Genital mutilation: It's not just for ladies

I was recently perusing some headlines when I came across a topic that always makes me cringe: ritualistic female genital cutting. An overview of this cultural phenomenon can be found in this New York Times article (complete with chilling photographs). This practice is, for obvious reasons, illegal in the United States. However, it turns out that the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be allowed to perform a ritualistic "nick" on the genitals of young girls in order to assuage those who have a cultural yearning to damage their daughter's genitals.

As I felt my face flush with rage at the idea of American doctors bending to the will of sadistic misogynists for the sake of RELIGIOUS DOGMA, a sudden precedent sprang into my mind which could justify their reasoning - we're allowed perform unnecessary genital cutting on boys. In fact we're not just allowed - we're peer-pressured, band-wagoned, and indoctrinated into thinking it's abnormal NOT to cut nearly half the skin off a baby boy's penis.

This topic makes me, quite possibly, more irritated than most other religious topics (and yes, it is a religious topic, as well as a cultural topic). In fact, irritated isn't the word - enraged is the word. Why am I so enraged? I'm not a guy. I don't have to worry about it, right? Wrong. I worry about the unnecessary denial of human rights to any being. A human problem is a human problem is a human problem. This is part of the reason that I sometimes hesitate to call myself a feminist - I am not simply concerned with unfair treatment of women (though it is currently far more common than the alternative), I am concerned with the unfair treatment of any person. Call it "gender equality" which often ends up having to defend the feminist cause. So here I am to defend men's rights, even if many men don't feel the need to defend them.

My least compelling argument against the practice of male infant circumcision is that it is a needless infliction of pain on a helpless being. I say "least compelling," because in the grand scheme of things, the child suffers for a very short period and will not, as an adult, remember the procedure. You may be thinking - "If your least compelling argument involves subjecting an infant to unnecessary bloodletting and pain, then I feel no need to hear the most compelling," then congratulations! You're a good person. For the rest of you, to go a bit further, infant circumcision is routinely performed without anesthesia. Pain is very, very real in this procedure. I would like you, the reader, to take a moment to vividly imagine having a section of skin somewhere on your body stretched out and then sliced off without anesthetic. Now imagine that this is some of the most sensitive tissue on your body. Now justify doing that to a helpless infant. Now look at yourself in the mirror, and think about what you just defended.

Furthermore, infant circumcision is completely medically unnecessary. This is the part of the debate where I have countless objections relating to hygiene thrown at me. Hygiene as a justification for circumcision is laughable. As a female, I am responsible for keeping my own vagina clean. If I neglect my genital groundskeeping, I will experience all kinds of creepy and unpleasant problems (and I will have a terrible time convincing my partner to engage in sexual activity with me). Do I yearn for less complicated genitals? I imagine that would go something like this:

"Why, oh why must the labia majora and labia minora be so close together and complicated? How on earth will I ever keep this under control?! Whoa is me! If only someone had removed my labia minora in my infancy! Then there would be less need to consult a manual or ask an expert on how to cleanse myself."

This lament sounds, well, stupid. That's because women clean their genitals without a second thought. It's part of the shower routine. We like all of our lady parts where they are, because they are engineered to do what they are supposed to do. Gentlemen, your foreskin has a purpose. You know that overly-sensitive, sort of shocking feeling you sometimes get when it scrapes up against, say, the inside of your zipper? Your glans (head) isn't meant to be fully exposed. It has a protective, lubricated covering when you're born. This flexible covering is known as the prepuce, or foreskin. Now since it does get a bit moist under there, it is necessary to slide the foreskin back and clean the glans of the penis when performing your normal maintenance. This just means you have to spend five extra seconds touching your penis. I fail to see how this is difficult. When this routine is maintained, the fear of smelliness, buildup, or infection is eliminated. To imply that the foreskin should removed in order to eliminate the risk of uncleanness is tantamount to removing some of one's teeth to avoid having spend so much time brushing and flossing.

To address another common objection to my position, many people insist that uncircumcised penises are less attractive than circumcised penises. First of all, when erect, they look damn near identical:

Yes, this is a photograph of an erect, UNcircumcised penis, so don't click it if you don't want to see it.

Yes, this is a photograph of an erect, circumcised penis, so don't click it if you don't want to see it.

When flaccid, the uncircumcised penis looks just as you would expect: it looks like it has a covering of skin over the glans. The value judgment placed on the attractiveness of this unassuming section of skin (which, FYI, in the adult penis is the size of a postcard when stretched out - think how many nerve endings you lose!) is nothing short of an artificial cultural bias. To make a disquieting comparison, female genital cutting in Indonesia is viewed by men as a beautification - does this make it acceptable? In Europe, circumcised penises would be outside the status quo - fewer than twenty percent of European men are circumcised! Plenty of women and men here in the States find uncircumcised penises just as attractive as or more attractive than circumcised penises. No one knows what an infant's personal tastes will turn out to be as far as the aesthetics of their sexual organ, much less the tastes of their future sexual partners. This is not your decision to make, and that is exactly the point.

It is a violation of human rights to perform a medically unnecessary cosmetic surgery on a infant. This alone is reason enough to end this antiquated religious ritual. Adults who are displeased with the shape of their penis have just as much right as adults who are dissatisfied with their nose to change it if they decide that it would make them happier. There are thousands of men who feel violated that their parents took it upon themselves to make such a personal and permanent decision on their behalf. While there are men who are perfectly satisfied with their parent's decision to circumcise (note that they never had an opportunity to know what they missed), this is no reason to assume that their parents had the right to do so. Even if only a small minority feel that their parents took something from them, this does nothing to change the fact that every parent who has their infant circumcised has, in fact, stolen a piece of their child's flesh without permission. Just because something is popular does not make it right.