Jared doesn't trust Dr. Friedan's notion of "Health and Mental Hygiene":
Tony expresses his personal dissatisfaction at being denied his opportunity to choose intactness:
Kurt Jorgensen has an insider's view, has tirelessly researched the issue, and has a lot to say on the subject:
I write to you as a humanist, a guide and a friend. This letter will be frank, adult, probably shocking, but please hear me out.
You are going to be wonderful parents, which a privilege and blessing that you deserve, but I knew that you would soon be offered a "choice" that so many misinformed parents fail to say "no" to. I've been feeling uneasy since that day, and I feel compelled to say something to you about it.
Please don't circumcise your son.
On and off over the last 15 years, I have studied the topic and read the literature, journal articles (both pro and con), and have discussed it with physicians, nurses, psychologists, clergy, moms, dads, friends, strangers, victims, and advocates. My mother is an Ob/Gyn and circumcised thousands of babies before she saw the light, and my father is a pathologist and has told me of the perfectly healthy foreskins that flow through his lab daily. I have become an expert on the topic, and am compelled to share my knowledge.
You may or may not be aware, but this is a uniquely American phenomenon. It is superficially cosmetic, physically and sexually significant, and relatively recent cultural quirk. While most people in this country (which, incidentally, made mutilation of female minors' genitals a federal offense) abhor the idea of cutting girls, they show calloused indifference to what is done to an American boy every 30 seconds of every day. Circumcision, by strict definition, is actually a form of male genital mutilation, and when performed against a non-consenting uninformed minor without medical indication, is wrong.
I can only assume that like most boys born in the US in the last 50 years, you didn't really have a chance at experiencing life the way nature intended it. When you were born, a form was presented to your loving and well-meaning mom, someone might have said something about "it being cleaner" or "won't have problems later", mom signed it, and a little while later you were strapped down, given your first erection by someone else, and then had parts of your penis removed with an ingeniously designed device which has been employed on millions of other helpless and healthy baby boys in the 70 years since its invention. You screamed out for the first few minutes, but even babies have biological defense mechanisms, and your endorphins kicked into overdrive, letting you go stone-cold-passed-out for a little while. If your mom watched, they probably told her "see, it's not so bad, he got bored and went to sleep!" A few minutes later, after the surgeon's work was finished, you were wrapped up, taken back to the nursery, and that was that. Your mom was probably told to put some Vaseline on your raw glans for a couple of days, and as we can see by mom's current belly, everything worked out "just fine" in the end, and you've ended up with a functional "American" penis. Hoorah!?
Unfortunately, this isn't the way boys are supposed to grow up. Boys are designed and born with foreskins. Foreskins are rarely retractile at birth due a membrane called "synechia" which adheres the glans to the foreskin. In infancy, we've deduced that the foreskin's function is to protect the tender urethral meatus and vulnerable urinary tract from irritation, inflammation, possible infection and subsequent scarring. Meatal stenosis (narrowing of the end of the urethra, ie, small pee-hole) is a common problem associated with lack of protective foreskin during the diaper years. With the synechia in place and the foreskin non-rectractile, there is no space under the glans and foreskin, and hence, nothing to clean. In practice, an intact penis requires less maintenance than a circumcised one during infancy. As the boy starts growing up, erections, urination and pleasurable exploration lead to the synechia breaking down, and the foreskin becoming retractile. Only after this point should the area between the glans and foreskin be washed. By then he would have figured out that his genitals are a pleasure center, and that much of the pleasurable feelings come from sliding the foreskin back and forth over the glans. The exquisite feelings come from the expansion and contraction of the pursed tip of the foreskin that extends past the glans, and not from the glans itself. Comparatively, the glans isn't really "pleasurable" but instead produces sensations that lead to orgasm. The ability to differentiate between these feelings is what most people call 'sensitivity', and something that circumcised men laugh off with comments like "I couldn't being imagine being more sensitive! I have a hard enough time lasting a couple of minutes!" This is due to a change in quality and quantity of sensation, something like the difference between TV and HDTV. An intact penis offers deeper sensitivity and understanding of the sensations, not uncontrollable over-sensitivity.
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So where does that leave us today? Well, in Illinois, 7 out of 10 baby boys are circumcised at birth. But for what reasons?
"It's cleaner" - It's cleaner of what, exactly? Are intact boys putting their penises in places that circumcised boys aren't, and then not washing them? Of course they're not. They're just as clean as girls and circumcised boys.
"It's easier" - Related to above, but are we saying that guys don't like to wash their penises? Those who think it's difficult are either prudes or misinformed about what to do for three seconds in the shower.
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"It's healthier" - Pro-circumcision doctors try to sell well-meaning parents on circumcision by offering a statistically lower chance of a urinary tract infection in the first 6 months of life. However, an intact boy left to develop naturally is significantly less likely to get a UTI than a girl is. Girls' UTIs get treated with antibiotics, not surgery. Boys' UTIs are also treated with antibiotics. Promoting surgery to prevent something that is both uncommon and easily treated makes no sense. And STDs? Condoms and abstinence prevent STDs from spreading, not circumcision. Thinking otherwise is false confidence and misdirection. Besides, by the time your son is old enough to have a lover, STDs and HIV should have a vaccine or cure. Besides, these studies performed by white folks in black Africa are saying that 1.8% of circumcised guys got HIV while 3.6% of the natural guys did. If both had been wearing condoms, <0.5% of any of the guys would have gotten HIV. Permanently mutilating babies today for a possible solution in 15-20 years makes no scientific or medical sense.</p>
"It's popular" - It is popular, but on the decline. While the rate in Illinois is disturbingly high, nationally the rate is fast approaching 50%. In Canada and Australia the rate is between 5-15%, and in Europe, circumcision of baby boys it is almost unheard of, generally frowned upon, and in Finland, for example, it is flat-out illegal. Incidentally, something else that has stopped being popular is group showers and skinny dipping. Your will probably not be hanging out and comparing with other nude boys for years to come, and by the time he does, the natural intact penis will be more popular. He'll understand that his is the natural penis, and that he wasn't tribally mutilated the same way that half of his peers were. Besides, if 18 years from now someone asks your son if he wants a doctor to take a sharp knife and cut any part of his penis, more than likely he would strongly object. The surgery is the same today as it will be in 18 years, and it wouldn't be any less unnecessary, painful, or traumatic later than it would be sooner. A decision to circumcise your infant son can't possibly be rationalized by saying it's OK to do something to him as a newborn while he's unable to speak or defend himself, if it's unacceptable to force it on him when he's 18.
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A problem arises due to the prevalence of infant circumcision, as now many Americans feel that foreskins are strange and unnecessary. They do not know anything about how well a foreskin works or how great it feels, but are very quick to cut it off of a non-consenting baby and throw it in the trash. To make matters worse, without personal experience, it's almost impossible to learn more about the foreskin. Medical and anatomy textbooks in the US have nary a complete sentence about its form or function, and the next line in the text is often the foreskin's death sentence, eg "The foreskin covers the glans penis. It is removed during circumcision." However, there is no medical association on Earth that promotes or recommends infant circumcision. The excuses for carrying it out are built upon faulty logic and poor science. People who continue to circumcise their sons once fully informed of the above facts are inflicting ritualized sexual abuse through genital mutilation and, excluding arguments of cultural relativism, living in some state of denial of global humanistic morals and ethics.
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I know that you're smart. I know that you make informed decisions. I know that you try to see through BS. I have distilled the thousands of pages I've read and hundreds of hours of conversations I've had into a letter to spare you the trouble, but by doing so, I might have put our relationship in an awkward position. By taking this risk, I hope that you can see my sincerity and conviction when I say that I would be devastated if I fail in this mission to get you to spare your son. If I hadn't brought this up, you probably wouldn't have thought much of it and would have signed off and not thought twice about it. But then I would find it hard to look you in the eyes, I couldn't continue to respect you as much as I do, and that would leave neither of us happy.
The two of you have invest a lot into your perfect baby boy. Please don't cut your son. Keep him perfect. Doing otherwise just doesn't make sense.
Love,
Your friend
Kurt Jorgensen
