Africa and Our Love of the Naked Penis
I am very uncomfortable with the enthusiasm I hear regarding male circumcision as a strategy for reducing AIDS transmission in Africa.
Recent studies suggest that male circumcision offers some protection from the transmission of HIV, but does this mean that we should start amputating healthy tissue? Not necessarily. We don't, as a rule, amputate breasts because it would decrease the rate of breast cancer. So how, exactly, did we decide that this was a good idea?
I suspect that the main reason this strategy is so appealing to Americans (who have a great deal of influence in transnational aid organizations) is because we already like male circumcision. Or, perhaps more accurately, Americans tend to be kinda icked out by the uncircumcised penis. If most Americans were uncircumcised and we had the same sort of distaste for the circumcised penis that we now have for the uncircumcised one, there is no way that we would be promoting circumcision. We would promote condom use, which is significantly more effective for stopping the spread of HIV than circumcision and does not involve chopping off a part of the body we are born with. Sacrificing the foreskin is just something that Americans are comfortable with.
I worry, too, that the marketing of circumcision as an answer to HIV infection in Africa may make some individuals less cautious once circumcised. Public health campaigns often rely on oversimplification and hyperbole. Indeed, in an AP article published in multiple venues on Friday, a UNICEF AIDS advisor was quoted as saying that "circumcised men are relatively well protected against HIV." It sounds, here, like he is saying that circumcision is protection against HIV. Saying so is the kind of misinformation that will lead to more death in Africa, not less. Let's hope he was misquoted.
The comeback, of course, is: What's the harm? And the answer is: We don't know. Since being circumcised, in mainstream America, is not seen as a problem, no one asks the questions that could lead to us discovering that circumcision is harmful. We do know, however, that men lose sexual sensitivity with circumcision: nerve endings in the foreskin itself are lost and the skin on the head of the penis, no longer protected by the foreskin, thickens and becomes less sensitive. (Maybe it's just me, but I think that's unfortunate.) And, like any procedure, it's risky. In addition to the risk of excessive bleeding and infection, circumcisions are botched and sometimes babies lose more than their foreskin. The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend it.
Still, if the studies are right, then circumcising men will mean that some lives will be saved. That's great, of course. But the degree of attention and applause for male circumcision is disproportionate. Circumcision is not the answer to the AIDS epidemic. If circumcision could stop HIV, we never would have had an epidemic in the United States. Instead of vindicating our love of the naked penis, the media should focus on the real progress made in Africa. World AIDS Day will be commemorated on Saturday, December 1st with the news that AIDS transmission is down in Africa, but it's because of more monogamy, more abstinence, and more condom use, not losing those pesky foreskins.
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Lisa's article suggests that circumcision is harmful to the circumcised male. I would suggest that thousands of years of circumcisions performed on Jews suggests otherwise.
Many of us actually manage to live productive and sexually active lives with our partners despite the fact we were circumcised. :-)
And don't worry - we still enjoy sex.
Also I think to compare a mastectomy to a circumcision is way off and is comparing apples and oranges. It's just not the same.
The last point is Lisa dismisses circ as an option because Condom use does a better job of preventing AIDS transmission. I think this ignores that getting the population in these areas to use condoms has not been successful. If these men are circumcised and they don't use a condom that's not great, but it does reduce the rate of transmission of AIDS. It seems that you're sacrificing that over cosmetics.
I'm not encouraging anybody to have their child circumcised. I'm just saying it's not as black and white an issue as it is being portrayed in this article.
The Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa HIV/Circumcision "controlled" trials are not unassailable. There is serious doubt that the cut men and the controls were given the same counsel.
There is also a known but neglected factor regarding all three studies being cut short. HIV is often undetectable until months after infection occurs. If the cut men were abstinent for a couple months while healing, they could have been just coming into a period when HIV acquired after the cut might have been detected when the studies (ALL THREE OF THEM) were halted well before the duration stipulated in the protocol. Something's fishy.
It's kind of like betting that a deck of cards is 50% face cards and agreeing to draw 20 cards to prove it. Ready,..st
You say that circumcision offers "some" protection against HIV. Indeed, circumcision probably reduces the risk of HIV infection by well over 90% with each exposure. (Multiply that by multiple partners and hundreds of exposures you achieve the reported 55-75% reduction at one year.)
If a vaccine or any other procedure were half as effective it would be one of the biggest medical stories of the decade. Universal vaccination would be mandatory.
That result was in men who had recently undergone the procedure. I suspect the protection against heterosexual HIV infection in men is much greater if they have undergone the snip before adolescence – allowing more time for the skin of the penis to thicken. (African populations that circumcise have a dramatically lower rate of HIV infection.
Isn’t it possible that the practice of circumcision for religious reasons (in many cultures) may have been derived from a health benefit that was evident to our ancestors thousands of years ago?
After the prospective African trials of circumcision, it now seems clear that the dramatic differences in HIV prevalence between tribes has less to do with cultural differences than with the presence or absence of a few square inches of skin.
Nommo, certainly one can miss sensitive sexual tissue, especially once one learns from the web just what is missing. That's exactly what sexually emerging youth are doing today, searaching on the internet for information on circumcision. Maybe you should try it.
When I was pregnant for my son, my husband and I needed to make a decision regarding circumcision. I did research and I discovered the history of widespread circumcision in the US precedes the Holocaust (sorry, no partygal). It started during the Victorian era, when doctors believed (against all evidence to the contrary), that circumcised males would be less likely to masturbate. (Remember that the Victorians viewed masturbation as a moral and health issue. You know, the old, "if you do that too much, you'll go blind" thing.) When I found this out, and that most of the so-called "health benefits" offered infinitesimal gains (e.g., reduction in penile cancer by 0.0004 per million, or some ridiculously low number), which, to me (admittedly not a statistician), were too small to be much more than a statistical error. However, when I told my Ob/Gyn that we were not going to do it, she became upset. When she knew that I couldn't be persuaded on medical grounds, she tried other arguments to try to persuade me to do it. "He won't look like the other kids," she said. I said, "You’re asking me to remove a healthy portion of my son's body for cosmetic reasons?" She denied it (and was indignant in the process). She then told me about the Philippines, where she was from, that the Muslim boys underwent circumcision at 12, and it was very painful. Well, I said, my husband and I don't belong to any organized religion, including Islam, and if my son decides to convert some day, that will be his choice as an adult and he'll have to deal with it. I later found out that circumcision is covered under most health-care plans, so it's a quick $500 for the physician who performs it. By the way, in most countries that have national health insurance , it’s considered a non-medically necessary procedure and it is not covered. The bottom line is that the whole process made me skeptical of anyone who makes claims that circumcision has health benefits.
Look, as an uncircumcised healthy male, I'm here to tell you that sex is a LOT better for us guys than for the muslims and jews of the world. The pure euphoria felt by the sensitive uncircumcised penis in sex compared to the blunted stimulus of unfortunately circumcised "males" bares no comparison.
Circumcision is unnatural. End discussion.
Excellent article, Lisa! I'm 100% with you on this. I've been making the same argument regarding breast removal for years, but this is the first time I've heard someone else make the same logical comparison. You're also totally on the money regarding the American viewpoint on foreskin. As a man whose partner is uncircumcised, I personally find intact penises to be much more attractive and "normal looking" than circumcised penises, which are often left with an unsightly scar. And the whole argument regarding hygiene is garbage. He's clean as a whistle down there (believe me, I would know). Fortunately the rate of infant circumcision has been dropping in this country and is now somewhere along the 60% range, which is considerably better than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Slowly but surely, I think we're heading in the right direction.
I agree that circumcision alone will not stop Aids, but I think it's something that may help...and I know I feel less at risk with a circumcised man; I also like the way it looks better. Maybe that's just my upbringing and the fact that I am circumcised. I think a lot of men would keep their foreskin, though, if they were given the choice later in life.
Warning: please brace yourselves for seriously non PC comment here.
Disclaimer: Let me preface by saying that I am 1/4 Jewish on my Mother's side, so this is *not* an anti-Jewish hate comment. It is just a comment based on observation and theory. Anyway, I don't do hate comments of any kind.
Regarding circumcision, my theory is that the mass promotion of circumcision as a health benefit is rooted largely in a desperate bid by Jews to avoid being identified by their sexual appendages. It is a self-protective measure to avoid a recurrence of the Holocaust where there was no way out for the Jewish males, since the gig was up as soon as their pants were down. They were immediately identifiable once the goods were on display. Lying was useless. And they never, ever wanted to feel so helpless and exposed again. (And who can blame them?) This propaganda was very cleverly and wisely perpetrated by Jewish Doctors and health professionals over the years. And it worked! As Lisa Wade points out: "Americans tend to be kinda icked out by the uncircumcised penis." Why? because they bought into the propaganda hook, line and sinker! And there really is no turning back now. We have at least 2-3 generations of thoroughly brainwashed people to contend with. You try telling someone who is already circumcised and has also had his son circumcised that they were the victims of mass indoctrination. That won't fly at all. Heck, they'll show you by having the next generation properly tended to as well.
Think about it.
Cicumcision which is abundantly common in America didn't stop ONE case of AIDS.
The naked penis that causes the spread of AIDS isn't due to foreskin present or missing, it's a condom missing.
PRACTICE SAFER SEX
PWA since 85
I believe much of the knickertwisting is
all about that "Missionary position"
If I were an alien, visiting earth for the first time and interested in the sexual habits, the first piece of interesting information is that certain religions demands that you take an innocent male child, barely a few hours or weeks old, and you mutilate their private private parts in a religiously mandated ritual all in the name of a 'god'.
I would question the value of visiting sucha place ever again.
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