When it comes to
the human body if we didn't need it,
we wouldn't have
it.
If you believe
in the grand creator or not I doubt you would find many arguing that
our bodies are perfect as they are. We come into this world with
everything we need.
I am a mother.
And like all
mothers we will tell you the birth of our children are up there with
the most monumental events of our lives. Profound, un equalled in
importance and in the depths in the wells of love.
Here in the western world
Mothers of daughters do not come face to face with the consideration
of genital mutilation and in fact it is illegal.
But in countries where it is
practiced several health and human-rights organisations, such as the
World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF, are acting to increase
awareness of this problem, decrease cultural acceptance and encourage
practitioners to abandon the practice.
So..
The
question has to be asked...
Why do so many
mothers hand over their baby boys for genital mutilation, commonly
known as circumcision. ?
Firstly lets look at how we speak about it.
Language.
Language of the debate is
skewed toward the pro-circumcision side. Using the term
"uncircumcised" heavily leads to the belief that this is
the “unnatural” state, or the exception to the rule. We do
not often hear the words "natural," "full length"
or "intact" referring to an uncircumcised penis. A boys
penis is generally either circumcised or un-circumcised. This wording
needs to be changed to in tact, natural, full length.
Secondly let's look at basic biology
The Foreskin.
The foreskin has up to 20 000
nerve endings in it. When sliced off this leaves exposed the head of
the penis that has only around 4 000 nerve endings. A penis left in
tact and in its natural state has more sensitivity than a woman's
clitoris. A penis subjected to mutilation has had its sensitivity
lowered by 80 %.
Fact is when a boys penis is
circumcised, it loses its protective encasing and becomes
desensitized over the years from its natural state. It basically
obtains a certain state of numbness.
So
what history lies behind MGM (male genital mutilation)?
Business,
ownership and wealth with the promise of elitism.
“According
to the Book of Genesis in the Torah, God made a covenant with
Abraham (a Jewish patriarch) in which Abraham and his descendants
would be given great lands, riches and success, but with one catch:
Abraham, his descendants and any slaves purchased or born in his
household must be circumcised by the eighth day of life. Not doing so
would mean that the uncircumcised male would be separate from his
people and live without the favour of God. The Jews have held up
their end of the deal. Rates of circumcision remain high in Jewish
men: about 98 percent of American Jews are circumcised.”
The
prophet Muhammad was circumcised due to traditions passed down from
Abraham's son to a slave woman ( Ishmael ) whom is considered the
forefather of the modern-day Arab people. Although when Muhammad's
teachings were collected into the Quran there was no directive
regarding circumcision you will find most Muslims circumcise their
sons just because Muhammad himself was.
Today,
almost two out of every three circumcised men on the planet are
Muslim.
Mainly viewed as an Islamic
practice religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism don't have a stance
on circumcision and most Christian sects don't endorse circumcision,
leaving the choice up to the family.
In fact the Catholic church
has a strong moral statement on amputations, mutilations, and
sterilisations. Circumcision falls under both amputation and
mutilation, so it is clearly covered by this policy. Catholics
generally are required to respect bodily integrity.Lack of respect
for bodily integrity is viewed as a violation of the Fifth
Commandment, Thou shalt not kill.
Circumcision
of children for “non-medical reasons” is banned in Denmark and
Sweden yet boys may consent to the procedures from the age of 12.
Stating
that circumcision violates the child's right to bodily integrity, a
German court ruled on June 28th 2012 it illegal for baby
boys to be circumcised for religious reasons.
In
Australia "Cosmetic" circumcision is banned in public
hospitals in Australia, although permitted in private ones. Figures
from Medicare show that circumcision incidence in Australia continues
to decline and is now at the lowest rate since records were kept.
Between Financial Year 2009/10 and 2015/16 the number of
circumcisions of boys under 6 months of age fell from 20,246 to
14,880 – a decline of about 30%.
In
2013 the Council of Europe adopted a resolution questioning the
practice of circumcising young boys and several EU member states are
debating bans on religious circumcision
Whilst
the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association
now defines neonatal circumcision as a "non-therapeutic"
surgical procedure.
Many
Western jurisdictions have only recently banned the genital
mutilation of girls as there was previously no history of the
procedure occurring there. Increased immigration from Africa and the
Middle East has forced governments to clarify existing legislation or
introduce new laws explicitly banning FGM, and it is now restricted
across the EU, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United
States:
As stated in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church at paragraph 2297 states in part:
"Except
when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly
intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations
performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.
Christians have, with very
few exceptions, never
practiced circumcision.
Nevertheless, secular thought
introduced the practice in the modern United States, and American
Christians absorbed it. Christians in other lands are often shocked
to hear that some American Christians routinely circumcise their
boys. They view the practice as a lack of respect for God's wise
creation and a clear violation of basic medical ethics.
This
leads me to ask why in my 27 years of being sexually active have I
consistently found many men of christian back grounds circumcised ?
Recently
when speaking with my lover here in Costa Rica he told me with pride
how his mother made the decision for himself and his brother not to
be circumcised as it would hinder their sensitivity during sex. I
just want to hug that woman !
He
also told me that he was the one that looked different amoungst his
school friends growing up with most of the boys around him having had
their foreskins removed as babies.
SO,
Why, indeed ?
And
I have heard it over and over again.
“
The real reason I wanted
to do it was so our son wouldn't look different in the locker room
when he got older”
Most American and parents
choose newborn circumcision in spite of medical advice; in fact, for
many it's a no-brainer. "My husband and I probably spent only 10
minutes discussing it," says one mother of Concord,
Massachusetts, of their son's circumcision last year. "We didn't
want our boy to look different from his dad."
Let's just pause for a
moment......
Isn't this the problem we are
now having in female populations of the west where girls and women
are wanting to look like porn stars and having their inner and outer
labia's cosmetically altered? “So they look the same as someone
else”
I mean come on guys. Would
you do it to your daughter? So she had a good chance of looking like
the pixelated images in porn movies?
I would go out on a limb and
say NO you would not.
Another woman, of Brooklyn, New York, when delivered her boy recently and had him circumcised, She states. "I went to high school in
Marin County, California, in the early '90s. My friend's boyfriend
was uncircumcised, and it was a topic of conversation among the
girls," she recalls. "But if I lived in a place where 80
percent of the boys were not circumcised, then I probably wouldn't do
it.”
From about 1980 to 1999, 65
percent of infants born in the United States were circumcised; in
2005, that percentage had dropped to 56, where it has generally held
steady since. Rates of circumcision vary across the regions of the
United States: Three out of four Midwestern babies are circumcised,
while only slightly more than half of all Southern babies are cut
[source: Merrill].
Only about 21 percent of infants are circumcised in the West.
Hispanics are less likely
than non-Hispanics to circumcise male children. The greater
concentration of Hispanics in the West over the last 30 years is
believed to be responsible for the regional decline in circumcision.
As with various patent
medicines and medical beliefs of the past, circumcision was seen by
some as a cure for a range of ailments, from impotence to
homosexuality.
The health benefits of
circumcision are overstated. Circumcision may drastically cut down on
HIV and other STD infection rates, but so do safe sex practices.
Also in the past the American
Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said that circumcising newborn boys did
have potential medical advantages, primarily related to preventing
urinary tract infections (UTIs). But by 1999, the AAP had formed a
task force on circumcision that decided the procedure shouldn't be
routinely recommended. The task force based this policy on 40 years
of studies of both circumcised and uncircumcised boys, and it
concluded the following:
Problems
with the penis, such as irritation, can occur with or without
circumcision.
With
proper care, there is no difference in hygiene.
There
may or may not be differences in sexual sensation in adult men.
There
is an increased risk for a UTI in uncircumcised males, especially
babies under 1 year. However, the risk for a UTI is still less than
1 percent.
- Newborn circumcision
provides some protection from penile cancer, which only occurs in
the foreskin. However, the risk of this cancer is very low in
developed countries such as the United States.
"We also looked at
whether being circumcised prevents HIV in a man's partner," says
Jack Swanson, MD, a pediatrician in Ames, Iowa, and a task force
member. "There may be a slight benefit to being circumcised, but
the statistics were inconclusive. There weren't any medical reasons
that were convincing enough for us to say that all boy babies should
be circumcised," he says.
At the end of the day no
major
medical organization recommends circumcision. As the chief Dutch
medical organization KNMG has concluded doctors should "actively and insistently inform
parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical
benefits and the danger of complications."
With all of this talk about
cutting it off, it's time I shared with you what it s all about.
Uncircumcised men have
stronger sexual sensations because the tip of the penis is not
constantly exposed to the everyday elements; The ability of the
uncircumcised penis to slide within its own sleeve provides for
"nonabrasive" sexual intercourse and masturbation.
.Men lose a degree of sexual
pleasure and stimulation when he foreskin is removed. Many unique
nerve endings -- found only in the foreskin -- are lost forever. As
mentioned above,
20 000 in fact.
The foreskin, also known as
the prepuce is a complex structure with multiple anatomical and
physiological functions. It is specialised tissue,
composing of skin, mucosa, nerves, blood vessels, and muscle fibres.
A frenulum is found on the
ventral side of the penis. The frenulum serves to tether a movable
structure to a non-movable structure. The penile frenulum returns the
foreskin to its normal protective forward position. Most
men report that the frenulum is highly erogenous tissue.
The prepuce covers and
protects the glans penis and urinary meatus. In most males, the
prepuce protects the sterile urinary tract environment in infancy and
maintains the moistness — beneficial to good health — of the
mucosal surface of the glans penis throughout life.
Several writers have
commented on the sensitivity of the prepuce. Winkelmann (1956) wrote,
“…it is a region of great sensitivity and possessed of an
abundant nerve supply, and later (1959) identified the prepuce as
a specific
erogenous zone.
Falliers (1970)
noted the “sensory pleasure associated with tactile stimulation of
the foreskin.”
A landmark study by Sorrells
et al. (2007)
of the fine-touch sensitivity of the penis finds that the areas most
sensitive to fine touch are on the foreskin.
The presence of the prepuce
tends to protect the corona of the glans penis from direct
stimulation, helps to prevent premature ejaculation and
contributes to female satisfaction.
Circumcision, therefore,
amputates the most sensitive areas of the penis.
And from a woman's
point of view that is a damn shame.
Empowerment Through Pleasure.
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