Next Time Boychick, We Take the Whole Thing

Yesterday, Darwin turned eight days old. Darwin is my second grandson. You know what that means if you're Jewish. The briss, the brit mila, the covenant of circumcision. Or as I like to think of it: Next time boychick, we take the whole thing!

Ever wonder why Jewish boys are so fucked up about sex? Ever wonder why they fall for mile-high models from Slovenia who wear those big cold crosses? Ever wonder why they like Chinese girls, Chinese-American girls, Blonde shiksa cheerleaders from Kansas? Or those cool black models who dance like Beyonce?

It's because of the Covenant with Jahwah or G-d: I take this piece of your pecker, with your mother, father, grandfathers and grandmothers looking on, teary eyed. And you think of nothing but your pecker for the rest of your life!

You think female circumcision is bad? (It's hideous, health destroying and horrible -- and inflicted on women by other women). But at least women have other things to think about than their pussies -- like children, like politics, like writing. At least women don't focus nonstop on their vaginas (or as Oprah says, their vajayjays). Men think about their pricks for the rest of their lives. Don't get me wrong, they think about them whether or not they're circumcised. But circumcision bumps it up to a whole other level.

Health reasons, my ass. It's the health of the old impotent grandpas they're thinking of, not you, little boy. You could learn to push the skin back and wash. We're not in the desert any more. We have Jacuzzis and steam showers and redwood hot tubs from Californicate. No, folks, it's the grandpas who love this ritual. The mothers usually run in the other room crying. But they get blamed for it anyway. And Jewish women bear the brunt ever after. Either they marry you and run around with Diana Ross or Beyonce or Naomi Campbell -- or they marry Sandra Oh or Lucy Liu or Yoko Ono and she converts.

In the old days, your mother used to threaten suicide. Now we're more liberal, so your mother embraces Ms. Hung, Ms. Jong, Ms. Ono, Ms. Liu, Ms. Hoe, Ms. Loe, Ms. Cho, Ms. Choi, Ms. Loi. And guess what, the next little boy goes through it anyway!

In my parents' youth, there was a show that ran forever called: Abie's Irish Rose. That was the forbidden fruit in 1920s, 1930s New York. If you updated it, you'd have to call it Abie's Swahili Sweetie or Abie's Chinese Lotus. Nowadays it might be Abie's Tantric Tootsie. The idea would be the same: brilliant Jewish boy flees his mother and hightails it for India or China or Japan. (And you can find India, Africa and China right here in New York City. You don't even have to take a jet).

OK. Call me an anti-Semite. (I'm secretly a pro-Semite). But I do have misgivings about circumcision. And I have met (and married) a lot of Jewish men. And one Chinese-American who is an M.D. but still doesn't speak Chinese. And who was circumcised. Probably still is.

The altacockers (loosely translated as old shitters) have every explanation under the sun. Explanations, after all, are all altacockers can do. It's healthy. It prevents the clap.

You won't get those nasty new viruses around today, G-d forbid. (A secret warning about gayness, I think). But how can you ever forget the pain, the fear, the confusion of being eight days old and having your pecker snipped? They don't remember, say the altacockers. They don't feel it, say the bubbies. We did it in the hospital, say the parents. He didn't feel a thing, says the mother (who was in the other room crying her eyes out).

And here comes the mohel, with his beard, his tallis, his yarmulke, with his red wine and his gauze pads, and his shiny snipper and his old jokes.

What did the mohel put in the window of his shop? Bonsai trees? Why? What else should he put in the window?

If this is the covenant with G-d, then G-d is a sadist. But we knew that already. He descends from Ba'al and all those other mean old gods. Not that the goddesses are any better. Think of Kali, after all, with her necklace of skulls. Life and death are always close as twins. Even Jesus was circumcised and we know that Jesus was chaste -- especially since we have demoted Mary Magdalen from disciple to whore, from wife to mistress, from wise woman to bimbo.

In the older Christianity -- the one Jesus the Jew actually practiced -- women were revered for their wisdom and spirituality. But that didn't suit St. Paul nor apocalyptic St. John the Evangelist who was doing LSD on Patmos (I visited his cave) where he wrote about the four horsemen and the blazing fires in the sky. (It could have been the Patmos sunset seen by a stoner emerging from a cave -- or the Patmos sunrise -- equally bewitching).

But whatever the old guys say, circumcision must hurt -- even to a baby eight days old who then gets his first taste of wine -- pain and alcoholism going hand in rubber glove.

It killed me to see my grandsons marked like this so future Nazis can identify them. What is wrong with the chosen people? Chosen for pain? All the psychological troubles of Jewish men -- from Sigmund Freud to Lenny Bernstein to Philip Roth -- must stem from this dubious ritual. I want to tell my adorable grandson, Max, who is four: Just make sure you never make pee pee in front of a skinhead. But he doesn't know what a skinhead is.

Don't mark him! I wanted to shout, but instead I laughed hysterically at all the mohel's jokes.

"What a great audience!" he said. And was off to the next snip.

1/30/08 8:12 AM

Comments

[Counselor]

Putting aside the circumcision thing, I think the statement that women have more things to think about than men (like children, politics, and writing) is a load of sentimental crap! Erica--compare for me the contents of "Playboy" and "Esquire" with "Cosmopolitan" and "Vogue". "Playboy" has (or at least had) in addition to photos of nude women, fiction by the greatest writers in the world! Not in the town. Not in the state. In the world! (Updike, Vonnegut, Mailer, etc.) And millions of men read that fiction. "Esquire" has articles by some of the best writers in the world. How come the best "Cosmo" can come up with is "10 ways to arouse your man"? I thought you said women were more high minded than men. "Vogue" may have some more high-minded material but still not as much as the above men's magazines. As a novelist aren't you ashamed at the contents of women's magazines? Don't they give the lie to your statement. Answer me that.

[DanBollinger]

Thanks for this thought-provoking post. The International Coalition for Genital Integrity knows a lot about this topic. http://www.icgi.org Some people have posted incorrect information, here is the truth:
Forced genital cutting is barbaric regardless of the gender or age of the victim, or how much tissue is removed. Anyone saying one is worse than another is not only ignorant, but boorish, too.
Babies do feel pain, and the latest research says they feel more pain than adults.
Early trauma can permanently alter the development of the pain. This can result in changed adult behaviors including increased likelihood for addictive behaviors and suicide. It is not uncommon for victims to be diagnosed with PTSD or alexithymia (inability to identify and express emotions).
Circumcision does not protect you from HIV! Condoms and limiting the number of sexual partners does.
Circumcision regularly removes 75% of the fine-touch nerves from the penis by removing the most-sensitive portion, the foreskin, leaving the least-sensitive portion, the glans (head).
The United States is the only country in the world that regularly circumcises infants for non-religious reasons. More boys are left intact as parents learn more about the harms of circumcision. The circumcision rate has been dropping steadily for the past 25 years and is approaching 50/50.
Caring for an intact boy is easy! http:www.babyboy.info

[squarebird]

Hearing that Jews were 'different', I had always assumed that meant that they were NOT circumcised. Honestly, all through Junior High and High School, I don't know that I ever knowingly met a Jew, and yet I never met any boy who was not circumcised. This was in Alabama, Virginia, Texas and Hawaii. When our own boy was born, my wife (Catholic) did not think twice about it, since uncircumcised men "look like dogs". Me (Southern Baptist) went along with her. By the way, Erica, it is women who set the cultural norms (most of us men are oblivious even to changing styles until a woman points it out to us).

Robert in Virginia

[fightingwords]

Let's forget for a minute that the vast majority of American males are circumcised, only a small percentage of whom are Jewish. Let's forget also that an eight-day-old Jewish boy child is far less likely to remember his "mother, father, grandfathers and grandmothers looking on, teary eyed" during the bris than the majority of girls who undergo female circumcision between the ages of 4 and 10 years. But that's not so big a deal, according to Jong, because "at least women have other things to think about than their pussies -- like children, like politics, like writing."

And apparently I'm not supposed to notice Jong's racist implication that black women are only good enough for extra-marital affairs while Asian women may be lucky enough to actually marry these cultural traitors. I guess I also shouldn't mention the fact that black AND Asian women can actually be Jewish.

In fact, I'm clearly hallucinating my own ancestry, that of several other black Jewish women I know, and the huge number of Ethiopian Jews--perhaps I bumped my head last night and am having an episode.

I could go on, but really, what's the point? This is clearly just more proof that the Second Wavers have all lost their minds.

[OSUMercutio]

"Female Circumcision" or Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is not a joke. And it is nothing like male circumcision.

Among practicing cultures, FGC is most commonly performed between the ages of four and eight, but can take place at any age from infancy to adolescence. Prohibition has led to FGC going underground, at times with people who have had no medical training performing the cutting without anesthetic, sterilization, or the use of proper medical instruments. The procedure, when performed without any anesthetic, can lead to death through shock from immense pain or excessive bleeding. The failure to use sterile medical instruments may lead to infections.

Other serious long term health effects are also common. These include urinary and reproductive tract infections, caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood, various forms of scarring and infertility. The first time having sexual intercourse will often be extremely painful, and infibulated women will need the labia majora to be opened, to allow their husband access to the vagina. This second cut, sometimes performed by the husband with a knife, can cause other complications to arise.

A June 2006 study by the WHO has cast doubt on the safety of genital cutting of any kind.[1] This study was conducted on a cohort of 28,393 women attending delivery wards at 28 obstetric centers in areas of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal and The Sudan. A high proportion of these mothers had undergone FGC. According to the WHO criteria, all types of FGC were found to pose an increased risk of death to the baby (15% for Type I, 32% for Type II, and 55% for Type III). Mothers with FGC Type III were also found to be 30% more at risk for cesarean sections and had a 70% increase in postpartum hemorrhage compared to women without FGC. Estimating from these results, and doing a rough population estimate of mothers in Africa with FGC, an additional 10 to 20 per thousand babies in Africa die during delivery as a result of the mothers having undergone genital cutting.

[OSUMercutio]

"Female circumcision" or female genital cutting (FGC) is not funny.

Among practicing cultures, FGC is most commonly performed between the ages of four and eight, but can take place at any age from infancy to adolescence. Prohibition has led to FGC going underground, at times with people who have had no medical training performing the cutting without anesthetic, sterilization, or the use of proper medical instruments. The procedure, when performed without any anesthetic, can lead to death through shock from immense pain or excessive bleeding. The failure to use sterile medical instruments may lead to infections.

Other serious long term health effects are also common. These include urinary and reproductive tract infections, caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood, various forms of scarring and infertility. The first time having sexual intercourse will often be extremely painful, and infibulated women will need the labia majora to be opened, to allow their husband access to the vagina. This second cut, sometimes performed by the husband with a knife, can cause other complications to arise.

A June 2006 study by the WHO has cast doubt on the safety of genital cutting of any kind.[1] This study was conducted on a cohort of 28,393 women attending delivery wards at 28 obstetric centers in areas of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal and The Sudan. A high proportion of these mothers had undergone FGC. According to the WHO criteria, all types of FGC were found to pose an increased risk of death to the baby (15% for Type I, 32% for Type II, and 55% for Type III). Mothers with FGC Type III were also found to be 30% more at risk for cesarean sections and had a 70% increase in postpartum hemorrhage compared to women without FGC. Estimating from these results, and doing a rough population estimate of mothers in Africa with FGC, an additional 10 to 20 per thousand babies in Africa die during delivery as a result of the mothers having undergone genital cutting.

[Blackspeare]

Just what we need----more sarcasm, but still an interesting post. Circumcision has to be one of the oldest rituals still performed today. But religious circumcision is not restricted to people who practice Judaism, but also to Muslims. However, the Muslims perform what is known as a symbolic circumcision in which only a part of the foreskin is excised; the Jews remove the entire foreskin.
As legend goes, the Jewish ritual of circumcision was part of a covenant between Abraham and his God, but you have to ask why would an omnipotent God care about the tip of someone's penis so much?! And the answer is----God really doesn't! The early Hebrews were a brazen warrior nomadic tribe sometime ruthless in combat. As their numbers grew they needed some kind of an identity marker for two purposes----to prevent desertion and enemy infiltration and circumcision was a convenient procedure that could be described as a secret mark. Wrapped in religious overtones it became a tribal ritual for Jews for over 5000 years----now that's staying power.

[bauersox]

Why wait until "next time?" Let's do it now!

[HC]

An 8 day old child doesn't feel pain? Well then it's just too bad you weren't home with us the day we came back from the hospital w/our 2 day old newly circ'd son and he spent the entire 24 hrs screaming b/c the gauze fell off.

I totally regret signing off on the procedure.

[aintnorep]

You funny, but you nuts girl. Besides I like Jewish girls, just not the white ones.

[fightingwords]

Let's forget for a minute that the vast majority of American males are circumcised (http://www.cirp.org/library/statistics/USA/), only a small percentage of whom are Jewish. Let's forget also that an eight-day-old Jewish boy child is far less likely to remember his "mother, father, grandfathers and grandmothers looking on, teary eyed" during the bris than the majority of girls who undergo female circumcision between the ages of 4 and 10 years (http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm). But that's not so big a deal, according to Jong, because "at least women have other things to think about than their pussies -- like children, like politics, like writing."

And apparently I'm not supposed to notice Jong's racist implication that black women are only good enough for extra-marital affairs while Asian women may be lucky enough to actually marry these cultural traitors. I guess I also shouldn't mention the fact that black AND Asian women can actually be Jewish. (In fact, I'm clearly hallucinating my own ancestry, that of several other black Jewish women I know, and the huge number of Ethiopian Jews--perhaps I bumped my head last night and am having an episode.)

Oh, I could go on, but I don't have the time. Maybe when I'm done working and phone-banking for a get out the vote campaign and looking for a new home for my dog, I'll spare a moment to fuck with Jewish women by screwing their men. Hey, it's their fault for getting their sons circumcised in the first place. Karma is a bitch, and so am I.

[vaman]

I am happy that I am circumcised.

[eddiestardust]

Funny how women say to men that they shouldn't talk about abortion, well, women don't have this procedure done to them so I kindly suggest that they...

be very quiet!

[dogman44]

So my evil Jewish doktor lopped off my foreskin. And I'm not Jewish! Can I sue for my
inability to satisfy women because my circumcised dick causes chaffing and makes me
unacceptable as a sex partner?
Jesus Christ! There's a war going on. Quit thinking about everybody's genitals

[splashy]

It seems really barbaric to me, butchering one of the most sensitive places on the body when someone is so young, with no choice of their own.

I have always thought that when I first found out about what was done. What a horribly introduction to the world!