… so shut up and stop whining about your stupid foreskin
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | 16 Comments
A recent reader of one of my blogs agreed with my position against male circumcision but objected to any comparison between the male foreskin and the clitoris, explaining that women without a clitoris couldn’t have an orgasm, where a man without a foreskin can. I myself thought this to be true six months ago, so I was sympathetic with her objection. Only my researches at the UCLA biomedical library have proven this to be entirely untrue, so I gently passed on the information that this wasn’t the case: Cutting of even the severest type results in women who can and do have orgasms. Seems strange to us but it’s true.
But can’t you just advocate against male circumcision without discussing female circumcision? another reader asked me, Why oh why do you insist on discussing the two side by side? It’s gross. It sounds halfway like you’re OK with female circumcision.
For those readers of my blog who have not read my book (shame on you, do it immediately), let me inform you that I have spent the happiest hours of my life face-first in an intact vulva, so the idea of anyone excising part of or injuring in any way my favorite part of the human form makes me throw up in my mouth. (That is the refreshing moral clarity of being against all genital cutting. You oppose all of it so don’t have to spend soul-sucking moral capital justifying the kind that your own society practices while demonizing the kind practiced by others.)
Having made myself clear on that point, there are two reasons that I am interested in directly attacking this myth about genital cutting ruining a woman’s opportunity for sexual pleasure, a myth that our own genital-cutting culture clings to like a baby blanket:
1. There are around 130 million women who are circumcised worldwide. These women all have a right to sexual pleasure, can achieve sexual pleasure, and I don’t believe that it’s appropriate to call them sexually dysfunctional or mutilated or definitionally anorgasmic just because they have undergone some procedure in their infancy that we don’t happen to do in our culture, so are quite naturally opposed to. On this topic, a reader aptly pointed out to me that a Western doctor counseling a woman who was getting a clitorectomy for vulval cancer would never in a million years tell her that she’d never have an orgasm again. He or she would talk about how her sex life might be different but certainly pleasurable and with continued orgasmic potential. What else would a doctor say?
(I believe that it’s similarly important for opponents of male circumcision to be sensitive about not over-emphasizing the mutilation factor there, considering that the world has an estimated 650 million circumcised men who might be listening, myself included.)
2. Mainly though, I have come to understand that the foundation of the pro-male-circumcision movement in America is this very myth: that female circumcision is a curse that results in the sexual equivalent of a nuclear winter while male circumcision is a gift of health that doesn’t hurt a man’s sexual function one bit or cause an infant boy any pain. Pro-male circumcision forces rely on the idea that it’s distasteful in the extreme to discuss the two practices in the same paragraph or even refer to them with the same words. For them to keep collecting foreskins, one has to be circumcision, the other a mutilation.
In particular, they’d like to keep our focus on genital mutilation 10,000 miles away, in a Somalian village and keep our minds occupied with an old crone (no coincidence that she’s black or Muslim or–hide the children–both) holding a dirty shard of glass and with the infections and with the horror show of infibulation because if we keep thinking about that, male circumcision performed by a clean white male doctor in a clean hospital room in Brooklyn starts to seem like a ride at Disneyland and, combined with America’s misandrous view of male sexuality, the attitude that results is an exasperated sigh of “What are you bitching about?! at least you’re not a girl in a dirty village in Africa with an infection and a sewn up vagina so shut up and stop whining about your stupid foreskin!” (It’s not a valid argument but it’s an excellent rhetorical device, I have to admit.)
As a reader pointed out, the insistent focus on the horrors of the dirty village circumcision scenario is laced with a racist assumption that we are the only genital cutters in the world who do our cutting in the best conditions available. (Female genital cutters who have access to hospitals do it in hospitals, just like we do. Does that make it more civilized?)
In addition, the perpetuation of this myth seems to argue that the main difference between the circumcised girl in the Somali village and the circumcised boy in Brooklyn is the severity of their genital mutilation. Where in actual fact, the main difference is that she’ll grow up to be a woman in a miserably poor Somalian village and he’ll grow up to be a man in New York City. There are not two more radically different versions of this thing called life, regardless of how much or how little of your reproductive apparatus that your society has generously allowed you to hang onto.
This is why the organization I have listed on the links page of www.howtomakeloveto.com is Massai Education Discovery an organization that works within the Massai community to improve their lives on many levels. Part of what they do within their mission is help the victims of female circumcision and work to discourage the practice. I simply do not believe that surgical (pun intended) efforts to eradicate the practice will do anything substantial to improve women’s lives in those communities.
In addition to having no faith in such directed interventions, I do not believe that one genital cutting society carries any moral weight when approaching another genital cutting society. So long as we ourselves are a genital cutting society, our argument to female genital cutting societies boils down to: You’re super-close with the genital cutting idea, you’re just holding down the wrong infant. Let’s get an anti-bacterial wipe and a baby boy in here and I’ll show you how civilized people do this genital cutting thing. Weak.
Tags: Africa > Circumcision > clitoris > foreskins > Orgasm > pleasure > racism
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16 Responses to “… so shut up and stop whining about your stupid foreskin”
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January 12th, 2010 @ 10:07 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Intact By Default, Ian Wilkinson. Ian Wilkinson said: RT @IntactByDefault: … SO SHUT UP AND STOP WHINING ABOUT YOUR STUPID FORESKIN http://j.mp/8bMKWa #i2 [...]
January 15th, 2010 @ 12:31 pm
Why oh why do you insist on discussing the two side by side? It’s gross. It sounds halfway like you’re OK with female circumcision.
It’s a telling look into the commenter’s assumptions: he figures you’re using the comparison to dignifying female circumcision, when clearly you’re using the comparison to further condemn male circumcision. That kind of assumption illustrates pretty well the biases you’re talking about.
[Incidentally, I'm fine with both male and female circumcision. When the subject consents to it. You want to lop it _all_ off, that's your business, not mine. You go right ahead and practice whatever religious or cultural body mods you please. But nobody has any business forcing permanent cosmetic body modifications on infants. It isn't your body--hands off.]
January 15th, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
Agreed. As you say, once you’re of age, trim your genitals as you desire. Very good point.
January 15th, 2010 @ 5:51 pm
Brilliant, as usual. I myself tend to get spluttery and shouty when the topic of circumcision comes up, so I’m always delighted to find a calm, reasonable articulation of the arguments against it.
I’ve quoted your blog during a number of conversation about genital cutting (male and/or female), and I’m sure I’ll be quoting this superlative post in the future. (Along with telling everyone to read your book as well as your blog.)
January 15th, 2010 @ 7:06 pm
Another great blog. Genital cutting is genital cutting, regardless of the gender of the unwilling person being cut. Unfortunately, Americans are great at being hypocrits.
January 16th, 2010 @ 6:21 am
“…can’t you just advocate against male circumcision without discussing female circumcision? another reader asked me, Why oh why do you insist on discussing the two side by side?”
Funny, I thought it was circumcision ADVOCATES that brought up female circumcision and discussed male and female circumcision “side by side.” They usually mention female circumcision to say that it’s WORSE, end of story.
“…a reader aptly pointed out to me that a Western doctor counseling a woman who was getting a clitorectomy for vulval cancer would never in a million years tell her that she’d never have an orgasm again.”
The doctor would also NEVER tell her, “see, if only you’d have gotten it cut off in infancy…”
“Pro-male circumcision forces rely on the idea that it’s distasteful in the extreme to discuss the two practices in the same paragraph or even refer to them with the same words. For them to keep collecting foreskins, one has to be circumcision, the other a mutilation.”
Yet, they do precisely this (discuss male and female circumcision together), but the rules are, this may only happen to minimize male circumcision. Discussion of male and female circumcision together outside of this context seems to be prohibited. Almost as unethical as the act of circumcising girls itself.
“… the insistent focus on the horrors of the dirty village circumcision scenario is laced with a racist assumption that we are the only genital cutters in the world who do our cutting in the best conditions available.”
They’d also like us to assume that infibulation is the only kind of FGM in existence. (In reality, it is the rarest form of FGM, and yet it is people against circumcision who are accused of “hyperbole.”)
“So long as we ourselves are a genital cutting society, our argument to female genital cutting societies boils down to: You’re super-close with the genital cutting idea, you’re just holding down the wrong infant.”
I say it boils down to, “It’s not mutilation when WE do it.”
People who defend male circumcision seem to have an afinity for “studies” that show this or that.
Well, do people know that “studies show” that even women who have suffered infibulation, which is the worst kind of FGM, are capable of orgasm? Advocates of circumcision are always saying that female circumcision can’t be compared with male circumcision “because female circumcision elliminates any possibility of orgasm” point blank.
Well, this study shows that this is all BS. And then people against circumcision are accused of “exaggerating” male circumcision. Maybe the “cut women don’t feel orgasm” myth was invented to downplay male circumcision? Who’s using “hyperbole” now?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118496293/abstract
Furthermore, oh lovers of “studies,” “studies show” that female circumcision, couched as “labiaplasty” and “vaginoplasty” here, “increases pleasure” for both the woman and her partner.
http://www.labiaplastysurgeon.com/labiaplasty-clinical-study.html
This just makes me want to get my daughters circumcised, erm, “labiaplastied” as soon as they’re born!
Yeah, next time someone tells you that FGM elliminates all possibility of orgasm, print these “studies” and staple them to that person’s head.
January 16th, 2010 @ 10:11 am
I am a lover of studies, so thanks for those links. Great points in your comment. “It’s not mutilation when WE do it.” Spot on.
January 17th, 2010 @ 7:09 am
The reason, to put it bluntly, that the two practices have to be considered together is human rights. The anti-female genital cutting but pro male genital cutting group has to support their hypocrisy. It would not be PC to suggest that boys have fewer human rights than girls. Yet that is exactly their position, that religion and culture can somehow override those unalienable human rights we admire so much. So the argument has to be the female variety is worse so it is a human rights infraction, while the male form is OK so it is not.
Hogwash, the severity may be in some cases worse. I am not sure in all cases since the US used to practice both forms until 1970. Severity should only be cited when establishing priority, so we got rid of slavery before we gave women the right to vote. Girls in the US are protected by law but not boys, so we are now ready to accede infant boys the rights we have bestowed upon infant girls. The point is this, we can not claim that human rights are different for boys and girls. As a society, we can not protect the rights of women by denying the rights of men.
January 17th, 2010 @ 11:35 am
The comparison to the failure of the 14th amendment to enfranchise women along with black men is exactly right. I had some thoughts in the can about that. You’ve inspired me to make those thoughts my next blog.
Thanks for commenting.
January 20th, 2010 @ 9:12 am
Brilliant post, and you make some extremely points we can all use when facing this argument (that female genital modification is “far worse” than the male equivalent). Again, thank you fior speaking out so eloquently.
January 21st, 2010 @ 8:51 am
Speaking of the 14th Amendment, we’re currently seeing disenfranchisement at work in regard to the 1996 FGM law, which protects the genitals of female minors from so much as a ceremonial incision, yet fails to protect male minors from the most heinous crushing, slicing and denuding of their genital tissue.
Why the double-standard?
January 21st, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
Elaborate on the disenfranchisement. I don’t know anything about that. Fascinating.
January 22nd, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
Wonderful points, Adrian. Let me just add something about female genital cutting. In many countries where the custom is still accepted, it is DOCTORS who do the cutting, especially among the wealthier, urban populations – and they do it in clinics or other medical settings. Sound familiar?
January 24th, 2010 @ 10:48 am
Re: disenfranchisement. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states: “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
A 1996 federal law makes the practice of genital cutting illegal for females younger than 18 years of age. Since this law does not provide equal protection for males, it is clearly unconstitutional…we just need someone with the courage and resources to challenge it.
January 24th, 2010 @ 10:28 pm
Wow, I hadn’t made that connection. But clearly, yes, that law can be challenged on the basis of equal protection.
April 14th, 2010 @ 5:01 am
Some forms of female circumcision do less damage than the usual form of male circumcision. Sometimes there’s just an incision with nothing actually removed. One form just removes the clitoral hood (the female foreskin), so it’s the exact equivalent of cutting off a boy’s foreskin. In some countries, female circumcision is performed by doctors in operating theatres with pain relief. Conversely, male circumcision is often performed as a tribal practice. When circumstances are similar, so are outcomes, and 79 boys died of circumcision in just one province of South Africa last year.
Are you aware that the USA also used to practise female circumcision? Fortunately, it never caught on the same way as male circumcision, but there are middle-aged white US American women walking round today with no external clitoris because it was removed. Some of them don’t even realise what has been done to them. There are frequent references to the practice in medical literature up until at least 1959. Most of them point out the similarity with male circumcision, and suggest that it should be performed for the same reasons. Blue Cross/Blue Shield had a code for clitoridectomy till 1977.
One victim wrote a book about it:
Robinett, Patricia (2006). “The rape of innocence: One woman’s story of female genital mutilation in the USA.”
Nowadays, it’s illegal even to make an incision on a girl’s genitals though, even if no tissue is removed. Why don’t boys get the same protection?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally against female circumcision, and I probably spend a lot more time and money trying to stop it than most people. If people are serious about stopping female circumcision though, they also have to be against male circumcision. Even if you see a fundamental difference, the people that cut girls don’t (and they get furious if you call it “mutilation”). There are intelligent, educated, articulate women who will passionately defend it, and as well as using the exact same reasons that are used to defend male circumcision in the US, they will also point to male circumcision itself (as well as labiaplasty and breast operations), as evidence of western hypocrisy regarding female circumcision. The sooner boys are protected from genital mutilation in the west, the sooner those peoples that practice FGM will interpret western objections as something more than cultural imperialism.