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CIRCUMCISION IN AMERICA | PAGE 1, 2
Research into circumcision's history suggests that it dates back to around 3000 B.C., when it was performed in ancient Egypt as a mark of slavery and as a religious rite. Aside from Jews and Muslims, however, people considered circumcision to be a repugnant form of genital mutilation, and both the Greeks and Romans passed laws forbidding its practice. Thus, for a few millennia at least, most men worldwide enjoyed the virtues of an intact penis. In fact, routine circumcision didn't take off in America until the Victorian era, and didn't reach cruising altitude until the Cold War years, when technology, medicine and big business came together in the interest of institutionalized birthing. The systematic removal of the foreskin owes its ubiquity in America to one man named Dr. Lewis Sayre, once known as the "Columbus of the prepuce" by his colleagues. In 1870, Sayre drew a correlation between the foreskin and an orthopedic malady in a young boy. Through a series of bizarre medical experiments, Sayre and his colleagues eventually determined that links existed between the foreskin and a vast range of ailments that included gout, asthma, hernias, epilepsy, rheumatism, curvature of the spine, tuberculosis and elephantiasis. But what drove circumcision deeper into the bedrock of pediatric medicine was the strident belief that masturbation, thought to be the root of everything from bed-wetting to intractable forms of insanity and mental retardation, could be "cured" with circumcision. Dr. Peter Charles Remondino, a well-known physician, public health official and champion of universal circumcision, typified the Zeitgeist. Remondino wrote that the foreskin, which he referred to as an "unyielding tube" and "a superfluity," made the intact male "a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings ... and other conditions calculated to weaken him physically, mentally, and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail, or even in a lunatic asylum." Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a well-known fundamentalist health reformer and medical journalist (his 1888 "Plain Facts for Old and Young" included roughly 100 pages dedicated to "Secret Vice [Solitary or Self Abuse]") who went on to create the world's preeminent corn flake, was more direct in his approach. "A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision," he wrote. "The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement." As astonishing as it may seem, Kellogg's views were shared by most prominent practitioners of the time. In Robert Tooke's popular book "All About the Baby," published in 1896, circumcision is recommended for preventing "the vile habit of masturbation." And Dr. Mary Melendy, author of "For Maidens, Wives and Mothers," wrote that masturbation "lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis and heart disease ... It even makes many lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide." Appealing to parents who might question the protracted afflictions associated with masturbation, Melendy warned, "Don't think it does no harm to your boy because he does not suffer now, for the effects of this vice come on so slowly that the victim is often very near death before you realize that he has done himself harm." Circumcision was not only bound up with deeply irrational fears about masturbation at the turn of the century; it was also tied to sociocultural changes as vast waves of immigration flooded American cities. Circumcision became a mark of social class that distinguished gentrified, "real" Americans from the "insalubrious" immigrant masses at a time when cleanliness was synonymous with godliness. Eventually, circumcision staked its claim on the American male and his problematic penis, and became so accepted as the norm that by the early 1900s standard medical textbooks depicted the normal penis without its foreskin. In this highly charged atmosphere, American parents who chose not to circumcise their sons were almost criminally negligent, if not freakishly nonconformist. By the Cold War era, roughly 90 percent of American males were systematically circumcised at birth. It was simply something you did -- a medical procedure as unquestioned as the cutting of the umbilical cord -- and so deeply entrenched in America that it was upheld as standard practice long after the theories by which it was justified were debunked. People had long forgotten that circumcision was not based on any supreme medical imperative but rather on the fantastically phobic mores of a Victorian society, and the medical establishment did little to clear the smoke on what had become a profitable business. Was this a perception/reality problem, or a morality/reality problem? It wasn't until the '70s -- after French obstetrician and natural-birthing pioneer Frederick Leboyer's "Birth Without Violence," after extensive studies discrediting longstanding medical claims, after lawsuits that forced hospitals to obtain parental consent before circumcising, and after millions of foreskins had been left on the cutting-room floor -- that Americans (and Jews all over the world) began questioning circumcision. By 1975, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) had reversed
its pro-circumcision stance in "Standards and Recommendations for
Hospital Care of Newborn Infants," by stating: "there is no absolute
medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn." And in 1984,
it published "Care of the Uncircumcised Penis," which, clearly supporting
the intact penis, concluded by saying, "The foreskin protects the glans
throughout life." But despite a slow decline in the circumcision rate, accompanied by a new awareness
of the rights of newborns -- and despite rigorous campaigning against
circumcision by doctors worldwide, in the form of international symposiums,
in-depth studies, human rights legislation, information resource centers
and more -- circumcision remains the most commonly performed neonatal
surgical procedure in America. And in this, America stands alone.
This is the first of a two-part series. Part Two Debra Ollivier's last story for Salon was Les birds et les bees.
Foreskin or against it Is circumcision the unkindest cut of all?
Did you circumsize your son? Why or why not? Join the ongoing debate in the Mothers area of Table Talk.
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