The Complete History of the Universe: A Personal Journey

Warning: this will not be pretty.

I’ve been reading Unspeakable Mutations: Circumcised Men Speak Out by Lindsay Watson. I’m only about halfway through the book, but I don’t need to read any more to know that circumcision is a terrible thing.

Parents, before letting the doctors cut off a piece of your son, please look at some of these stories. I truly think any parent considering circumcising their child should read this book first. It is common for the circumcision to be performed by a new doctor, so complications arise more often than you might think. Often, more is cut off than just the foreskin, sometimes so much that the body makes up for it by borrowing skin from the scrotum. One of the testimonies in the book is of a child who was nicked by the doctor’s knife during the circumcision, and when he was a few years old, that nick opened up and a tear ripped along the length of his penis. Several men describe how they cannot pleasure their wives during sex because they don’t have enough feeling in their glans. In some cases, foreskin restoration helps.

I looked into circumcision for the first time a few years ago. I learned that there is no valid medical reason to circumcise an infant. Some argue that it decreases the risk for certain diseases like AIDS and other STDs, but the rates of those diseases are higher in the US, where circumcision is routine, than the UK, where it is abnormal. Also, if you stick your penis in a person who is infected with an STD without any sort of protection, not having a foreskin won’t keep you from being infected!

Moreover, some children die from this procedure. If there were a completely voluntary surgery that might result in death, would you choose it for yourself?

Even though we now have painkillers that can be used to ensure the infant does not feel pain during the procedure, they are still not always used.

I’m not going very in depth here, but calling attention to the issue. There are many resources if you wish to learn more about circumcision; this will get you started.

Some religions require circumcision. That alone should show that the god of those religions is evil or non-existent, although it is important to note that circumcision has become much more mutilation than it used to be. In ancient times, much less of the foreskin was cut off.

Circumcision became popular in America because “oh noes masturbation”. Based on the testimonies of those who have gone through trauma from their circumcisions, the only time that works is when the circumcision is botched, leaving the boy almost entirely without feeling in his penis. If the circumcision is done right, it won’t help prevent masturbation in the slightest.

People do have varying opinions on whether circumcision helps or hurts sexual intercourse, but I’m quite certain that it hurts it for some men, as their stories are in the book I mentioned.

Would you cut off your child’s toe to prevent it from possibly getting infected later? Of course not. Would you cut off your newborn daughter’s clitoris to keep her from masturbating? I should hope not! Then why is it okay to cut off part of your boy’s penis?

The bottom line is that this is a voluntary procedure, and something that should be left for the boy to decide. If he wants a circumcision later in life, when it is naturally easier to tell where the foreskin begins and ends, possibly because he’s facing some health issue it would help, he can have it done then. It is incredibly difficult and in some cases essentially impossible to restore what has been taken away; foreskin restoration takes years, if it works at all.

Don’t circumcise your baby. At least not without reading the stories of men who suffer from it.