Here I go again with my ranting! Keith, although I never actually "came out"
and told you, you probably figured out that I'm doing this myself. Erin, I
remember that you've actually heard of this before. I brought it up to David
last night and this is what I wrote to him about it today.
-----Original Message-----
From: Darien Large []
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 1999 5:54 PM
To: David B
Subject: foreskin, circumcision and foreskin restoration
David, here are considerably more than my two cent's worth re: said.
I first heard about foreskin resoration when I was about seventeen, shortly
after I came out to myself. I don't know when I first realized that I was
circumcised, but it was much earlier than that: as a young teen or possibly even
earlier. A lot of men our age or a little older seem to have been extremely
confused about circumcision, thought they were "intact" when in fact they were
not, that circumcision involves removal of the entire glans, and so on.
There's an awful lot about this locus of issues on the internet. It's really
a raging debate, and so far it's heating up more and more every day. I'll send
some links to you as well.
I also have a book called "The Joy of Uncircumcising" that includes some
statistics about the routine circumcision rate in the US. Here's a chart that
indicates the circumcision rate in the United States from 1870 to 1990:
100%|
|
90 | 85
| 80 *
80 | 75 * *
| 70 * * *
70 | * * * *
| 60 * * * * 59
60 | 55 * * * * * *
| 50 * * * * * * *
50 | * * * * * * * *
| * * * * * * * *
40 | 35 * * * * * * * *
| * * * * * * * * *
30 | 25 * * * * * * * * *
| * * * * * * * * * *
20 | 15 * * * * * * * * * *
| 10 * * * * * * * * * * *
10 | 5.9 * * * * * * * * * * * *
| * * * * * * * * * * * * *
0 |_________________________________________________________________
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
If you find a chart of births in a hospital as a percentage of all births for
the same period, I'm sure you'll find a very close correlation. One of the
interesting things the author points out about these statistics is that,
although the circumcision rate now seems to be in decline, the percentage of
sexually active adult males who are circumcised is still *increasing*, due to
the approximately twenty-year delay involved from birth to adulthood and sexual
activity. More and more upcoming doctors and parents will be circumcised in the
years to come, as those born between 1960 and 1980 reach adulthood and move into
positions of responsibility and influence. It will only crest in the
twenty
years coming up, starting in about 2000 or so.
The links below that point to cirp.org go into a fair amount of detail about
the transformation of rationales for circumcision, routine and otherwise. An
awful lot of people aren't aware that in the early twentieth century in the
United States, circumcision was a common treatment for masturbation and other
"perversions". I'm sure you can add impotence, sterility, fornication,
promiscuity, and homosexuality to the list of diseases that circumcision was
supposed to cure. Starting (I'm guessing) in the 40's, hygiene gained currency
as a justification. During W.W.II an awful lot of men were circumcised after
enlisting in the armed forces. Most of the arguments in favor of routine
circumcision nowadays tries to establish a cause-effect correlation between the
intact foreskin and urinary tract infection and penile and cervical cancer.
There's no consensus on the proper interpretation of the statistics that are
available on these diseases.
"Phimosis" is a condition in which the intact foreskin becomes stuck in the
retracted position behind the glans and causes swelling of the foreskin and
glans of the penis. The most common treatment is circumcision; but everything
that I've read points out that since most parents and doctors have so little
experience with an intact, uncircumcised penis and don't know how to care for
it, phimosis most commonly results from premature retraction of the foreskin.
(About 4% of males' foreskins are fully retractable at birth. Most commonly the
glans and foreskin are joined by connective tissue; after birth the foreskin
gradually separates from the glans of its own accord, which can take anywhere
from seven months to several years. Premature retraction tears the developing
tissue and causes bleeding and sometimes scarring and possibly abnormal
development.)
Some common-sense arguments (some of which the late Dr. Spock initially
served as an advocate, and later renounced) go, "It's just a flap of skin, and
serves no purpose. And since it complicates penile hygiene especially beyond
the patience of young boys, it's better just to get rid of it." "You have to
periodically retract the foreskin and clean it out, and this is bad because it
encourages boys to play with themselves, which is bad." "A boy should look like
his father." "The foreskin has no proper functional role; it's an evolutionary
mistake that we can correct." An overwhelming majority of women in the U.S.
have never seen an intact penis, and many women say they would not date a man
unless they were circumcised. Young mothers commonly defend their decision to
circumcise their infant boys because a circumcised penis is more "aesthetically
pleasing."
Finally, some functional aspects of the foreskin which are only now becoming
understood. There are four obvious functional aspects of the natural foreskin:
First, in the foreskin fine touch nerve receptors are more concentrated than
*anywhere* else in the human body with the exception of the lips. The glans of
the penis is relatively impoverished in nerve endings. An intact male thus gets
a great deal more stimulation during sex.
Second, in an intact penis the glans is always covered and protected by the
foreskin, so it is itself more sensitive to physical stimulation; the outer skin
layer of the glans is very thin and is basically a mucous membrane (as is the
inner foreskin itself). In an uncircumcised male the glans penis is an
*internal* organ just as the clitoris, covered by the clitoral hood, is in the
female. After circumcision the glans becomes "keratinized", which means the
outer skin become thick and tough and relatively insensitive.
Third, the foreskin, being a continuous portion of the shaft skin that covers
the penis, forms a protective sheath during sexual intercourse. The literature
refers to this as the "gliding effect": during vaginal intercourse the foreskin
and some of the shaft skin more or less stays in the vagina during the
outstroke, and the shaft and glans of the penis thrust in and out always
enclosed by this sheath of skin.
(I read a report of a lecture in which the speaker illustrated the gliding
effect using his long-sleeved dress shirt: unbutton the cuff on you left sleeve.
Your left arm represents the penis, your hand represents the glans and you
shirtsleeve represents the foreskin. Now grab your left sleeve with your right
hand, which represents the vagina and vaginal walls. If you "thrust" with your
left arm in and out of your right hand, you can see the principle involved. Try
it without the shirtsleeve and you can see how that extra skin can keep
everything from getting sore and abraded.)
Only at the apex of the instroke is the glans actually exposed inside the
vagina. The foreskin sort of acts in place of lubricant-- with this sheath
to glide in and out of, there's really no need for any more lubrication than
would be required for the initial thrust of the penis into the vagina. After
that the foreskin keeps everything moving smoothly.
(In case you think the foreskin couldn't possibly make that much difference
in the way things work, consider that the average intact adult male, the
foreskin makes up about 15 square inches of skin, which is the size of a 3x5
index card. That's a *lot* of skin to be on a penis, that you and I are both
missing. Some men who were very tightly circumcised report painful erections
because there's not enough skin to cover their fully erect penis; and others
report a permanent and almost instant increase in penis length after surgical or
nonsurgical restoration.)
Finally, a growing number of anatomical biologists (or whoever's bailiwick
this is) believe that--especially during infancy, but also through adulthood--
the foreskin protects the urethra from bacteria and other environmental hazards,
totally contrary to the pro-circumcision UTI argument. The foreskin typically
constricts at some distance outward beyond the tip of the glans to form a
protective closure, so bacteria don't have ready access to the urinary tract.
This seems especially sensible from an evolutionary standpoint, and also makes
it plausible to argue that it serves a more gross protective function-- the
foreskin takes scrapes and cuts (or worse!) and leaves the glans relatively
unharmed.
Since urine is sterile when it leaves the body, it's not even hygienically
necessary for the intact male to retract the foreskin to urinate, and in fact,
in cultures in which circumcision is rare, most males do not retract to urinate.
Many are even taught as boys to pinch the foreskin closed at some point during
urination, to let the foreskin fill with urine and rinse the glans with sterile
fluid before releasing it again.
In reality the intact penis does *not* require any more attention to hygiene
than that of a circumcised male. The general recommendation for intact males is
to *infrequently* retract the foreskin and rinse gently with clear water-- no
soap, which can irritate the inner foreskin lining and glans penis. Anything
much more than this would be comparable in the female to a daily vaginal douche
with liquid soap. I'm sure you don't have to ask your female friends to realize
that this would be a *really bad idea*.
I've even heard some preliminary reports on the functional role of smegma.
Now I'm naturally repulsed by the thought of smegma, just as virtually everyone
else is I'm sure, but the thing I read speculated that smegma serves to keep the
glans and inner foreskin lubricated and soft (the paper I read used the word
"emollient") and even facilitates intercourse. Even more, the thing I read
hinted at certain *antiseptic* or at least antibacterial properties of naturally
occurring smegma.
Just a few more points. Consider the fact that about 85% of males in our age
group underwent a traumatic surgical procedure within days of birth, quite often
without the benefit of anesthesia. Think about that! I don't think anyone has
any idea of the developmental consequences of an experience like that. Birth
itself can be incredibly traumatic for the newborn, and then a couple of days
afterwards a new assault on your body just when you're beginning to recover and
you're getting used to the idea of being born. Historically, every time an
issue like this comes up for debate the argument is made "Well, they don't
really feel pain the way we do because they're newborns", or "It can't possibly
have any long-term effect because they're too young to remember". Substitute
the concept of race or class or gender and you can see that this argument is
logically groundless, and in reality is an empirical argument that's
historically turned out to be wrong every time.
This is a difficult concept for me to pin down, for the same reason I think
that it keeps rearing its head. Let me illustrate my point with a true story.
Daniel Dennett relates this story in his book "Brainstorms", which is a
combination defense of artificial intelligence in principle, and a challenge to
AI advocates who think that intelligence is something conceptually simple. This
is from the chapter "Why You Can't Make a Computer that Feels Pain":
...The major problem can be approached by way of a curious and terrible
incident from the annals of medicine. Curare, the poison used by South
American Indians on their blow-pipe darts, was purified (as d-tubocurarine)
and introduced into medical research in the 1930's, and its action was soon
well understood. It is a paralytic that acts directly on all the neuro-
muscular junctions, the last rank effectors of the nervous system, to
produce total paralysis and limpness of all the voluntary muscles. It has no
central effect except for a slight enhancement effect on activity in the
cortex. In the 1940's, however, some doctors fell under the misapprehension
that curare was a general anesthetic, and they administered it as such for
major surgery. The patients were, of course, quiet under the knife, and made
not the slightest frown, twitch or moan, but when the effects of the curare
wore off, complained bitterly of having been completely conscious and in
excruciating pain, feeling every scalpel stroke but simply paralyzed and
unable to convey their distress. The doctors did not believe them. (The fact
that most of the patients were infants and small children may explain this
credibility gap.) Eventually a doctor bravely submitted to an elaborate and
ingenious test under curare, and his detailed confirmation of the subjects'
reports was believed by his colleagues: curare is very definitely not any
sort of anesthetic or analgesic.
[Dennett goes on to hypothesize an "amnestic" administered in conjunction with
curare--a drug that "has no effect on experience or memory during 'n' hours
after ingestion but thereafter wipes out all memory of those 'n' hours." Would
this combination of curare and amnestic suffice as a substitute for general
anesthesia? (Would you take it?) Then he drops a bomb--curare is in fact a
ubiquitous ingredient in anesthetic mixtures administered for major surgery,
because many anesthetics do not completely suppress motor reflexes (that part
isn't the bomb); and some drugs that act somewhat like his imaginary amnestic
are in reality administered to patients when it's suspected that they weren't
sufficiently anesthetized during their surgery--to get the doctors "off the
hook", in the words of one anesthesiologist. But I digress.]
My point here is that in general, if there's any sort of plausible argument
for caution or restraint in matters like this, the absence of reliable
information generally indicates that the possible ill effects of a given action
or procedure should get more weight when compared to the benefits, than they
would if the issues were more well-understood. "If it ain't broke, don't fix
it."
Finally (I promise: the last "finally") with respect to nonsurgical foreskin
restoration: the principle involved, skin expansion, is extremely well-
understood in the mainstream medical community. Skin that's subjected to
constant gentle stretching stimulates the production of *new* skin cells and not
merely the elongation of existing cells. It's a fairly common procedure to
replace smaller amounts of lost skin by installing an inflated balloon
subcutaneously for a period of time, to subject the skin to enough tension to
stimulate new growth. Any fat person who later lost a lot of weight will have
wrinkles and extra skin; same thing there.
The literature on the internet about non-surgical foreskin restoration is
virtually all anecdotal, but it is *vast*. I've read reports from literally
hundreds of men who restored their foreskins through some form of stretching or
other, and it actually works. Of course, no method of restoration can restore
the nerve endings that were lost, but most people I've read of who were
circumcised as adults, and who subsequently restored, report that the restored
foreskin closely approximates their lost natural foreskin in sensation and
function. In cases in which one's circumcision was not very tight and left a
fair amount of foreskin intact, the results can be extremely dramatic-- the
keratinized foreskin sheds its rough outer layer and resumes its role as a
membranous tissue, complete with its newly sensitized nerves.
Since this message has gotten really long, I'm going to send the links I
mentioned under separate cover.
Your friend,
Darien Large
"...plus a constant."
And here are some links re:re: said:
-----Original Message-----
From: Darien Large []
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 1999 6:00 PM
To: David B
subject: some WWW links about foreskin, circumcision and foreskin
restoration
----------
First, a great resource to do with general aspects of the male reproductive
organs (the same place does an equally good job with the female reproductive
organs); every man should read this stuff:
The University of Toronto Sexual Education Centre: The Adult Male
"The major components of the male reproductive system are visible on the
outside of the body. Because their genitals are more obvious, easily accessible,
and easily stimulated, most males discover at an earlier age than females that
their genitals can be a source of special pleasure. Because males urinate
through the penis and therefore must handle it to free it from blotting, they
face fewer social prohibitions against touching their genitals than do females
(Have you ever watched a baseball game?)."
----------
Circumcision Information Resource Centre
"What is the Circumcision Information Resource Centre?
The Circumcision Information Resource Centre is a non-profit organisation
located in Montréal, Québec, Canada which provides information
about non-religious infant circumcision and related topics, in English and
French."
----------
Circumcision Information and Resource Pages
"The Circumcision Information and Resource Pages are an Internet
resource that provides you with information about all aspects of
the genital surgery known as circumcision."
(See especially the articles
"From Ritual to Science: The Medical Transformation of Circumcision in America"
and
"Historical Medical Quotes on Circumcision".)
----------
33 Photographs of The Intact Adult Male Foreskin
----------
National Organization of Restoring Men
"The National Organization of Restoring Men is dedicated to providing an arena
in which circumcised men can share their concerns without fear of being
ridiculed for a desire to be intact and whole again. A safe place is provided to
discuss goals and learn about methods and techniques of restoration and to
discover those methods that will work best for each individual. Further, the aim
is to help men regain a sense of self-directedness -- physically as well as
emotionally."
----------
Your friend,
Darien Large
"...plus a constant."