Tag Archives: Circumcision

Good men and foreskin restoration

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Somehow, it always comes back to penises.

Laura Novak has a great piece up at The Good Men Project Magazine today: The Foreskin Renaissance. It’s about the foreskin restoration movement (which has ancient roots, for example in Jewish philo-Hellenism), and about the wrinkle (sorry) that this trend adds to the ongoing and intense circumcision debate.

I’m pleased Novak quotes me as saying “Dude, get over yourself.” My students, especially in my men and masculinity course, tend to hear that a lot.

Here’s the original 2006 post I wrote about getting circumcised as an adult, and here’s the 2009 piece from New York Magazine on my story.

“One Man, Both Ways”: a short New York Magazine interview on circumcision

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The new issue of New York Magazine has a major story on circumcision: the pros, the cons, the details, and and the ongoing controversy. Because I’d blogged about the subject before, and shared my own personal experience of getting circumcised in my thirties, the reporter who wrote the piece, Molly Bennet, interviewed me a few weeks ago. The article is out now, and here’s a link to the main index of articles on the topic — and here’s the link to the piece featuring my story. Walks right up to the edge of TMI, but stops short, thank goodness.

Your thoughts are welcome. But no links to websites, please; this isn’t a soapbox. And anyone who suggests even the remotest degree of equivalence between the( generally) minor and harmless procedure of male circumcision and the various forms of female genital mutilation will have their comment removed.

Circumcision update

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In October, I posted about my own circumcision. I also wrote about the ongoing research into the link between circumcision and the reduced risk of HIV infection; at that time, studies were still in progress.

The New York Times reports today that the National Institutes of Health is convinced: circumcision works, and they are now formally recommending the procedure. This is powerful and important news.

Let’s get to snippin’.

Open thread on pseudonyms and blogging handles

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I promised to open a thread about blogging, pseudonymity, and "handles."  So here it is.

Queries:  If you blog or comment under your full name, why?    First name only?   If you use a pseudonym, how did you choose it?  What impression do you imagine your "handle" gives to others? 

I blog under Hugo Schwyzer because it’s my name.  Having tenure doesn’t mean I don’t periodically wish I did have a pseudonymous blog!  (My family’s fascination with my circumcision post was a bit overwhelming, given that that revelation was news to lots of folks, including my own mother.)  I realize that at times, I’m guilty of assuming that blogging under one’s full name is indicative of courage, while the repeated use of pseudonyms indicates, well, the opposite.  I acknowledge that’s unfair.

So, have at it.  Explain yourselves.

Just how nice the Nice Guys are…

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The boys at the Nice Guys Forum (registration required, a pity) have been their usual sweet selves lately.  They linked to my post about circumcision last week, and were predictably aroused.  One keyboard therapist named Patr writes:

This is beyond feminism, gender studies, whatever; this is mental illness. It is not so much what he did but his attitudes toward these things and the ways he chooses to describe himself. I think he has serious mental issues. I don’t just say that because I am looking to put down Hugo, I really believe he has serious problems that require treatment.

I suppose my second wife might agree with Skeptos, who wrote:

Hugo Schwyzer is living proof that narcissism and self-loathing are not mutually incompatible. Creepy.

These are among the nicer comments from the "Nice Guys."

There’s also a thread about my post yesterday on chest hair.  Steve writes:

I’m pretty easygoing for the most part (though not in the moral sense of that term) and pretty damned tolerant, too, but this is some seriously weird shit. The dude is posting like a high school girl and claims to be having conversations with high school girls that make it seem like he is trying to be one of their girlfriends. Is that f-ed up or what?

And Burton:

It is a bit disturbing that Hugo, who is the big mangina (man-vagina, the awfully clever term of opprobium for male feminists) on campus, would be talking to teenage girls about this stuff. Perhaps he and Mark Fole (sic) double date?

A while back he ran a blog on older men-younger women relations. Perhaps he was testing the waters? But that is what we suspect is his real agenda in ratting out other men, eh? Get the feminists to flop on their backs for him?

And Nigel:

This person should truly be on the sex-offenders’ register and be denied association with those over which he has authority without appropriate supervision.

And khankrumthebulgar:

Does his wife know he’s a closet Homo? This is such a cliche. I really think Hugo hates himself.

So, there you have it, boys and girls.  The MRAs suggest I’m

a.  insane
b.  a pedophile
c.  self-loathing
d. gay
e.  just using a guise of pro-feminism to get laid

These are the "Big Five" insults traditionally thrown at men who do pro-feminist work; I got ‘em all in less than one week.  I am flattered indeed.

Some of the lads who post here at my blog also post at Nice Guys.  They vary their language, mind you, but I’m afraid that the relatively tame discourse I’ve put up here is fairly typical of what goes on "behind the registration-required doors."  And though at times it’s tempting to retaliate in kind, I think it’s nice to let the boys hang themselves with their own ugly, hate-filled words.

Circumcised at 37: a personal story and a rebuke to the MRAs

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In January 2005, at the age of thirty-seven, I was circumcised.   I’ll get to the reasons why later in this post, but I figured I’d start by getting your attention.

Below this post, a men’s rights advocate (MRA) calling himself "ballgame" (!), offers a long comment that concludes with a reference to male circumcision as Male Genital Mutilation (MGM, a play on the term Female Genital Mutilation, which refers to a genuinely dreadful practice performed primarily in North Africa.)

One particular strand of the men’s rights movement that I find especially distasteful is the group that insists that the removal of the foreskin of the penis is equivalent to the removal of the clitoris.   The best known anti-circumcision lobbying group is NOCIRC.  The explicit equivalency between male circumcision and female genital mutilation is made by the folks at (get ready) the International Coalition for Genital Integrity. 

No one denies that there are "botched" male circumcisions.  But the NOCIRC and ICGI folks, and their men’s rights advocate supporters, fail to recognize that male circumcision is performed for radically different reasons than is female genital mutilation.  While the latter operation is designed to safeguard women’s purity (and make pleasure nearly impossible), circumcision is done for a variety of reasons, including increasingly legitimate health ones.

Though it is problematic to quote President Clinton in regards to this part of the male anatomy, the Guardian reported in August that

Bill Clinton called for the world to prepare to tackle the cultural taboos surrounding circumcision yesterday if, as many expect, trials show that it protects men and the women they sleep with from Aids.

Though a fuller study will not report until next year, a preliminary South African study released in 2005 made the compelling claim that male circumcision is a vital weapon in the fight against HIV.  Francois Venter, the head of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, described male circumcision as "what may be our most important HIV-prevention strategy ever."

No such medical benefits to the infinitely more barbaric practice of female genital mutilation have ever been reported.

Though the findings remain controversial, many doctors do believe that circumcision also reduces the risk of cervical cancer in women.   Warning: if you google about for information on this topic, you’ll note that non-medical anti-circumcision groups have had remarkable success in getting their results to the top of the queue of answers.  Much more will be known when we get the results of the first truly large scale study on circumcision and health from Africa next year.

My brother and I were not circumcised.  I was born in 1967, my brother in 1970; we were born in the United States at a time when virtually every baby boy was circumcised.  My parents had to be quite emphatic with the physicians at Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, to prevent what was a routine operation from being performed.  For my late father, the reason to avoid circumcision was linked to religion, ethnicity, and the Holocaust.  My father’s father was raised Jewish, but married my Catholic grandmother and converted.  When my father was born in Vienna in 1935, he was the first male Schwyzer in the family line not to have the foreskin removed.  My grandfather saw not being circumcised as a sign of assimilation, something he wanted very much for his family.  In Austria in the 1930s, only Jews were circumcised.  With the gathering clouds of anti-Semitism already clearly on the horizon, it was thought best that my father "not look Jewish" down there.

My father was of course no anti-Semite.  But like many Europeans, he retained the association between Judaism and circumcision.  He didn’t understand the post-war American custom of circumcising all boys routinely, regardless of their faith.  And quite understandably, he wanted his sons to look like him "down there."  Many fathers, I am sure, feel the same way.

It wasn’t easy being the only uncircumcised boy growing up.  Junior high locker rooms (where we had open, communal showers) were brutal.  I was teased relentlessly.  One memorable comment that has stuck with me since about 1979: "It looks like a pistol, instead of an apple like it’s supposed to."  My mother explained why I wasn’t circumcised with a simple "Your father is European, and it’s not done over there."  That explanation was all I got until I was in college, and it did little to ease the sense of being different.

In my sexual life, I found that some women were fascinated with the foreskin, others repulsed by it, others absolutely didn’t care.   But I did find — and here I’m walking dangerously close to what is known as TMI — that my foreskin did not always retract as easily as I would like for intercourse.  I had one very memorable, very painful visit to an emergency room when I was in college.   I’ve had stitches in my knees, on my scalp, on my arms — but stitching up a little tear "down there" was no picnic.   As I grew more experienced, I learned little tricks to make sure that I never had a foreskin tearing incident again, but it certainly made me worry for years and years afterwards.

The first person to recommend circumcision to me was the doctor at Cowell Hospital (in Berkeley) who took care of my "sex-related injury."  He said that it would make sex much easier, but I was emphatically not interested.  I didn’t consider circumcision again until just a few years ago.  There were many reasons for my choosing circumcision in my late thirties.  Some of those reasons are too private to get into in a public blog.  One reason, of course, was indeed to make intercourse more comfortable.  But there was another, profoundly personal reason as well that I will share (with my wife’s permission.)

I’ve alluded many times to a past of promiscuity.  While I am not ashamed of who I was or of what I did, when I met the woman who is now my wife and fell in love with her, I began to wish that I could offer her something radically new about me.  And it occurred to me one day that getting circumcised would be something tangible I could do to provide an outer manifestation of my sexual rebirth.   My wife would thus be the only woman with whom I had made love with that particular penis, as it were.   It was not her idea, it was entirely mine.  And that desire to create something wonderfully new, combined with the desire to avoid future trips to the ER, led me to call a urologist in early 2005.

The procedure was done outpatient.  It lasted just over an hour.  The application of the anesthetic stung a bit, but the actual circumcision (done by laser) was absolutely painless.  Dissolving sutures were applied, and I was on my way home.   I was running within two days, and my wife and I were intimate again within four weeks.  There was no loss of sensation or any other complication as a result of this minor, safe, medical procedure.  The physical benefits I had sought were exactly as I hoped, and the spiritual benefits were tremendous as well.  Every time I’m naked, my very flesh reminds me that I am not the man I once was.  I rejoice in that, and haven’t regretted my decision for a single second.

So that’s my story.  Hostile comments about that aspect of this post will be deleted, though you are free to take issue with my other contentions about circumcision. I write as a man who has intimate experience with the "before" and the "after", and whose "after" is physically and spiritually better than his "before."  I write as a pro-feminist angered by the "victim consciousness" of anti-circumcision advocates, who equate a quick, safe, beneficial procedure that rarely produces lasting trauma to an operation performed on girls that produces lasting pain and robs them of the opportunity for sexual delight. To suggest that male circumcision is equivalent to Female Genital Mutilation is like comparing the pain of a vaccinating needle to that of being stabbed by a knife.  It’s deeply offensive and indefensible to do so.

Foreskins and fidelity

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Still feeling poorly, I’m taking another day off from working out.  It’s always hard to stay away from the gym and the trails — my fears about losing fitness can become overwhelming.  But where in my younger years I might have staggered through a workout, wheezing and sneezing, I’ve become far wiser in my old age.

I am not feeling so poorly as to avoid the task of taking down the Christmas tree. It is Epiphany, after all, the day by which all good Mennoscopalians ought to have all holiday decorations taken down.  Given that the tree is now tinder dry, leaving it up a moment longer would be a fire hazard…

Anyhow, among the many topics in debate here is circumcision.  In particular, whether any serious comparison can be made between male circumcision and what is sometimes called female circumcision, but more often referred to as female genital mutilation.

Yesterday, I tried to make the case that in gender studies we needed to avoid competing in the "suffering Olympics", with each sex trying to make the case that their pain was greater than the other’s.  I stand  by the argument I made.  But I must confess that as a a pro-feminist, I was deeply and profoundly troubled by the equation of the removal of the foreskin of the penis with female genital mutilation as it is practiced in Africa and elsewhere.

For information on female genital mutilation (usually abbreviated FGM, or FGC), see the Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project.  More can be found here.

I’m not a cultural relativist.  I have no problem dismissing FGM as barbaric, and no problem seeking to have all varieties of female genital mutilation banned.  The near-universal purpose of FGM seems to be control of women’s sexuality, and there can be little doubt that the vast majority of FGM practices (as detailed on the sites above) are intended to make sex less pleasurable for women.

On the other hand, there is no hard evidence that male circumcision reduces male sex drive or pleasure.  Indeed, if that were so, we would be hard-pressed to explain the tremendous interest in sex that millions of circumcised American men display! 

But I’m not entirely untroubled by male circumcision, either.  Even if the physical repercussions are negligible for circumcised men, it is difficult to defend the involuntary imposition of real surgery on defenseless infant boys.  In the men’s movement, we must guard against the notion that boys are somehow tougher and more resilient than girls.  Boys can be victimized and wounded too!

In my Western Civ courses, we briefly cover the Abrahamic covenant, which is where male circumcision first appears in the Torah.  I offer my students three ways to think about male circumcision in this context, suggesting that elements of truth may be found in all three.

1.  Circumcision was intended to ensure male domination in Hebrew culture.  If only men have foreskins, and the removal of the foreskin is a mark of God’s promise to the Hebrews, than only men can "sign" the covenant.  Women, in this sense, are like minors in our culture — needing a parent or guardian to legitimize contracts.  If God had told Abraham to pierce his nose or his nipple, then women could have done that as well; male circumcision is virtually the only requirement that every man could meet and than no woman could.

2.  Alternatively, circumcision is intended to honor women.  In order for the "chosen people" to go on, women will have to give birth.  They will give birth in pain, and they will give birth in blood.  But that pain of childbirth is fundamentally productive; it is a sacrifice that leads to new life.  Requiring male circumcision means that men (or in most cases, infant boys) will also experience (though only once) pain and bleeding from the comparable part of their own bodies.  In some sense, circumcision may be men’s way of saying to women:  "We too will sacrifice, we too will bleed, we will honor (or appropriate) your pain by wounding ourselves in solidarity with you."  Just as the human race can only continue through childbirth, so the "chosen" can only continue through circumcision.  Both sexes will sacrifice together.

3.  But perhaps, circumcision is really about obedience and fidelity in the most private sphere of our lives.  It is axiomatic that nothing is more "personal" to a man than his penis.  In strictly religious Western cultures,once he hits adolescence, few people (if any) other than himself will hold his penis and look at it, with the exception of his wife (and in the modern world, his physician).   Many men in many cultures struggle with sexual fidelity; they struggle to honor their commitments (to chastity or to marriage).  Circumcision is a visceral, visual, tactile reminder that even in this most private area of a man’s life, God is still present.  Circumcision is about dedicating one’s body to God, and in particular, dedicating the very part of the body most renowned for inspiring men to act selfishly and destructively.   Our ancestors were well aware of the calamity and destruction that sexual infidelity could bring to the community; they may well have intended circumcision as an important token to remind every man of the colossal importance of his commitments.  (Of course, in modern culture where circumcision has lost its religious meaning, it’s difficult to imagine that most circumcised men would have this reaction to an absent foreskin!)

This is hardly an exhaustive list of all of the possible "reasons" for male circumcision.  But I must confess (without sharing any details of my own body — that would be far too much information) that I am immensely sympathetic to this third way of thinking about the meaning of the removal of the male foreskin.