Jezebel recently ran an a post about the anti-circumcision movement, fueled by ignorance and peppered with some good-old fashioned man hate.
I was appalled by the insensitive and obviously un-researched way the author handled the entire ordeal.
I have been anti-circumcision, since well, I started thinking about the topic. The thing that got my brain really cooking about it was coming across the restoration movement, the very same people that the Jezebel writer maliciously mocks.
Perhaps what got the Jez blogger’s panties in a twist is the fact that this is a movement of men. Men who are emotionally sensitive, standing up for their rights and for the rights of children who cannot stand up for themselves. To me, this is feminism and it isn’t boys-only.
Marilyn Milos is one woman who has a loud and clear voice in this movement. Milos is a nurse who started NO-CIRC, a group formed to educate the public about circumcision, I had the opportunity to interview her about her work in Spring of 2008. Before she founded NO CIRC, Milos worked in a hospital as a nurse. “In 1979, during my last rotation I witnessed a male circumcision” Milos says. “The baby was truly tormented, To see part of a baby’s penis being cut off without anesthesia was shocking. Even more shocking was the doctor’s comment,: “There’s no medical reason for doing this.”
The doctor’s word‘s rang in her ears. Milos couldn’t help the tears falling from her cheeks as she held the baby after the ordeal. At the end of her work day all she could was sit in her car and have a heavy cry, for her own babies who she’d had circumcised years before… and for all of the babies who didn’t need this painful cosmetic operation.
Upon hearing this story from Marilyn last year, my thoughts were: how could women not identify with this movement? This is totally a feminist issue!
Yet there seems to be no understanding, no outreach from feminists or women in general.
After witnessing her first circumcision, Milos kept working in hospitals but did everything in her power to keep circumcisions from happening. As expecting couples came into the hospitals she would urge them not to go through with the procedure by explaining that it is an unnecessary and painful procedure. When she got in trouble for doing this, (Circumcision is a billion-dollar-a-year industry after all!) Milos kept her mouth shut but began showing parents-to-be a video of a circumcision. “They were telling me to stop, that is was upsetting the patients. What man wants to hear that his penis was cut off and thrown into a trash can?” asks Milos. When Milos refused to remain silent about the topic, the hospital fired her. “I realized this is a message that no one wants to hear” Milos says. It was then that Milos started NO CIRC and is now just one of the many medical professionals in this growing movement.
The anti-circumcision movement believes that circumcision can have a profound and lasting effect on a man sexually and emotionally. One of the most common complaints about circumcision is keratinization , a condition that happens as men get older when the glans and remaining tissue begin to get dry and calloused. This can cause painful sex for the woman as well as the man, as the penis is very dry and the man has to pump harder. Circumcision is a very traumatic procedure for an infant to go through, a study shows that infants rarely get anesthesia for circumcision, it has also been noted that infants will sometimes go into shock from the pain. The same study also shows that the pain and traumatic memory in the infant seem to persist. I don’t think it is unlikely that this early trauma would create an emotional scar.
Is this really what the feminism movement of the last 50 years + has come to? A girls club, too ready to blame men? Men are not naturally sexist and violent, Women are not born submissive and passive aggressive. We raise our genders this way, and we women are on average the primary care-givers. We have absolute power over our children and children only learn abuse from their abusers. If the above is true than how can we change gender roles and achieve equality until we start with how we raise girls and boys? In my mind this includes not circumcising your infant son. If you want to tear down the patriarchy, start from the foundation.
More Info:
http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/circumcision/against-circumcision.html
http://www.infocirc.org/facts.htm
http://mensightmagazine.com/Articles/McAllister,%20Ryan/notjustskin.htm
http://www.nocirc.org/publish/3pam.pdf
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13 Comments
I’m a woman, and I’m right there with you. Awesome post. I was at the DC demonstration last week. Despite the mocking portrait that some have painted of us that week, we spent HOURS talking with passers-by who ASKED us for information. And they wanted literature. So many people just don’t understand what circumcision is and what its implications are. But they’re asking.
Thank your for this well-considered post, Rabbit White. I have come against this issue too, and it has been very upsetting. As a feminist and an intactivist, I occasionally find my intactivism meeting hostility from otherwise well-educated feminists. It is distressing to me specifically because it makes me feel rather disenfranchised from society. How can people be OK with this? Every time someone tells me that they’re pro-circumcision because it’s ‘better’, I just feel that I don’t want to be associated with this society. I would feel the same way if I lived in Iran and my peers were about to stone a woman to death for some petty crime.
I think I have identified the reason why formally-educated feminists are immediately hostile to intactivism, even though it dovetails with their movement so neatly. The problem, as usual, is misinformation. When feminists hear about intactivism, they think of the movement against FGM. I have yet to get a women’s studies student or graduate to explain to me exactly what they are taught, but the materials seem to contain a lot of incorrect ‘facts’, because what they tell me usually has an eerie disconnection with the information I have read in reputable journals and books.
I get very frustrated with people when I need to talk about genital cutting because I can’t just talk about it, I have to address all of the misinformation to which they try to cling.
It would be really nice if there was a pamphlet: “So you think FGM and MGM aren’t the same thing?”
I really can’t handle trying to explain it to one more person, only to find that they were never listening.
Foreskin feels REALLY good. HIS body HIS decision.
Hi, I’m an Intactivist as well. I’ve written up a detailed examination of FGM and MGM and how they are the same.
I thought I would post it here so that the commentators and bloggers can take a look and use it, or whatever parts of it, you think will help you argue your case!
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(07)00707-X/abstract
One may almost hope a consensus is developing. More and more, pro-circ articles are followed by a flood of anti-circ letters, and from not just the few familiar names.
Good to see the badges. Great minds think alike and someone is a much better artist than me. See http://www.cafepress.com/intactivism/5691045
Comparing MGC and FGC is a bit of minefield, and perhaps the biggest thing that alienates feminism from Intactivism, but it’s safe to say that *as human rights abuses* they are the same, especially when you factor in the much milder and more surgical FGC of Indonesia and Malaysia. The Intactivism Pages have a tabular comparison of FGC and MGC at http://www.circumstitions.com/FGMvsMGM.html
“A man has to pump harder” not just because it’s dry and keratinised, but because ~20,000 specialised nerves have been removed and he has to stimulate the remaining ones much more to get the same effect (requiring all his attention, so he doesn’t enjoy the journey as much). Some circumcised men masturbate by rubbing against a towel; I doubt that many intact man to stand to do that.
last sentence should read:
I doubt that many intact men could stand to do that.
Wow, my post didn’t show up probably due to some error on my part.
I have researched the issue extensively and MGC and FGC are basically identical. If you just cut off the foreskin, MGC might be comparable to ‘milder forms of FGC’ but another sexual structure, the frenulum, which _itself_ can be stimulated to orgasm like the clitoris, is also cut off in infant circumcision.
If there is a sexual structure on men, the frenulum, that can be stimulated to orgasm just like a clitoris and it is removed in circumcision, how is it different?
Male Genital Mutilation is the Same as Female Genital Mutilation (Part 1)
*Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of genital mutilation of any kind, I am merely pointing out the similarities in how cultures that promote ‘circumcision’ justify it for both men and women.*
Belief # 1 — Female Genital Mutilation has no protective effect against STDs unlike Male Genital Mutilation:
“[A] large survey of Tanzanian women netted the vexing conclusion that female circumcision halved their risk of HIV infection. Rebecca Stallings (ORC Macro, Calverton, Maryland) set out to see whether variables influencing circumcision or HIV risk could solve this apparent riddle [abstract TuOa0402]. But session attendees guessed Stallings had no good news when she started her talk with a terse avowal of opposition to female circumcision and to government intrusion in women’s lives. […] None of the variables Stallings weighed explained why circumcision apparently protected women from HIV in the primary analysis — and she weighed a lot of them: region, years living there, household wealth, age, education, religion, years sexually active, union status, polygamy, number of recent and lifetime sex partners, recent infection or abnormal discharge, use of alcohol, and ability to say no to sex. […] In the final model, circumcision whittled the risk of HIV infection by 40% (odds ratio [OR] 0.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.41 to 0.88).”
From http://www.thebody.com/content/art12238.html
The article above discusses the benefits of circumcision on both men and women. It mentions the work of an anti-FGM researcher in trying to discredit findings that show FGM has a protective affect against HIV. She could not. So, in conclusion, FGM has been found to have a protective effect against HIV infection.
Additional Reference:
http://www.ias-2005.org/planner/Abstracts.aspx?AID=3138
Also, the Africa results on MGM being protective against STDs haven’t transfered over to US cohorts. Here’s one study that indicates a reduction in genital warts for non-amputated men:
http://www.webmd.com/sexual-co…..eep-around
Additional studies have found no protective benefit for foreskin amputation:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu…..t=Abstract
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(07)00707-X/abstract
Also, the US leads western nations in both STD infections AND MGM.
According to our own western research, both FGM and MGM can protect against HIV infection. But only one form of GM is acceptable to our culture, so we only promote one. In my opinion, none of this conflicted evidence provides an excuse to remove erogenous tissue from either men or women.
Male Genital Mutilation is the Same as Female Genital Mutilation (Part 2)
*Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of genital mutilation of any kind, I am merely pointing out the similarities in how cultures that promote ‘circumcision’ justify it for both men and women.*
Belief # 2 — Female Genital Mutilation is like cutting off a man’s penis:
All of the erectile structures of the clitoris are internal and unharmed in most FGM. The clitoral glans is not an erectile structure, and it’s the only external structure of the clitoris. (O’Connell HE, Sanjeevan KV, Hutson JM., “Anatomy of the clitoris”, J Urol. 2005 Oct;174(4 Pt 1):1189-95.) The clitoris is as big as the penis, btw, it’s just INTERNAL. This is a common anatomical misconception. During development, both male and female genitals form from a ‘genital tubercle’. The erectile structures of the genital tubercle that become the penis in a male are internalized in a female and become the internal erectile structures of the clitoris.
Most forms of FGM remove no erectile tissue. Therefore none of them can be equivalent to removing _all_ of men’s erectile tissue. The glans clitoris is likely correlated to the frenulum of an intact male (they are both non-erectile and able to be stimulated to orgasm in similar ways for example, by a vibrator). Therefore the average infant circumcision in the west is equivalent to removing the clitoral hood, the clitoris and the inner labia of a female. Both forms of GM remove the non-erectile sexual structures of both men and women. (The average adult male circumcision may not be equivalent as the frenulum may be left intact.) This makes MGM and FGM very comparable, with the caveat that MGM also permanently exteriorizes a sexual structure (the glans of the penis) that then becomes less sensitive–like the effect of removing the lips and cheeks on the tongue.
Belief # 3 — FGM removes all sexual pleasure for women:
Studies don’t show this. FGM impairs female sexual function, just like MGM impairs male sexual function. However women who have undergone FGM do not loose all sexual function.
“Many who undergo FGM/C view it as a time-honoured rite of passage that cleanses, beautifies, and initiates girls into womanhood. They are proud to have FGM/C, and are grateful to parents for arranging and paying for it, and–in contrast to medical assumption–continue to experience sexual pleasure. It is difficult to reconcile these positive reports with medical accounts of genital pain and reproductive difficulty–yet we cannot disregard women’s own account of their lives.”
“Vagal innervation of the clitoral body and uterus may continue to carry excitatory input to the brain, mediating orgasm by vaginal stimulation–explaining why, in spite of extensive vulvar cutting, numerous women with Type III FGM/C report experiencing orgasm.”
Einstein, Gillian, “Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Neurological Perspective”–Presentation made at Forum 10, Cairo, Egypt, 29 October- 2 November 2006
“The group of 57 infibulated women investigated with the FSFI questionnaire showed significant differences between group of study and an equivalent group of control in desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction with mean scores higher in the group of mutilated women. No significant differences were observed between the two groups in lubrication and pain.”
Catania, Lucrezia, Omar Abdulcadir, Vincenzo Puppo, Jole Baldaro Verde, Jasmine Abdulcadir, and Dalmar Abdulcadir, “Pleasure and Orgasm in Women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C)”, J Sex Med 2007;4:1666–1678
“No significant differences between cut and uncut women were observed in the frequency of reports of sexual intercourse in the preceding week or month, the frequency of reports of early arousal during intercourse and the proportions reporting experience of orgasm during intercourse. ”
F.E. Okonofuaa, U. Larsenc, F. Oronsayea, R.C. Snowd, T.E. Slangerd, “The association between female genital cutting and correlates of sexual and gynaecological morbidity in Edo State, Nigeria”, BJOG,October 2002, Vol. 109, pp. 1089–1096
Belief # 5 – Male Genital Mutilation is Safer!
Those societies that practice FGM also practice MGM in exactly the same unsanitary conditions. Compare like to like. Also, infant male genital mutilation is not without its risks either. Some boys have had their penises cut off during the procedure, among other complications including excessive bleeding, skin bridges, and death!
Belief # 4 – Do it While He’s an Infant, It’s Better!
One in one hundred natural men will decide to get circumcised. You would have to circumcise one hundred infants to prevent the problems of one adult male circumcision. And of those one hundred infants 3 or 4 of them would have serious complications from their procedures.
The real reason why you do it when he’s an infant? Because he won’t choose the procedure for himself if he was given the choice. Which, right there, should be the biggest reason _not_ to do it.
Conclusion:
IMHO, FGM and MGM are very comparable. The only difference is our cultural attitudes. Read the comments of women who are circumcised and proud of it. Their rationales sound identical to circumcised men in the west–they deny any effect on their sexuality, they call the clitoris a ‘filthy piece of worthless flesh’ that they would cut off again if it ever grew back–and their societies make the same arguments for it as well: hygiene, protection against disease, sexual attractiveness to the opposite gender and sexual control(it’s only been since the seventies that the argument that MGM controls boys sexual appetites and reduces their sexual pleasure has been dropped from our rationales for promoting it.)
Finally, I don’t think you can understand FGM without also understanding MGM, and vice versa. The two phenomena are so similar, society deciding that sexuality exists only to serve society’s aims, and not for individual expression and enjoyment.
great post rabbit. this is definently an issue that needs to be promoted.
Thank you for your support in this issue, Rabbit. It’s true – true equality means NOBODY’S rights are infringed.
I say: “Right on!”
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