I hate to cut and paste, but here is a post I made on the boards on the topic of male and female circumcision. I think it sums up my position:
Many first time mothers wrestle with this question. They are given so much conflicting information that it becomes hard to make a reasonable and informed decision. I understand why many men feel that this is an abusive practice. I've also known men who wish that their parents had them circumcised.
When I was in high school in the 70s and early 80s, guys that weren't circumcised were made fun of by the other guys. Things like this tend to go in cycles. For example, when I had my daughter in 1982, the doctors, nurses, and other parents were horrified that I wanted to breast feed. They believed that bottle feeding was better for the infant and that breast feeding was an outdated practice and/or was sexually abusive (I have trouble wrapping my mind around this, but I've heard people say it).
I suppose what I am saying is to be gentle. Most mothers certainly are not out to hurt their babies. They are trying "do the right thing." This is just one of those topics that most people feel very strongly about, just like people felt very strongly about breast feeding back in the 80s. I do not think it is even borderline abuse to circumcise a baby, but perhaps it is misguided. The word abuse brings to mind "intent to harm." I don't believe there is any intent to harm here, only confused parents trying to decide on a very important issue.
I witnessed a circumcision when I was in the hospital (my OB let us watch when we were making the decision for our son) and it didn't even wake the baby much less make him scream with pain. I believe the modern method is to use a ring around the penis that causes the foreskin to dry and fall off with no cutting involved. Feel free to correct me as I am no expert. I only know what I saw and what the doctor explained to us at the time.
Remember that like all controversial issues, there are websites and documentation that are overblown, outdated, or completely untrue. We all understand this in relation to abortion and anti-abortion sites, well it holds true for anti-circumcision sites as well (I've seen some horrendously bloody pictures on these sites that make it look like the child is being circumcised with a chainsaw and/or tortured).
Nobody really knows if a man who was circumcised as a baby feels more or less stimulation than one who wasn't. There simply isn't any single person who was circumcised as a baby and then transformed back into a baby to go through life uncircumcised (Well, maybe Shirley MacLaine). Sexual pleasure, like pain, is subjective. We can't take the testimony of men who underwent circumcision as adults or teens because the reduction of stimuli could be mental, due to the age and development of the man, or because of an issue that made the circumcision necessary.
For the record, I do not think circumcision is a necessary procedure. I just think that we should keep an open mind and refrain from knee-jerk reactions against parents who are trying to do what is best.
Also, be aware that there are huge differences between male and female circumcision. I often see them equated during such debates, but they are very different practices. I wrote a term paper for my Aesthetics major on female mutilation for male sexual pleasure (genital mutilation, foot binding, facial mutilation, etc). It is very disturbing stuff. Female circumcision (or genital mutilation which includes excision and infibulation) practices are intended to harm the child or young woman and make her unable to feel sexual pleasure. This is so that she will stay pure until marriage and will not want to cheat on her husband after marriage. It is not done because it is thought to be more sanitary, like most reasoning behind male circumcision, in fact it causes infection and is often performed outside of a hospital. The very fact that the intent is to harm the child makes it abusive to an extreme.
In many cultures that practice this barbarity, the removal of the clitoris (clitoridectomy)is performed along with infibulation which is when tissue is removed from the vulva (often abraded with glass shards or a knife) and made to heal together. The girl's legs are tied together for up to 6 weeks. The girl/woman has to undergo this procedure repeatedly throughout her life and often the husband takes great pleasure in cutting her open on the wedding night. The following is from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting) because it is a good summation of reverse infibulation which may actually be more barbaric than the original infibulation:
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A reverse infibulation can be performed to allow for sexual intercourse (often by the husband using a knife on the wedding night) or when undergoing labor, or by female relatives, whose responsibility it is to inspect the wound every few weeks and open it some more if necessary. During childbirth, the enlargement is too small to allow vaginal delivery, and so the infibulation must be opened completely and restored after delivery. Once again, the legs are tied together to allow the wound to heal, and the procedure is repeated for each subsequent act of intercourse or childbirth. When childbirth takes place in a hospital, the surgeons may preserve the infibulation by enlarging the vagina with deep episiotomies. Afterwards, the patient may insist that her vagina be closed again so that her husband does not reject her.[10]
This practice is reported to cause the disappearance of sexual pleasure for the women affected, as well as major medical complications, although advocates of the practice deny this, and continue to carry it out.
