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Mother circumcises son despite father’s pleas to save him

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Last year insideMAN published a letter from an Iranian father-to-be from London who wrote to us asking for help in stopping his wife circumcising their son.

We recently contacted him to find out what had happened. His response is posted below. We have kept the father’s identity anonymous to protect the identity of his son.

The support I received through insideMAN was invaluable, you were the only people who seemed to understand what I was going through. Sadly, after taking legal advice, I felt the only way to keep my family together was to go along with my wife’s wishes.

At least I could be there to support my son, rather than taking the risk that she would do it behind my back. So we went to a doctor in Harley Street together and I cried throughout the procedure and he was crying his eyes out too. The moment the operation was over I snatch him from the nurses arms and whispered in his ear that he will never have to go through such trauma ever again.

I couldn’t believe how much blood was in his nappy and I had to take him to a second specialist to find out if he was okay, because the first doctor didn’t tell us what to expect.

I still feel frustrated and heartbroken that I was unable to protect my son and since the operation. I have recently developed alopecia, which I think was caused by the stress of this situation.

I’m sad to say that the sparkle from my relationship with my wife has completely gone and I have been so deeply touched by what happened that I don’t think it can be repaired.

But my son is such a delight. I’m being a really hands-on dad and we’ve bonded really well. He loves being in my company and when I return from work he cries out as soon as he hears my voice.

He is the best thing to ever happen to me. We have bonded so well, it feels like he knows how much I care about him and when he is old enough and will share this article with him so he knows what happened.

Photo: Ran Yaniv Hartstein

You can read the original letter here.

The father’s letter and this update are one of the powerful men’s stories included in our crowdfunded book. Help give these inspiring men a voice by clicking below and backing our project:

 

Guardian newspaper tries to silence victims of genital mutilation, because they are men

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The Guardian newspaper has publicly confirmed its policy of banning discussions about genital mutilation in the comment section under articles about genital mutilation.

To be more precise it is trying to ban commentators from sharing views about male genital mutilation that contradict its left-wing, pro-feminist, editorial views on female genital mutilation (FGM).

Many of the people impacted by the ban are committed campaigners against all forms of genital mutilation and men who were victims of genital mutilation themselves.

Campaigners told insideMAN last night that the practice of “moderating” male victims of genital mutilation (and their supporters) who call for all forms on non-consensual, medically unnecessary genital cutting to be banned has been going on for several years at The Guardian.

This week, apparently for the first time, the media group decided to openly “pre-moderate” comments on an article about FGM warning readers that “to keep circumcision of boys out of this particular conversation… comments specifically about male circumcision will be removed by mods as ‘Off Topic’.”

Debating the ban is banned! 

The reason The Guardian gave for banning discussion of male circumcision was that “the effects and cultural practices/significance are very, very different, and essentially they’re two separate debates”.

One campaigner accused the newspaper of issuing a “fiat” that censored fair and reasoned debate and banned commentators from even discussing whether the two practices are linked or not.

To prove the point, another campaigner from New Zealand posted a comment explaining the historical links between FGM and male circumcision in the US and the UK and his comment was removed.

Boys have human rights too! 

The same campaigner, who claimed on a separate forum that The Guardian allows posts supporting male circumcision, told insideMAN:

“It is legitimate for a site like the Guardian to not want every thread on FGC (female genital cutting) to be dominated by MGC (male genital cutting). What is less legitimate is to suppress every mention of MGC, and what is completely disgustingly illegitimate is to allow praise of MGC but not refutation of that praise, which seems to be what they are doing.”

“You could argue that to discuss FGC in isolation from other GC allows you to conflate harm with human rights violation…all GC is a human rights violation regardless of the degree of physical damage.”

Marilyn Milos, a US campaigner who began advocating for genital autonomy after observing the circumcision of baby boys as a nurse, agreed that the focus should be on human rights for everyone. She said:

“I’ve said many times before, genital cutting is not an issue of competitive suffering. The screams of infants and children undergoing genital cutting are genderless and both genders die from these harmful traditional practices. Both are human rights violations and should be dealt with as such.”

Men Do Complain

One man who has been making the case to the UK government that both practices violate human rights, Richard Duncker of Men Do Complain, explained his thinking to us. He said:

“It is difficult to see how a child’s human rights are not breached by non-therapeutic genital modification. The European Court of Human Rights has set a very low threshold for a breach of article 3 – that no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment  – for example the application to the court No. 9078/06 Tarhan v Turkey (17/07/2012) found that the applicant’s Article 3 right had been breached by the forced shaving of his head and beard.”

“Children are equally entitled to the protection of their human rights. There is a misuse of Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998 when adults state that it is their right to manifest their beliefs by modifying their children’s genitals. Article 9 is a qualified right in that a person cannot infringe the rights of another, even if that other is his or her child.”

Sadly, such considered comments from committed campaigners like Richard Duncker are not welcome at The Guardian.

What debate is allowed? 

To its credit, The Guardian probably generates more debate about male circumcision AND female circumcision than any other mainstream media operation. The coverage is heavily weighted towards FGM, which has been the subject of five articles this month alone, compared with male circumcision, which has generated 5 articles all year.

Furthermore, while The Guardian’s coverage of FGM is unequivocally opposed to the practice and strongly rooted in discussion about the UK’s role in ending the practice at home and abroad; The Guardian’s articles about male circumcision offer a mix of pro-circumcision; anti-circumcision and neutral viewpoints and are often presented as “world news” and not connected to the need for the UK to end the practice at home and abroad.

The Guardian claims that while “the two issues are superficially related, the … cultural practices/significance are very, very different, and essentially they’re two separate debates”.

What appears to be happening is that The Guardian has mistaken its editorial, gender political, worldview of genital with the absolute truth and is now insisting that any victims of genital mutilation (and their supporters) who think differently are quite simply wrong.

We can only solve this problem together 

I’ll give the final word to Georganne Chapin of Intact America, who told insideMAN:

“I think it’s rather curious. The Guardian is preaching to the choir if it does a piece deploring the evils of FGM. I do not minimize the problem of FGM in the cultures where it is still practiced, and we cannot deny that western countries with large Muslim populations will have to address the practice from a legal standpoint.

“However, as journalism, the topic isn’t even all that interesting on its own; the party’s over. The Guardian’s readership is universally going to condemn FGM.  What IS interesting is that The Guardian and the mainstream western press, in general, are not willing to even entertain the possibility that in order to solve the FGM problem, we might need to address MGM.”

—Photo Credit: flickr/erix

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why I think male circumcision is a big issue

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Richard Duncker is one of the UK’s leading campaigners against medically unnecessary male circumcision. Here he explains why circumcision is such a big issue.

—This is article #19 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

There are about three billion men alive in the world today. Approximately two billion of them are allowed to grow up with their genitals intact. The remaining one billion have their genitals cut; they are circumcised without their consent, usually when they are children.

Physical harm and loss of sensation

The removal of about 90 square centimetres of specialised erogenous tissue is clearly physical harm. The anatomy of the penis and the foreskin in particular has been studied by Cold and Taylor [1] and a fair summary is that fine touch nerves and stretch receptors are removed during a circumcision. These are the types of nerves that let you locate a splinter in your finger and create good feelings when you smile. At the junction of the inner and outer foreskin is an extension of the frenulum (banjo string) that is the ridged band of nerves that runs around the opening of the foreskin.

In their 2007 study Sorrells et al [2] identified the ridged band as the most sensitive area of the penis. This area is always lost to circumcision. There is also the fact that nerves that are cut do not join up as they heal and the brain will map the sensation from the affected area unpredictably. It is probably fair to say that a man without a foreskin experiences sex in a similar manner to a person trying to speak after the dentist has numbed their lip [3].

Such a loss compromises the sex life of the man concerned. Frisch et al in their study [4] conclude that “Circumcision was associated with frequent orgasm difficulties in Danish men and with a range of frequent sexual difficulties in women” They also go on to say that a “Thorough examination of these matters in areas where male circumcision is more common is warranted.” So far no one has been willing to fund such a study.

Hospitals regularly care for boys who have suffered complications as a result of circumcision, FOI (freedom of information) requests are pending. It seems from previous FOI requests that an almost equal proportion of casualties resulting from circumcision come from medical and lay operators. Some of these injuries are life threatening as this report of complications in one Birmingham hospital shows [7].

Deaths

That boys have died as a result of genital cutting is now widely known, news stories from London, Manchester, Africa and hospitals in America show that deaths are not rare and represent the most extreme form of physical harm.

Psychological harm

After circumcision there are a number of possible psychological outcomes. Some men, an unknown proportion of those circumcised, will go on to live happy lives oblivious to any adverse effects their circumcision may have had on them. Lindsay Watson in his excellent book “Unspeakable Mutilations” [5] describes this state as the “circumcision coma” and that such men are in denial or are genuinely happy with their status but no one knows the proportions, it seems that no one wants to know or study the answer.

Some of the men circumcised will have a negative reaction to their circumcision and may be described as suffering from Post Circumcision Syndrome referred to by Dr John Warren in his video interview with James Loewen.

There has been work done on the psychological damage caused by circumcision and a good place to start is – Circumcision and Resources Information Page – where you will find links into a lot of work on this subject. There is a spectrum of psychological, economic and social damage that remains to be studied. Some men report depression, inability to form relationships and shame about their bodies.

I have been told, by impeccable sources, of at least two suicides where a note showed that circumcision was a significant contributory factor for the suicide.

So to conclude – of about a billion men that is 1,000,000,000, some live possibly in ignorance and unaffected by the damage they have been caused. A proportion of that billion live only too aware and resentful of what has been done to them and others may feel damaged but unable to identify or admit the cause. The numbers of men in each category are unknown and the dead are uncounted. What is certain is that male circumcision is a big problem. Even if only a small fraction of that billion are damaged it is still a large amount of suffering. It is surely time that non-therapeutic male circumcision followed the path identified by the sociologist C Wright Mills and moved from being a private trouble to becoming a public issue.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “The prepuce: specialized mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision” J .R. Taylor, A.P . Lockwood and A. J. Taylor Department of Pathology, Health Sciences Centre, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

[2] “Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis” Morris L. Sorrells, James L. Snyder, Mark D. Reiss, Christopher Eden*, Marilyn F. Milos†,Norma Wilcox and Robert S. Van Howe

[3] Lower lip key to smile and kisses

[4] “Male circumcision and sexual function in men and women: a survey-based, cross-sectional study in Denmark” International Journal of Epidemiology 2011

[5] “Unspeakable Mutilations Circumcised Men Speak Out”  Lindsay R Watson

[6] C. Wright Mills: power, craftsmanship, and private troubles and public issues

[7] Botched circumcision put 100 boys in A&E in Birmingham 

—Picture credit: Men Do Complain website 

To find out more about Richard Duncker’s Men Do Complain campaign you visit their website or follow them on facebook or twitter.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

 

Why it’s rational to say circumcision is worse than FGM

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Is it rational to compare male circumcision and female genital mutilation and come to the conclusion that one is worse than the other, asks Glen Poole?

If I asked you what’s worse, damaging your arm or damaging your leg what would you say? If you had the most rudimentary skills of rationalization, you’d probably say well that depends what type of damage you’re taking about?

Clearly it’s worse to die of a gangrenous leg wound than to get a small bruise on your arm that disappears after a couple of days. Whereas grazing your knees is not as bad as getting your arm trapped under a rock on a remote mountainside and having to saw it off with a penknife to stay alive.

So which is worse, injuring a leg or injuring an arm?

Well there are so many variables that you can’t simply say that one is worse than the other. It is, however, perfectly reasonable and rational to say that damaging one of your upper limbs is different and sometimes worse than damaging one of your lower limbs—and vice versa. No-one with a sane mind would say otherwise.

And so to ritual circumcision, a practice that’s often viewed as benign and even beneficial, but in reality is a medically unnecessary practice that is both painful and dangerous and can cause discomfort, disease, deformity, disability and sometimes death.

We know that routine circumcision is medically unnecessary because the majority of men and boys all over the world live happily and healthily with their foreskins intact. We know, from research, that it’s painful; that even when performed in a “safe” medical setting that there’s a risk of complications and that in worst case scenarios baby boys and young men die from unnecessary male circumcision every year. We also know that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is painful and causes many problems and complications including death.

So which is worse male circumcision or FGM?

Many people argue that FGM is worse. Tanya Gold, in the Guardian, for example referred to “the revolting juxtaposition of female genital mutilation, which is always torture, and often murder, with ritual male circumcision, which is neither” (despite the fact that it kills people).

Then there’s Lynne Featherstone who, as the UK’s Junior Minister for International Development, spoke about FGM in way that suggested she was unaware of the practice of male circumcision saying: “Quite frankly if it was boys’ willies that were being cut off without anaesthetic it wouldn’t have lasted four minutes, let alone 4,000 years”.

But aren’t Gold and Featherstone, who both come from communities that cut boys but not girls, simply voicing a view that we all instinctively know to be true—that it’s worse to do it to girls?

It depends what criteria we use to compare

If you look at the scale of the problem, WHO estimates that 125 million women and girls are affected , compared with around one billion men and boys. If you look at the severity of the problem, there seems to be more deaths around the world from male circumcision than FGM, even in a country like the UK where the practices are relatively rare.

If you look at the seriousness with which we, in the West, take the issue, we ban one practice but permit the other. This means that any man who considers himself to be a victim of unnecessary male circumcision, spends a lifetime of secondary victimisation being told that what happened to him wasn’t a crime and he should get over it and move on.

Imagine if the same were true of arms and leg. Imagine if there were many, many more arm injuries in the world; that more people died from arm injuries and that, unlike leg injuries, there was no serious recognition that arm injuries were a problem that deserved equitable attention to leg injuries. If all of these things were true, then it would be rational to argue that arm injuries are worse than leg injuries.

So is the same true of unnecessary male circumcision?

Is it reasonable and rational to argue that it’s worse than FGM? I think that a rational person who cares passionately about the subject could validly make that argument at a superficial level. Taking a deeper perspective, I think, like arms and legs, the rational way to compare the unnecessary removal of healthy tissue from people’s genitals is this:

FGM is different and sometimes worse than unnecessary male circumcision and unnecessary male circumcision is different and sometimes worse than FGM.

If you find this a difficult concept to understand then this 5 minute video explains how the different scales of severity of the two practices overlap with each other—and how one practice is sometimes worse than the other (and vice versa).

Right now, this rational and obvious truth is considered not only a radical view, but often a “revolting” view. I’m sure, in centuries to come, we’ll look back and wonder how rational and intelligent human beings could ever have believed that the practice of FGM was always worse than unnecessary male circumcision, when the practice kills and injures people.

Why is this? I am convinced that the overriding reason why Westerners believe that FGM is always worse than male circumcision is sexism, because when it comes to helping people of different sexes in the West, we remain collectively more tolerant of any harm that happens to men and boys.

So what do you think? Is one practice worse than the other or are they simply different (and sometimes worse) than each other?

—Photo credit: Flickr/Keoni Cabral

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Help! How can I stop my wife chopping off our baby’s foreskin?

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An Iranian father-to-be from London has written to insideMAN to ask for help stopping his wife circumcising their son. His letter to our readers is printed below. 

– This is article #96 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys

Dear insideMAN Reader

Please can you help me?

I am an Iranian man living in London just days away from becoming a father for the first time.
I feel so special about his birth. I feel he is going to be a very precious gift to me. I can’t wait to see him and hold him tight in my arms. As a proud father I would like, to the best of my ability, to protect and nurture him and that includes protecting him from being circumcised.

Unfortunately, my wife disagrees with me and insists that she will have him circumcised just like her son (my step son) from her first marriage. I feel powerless and cannot sleep at night because of this issue. My wife will not listen to the reasons why I want to protect him from circumcision. I have tried to approach her from different angles but I keep hitting a brick wall.

So what can I do?

I come from a diverse family, my mum is an open-minded Muslim, my dad is an anti-religion atheist whose parents came to the UK from Iran in the 1970s, just before the Islamic revolution. I started living in the UK permanently myself 14 years ago and while people think of me as Muslim, because I was born in Iran, I am not. I am an atheist and only believe in balance and justice in the universe.

And now I need help to make sure my son gets the justice he deserves.

As parents I believe we should not stamp our religion, culture, tradition or opinions on our children without their consent. I find circumcision totally barbaric. I strongly believe circumcision trauma leaves a deep blueprint on the subconscious mind and soul of a baby. I believe that  human beings are born in a complete form of perfection. If there is a nose to breathe through or a pair of eyes to see, there is certainly a reason for the foreskin to be there. A boy’s penis is the very centre of his manhood, why would anyone want to mess with it and reduce it? I feel very strongly that we should ban circumcision, especially in Europe.

Sadly, for some strange reason, most Iranian women support male circumcision. A good friend of mine who is a highly educated lawyer, born to a Iranian family and raised in the UK, recently gave birth to a lovely little boy. I could not believe her strong views about circumcision. Her main concern was the beauty and the similarity of his penis to her husband! It seems Iranian women take the same approach to circumcision as they have to plastic surgery. They think it’s a nose job!

My mother also supports circumcision, even though she is a very open-minded, flexible, modern woman for her generation. She heard me trying to explain to my wife why I want to prevent our son from being circumcised and she told me afterwards that I should “give in gracefully and let her do it”!

My mum’s thinking is that my wife is going to do it anyway and there is a positive side to circumcision which, according to my mum is this—my baby’s willy will look the same as mine and my stepson’s and prevent any confusion he might feel in future if he compares his penis to ours!

I was so angry and frustrated at the same time, that I couldn’t stop laughing.

I said to her, ”Mum, how often do see me and my brothers and Dad sitting at a dinner table, comparing our bits with each other?” We are, of course, all circumcised. I have never questioned my parents about this because they did what they thought was right at the time. I don’t have strong feelings about being circumcised myself, as long as I can remember I have always been this way, but I have always wondered how it would feel it I wasn’t circumcised and I never heard of an uncircumcised man who wants to have it done.

But now I have the knowledge, I am conscious and I know the fact my father is against it too. I feel I must do everything I can to protect my son. I won’t have any issues if he decides to do it when his is older but that his decision to make, it’s his body and it’s his choice.

But my wife’s mind is made up. She is a Christian woman of Iranian background, so her reasons are not religious, I would say it’s more cultural and mainly cosmetic. She plans to have him circumcised in a private clinic in Harley Street. I cannot begin to describe how distressed I am about the whole thing. It’s almost taking away the excitement of having a baby and becoming a dad.

I am in desperate need of help and support. I’ve been in touch with the charity NORM UK and insideMAN magazine and I’m going to try the NHS too. I’d welcome support from any organisations or charities who understand my point of view and I’d like to know my legal rights as a father. I’d also like to hear from other parents who have been in a similar situation.

Please help me, I want to protect my son from circumcision before it’s too late.

— Picture Credit: Flickr/bgottsab

We have kept this father’s identity anonymous to protect the identity of his son. If you can offer help, advice and support please leave a message in the comment section or email us at insideMANeditor@gmail.com and we will forward your message to him. 

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Male genital mutilation: one man’s story

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—This is article #41 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Photo courtesy Men Do Complain

I and my sister were born in the late 50’s in the UK. Soon after I was born my parents taught me what it is to be discriminated against.

They saw to it that my foreskin was cut off and tossed away, but nothing was cut off my sister’s body when she was subsequently born. If I had been born a female I would still have all the genitals I was born with, just as my sister still has.

We hear a lot about FGM and rightly so, as it is an abomination. Sadly, many think that male circumcision is performed for religious and medical reasons: so it can’t be harmful. The truth is that all those men and boys who were circumcised without their personal consent are the victims of the theft of a functional and erogenous body part.

You do not enrich the life of a man by cutting a part of his body off, you make that man a poorer man, even though he may not realise it because he has never known any different.

‘It royally fucks up a man’s sexuality’

I recently spotted the following comment in response to an online petition against infant male circumcision: “I was circumcised as an adult… I can confirm that it royally fucks up a man’s sexuality.”

This came as no surprise to me since it was as obvious as my lack of a foreskin that my wife was enjoying a more ‘earth-moving’ sexual experience than me. We are now separated after spending almost 30 years together and I reflect that sexual issues were very much the undoing of our marriage. My sex life was not what it should have been. I now live alone and am a chastened man.

It is my personal belief that all infants, whether they be male or female, should enjoy the basic right to be born unto parents that do not feel it is their right to modify the genitalia of their offspring.

‘It should have been my own decision’

My late parents felt that it was their right to condone my circumcision as an infant without medical necessity. This is something that has caused me considerable pain and anguish and I shall eternally regret. It should have been my own decision as to whether or not I chose to give up an intimate and personal part of my body, because once it is done, it is done.

Children are in the custody of their parents until they reach maturity and are not their property. I am not Jewish or Muslim, but there are men I know of that were born unto Jewish/Muslim parents that also resent the fact that they suffered the same indignity of forced circumcision.

The majority of men in this world are genitally intact and perfectly content with their status. I believe that it is a profound injustice that there is not statutory legal protection for all infant boys against non-therapeutic circumcision (such as there is for girls in the UK, US and elsewhere), regardless of the religious affiliation of their parents.

If men want to be circumcised for religious reasons let them volunteer for it once they are adults, and can give meaningful consent.

By Patrick Smyth, trustee and secretary of NORM UK

For more information about male genital mutilation, please visit Norm UK and Men Do Complain

 You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Further articles:

NHS Midwife referred baby for genital mutilation against mother’s wishes