Couple’s Couch: To Cut or Not to Cut
Everyone in my life is having babies right now. If I were to throw a rock randomly into the air, it would surely land on a pregnant friend. And I’m not sure what’s in the water, but it seems like everyone is having boys.
If you are one of the many who have uttered the words, “It’s a boy!” in my home, you’d still be telling the stories about the four queer men who swooped in on you demanding a answer to their only question, “You gonna have him clipped?”
To cut or not to cut, that is the question facing new parents today. I suppose the question has always been around for parents to contend with, but it’s rearing its head (sorry, bad pun) with more ferocity in the last few years thanks to public health research and what passes for social awareness in this country.
Why, just back in March the World Health Organization and UNAIDS reported that male circumcision is an effective method for helping prevent HIV transmission. This study piggybacks off another project in 2000; a research study found that circumcising infants reduced the rate of penile cancer in adult men anywhere from 3 to 22 percent. (Side note: 3 to 22 percent is a wiiiide margin, people!) These studies are oft cited as proof that snipping is the preferred penis fashion of the new century, at least for American males.
On the flip side, groups like Hands Off Our Penises (HOOP) and Anti-Circ are fighting to keep the foreskins on the babies of the world. They present similar studies that propose opposite results, reporting that any health benefits of circumcision are largely a product of inadequate hygiene practices in those with intact members. One also should consider that the rate of infection and mutilation from botched circumcisions could greatly outweigh the potential health risks sited by the WHO. Plus, they argue, the foreskin is part of an individual’s genitals. Removing parts of someone else’s body without consent is never permissible and can very well be considered an act of mutilation. Touché.
What are anxious parents to do?
I strongly believe that I have no business intervening between you and your kid’s peepee. Besides, anything I say can and will be used against me for the rest of my life. I can just imagine the calls rolling in forty-five years down the road. “Hello? Is this Ms. Skoor? Yes, well, this is David, the one whose parent’s you advised to leave my foreskin intact. Yeah, well, my boyfriend is pissed off that I’m ‘un-cut” because he says that I come too fast when he sucks me off and I’m afraid at any moment I am going to come down with some rare form of never-before-seen penis cancer and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!”
Yeah, we don’t need to go there.
I think there are some terrific reasons both for and against male circumcision. Especially if your religion and/or your cultural background strongly inform your snipping decision, I won’t get near your choice with a ten-foot pole. But if you are cutting the tip of your tyke’s weewee because, well, everyone else is doing it, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking critically about the perks and pitfalls of either decision.
Medical professionals and activist websites will be more than happy to fill your brain with statistics about this or that in order to sway your decision in whichever way their background deems most appropriate. I’ll leave that to them.
I’m more interested in how circumcision affects one’s sex life.
What better place to go than my very own kitchen to ask some of the most sexually active men in the entire world about what they like in a good cock.
My informal study questioned twelve gay and bi men and one bi woman about their circumcision preferences. By far and away, men who generally fuck cut men like their men cut. When asked why, the answers I got back were a hair shy of revolutionary. “Um, because, well, that’s what I am used to thinking is normal,” was a popular response. Coming in as the second most popular answer was something along the lines of, “I think it might be cleaner to be cut, but I’m not sure.” I also got a fair number of, “That is what I see in porn” as well as, “I’m afraid I’ll dig up some smegma with my tongue.” There was some general unrest about the average man’s ability to keep his foreskin fresh. I’ll give them that.
Those who liked their ding-a-lings uncut reported functional reasons for their opinions. “Less lube required,” said a housemate with a glimmer in his eye. Another swears on his still-present foreskin that he “would never, ever think about circumcision” because he adores the sensitivity of his head and the sensation of the skin moving over itself. A third once dated a guy with an “unusually tight circ” who wasn’t able to get fully erect because the skin around his cornea pulled too tightly and chafed. Nothing says buzz-kill like chafing, over-stretched penis skin.
I’ve always been a fan of waiting until my kids were old enough to make their own bodily decisions before asking if they wanted to get circumcised. I ran this idea by the boys and they looked aghast, as if I had just taken away their new Prada shoes and replaced them with Tevas. “Oh HELL no!” they shrieked. Apparently no one in their right mind would volunteer for a circumcision when they were old enough to remember it.
Isn’t that telling parents something, though? If you won’t submit your penis to Mr. Knife when you are old enough to remember it, wouldn’t it reason that these babies are lying in their cribs thinking, “Just what the hell do you think you are gonna do with THAT?”
I wished, just for a moment, that I had my own flesh-and-blood penis so I could stand hip to hip with these sex-fiend friends and relate to what it must feel like to consider removing part of my own anatomy. I can’t really imagine what it must be like to know that my parents could very well have agonized about the future of my willie for months, subjecting their friends to lists of pros and cons, and reading up on opinion pieces not so unlike this one.
I’m still unsure what I’ll do if I give birth to boys one day. I know that my gut reaction to circumcision is quite different from that of my girlfriend, never an easy starting point. I’ve come up with a failsafe avoidance plan, however . . .
Note to future self: when choosing donor sperm, remember to have them spun and sorted for only female swimmers.
There. Debate over.
This entry was posted on Friday, 19 October 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Sunday, 21 October 2007 at 10:03 am Modified mummy wrote:
Thank god I live in the UK, and circumsion is rather rare. I have two wee boys and never even had to think as to whether to cut it off or not. Personally, I wouldn’t have anyway. I think it’s really un-neccessary. And most of what I’ve heard about it being ‘cleaner’ seem rather bogus, as a half decent daily hygeine programme will easily keep a covered cock clean.
The only time I’ve seen a cut penis is in porn, but my partner isn’t cut, and nor are the men that I slept with when I had the freedom to sleep with everyone!
I think that unless people have severly strong religious reasons for it… it’s just a way to encourage laziness. There, I said it. now shoot me!
Maybe I’ve stumbled on the goldmine as to why laziness is such a predominant trait in this day and age! too many forskins have been cut off, and general laziness of cleaning has been compromised, which has had a domino effect on other aspects of peoples lives!
*copyrights idea*
The only person I know who has a cut penis is my father. And I thank my mother so much for telling me that (!) because I really needed that mental image.
on Monday, 22 October 2007 at 2:36 pm rosetta wrote:
my husband was the first uncut man i’d ever encountered, sexually. what a treat! he’s much more sensitive, which means he usually knows if he’s hurting me, unlike some oblivious dudes i’ve had the misfortune to sleep with.
i have never encountered any smegma in all the years i’ve been fellating him. as for the HIV thing, well… there are much better ways to prevent transmitting it. like, oh, i don’t know… CONDOMS? testing? communicating with sexual partners? jeez, people. and penile cancer? how many guys do you know who’ve ended up with penile cancer? the rates are so low that really, it’s sort of ridiculous that anybody quotes that as a reason to modify their child’s body.
my 3 year old son is uncircumcised, and we just make sure that he knows to wash himself thoroughly.
on a more personal and opinionated note, i view the medically unnecessary circumcision of newborns as an act of rape - adults forcing their ideals on a defenseless child and thus permanently altering that individual’s sexual self.