D R A M A_ Q U E E N

This won't hurt a bit! Ever been brought to tears while lying on your back with your legs open in front of a strange doctor? Share your tales of gynecological woe in Drama Queen for a Day contest.

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T A B L E_ T A L K

Halloween is less than a week away. Do you know what your kids are wearing? Discuss costumes, candy and pumpkins in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Circumcision in America
By Debra S. Ollivier
How did a medically pointless procedure become a routine practice performed on a majority of American males?
(10/26/98)

Citizens of the world, turn on your televisions!
By Sallie Tisdale
TV opened up my world. Really
(10/22/98)

Mommy's little accessory
By Dayna Macy
Jo Copeland designed glamorous couture clothes for the rich and famous. But while she was an extraordinary designer, she was a disaster as a mother
(10/21/98)

The worst trip ever
By Susan McCarthy
A sweaty cross-country trek in a 1937 Plymouth with two cranky siblings, a kangaroo rat in a box and a pogo stick turns into family legend
(10/20/98)

Beautiful Dreamer
By Lisa Kleinman
Babies No. 1 and 2 had to suffer through less-than-perfect strollers. But baby No. 3 will have the ideal ride -- that is, if there is a baby No. 3
(10/19/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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--------Despite medical and religious debunking, long-standing
--------------cultural biases keep the practice of circumcision alive.

-------- Read Part One
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BY DEBRA S. OLLIVIER | Why is the most "advanced" nation in the industrialized world alone in practicing a disturbing archaism from less enlightened times? In "The Saharasia Connection," Dr. James DeMeo, who calls circumcision "an ancient blood ritual ... that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with medicine, health, or science in practically all cases," puts forth this hypothesis: "The fact that so many circumcised American men, and mothers, nurses, and obstetricians are ready to defend the practice in the face of contrary epidemiological evidence is a certain giveaway to hidden, unconscious motives and disturbed emotional feelings about the penis and sexual matters in general."

It remains to be seen to what extent "unconscious motives" are responsible for the perpetuation of circumcision today. However, "emotional feelings about the penis" may very well be knit into the fabric of certain long-standing myths that persist in the United States despite logical or empirical evidence to the contrary. After much verbal intercourse with friends over the years about near misses and close calls with the intact penis, it seems evident that three persistent myths or biases dominate.

The mother of all myths, now locker-room gospel, is that a circumcised penis is more hygienic than an intact one. This comes as no surprise in a culture where the art of sterilization is so pervasive that certain foods have a half-life that probably exceeds that of plutonium. Still, doctors discredited hygiene as an advantage of circumcision years ago. When I asked our pediatrician what I needed to clean my son's intact penis, he replied: "Common sense." The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) put it another way: "Good personal hygiene would offer all the advantages of routine circumcision without the attendant surgical risk." (This, of course, is the case for both sexes: Leave any body part unattended for too long and things get, well, unpleasant.) Yet another doctor posited in "Circumcision: A Medical or Human Rights Issue?" that removing the foreskin for hygiene's sake is like removing one's eyelid for a cleaner eyeball.

Another popular and profoundly baffling myth is that circumcision is painless. Studies indicate that those babies who appear to sleep through a circumcision have most likely slipped into a semicomatose state, and a slew of recent studies on newborns, traumatic experience and sensory perception support this hypothesis.

Equally strange is the cultural bias for the aesthetics of a circumcised penis. In moments of free-associative candor, girlfriends have compared the looks of an intact penis to everything from an elephant trunk to a dachshund. The queerness of it was reinforced by the unsettling feeling that it required at best a refresher course on basic anatomy, at worst a whole new sex education, as if an intact man were some sort of Minotaur. To the extent that the circumcised penis is endorsed largely through culturally determined views about hygiene and aesthetics, one wonders if it's not in some odd way a metaphor for America itself: sleek and streamlined, the way we like our cars and buildings, connoting speed and unimpeded verticality; but also surgical and sanitized, and thus thoroughly modern. By contrast, the intact penis is a little too unruly, too Paleolithic, a little too, well, animal. (If penises could walk and talk, the circumcised penis would be a suit and tie, a clean shave and a shoulder-high salute. The intact penis would be a rumpled shirt, a five o'clock shadow and a finger flipping you the bird.)

Either way, passing judgment on an intact penis in America is like passing judgment on a real nose in a country where rhinoplasty is imposed at birth. Quite simply, most Americans have forgotten that an intact penis is actually the norm, and that for thousands of years the only people who were circumcised were Jews and Muslims.

N E X T_ P A G E: The Covenant of Abraham and my son's penis