MotherNurture
05-11-2007, 02:53
The Sunday Times
November 4, 2007
Cutting comments: the foreskin debate (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2761868.ece)
Some say it’s ********, others a matter of hygiene. But with babies dying from circumcision, should it continue? Our correspondent hears from the ‘intactivists’
That’s why the uncut likes of Nick Nolte, Leonardo DiCaprio, Willem Dafoe, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves, all born during the ******** period of the last millennium, are listed on pro-foreskin websites as if they were all some kind of heroic locker-room maverick.
Blame Cumming and the unlikely figure of Ben Affleck, if you like, but the circumcision debate has suddenly caught the attention of a new breed of quietly militant pro-choicers and so-called “intactivists” who are putting foreskins to the fore again and unleashing some appropriately cutting comments from the high-minded and famous.
...
The pro-choicers feel that they are on a roll right now. Non-medical circumcision for children is now illegal in Sweden. The numbers of circumcision procedures in the UK are slowly declining and, after peaking in the 1930s, when 35% of British boys were snipped, fell to a mere 6.5% in the 1980s. Today, only 12,200 circumcisions are performed in the UK annually. Most of them go ahead without a hitch. A few end in tragedy.
The inquest into the death of Amitai Moshe, who was just seven days old when he stopped breathing after being circumcised at a synagogue in north London last February – he died a week later from a heart attack – is to be held tomorrow at Hornsey coroner’s court.
...
But this isn’t just about cautiously radical telegenic celebrities or grown men checking one another out at the urinals or intact males doing histrionic winces and leg-crosses at the thought of the dreaded bris. For parents, there’s a basic guilt issue at play, too. In his eloquently incensed invective against religion, God Is Not Great, the firebrand polemicist Christopher Hitchens rails against parents who have their boys circumcised.
“As to immoral practice,” he writes, “it is hard to imagine anything more grotesque than the mutilation of an infant’s genitalia.” He argues that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and diminishes its pleasure, pointing out the significance of the operation being performed on babies rather than those who have reached the age of reason. (One study found that 92% of male infants subject to circumcision were not given anaesthetic during the procedure.)
...
“There’s a sinister side to all this,” Cumming says. “It’s tradition, control and pleasure-removing masquerading as a hygiene thing. What it comes down to is mass genital mutilation. It’s ********. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I’ve heard about men who can’t orgasm for ages because they have no sensation. People in America are impeded, because they don’t feel, you know?”
...
For Cumming, it’s more of an emotive issue. “As far as I am concerned, the default-setting arguments about hygiene just don’t stand up,” he says. “The sanitation issue, especially, always comes up when I am in America. But you know what? I am very clean. I shower frequently.
“I am very proud of my foreskin. I believe it’s there for a purpose. And I just want people to stop and think for a second before they decide to get a big bit of their newborn son’s **** cut off.”
:thumbsup: :smiliedance: :yelclap:
Jen
November 4, 2007
Cutting comments: the foreskin debate (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2761868.ece)
Some say it’s ********, others a matter of hygiene. But with babies dying from circumcision, should it continue? Our correspondent hears from the ‘intactivists’
That’s why the uncut likes of Nick Nolte, Leonardo DiCaprio, Willem Dafoe, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves, all born during the ******** period of the last millennium, are listed on pro-foreskin websites as if they were all some kind of heroic locker-room maverick.
Blame Cumming and the unlikely figure of Ben Affleck, if you like, but the circumcision debate has suddenly caught the attention of a new breed of quietly militant pro-choicers and so-called “intactivists” who are putting foreskins to the fore again and unleashing some appropriately cutting comments from the high-minded and famous.
...
The pro-choicers feel that they are on a roll right now. Non-medical circumcision for children is now illegal in Sweden. The numbers of circumcision procedures in the UK are slowly declining and, after peaking in the 1930s, when 35% of British boys were snipped, fell to a mere 6.5% in the 1980s. Today, only 12,200 circumcisions are performed in the UK annually. Most of them go ahead without a hitch. A few end in tragedy.
The inquest into the death of Amitai Moshe, who was just seven days old when he stopped breathing after being circumcised at a synagogue in north London last February – he died a week later from a heart attack – is to be held tomorrow at Hornsey coroner’s court.
...
But this isn’t just about cautiously radical telegenic celebrities or grown men checking one another out at the urinals or intact males doing histrionic winces and leg-crosses at the thought of the dreaded bris. For parents, there’s a basic guilt issue at play, too. In his eloquently incensed invective against religion, God Is Not Great, the firebrand polemicist Christopher Hitchens rails against parents who have their boys circumcised.
“As to immoral practice,” he writes, “it is hard to imagine anything more grotesque than the mutilation of an infant’s genitalia.” He argues that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and diminishes its pleasure, pointing out the significance of the operation being performed on babies rather than those who have reached the age of reason. (One study found that 92% of male infants subject to circumcision were not given anaesthetic during the procedure.)
...
“There’s a sinister side to all this,” Cumming says. “It’s tradition, control and pleasure-removing masquerading as a hygiene thing. What it comes down to is mass genital mutilation. It’s ********. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I’ve heard about men who can’t orgasm for ages because they have no sensation. People in America are impeded, because they don’t feel, you know?”
...
For Cumming, it’s more of an emotive issue. “As far as I am concerned, the default-setting arguments about hygiene just don’t stand up,” he says. “The sanitation issue, especially, always comes up when I am in America. But you know what? I am very clean. I shower frequently.
“I am very proud of my foreskin. I believe it’s there for a purpose. And I just want people to stop and think for a second before they decide to get a big bit of their newborn son’s **** cut off.”
:thumbsup: :smiliedance: :yelclap:
Jen