead of the traditional
mohel, to carry out the procedure, but after botching the job,
"septicemia set in, and Lincoln nearly dies.["] To save him, the sweat
glands in his groin were surgically removed, leaving physical and
psychological scars, locker-room concealments, and castration
nightmares that would haunt Lincoln into adolescence.
Christopher (not "Chris") Hitchens
12'48" in)
"I still sometimes brood on the missing bits." (13'20")
Tom Leykis
Caller: Ok, so, I'm calling because I have a
newborn ...
what is your opinion on circumcision?
Tom: My opinion is ...
I think that people should get to
decide that stuff for themselves.
Caller: That's what I said.
Tom: It shouldn't be decided by rabbis, or the
family, or anybody else...
I think it's barbaric.
...
Tom: Isn't there something kinky... everybody
wants to know about your baby's penis? I mean what is that?
Caller: I don't know, and they're like "Well he
can get infections" and all this other stuff, but,
Tom (disdainfully): Oh come on,
you can get infections...
Caller: yeah, but I heard that, um, if you get em
circumcised it takes off length and like uh, ten percent of the feeling
when they get older so, but they're, they're like all,
Tom: I have no idea what I'm missing, I know. I'd rather have found out for myself,
you know what?
Caller: Yeah.
Tom: You know what, if I would have had a couple
extra infections over the years but it felt better? Would have been
worth it.
- the Tom Leykis Show, open
phones, March 11, 2005
Anonymous
asked
Hi Erik
have you lost sensitivity since you got circumcised ? I read that you
regret it, why is that ?
...
First off, Everyone was complaining saying it
looked deformed and well… it was. The first doctor that did it, really
f***ed it up… he, after months of leading me along saying that i had
extra swelling… finally admitted he messed it up saying he would
correct it and that “he was sorry”… Really, your sorry? Who wants to
hear i’m sorry from the doctor who’s performing surgery on your penis?
I swear, in my eyes, its as bad as a surgeon saying sorry that he
f***ed up your face…
anyways, after losing sleep about this a**hole
doing surgery on my dick again, i said to myself there is no way in
hell that i could let the same guy who did this to me… try it again… i
mean what if he messed up worse? So after doing 3 movies with my jacked
up dick… i finally had a better surgeon do the correction. Which
included having to cut my nut sack open and resetting where it hung…
what fun.
So to answer the question, after getting all that
out… yes i do regret it. I should have just looked for other options
before letting some crazy a**hole take a knife to my dick and yes i have lost sensitivity. Its just not
the same. Granted… it looks so much better now… as in
after the second time around. Uncut
cock is hot and i wish it was still intact.
(He seems to have no empathy for men born into Jewish or
Muslim families, who, like him, may resent being circumcised. The
problem with his proposal (2:33) to allow a religious exemption for
infant circumcision is that any parent can define any belief they
happen to have as "religious". His proposal (2:53) that religious
circumcision be publicly funded is a clear breach of the First
Amendment to the US Constitution.)
Russell Means (Oglala/Lakota Sioux)
Activist and actor (Last of the Mohicans)
In his
autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread,
he tells how he was circumcised against his grandparents' will
during a tonsilectomy. His attitude changed from novelty
at age 6 to resentment as an adult.
Daniel Tosh
Comedian
Just for the record ... I always wished that I
wasn't circumcised.
I'm not Jewish and I'm circumcised. That's a
theft. I want it back. (3:18)
Billy Joel musician
"I got the, ah, 'snip', and I had nothing to say
about that. (laughter and applause) And I'm still a
little pissed off about that (loud laughter),
y'know. They should have asked first."
In the song "So Long, Reverend Ike" he sings to
"Rabbi Gold" (at 1:03), "My circumcision grieves me".
Jonathan Swift (Icky Boyfriends)
'Since the band [The Icky Boyfriends] reunited in
2010, [Jonathan]
Swift has been writing new songs. "We have a new one called 'Knives,'
which is part of the campaign to illegalize circumcision, because it's
dangerous and it traumatized me and ruined my sex life," he said. "It
should go over well in the Bay where the anti-circumcision movement
started."'
Davey Wavey Gay travel and fitness writer/performer
Mike ("Fat Mike") Burkett NOXS
Don't Call Me
White
Don't call me white,
Don't call me white
Don't call me white,
Don't call me white
I wasn't brought here, I was born
Circumcised, categorized, allegiance sworn,
Does this mean I have to take such shit
For being fairskinned? No!
I ain't a part of no conspiracy,
I'm just you're average Joe.
We Called It
America
We called it America, whoa.
We called it America, whoa.
National bankruptcy, circumcised society.
USA, dined and ditched;
Fox reports "poor is the new rich".
Lawrence Mooney Australian Comedian
"When I was but a few hours old, my parents gave
me to a complete
stranger. And he took me into a room and hacked the top of my cock off.
Let’s just sit with the loneliness and brutality for a moment shall we?
... My knob has been rubbing against my undies for 50 years, and it is
dead to the touch. Alright? It is. No seriously, you could hit it with
a hammer and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. I could bang you for two
hours…and nothing."
- Melbourne
International Comedy Festival, 2016
Nico Tortorella
Actor, Younger
penis. cauterized at birth
circumcised,
an ancient covent fulfilled
but still, i wish
you were uncut, natural, organic, hooded
protected.
they say orgasms would be better.
more like hers blows bright, redder....
Born
Israel Ehrenberg, he was subjected to antisemitic abuse as a child and
"developed an interest in anatomy very early"...* Later in life he
actively opposed genital modification and mutilationn of children. In
1994 he gave his name to The Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the
Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide, a petition to the
World Court, The Hague.
He
is best known for his work showing that "race" is not a valid
biological concept and for the film of his book, "The Elephant Man".
In this Instagram post opposing
infant male genital cutting, he says "Crazily enough, part of my
foreskin was removed when I was eight days old, by a rabbi, in front of
a lot of drunk and dissociated family members and 'friends'."
George Carlin Standup comedian
I also survived
circumcision, a barbaric practice designed to remind you as early as
possible that your genitals are not your own.
