An Open Letter To Pro-Circ or Anti-Anti-Circ Advocates

Regarding circumcision, I was circumcised when I was six years old because I had phimosis. (that's where the opening of the foreskin is too small to adequately allow urine to pass resulting in painful ballooning of the foreskin during urination)
I understood why I needed the surgery, and what was going to happen to me. Nonetheless it was a scary event in my life, and I remember it clearly now some twenty-four years later. The surgery was scary because the doctors weren't very sensitive and that wasn't anything to do with the procedure. That was just bad doctors. The recovery was more unpleasant. I couldn't walk for several days, and I couldn't climb stairs or do anything that involved lifting my legs for a couple weeks. The stitches were very painful and extremely itchy. I'm sure infants are too inexperienced to fully realize the pain, even though I do think they feel it, but that's not really the impact of circumcision. That was a discrete event in my life, and I don't feel that it had any significant lasting effect. The lasting effect came from the glans of my penis rubbing against my underwear every day from then on, and the lack of said foreskin. When I reach puberty, I didn't have a foreskin to retract to learn how to masturbate, and my glans doesn't seem to be particularly sensitive. Instead I discovered sensation from the natural stimulation I experienced; bending my penis. It happened when I started getting erections while wearing tighter fitting jeans. So instead of learning to masturbate in a reasonable period of time, I spent years just bending my penis. I feel that this inhibited my sexual maturation and subsequently my emotional development. In retrospect, I think that I was noticeably less mature than my peers despite being reasonably intelligent. I think that it has impacted all of my sexual relationships, not necessarily in a very negative way, but in a way that changed my role in each given relationship, and in a way that impacted my self-esteem.

My mother sent me a message a few months ago about circumcision. She had been reading about it's necessity, and lack there-of, and the side-effects, and she felt terrible. She apologized and asked me how I felt about it. I told her that I remember the experience and that I am happy with her decision, given the other options (manual stretching or living with phimosis). Honestly I think that having my parents stretch my foreskin every day would have been a lot more troubling, even if only due to the social stigma. I feel that the side-effects are worthwhile given the problem the circumcision was addressing.

As far as non-medically necessary circumcisions go, I just have to throw down my two cents. If you're a mother and you circumcised your boy(s) you shouldn't feel like a genital-mutilating monster. You're part of a society that does a lot of strange things for questionable reasons. What's done is done. It's in the past. It is however pretty offensive to continue, in light of modern science highlighting circumcision's unnecessity, advocating parents' "rights" to arbitrarily modify their children's bodies. Children, much like women, are no longer property items. They're people. It's time to start treating them as such. The distinction between child and adult doesn't matter as much when you get into this area, because lifelong changes like this affect the adult the child will eventually become. If you wouldn't do it to an adult, don't do it to a child. If you were fifteen or sixteen years old and you for some reason slipped into a coma, it would be perfectly acceptable for your parents to consent to medically necessary procedures. Unnecessary procedures however, like plastic surgery, mole removal, or removal of protective pieces of skin, are not acceptable for your parents to request, without your consent. Babies are people, just like teenagers are people. No amount of ignorance or inexperience justifies violating that person's right to make the decision themselves when they're informed and experienced enough to make it. Circumcisions used to be performed under the premise that they were medically beneficial. That has been disproven. If you have trouble accepting that because you feel embarrassed or guilty, that's fine, but that's your problem. Don't come on the internet and try to sway the general opinion toward your own decision being okay just to make yourself feel better. If what you're hearing makes you feel bad, just move on. It's not your discussion to partake in. If you feel that your rights are being stolen away, sit back and think about what rights are, and who deserves to exercise them. Making surgical choices for your child is a privilege granted to you by your child's inability to assert their own wishes. Having rights to other people is something we're getting rid of in society. It's not healthy. Men don't own their wives anymore, nor are they allowed to beat them. People don't own slaves anymore. Children are the last vestige of the "owning people" era, and it's done. You don't own your child. You are responsible for them, but it's more of a rental/lease situation than a straight-up buy-out. Your child's body is not your body. You are responsible to make certain decisions on behalf of your child, but you are not at liberty to do whatever you want with them. The only reason medically-unnecessary circumcision isn't illegal yet is that it is a ceremonial part of at least one religion, and legislation encroaching on religious freedom sets off an unreasonable reaction in the public forum. If you want to advocate for somebody's rights, advocate for your child's right to make decisions for themselves whenever possible. Medically-unnecessary circumcision is a decision that can wait.

It's time to grow up, as a society, acknowledge that the 'traditions' and habits of the past are based largely off ignorance, accept modern science, and start moving forward.