kame-sennin
Member
The article is a little long, so I had to trim it down:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/oct/29/health.religion
Posted without commentary.
Skin constantly renews itself. Foreskin is no different: stretch it, and it will grow. Which is why eight circumcised men are meeting in Watford town hall. They want new foreskins. "When people come to my house," says Laurie, "I don't go 'Hello there, I'm Laurie, I'm growing my foreskin', but I've often got research papers out on the table, so word gets out. I do find people are really very interested in what I'm doing."
Laurie is sharing his experience of restoration, as the process of foreskin renewal is called, with fellow members of NORM-UK. In the US, where NORM was born (and where circumcision rates are somewhere around three-quarters of the male population, far higher than in Britain), it stands for National Organisation of Restoring Men. NORM-UK is about more than that, but Laurie is on a roll. And the others don't want to interrupt him - after all, in two and a half years, Laurie has achieved glans coverage when flaccid. In the world of restoration, that is major.
Some men can't restore - they are too tightly circumcised and have no tissue left to grow, but others can and are availing themselves of products such as the TLC Tugger, Tug Ahoy and the Your-Skin cone. Some have found their own DIY solutions, using funnels and gaskets to stretch the foreskin, and sash-window weights to provide traction.
When the foreskin is removed, it leaves the glans exposed and that can be difficult - removing a protective layer and sometimes creating soreness. "I always had a problem with my penis giving me stimulation I didn't want," says Kevin, recalling how, as a boy, "I had to keep adjusting it through my pocket. I was near the climbing frame in the playground when, all of a sudden, everyone started chanting 'Kevin is dirty - he's always playing with himself'. I didn't like the feeling of being odd, of being deformed. Suicide would have been a good option."
John D was like that. He felt abused because his circumcision was unnecessary - a course of antibiotics had already cleared up his urinary infection. "But my father agreed with the doctor, and told me I was going to have a minor operation," he says. "I remember the nurses giggling as I was taken off to theatre. They wore these big sickly grins, and said, 'We're taking you to be done up now. Hee hee hee.' I was eight, but suffice it to say that they knew what was happening to me and I did not ... I remember waking up," says John D, "after the general anaesthetic had worn off, and looking down. My beloved penis had been replaced with wrinkled skin, a collar of thorns - the black stitches - and an ugly great dome on top. I experienced shock at first, later deep anger and resentment. The stitches disappeared, but the mutilation didn't. My father said, 'I didn't think it would look like that.' It was misinformed consent."
Religious circumcisions are frequently performed without anaesthetic, and are painful, even when performed on newborn babies. Adults can testify to the pain for themselves and can give their informed consent - but children can't. If, as opponents claim, circumcision is traumatic, and can result in lifelong damage - including psychological problems and a reduced sex drive - why are religious circumcisions still allowed?
NORM-UK says, actually, they aren't allowed: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that violence to children cannot be justified on grounds of "religion, culture or tradition". Children are not the possessions of their parents to do with as they please - or submit to surgery unless absolutely necessary. We make an exception for circumcision because it's mentioned in Genesis.
Circumcision was not practised in Britain until the 18th century and it really only gained popularity in the 19th century, after claims that it stopped the vile habit of masturbation. By stopping masturbation, Victorians thought circumcision would cure everything from epilepsy and hip trouble to asthma and alcoholism. In the first world war it was hailed as a defence against venereal disease, and by the second world war it had become an emblem of status; most of the middle and upper classes were eagerly circumcising their sons. Only in the late 1940s, with the introduction of the National Health Service, did numbers begin to fall - it is now estimated that around 20% of the current male population in the UK are circumcised.
But whenever a new disease becomes a matter of social concern, circumcision is wheeled out as the cure. A recent paper in the British Medical Journal found a link between an intact foreskin and HIV infection - but a paper in the British Journal Of Urology found exactly the opposite. There is clear medical evidence that circumcision reduces the incidence of cancer of the penis, and of the cervix for the women whose partners are circumcised, but even this is disputed by NORM-UK. It argues that the research is out of date and that a lack of cleanliness is more important to the transmission of disease than the lack of a foreskin.
The organisation doesn't want to see circumcision banned altogether. It accepts there are a few medical conditions where it is necessary. The others can be treated by simple, nonsurgical means."We need to educate the medical profession," says Smith, "because they seem unaware of the alternatives to circumcision. They are certainly unaware of the problems that it is causing."
John D is typical of NORM-UK members in that circumcision when he was a young boy changed his entire persona. "I became less sociable, and I started talking to myself. I was fearful of changing rooms. I had no close relationship with the opposite sex until I was 41, and I still haven't been able to reach orgasm through sexual intercourse. Over the years, I've had real problems with depression, and I'm sure I could trace it back to that day."
Circumcision for babies and for older people is dismissed as "the snip", but it can still result in serious bleeding, or an adverse reaction to the anaesthetic. "And you cannot cut off normal, healthy, sexually-functioning tissue without cutting off normal, healthy, sexual functioning," says Marilyn Milos, a nurse and director of the National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centres in the US. "It's a sexual issue, and it's a human rights issue." The foreskin isn't a useless flap that evolution should have got rid of long, long ago - it's skin that is rich with blood vessels, highly innervated, and uniquely endowed with stretch receptors. These contribute greatly to the sexual response of the intact male. The stretching of the foreskin over the glans activates nerve endings, enhances sexual excitability, and contributes to the ejaculatory reflex. There's no escaping it - the foreskin is sexual tissue.
Laurie can laugh now, but he missed his foreskin (it was removed when he was two). He was getting on for 60, and rapidly losing the feeling in his penis. "To be honest," he says, "sex was like pushing a rolling pin in. And I'm not referring to size when I say 'rolling pin' - you can get little rolling pins. I just could not feel a thing." His glans had been badly desensitised after years of rattling around - so much so that he could have an orgasm and not even feel it. That is when he approached NORM-UK.
During heterosexual intercourse with a circumcised man, the penis removes natural lubrication as it moves in and out of the vagina. "So my poor wife was buying artificial lubricant by the gallon," says Laurie. During heterosexual intercourse with an uncircumcised man, the glans moves but the foreskin stays put. And so does the lubrication. The woman doesn't feel friction at all - what she does feel is a variation in pressure.
Laurie is delighted. "And so is my wife," he says. "The skin grew in jumps. I did a lot of work for a long time and nothing happened, like with the sticky tape, but suddenly I woke up one morning and thought 'Where's that come from?' " The new foreskin didn't have the nerve endings it once did, but the glans recovered all its sensitivity. "For 40 years my wife and I had to use lubrication. Not any more. We're delighted."
Meet the members of NORM-UK and you'll understand that it's more important to look at the complications of circumcision, and its physical and psychological side effects. In time, campaigners hope that routine circumcision will come to be seen as yet another deluded fad, along with bleeding, electro-convulsive therapy and the frontal lobotomy.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/oct/29/health.religion
Posted without commentary.
