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MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE

I just found out that I’m pregnant, with a boy. I don’t believe in circumcision, but my husband does, and so do our families. If I refuse to circumcise him, will he end up psychologically scarred for life? Do my wishes trump my husband’s here, or do we have to decide 50-50? —Occam’s Razor

The Gay Perspective: You can’t decide “50-50.” You either circumcise the baby or you don’t. As for “believing in circumcision,” you are not waiting for a visit from the tooth fairy here; you are contemplating cutting off a portion of your child’s anatomy. Contrary to what many gay men might tell you, this is not a fashion decision in anticipation of some future online come-on. You should make a thoughtful and educated decision. Be aware that there is no medical reason to circumcise. There is no evidence that circumcision results in better health; behavior is a far more important variable. Circumcision will cause pain to your baby and is widely believed to result in a loss in sexual pleasure. Leaving the penis intact is not an invitation for future problems—the need to circumcise adult males for any medical reason is rare, and the intact penis is quite easy to keep clean. The United States is the only nation in the world where infants are routinely circumcised for non-religious reasons. (This is a practice that became common in the 1870s as a preventative “cure” for masturbation). Eighty percent of the men on this planet are intact.

I think you need to educate your husband and his family. Be prepared that you may not necessarily find much support from your doctor on this. The bias to circumcise runs very deep among some Americans. Indeed, the mother is, typically, the only protection a child has against circumcision in our society. Women are, generally, more sensitive than men to the feelings of infants, and because they have not been circumcised themselves, women are far less likely to be motivated by narcissistic psychological reasons, as in “I want my boy to look like me!”

On the other hand, mothers are the parent who signs most circumcision consent forms. In my own family, my sister justified having her sons circumcised by arguing that she didn’t want them “to look weird in the locker room.” Her husband is an MD. I recommend that you and your husband take a more thoughtful and educated approach. Don’t cave in to pressure. Having an uncut penis will not scar him for life. Circumcising him might.

The Crafty Office Girl says: Tough question. If a consensus can’t be met, I’d say logic dictates that it would be best not to snip, only because snipping later seems to me to be easier than re-attachment, if that is even an option.

The Sales Guy says: Congratulations on your impending baby boy’s arrival. About the circumcision thing, as with most guys, I had it done soon after birth so I have no memory of any difference, pro or con. However, a good friend of mine is—how do you say?—unsnipped, as it were. He swears if he had a say he would have preferred circumcision early on. The reason being a certain mild sexually contracted infection turned unusually problematic because of the “ turtleneck”—it lasted far longer and was more painful than it otherwise might have been. So take that into consideration.

“…a good friend of mine…”? “Turtleneck”?: Come on, Sales Guy. What is this, summer camp? Here’s some more apocrypha: “A friend of mine said his brother wasn’t circumcised, and he whacked off so much that the skin came off in his hand.” “I heard that if you don’t get it cut off, the head of your thing turns white—like a fish in a cave. Girls are scared of it.” “There was a guy who thought he was just uncircumcised, but when he was 14 he pulled back the foreskin and turned out he was a girl. He had to drop out of school and now he wears a dress and works at Family Dollar.”

And I heard that if you made a chain of all the foreskins cut off in the US in the last 100 years, it would be long enough to travel twice around the earth—with enough left over to reach the moon. But that will never happen, because hospital orderlies take them home and feed them to their dogs. It’s true, I read it online.

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