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Mother jailed for refusing to have her son circumcised forced to withdraw her case

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A US mother who was jailed for refusing to allow her son to be circumcised remains behind bars despite withdrawing her case.

Heather Hironimus, 31, went into hiding with her four-year-old son after a bitter legal battle with the boy’s father Dennis Nebus, reported Sky news.

The couple were never married, but share custody of their child and had filed a parenting agreement in court where they both agreed to their son being circumcised.

‘Scared to death’

But Hironimus later changed her mind, with her son reportedly “scared to death” of the procedure.

In March, a Palm Beach County judge signed a warrant for her arrest after she failed to appear in court so the procedure could be carried out.

She was arrested after going into hiding with her son at a domestic violence shelter.

According to reports, Hironimus has now withdrawn her case in the belief there was no hope of it succeeding and to have continued would have jeopardised her custody rights to her son.

Thomas Hunker, attorney for the mother, told her supporters that his mission now is to try to get Heather “out of jail and preserve her custody rights.”

Legal precedent

However in the latest twist in the extraordinary case, she has not been released as she is now charged with interfering with the father’s custody of the boy.

Judges have sided with Mr Nebus, but surgeons have refused to carry out the operation after Hironimus refused to give consent and anti-circumcision protesters targeted them.

The mother’s lawyer said continuing the lawsuit opposing the circumcision would surely result in “an unfavorable order which could potentially hurt the cause and future efforts to establish a child’s right to object to circumcision. I hope you understand and agree that under the circumstances, this was our only available option”.

The decision to back down from the case has triggered sadness and anger from anti-circumcision campaigners who have backed her case and raised funds to support the legal battle.

Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America, told the Sun Sentinal: “What we hope for now is that the father will have compassion for his young son, and not compound the trauma of the past few months with the trauma of a medically unnecessary surgery.”

Male circumcision can be worse than FGM rules senior judge

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One of the country’s most senior judges has courted controversy by declaring that male circumcision can be more harmful than female genital mutilation (FGM).

Sir James Munby acknowledged he was entering “deep waters” by highlighting inconsistencies in the law, but said it would be “irrational” to dispute the fact that male circumcision can be more harmful than some forms of FGM. The High Court judge made the comments as he passed judgment in care proceedings brought by a local authority seeking to take a brother and sister, from a Muslim family, into care on the grounds that the girl was a victim of Type IV FGM.

While the case failed on the grounds that damage to the girl’s genitals was probably caused by a condition called vulvovaginitis, Munby, who is president of the family division, felt compelled to highlight the sexist double standard that the case brought to light.

In summing up the judge noted that while subjecting a girl to Type IV FGM could result in that child being taken into care, male circumcision would not lead to a boy being removed from his family, even though the procedure is more harmful than at least some forms of Type IV FGM.

An inconvenient truth 

Campaigners against male circumcision have long been hampered by the myth that subjecting girls to FGM is different and always worse than circumcising boys.

The uncomfortable truth, to which Munby has now given judicial credibility, is that male circumcision is different and sometimes worse than FGM.

This is particularly true of Type IV FGM which incorporates practices such as pricking, piercing and nicking the genitals, which are less harmful and invasive than removing the foreskin in it’s entirety.

Male circumcision in the UK is often performed without anaesthetic, in non-medical conditions and can cause complications such as life threatening haemorrhage, shock, sepsis an in extreme cases death.

In 2012 a Freedom of Information request revealed that two boys a week are admitted to the emergency department of Birmingham children’s hospital as a result of male circumcision.

Society more tolerant of male circumcision 

However, despite Munby’s assessment that ”on any objective view” male circumcisions is sometimes worse than FGM, he also made clear that current judicial thinking is that there is no equivalence between the two practices.

“In 2015 ,” he said in his judgment, “the law generally, and family law in particular, is still prepared to tolerate non-therapeutic male circumcision performed for religious or even for purely cultural or conventional reasons, while no longer being willing to tolerate FGM in any of its forms.

“Given the comparison between what is involved in male circumcision and FGM WHO Type IV, to dispute that the more invasive procedure involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive procedure would seem almost irrational. In my judgment, if FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision.”

The phrase “significant harm” is important as this is the first threshold that must be crossed before a child can be taken into care under section 31 of the Children’s Act 1989. There is another criteria which must also be considered in care proceedings and this is whether the care given to a child is “what would be reasonable to expect a parent to give”.

Why the law is different 

According to Munby, while it can never be reasonable parenting to inflict any form of FGM on a child, the position is quite different with male circumcision.

Munby argued that there are at least two important distinctions between the two practices. Firstly, that FGM has no basis in any religion, while male circumcision is often performed for religious reasons. Secondly, that while FGM is said to have no medical justification and confers no health benefits; male circumcision is seen by some people as providing hygienic or prophylactic benefits, although opinions are divided.

Even taking the conflicting medical evidence on any perceived benefits into account, Munby concluded that “reasonable” parenting should be seen to permit male circumcision.

And that is where UK law stands on the matter today. The Head of the Family Division of the Family Court has judged that while male circumcision is sometimes worse than FGM, it is deemed to be reasonable for parents of all backgrounds to circumcise their sons, while carrying out a less invasive and less harmful from of Type IV FGM on their daughters is not considered reasonable parental behaviour.

A welcome coup for campaigners

Having a senior judge acknowledge that FGM can be less harmful than male circumcision is a welcome coup for those of us who advocate for the right of every human being to enter adulthood with intact genitals, except in rare cases where therapeutic surgery is unequivocally unavoidable.

The fact that our society, led by politicians and the judiciary, is still prepared to tolerate greater harm happening to boys than to girls, reveals a great deal about the sexist double standards we apply to the issues that affect men and boys in 2015.

The fact that we are collectively more tolerant of the harm that happens to men and boys, than the harm that happens to women and girls, doesn’t begin and end at genital mutilation.

Our shared cultural beliefs that “boys don’t cry”; that men should “man up”; that women have problems and men are problems; that females are the weaker sex and that we should always put the protection of women and girls first; is reflected in our inability to tackle a whole range of social issues that, predominantly impact men and boys, head on.

Why this is a men’s issue

These include male suicide; male homelessness; the high rate of male workplace deaths; men’s lower life expectancy; the expulsion of boys from school; the exclusion and marginalisation of separated fathers from their children’s lives; the way we respond to male victims of violence and the harsher treatment and sentencing of men and boys in the criminal justice system.

What Sir James Munby has uncovered is an inconvenient and important truth about men, manhood and masculinity in 2015 which is simply this—while the harm that happens to men and boys in our society is different and sometimes worse than the harm that happens to women and girls, we still view any harm that women and girls experience more seriously.

Munby is part of the problem he has raised, for while he acknowledges that male circumcision can be more harmful than FGM, he has essentially declared that while it’s reasonable for parents to harm their sons, it is never reasonable to harm their daughters.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why feminism has a problem with male victims

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Our post about The Guardian’s censorship of male victims of genital mutilation has sparked some lively debate and brought the feminist campaigner Hilary Burrell to insideMAN. Hilary directed us to a quote by Dale Spender suggesting that people who aren’t feminists have a problem. Here our news editor, Glen Poole, responds to Hilary with an open letter outlining why male victims of various gendered crimes often find themselves at odds with feminism.

Dear Hilary

Thanks for your detailed comment on my article about The Guardian’s censorship of discussions on genital autonomy, which restricts the involvement of those who campaign for male genital autonomy in favour of those campaigning for female genital autonomy.

Let me be clear from the outset. We are seeing the world through a different lens. You are a feminist, I am not.

I am an integralist, which means I seek to integrate “what works” from many different word views and perspectives into my thinking. My theoretical framework for understanding gender issues is “integral gender theory”.

Not being a feminist, means I neither feel the need to attack it nor defend it. I can simply look at different feminist perspectives and ask myself—does this perspective work or not?

The Wisdom of Feminism

There are, as you say, some feminists who promote genital autonomy for everyone—male, female and intersex. One such campaigner is Travis L C Wisdom who is a feminist, an intactivist (ie a campaigner for genital autonomy) and a survivor of genital mutilation. I am a great admirer of his feminist approach to promoting genital autonomy—and I’m still not a feminist.

You say “feminism is about equality, people” which is a well meaning but ultimately meaningless statement which echoes (albeit more politely) the recent words of the feminist campaigner Kate Smurthwaite:

“Feminism is the same thing as gender equality, those who say it is not are lying assholes….please let them know they are misogynist dickwads.”

Kate’s tirade demonstrates why the  fundamental belief that “feminism = equality” is problematic. Just as beliefs  like “my religion=God” or “my religion=good” are also problematic.

More than one way to understand the world

There are many religions, many feminisms, many views of God, many views of equality and many views of what is good. People all over the world deny boys and girls the right to genital autonomy because they fundamentally believe the practice is good.

Some people campaign for genital autonomy for girls (but not boys) in the name of equality. Many of those people are feminists. They aren’t campaigning for equality for all, they are campaigning for better rights for women and girls, sometimes inspite of men and boys and sometimes in direct opposition to better rights for men and boys.

I pass no moral judgment on this. That it happens in an equal rights movements is not surprising.

It happened in the campaign for universal suffrage where some of those who campaigned for all adults to have the vote, realised they’d make progress a lot quicker if they campaigned separately for the male vote.

Not all equality campaigners are equal

People campaigning for the female vote were furious. They smashed things. They killed themselves. They planted bombs.

Today those people—the Suffragettes—are celebrated as heroic campaigners for equality. Many of those Suffragettes were wealthy, privileged women and in terms of voting rights they were under privileged.

Privilege literally means a “private law”, a law which applies only to one group or individual—like the right to vote or not. Like the right to genital autonomy or not.

It is true some feminists support genital autonomy for men and boys and yet campaigners against FGM worldwide have fought for laws that privilege women and girls and leave men and boys underprivileged. Just like some campaigners for voting reform  favoured an approach that privileged men in the first instance.

Suffragettes weren’t against giving men the vote, they were against an approach that privileged men and under-privileged women. Intactivists aren’t against ending FGM, but they are often against an approach that privileges women and girls and under-privileges men and boys.

And all over the world, feminists are campaigning for laws, policies and strategies that privilege women over men—most notably when it comes to “Violence Against Women” initiatives which focus on issues like domestic violence, sexual violence and FGM.

How men are underprivileged 

Feminists don’t, as a rule, set up campaigns to end domestic violence against everyone, to end sexual violence against everyone or to promote genital autonomy for all.

Feminism in practice is rarely about equality for all—there’s a reason it’s not called “equalism” or “genderism” or “humanism”. If anyone needs to know what feminism is predominantly about, the clue is in the name—it’s about female concerns and interests.

Feminism is rarely about equality for men and boys. Feminists can’t even agree whether men should have an equal right to be feminists, hence the ever recurring discussions about “can men be feminists” and the debates about how men should or shouldn’t be allowed to engage in gender equality work.

This is why male victims often have problems with feminism—and feminism has problems with male victims. Some male victims who were denied the right to genital autonomy, like Travis L C Wisdom, take on the struggle of work within feminism. Here’s what he has to say on the matter:

“I think that a current limitation of feminism is that it doesn’t incorporate male circumcision or the concept of a genital autonomy as an inalienable right across the gender continuum, it only focuses on Genital Autonomy as it relates to females and at times I will feel a bit betrayed.”

Feminism betrays male victims

How did the Suffragettes feel when campaigners for the universal vote focused on getting the male vote first? Betrayed!

How do male victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and genital mutilation often feel about feminism? Betrayed!

There are those who say that men can’t be feminists because they can never understand what it’s like to experience life as a woman. By the same token, it is rare to find a feminist who has experienced life as a male victim.

Too often feminism seeks to pull off the confidence trick of presenting itself as having the solution to all gender problems, while simultaneously ignoring and excluding those who seek to resolve the gender problems that men and boys experience—and excluding those who aren’t feminists.

I’m delighted that you consider the genital mutilation of females and males to be a human rights issue. However, you have never experienced life as a non-feminist campaigning for gender equality for men and boys Hilary.

Oppressive, controlling and dominating

You can have no living idea of how oppressive and controlling and dominating and dictatorial and fundamentalist and anti-male feminism can be until you’ve experienced feminism through the lived experience of a male victim of gender discrimination, campaigning for gender equality for everyone—men and boys included.

As some feminists say Hilary, you can be an ally, but you can never be one of us because you will never experience life through our eyes. And if you truly want to be an ally—rather than convert us to your belief that “feminism is about equality”—you will need to acknowledge and validate the fact that many male victims (including many intactivists) have the experience of being betrayed by feminism.

And when a group of people feel betrayed by a movement, unless that betrayal is acknowledged and addressed, there is no way forward. The only way for feminism to prove that it is really about equality and address the betrayal that many male victims of genital mutilation feel, is for feminists to campaign with equal urgency for all boys and girls all over the world to be granted the basic human right of genital autonomy.

If the pro-feminist Guardian was ready to do this, if it was ready to campaign for genital autonomy for all, with equal passion and commitment, there would be no need to censor passionate campaigners for men and boys’ right to genital autonomy.

Thanks for all you do campaigning to end FGM and for providing a page about male circumcisions on your website.

Best Regards

Glen Poole

—Photo Credit: flickr/fibonacci blue

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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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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Oxford academic slams US Government plans to encourage non-consensual circumcision of baby boys

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The arm of the US Government tasked with disease reduction has announced plans to actively encourage male circumcision, which they say would reduced transmission of HIV. Here Oxford University academic Brian D Earp critiques both the evidence and ethics that underpin the proposals.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced a set of provisional guidelines concerning male circumcision, in which they suggest that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks (CDC, 2014). In this brief comment, I highlight a few of the key scientific and ethical issues worth considering in interpreting the CDC recommendations.

First, the CDC appears largely to be following the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), whose 2012 policy statement and technical report have already been subjected to numerous international critiques (e.g., Frisch et al., 2013, Svoboda & Van Howe, 2013; Garber, 2013; Hartmann, 2012; Lawson, 2012; Booker, 2012; Bewley & Stranjord, 2012; Guest, 2012; Androus, 2013; Earp & Darby, 2014).

While these critiques are not necessarily definitive,[1] they do raise a number of concerns about the manner in which the AAP, and by extension, the CDC, conducted its analysis of the available literature on male circumcision, and presented its findings to the public.

Incompatible data

Among other issues, critics have pointed out that the bulk of the data used to justify the AAP/CDC policies was derived from studies of adult circumcision carried out in sub-Saharan Africa—a geographic region whose epidemiological environments and patterns of disease transmission are dissimilar, along numerous dimensions, to those elsewhere in the world (see, e.g., Lyons, 2013).

This is important, because the spread of disease is determined much more by socio-behavioral and situational factors than by strictly anatomical-biological factors, such as the presence or absence of a foreskin (see, e.g., Ramos et al., 2009, Darby, 2014).

In other words, the apparent findings from these studies cannot be simply mapped on to non-analogous public health environments, nor to circumcisions performed earlier in life, i.e., before an age of sexual debut (see Earp, in press). As Bossio et al. (2014) argue in a recent comprehensive review, not referenced by the CDC, “At present … the majority of the literature on circumcision is based on research that is not necessarily applicable to North American populations” (p. 2847).[2]

In addition to such empirical limitations, the proposed CDC guidelines exhibit conceptual and ethical limitations as well. Conceptually, the CDC relies on an inappropriate construal of risk in its benefit vs. risk analysis, since it appears to interpret “risk” as referring (primarily or exclusively) to the “risk of surgical complications.”

‘Loss of a healthy, functional, and erotogenic penile structure’

To begin with, the actual incidence of surgical complications is not known, due to the poor quality of the available data on this question as well as conflicting definitions (and ways of measuring) “complications” (see AAP, 2012). Thus, as Garber (2013) has noted, “it is inconceivable that the AAP [and by extension, the CDC] could have objectively concluded that the benefits of the procedure outweigh the risks when the ‘true incidence of complications’ isn’t known” (p. 69).

Even if this figure were known, however, the CDC test would still be ill-conceived. This is because the standard heuristic for evaluating non-therapeutic surgery (i.e., surgery performed in the absence of disease or deformity) is not benefit vs. “risk of surgical complications” but rather benefit vs. risk of harm (cf. UC Irvine Office of Research, 2014).

In this case, at least one relevant harm would be the necessary loss of a healthy, functional, and erotogenic penile structure (Cold & Taylor, 1999; Taylor et al., 1996), amounting to approximately 30-50 square centimeters of richly innervated, elastic genital tissue in the adult organ (see Earp, in press; Earp & Darby, 2014). To its discredit, the CDC nowhere in its proposed guidelines mentions, much less explores in any detail, the actual anatomy or functions of the penile prepuce—i.e., the part of the penis that is removed by circumcision (see Guest, 2012 for a related discussion).

‘Even successful surgery, if non-consensual, causes harm’

As Fleiss and Hodges (2002) ask, “How can parents make a rational decision about circumcision when they are told nothing about the part that will be cut off?” (p. xii). For a point of comparison, imagine a report by the CDC discussing the health benefits of prophylactic mastectomy, in which the only implied harms of the procedure were “surgical complications,” and in which the anatomy and functions of the breasts were nowhere described.

Indeed, the CDC’s approach runs counter to the conventional bioethical (and legal) view that unnecessary surgeries, and especially those that remove non-diseased tissue from an individual without his consent, are in and of themselves harmful. As a California Appeals Court recently held (see Adler, 2012), “[I]t seems self-evident that unnecessary surgery is injurious and causes harm to a patient. Even if a surgery is executed flawlessly, if the surgery were unnecessary, the surgery in and of itself constitutes harm” (p. 496).

The only other potential harm that the CDC appears to have entertained is the possibility of diminished sexual experience, finding that: “Adult men who undergo circumcision generally report minimal or no change in sexual satisfaction or function” (CDC, 2014, p. 7).

However, the CDC’s appraisal of the literature on this point is as superficial as it is selective.[3] As Bossio et al. (2014) noted in their recent review: “Adverse self-reported outcomes associated with foreskin removal in adulthood include impaired erectile functioning, orgasm difficulties, decreased masturbatory functioning (loss in pleasure and increase in difficulty), an increase in penile pain, a loss of penile sensitivity with age, and lower subjective ratings of penile sensitivity” (p. 2853, internal references omitted).

Would the arguments hold if we swapped the genders?

While “other studies have found no significant differences in self-reported sexual functioning following adult circumcision” (ibid.), it must be remembered that a lack of statistical significance does not entail a lack of effect (Aberson, 2002). For example, in one of the studies cited by the CDC, “several questions were too vague to capture possible differences between circumcised and not-yet circumcised participants [such that classification] of sexual outcomes … probably favoured the null hypothesis of no difference, whether an association was truly present or not” (Frisch, 2012, p. 313). More generally, studies of adult male circumcision often fail to achieve long-term follow-up, and assess only a limited range of sexual of outcome variables (Bossio et al., 2014; Earp, in press).[4]

On the question of health benefits, suppose it could be shown that removing the labia majora of infant girls reduced their risk of acquiring a urinary tract infection (since there would be fewer folds of moist genital tissue in which bacteria could find a home), as well as, say, cancers of the vulva.

It is not implausible, and in fact in countries in which female “circumcision” is culturally normative, it is often thought to be “more hygienic” as well as more aesthetically pleasing (Lightfoot-Klein, 1997). Now, it is usually not recognized that female “circumcision” falls on a spectrum; that some forms of it are less invasive than male circumcision (including several forms that do not involve modification of the clitoris); and that it is sometimes done for reasons other than (attempted) control of sexuality (Shell-Duncan & Hernlund, 2000; Davis, 2001; Earp, 2014; Earp, 2013).

Right to bodily integrity

Nevertheless, it is actually illegal in Western countries to conduct the very research by which such “health benefits” could be “discovered” in the first place. This is because non-therapeutic surgeries performed on the genitals of healthy girls—no matter how slight, nor under what material conditions—are deemed to be impermissible mutilations in Western law (Davis, 2001).

Presumably, this is due to concerns about respect for sexual self-determination, a desire to protect children’s (future) autonomy (see Maslen et al., 2014; Darby, 2013), and a recognition of widely-upheld moral and legal rights to bodily integrity and to security of the person (see, e.g., Ungar-Sargon, 2013; Merkel and Putzke, 2013).

Taken together, these considerations suggest that little girls should be free to grow up with their genitals intact, and to decide, at an age of understanding, whether they would like to undergo permanent alterations to their “private parts,” and if so, for what reasons (and what kind). The same principles apply equally to boys (DeLaet, 2009; Johnson, 2010; Svoboda & Darby, 2008; Earp, 2014).

Whether a minor reduction in the (absolute) risk of certain infections or diseases (whose prevalence in developed nations is low, and whose occurrence can be prevented and/or treated in much less invasive ways than surgery; see Earp & Darby, 2014; Frisch et al., 2013) is worth the trade-off of losing a non-trivial part of one’s external sex organs is a complex question.

What is certain, however, is that the answer to this question is likely to be highly subjective, and to depend upon numerous, unpredictable, and ultimately personal factors. Therefore, it should be up to the affected individual to decide about permanent genital-modification surgeries at such a time as he or she can factor in his or her own preferences and values (see Maslen et al. 2014).

Circumcision before an age of consent is not a desirable health-promotion strategy, given more effective—and less ethically problematic—alternatives.

For the original version of this article, including references and further up-dates, visit the Academia.edu website here. For more of Brian D Earp’s writing visit his page here

Foot notes:

[1]Replies and counter-replies to some of these critiques have been published; see the relevant journal websites.

[2]The CDC does acknowledge this “translation” problem, although the caveat was rarely emphasized in the initial flurry of media coverage following the release of the CDC draft guidelines: “Much of the data related to HIV and STI prevention are from randomized clinical trials (RCTs) conducted among men in sub-Saharan Africa in regions with high rates of heterosexually acquired HIV infection. In the United States [by contrast] the prevalence of HIV and lifetime risk of HIV infection are generally much lower than [in] sub-Saharan Africa. Also, most new HIV infections in the United States are attributed to male-male sex, a population for whom male circumcision has not been proven to reduce the risk of HIV acquisition” (CDC, 2014, p. 1).

[3]In the 61-page technical report which forms the basis for its proposed recommendations, the CDC dedicates a total of four sentences to the possible effects of circumcision on sexual sensation, function, and/or satisfaction: see http://arclaw.org/sites/default/files/CDC-2014-0012-0002.pdf. Moreover, it fails to reference, much less discuss, several of the most well-known, good quality studies providing evidence of negative effects of circumcision on sexuality (e.g., Kim & Pang, 2007; Frisch et al. 2011; Dias et al., 2014; Bronselaer et al., 2013), and instead relies on other reports without mentioning published critiques of their methods. For a recent, comprehensive, and nuanced discussion of the available literature on the various sexual effects of circumcision, see Bossio et al., 2014.

[4] Of course, the CDC ignores the fact that any sensation in the foreskin itself is necessarily eliminated by circumcision, as are any sexually-relevant (e.g., masturbatory) functions that require its manipulation. As I have argued elsewhere: “To say that circumcision has ‘little or no effect’ on sexual experience … is to adopt an extremely narrow conception of that term” (Earp, in press).

 

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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. 

 

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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Half a million boys killed and hospitalised by tribal circumcision

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Around half a million boys have been killed and hospitalised by circumcision in South Africa in the past eight years according to local reports, writes Glen Poole.

Research published by the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) claims that more than 500,000 boys have ended up in hospital since 2008 after being subjected to traditional circumcision practices.

The South African media has also revealed that circumcision has killed more than 500 boys in the Eastern Cape region of the country in the past eight years, with the toll reaching 528 last month.

Traditional circumcision is seen as a rite of passage into manhood in some tribal communities. Boys face huge social and cultural pressure to take part in these dangerous rituals and males who haven’t been circumcised are not considered to be real men and face being ridiculed and ostracised.

Circumcision schools have become death traps 

In the Eastern Cape of South Africa, boys attend initiation schools where they spend several weeks in the mountains during the circumcision season. “The initiation schools are seen by many as death traps for young people,” said the Reverend Dr Wesley Mabuza, Chair of CRL’s  Rights Commission. “The South African society is being confronted with issues that force it to re-examine its ways of doing things”.

South Africa isn’t the only country where traditional circumcision practices are increasingly being recognised as a social problem.  In Kenya, men from tribes who don’t practice circumcision are chased and rounded up by members of the Bukusu tribe and forcibly circumcised. Elsewhere, in Australia, the safety of ritual circumcision became a topic of public debate when three boys were airlifted to hospital after being injured in an aboriginal initiation ceremony.

Meanwhile the South Africa state is promoting circumcision as a weapon in the fight against HIV/AIDS and has set itself a goal of circumcising 4.3 million men and boys from 2010-2016. Both the ethics and efficacy of using circumcision to try and c

ombat the disease have been heavily criticised but the state seems determined to hit its targets and is exploring the introduction of infant circumcision to help it reach its goals.

African boys killed by circumcision in UK 

The social and cultural acceptance of male circumcision as a legitimate practice places boys in African families all over the world at risk. High profile incidents of African boys being subjected to forced circumcision in the UK include Goodluck Caubergs who died aged just 27 days old after being circumcised by a midwife and Angelo Ofori-Mintah who died aged 28 days old after being circumcised by a Rabbi. Last month we also reported the story of a trainee doctor who divorced her African-born husband after he had their son circumcised without her consent or knowledge.

Those campaigning against male circumcision in South Africa, like the group NOCIRC-SA are currently in a minority. Groups like CRL are not opposed to the ritual, but are focussed on reducing the obvious risks.

CRL Chairperson, Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva said: “We cannot have mothers lose their boys up there and be told only when the other boys come back. At this rate [the practice] is going to die of natural causes because….people are scared of taking their kids to initiation schools.”

—Photo by: Flickr/Speaking of Pictures

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why the UK has no moral right to tell Africans to stop genital mutilation

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UK girls are being flown to Kenya to have their genitals mutilated but the British have no moral right to complain about this practice when we continue to turn a blind eye to unnecessary male circumcision says Glen Poole.

Wealthy Somalis living in the UK are flying their daughters to Kenya to undergo ritual FGM (female genital mutilation). There they are handed over to traditional practitioners like 80-year-old Dubey Sankader, who uses a support team of 10 women to pin down the girls while performs female circumcision in a temporary shelter made of sticks, wood and leaves.

In an interview published by Bloomberg this month, Sankader is reported to have said: “It’s painful and most of them faint in the middle of the rite, while others make loud noises and cries, but they are subdued by my permanent staff”.

While FGM has been illegal in Kenya since 2011, the practice is still commonplace and the UK is powerless to act when it comes to protecting Somali girls whose families have made Britain their home.

We aren’t legally powerless. Taking a girl out of the country in order to mutilate her genitals is against British law and today the prime minister, David Cameron has announced that new measures will be introduced meaning parents who fail to stop their daughters undergoing FGM will face prosecution.

However, rather than empowering ourselves when it comes to making a difference for women and girls, we disempower ourselves by becoming  moral hypocrites who apply one rule to women and girls and another rule to men and boys. We essentially tell parents from other cultures that their tradition of performing rituals on boys’ genitals is tolerable and but performing rituals on girls’ genitals is intolerable—one act is good and right , the other is bad and wrong.

Men are being forcibly circumcised in Africa

Meanwhile in Kenya, a man was dragged by a gang of men into his local church clinic and forcibly circumcised this weekend, according to media reports. After the operation, the Kenyan Post reported that his wife was overheard saying that she is “now assured of total satisfaction in bed”.

The forced circumcision of men and boys is neither uncommon nor illegal across Africa. There are many forms of ritual circumcisions which kill scores of young men every year, there are incidents of forced circumcision where men belonging to tribes who don’t circumcise are chased and forcibly circumcised by men from tribes who do circumcise and then there is the bizarre importation of circumcision to prevent AIDS by the World Health Organisation, a campaign that has been heavily criticised.  

The situation for men and boys in the UK is less severe and yet many boys in African families living in the UK are at risk and unlike their sisters, their parents don’t need to take them abroad to have their genitals mutilated. High profile incidents of African boys being subjected to forced circumcision in the UK include Goodluck Caubergs who died aged just 27 days old after being circumcised by a midwife and Angelo Ofori-Mintah who died aged 28 days old after being circumcised by a Rabbi. Earlier this month we also reported the story of a trainee doctor who divorced her African-born husband after he had their son circumcised without her consent or knowledge.

Moral double standards

There is a moral double standard at play here. While we essentially tell people of African heritage that they are wrong to perform rituals on their daughters genitals both in the UK and in Africa, we stand silently by while African men and boys in the UK and Africa are dying as a result of being subjected to ritual circumcision. Worse still, we support the highly contentious export of medical circumcision into Africa in the fight against AIDS.

And therein lies our moral dilemma. Anyone who has spent time studying the different types of male and female genital mutilation knows that the following statement holds true—male circumcision in all its forms is different and sometimes worse than the many different forms of female circumcision (and female circumcision is different and sometimes worse than male circumcision).

If we are serious about protecting the genital autonomy of African girls (and girls of all nationalities), then surely we’ll get there a lot quicker—and with far greater moral integrity—if we also take a stand to preserve the genital autonomy of men and boys in Africa, the UK and the rest of the world.

Photo: Courtesy of DFID shows the UK’s government minister for international development Lynne Featherstone supporting the “FGM or excision can kill” campaign in Burkina Faso.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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

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