Kahal: Giving Up Brit Milah (in Hebrew and English)
http://www.kahal.org

Jews Against Circumcision
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org

Beyond the Brit Milah: A Jewish Intactivist Blog
http://www.beyondthebris.com

Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective
http://www.jewishcircumcision.org

Israeli Association Against Genital Mutilation (in Hebrew)
http://www.britmila.org.il

Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision – A Movie by Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon
http://www.cutthefilm.com

Brit B’lee Milah (Covenant Without Cutting) Ceremony
http://www.nocirc.org/religion/Naming_ceremony.php

Being rational about circumcision and Jewish observance by Moshe Rothenberg, MSW
http://www.noharmm.org/rationaljew.htm

Challenging the Circumcision Myth by Jan Jaben-Eilon, Jerusalem Post, 4/10/11 (PDF)
http://lisabravermoss.com/uploads/Challenging_the_Circumcision_Myth.pdf

I really, really didn’t want to get into this, but I couldn’t let that one go. You seem to place a lot of weight on “studies that go back and forth.” Well, to be fair here, the research done on this has found that that argument has no roots in reality OR real studies, but comes entirely from pro-life groups. Research has found that the majority of women who have abortions need no counseling and have no notable psychological problems after the fact. Again, regardless of your personal opinions on the subject, I’m sure you can agree that presenting accurate information trumps using outright propaganda to “prove” a point. I’ve tried hard to stick to legitimate facts and throw out the aspects of my argument that seem difficult to back up. Please consider doing the same.

“I appreciate reading that statement, as it holds much more reason then the whole 11 reasons not to circ blog post. This in part because the 5 reasons, the ones that were not just opinion, go back and forth based on the numerous studies out there.”

Looking at the five that aren’t opinion:

Since we can’t really prove either way whether strapping a baby down and cutting off a part of his penis causes him long-term trauma, wouldn’t you agree logic dictates it’s safer to NOT do it if there’s not some overwhelming reason why his life or well-being are directly threatened by not doing it?

Girls get far more UTIs, yet a simple treatment with antibiotics is considered perfectly reasonable for them. Do we consider boys so fragile that irreversible SURGERY is preferable to a Z-Pak every few years in the more extreme cases of kids whose parents neglect basic hygiene for them?

The STD issue’s tricky, as the studies HAVE been poorly conducted, but may have a kernel of truth, as it’s likely that as viruses evolved, they latched on to any vector they could find, which might include the specific cells that are partially lost during circumcision. But the USA proves the argument irrelevant. We’re the single most circumcising high-level country in the world, and have the worst STD rates among them. This is due most likely to our abhorrent sexual education, but proves that circumcision can’t trump poor education in protecting us. Meanwhile the countries in the world with the best education also happen to have the lowest rates of circumcision AND the lowest rates of STDs. Clearly education is more beneficial than circumcision.

Phimosis really isn’t much of an issue for studies. The reality is that you can ask any doctor whose knee-jerk reaction isn’t “circumcise” every time he hears “penis” and “problem” in the same sentence, and you’ll find there are plenty of reasonable options employed throughout the world that resolve the relatively rare problem easily without the need for surgery. But since we’re used to circumcising as a norm anyway, we don’t value the foreskin enough to try to preserve it.

Penile cancer is kind of a joke of a reason for circumcision. First off, it’s rare. But for the poor people who do get it, there’s kind of an important distinction: the vast majority of them develop it in their 70s. We’re performing surgery on our infants to prevent a condition they won’t get until they’re elderly, and well past the point where they had the ability to make their own choice on the matter? You see any logic to this? Besides that, if you compare the mortality rate between penile cancer to that of infant circumcision, you’ll be surprised to find they’re quite similar. So when given the choice to perform a procedure that is almost just as likely to kill my newborn as it is to prevent him from dying in his 70s, I don’t think I’m crazy for favoring the odds that he reach his average lifespan.

If you examine each of those, at the absolute worst they seem to be a wash when it comes to research. Either the research is too shoddy on one or both sides to draw a good conclusion, or outside factors counter any benefits the research finds. So if the research is a wash, then that really does seem to lead to “it’s what you prefer” which was the clear point made in that original blog. I prefer not to permanently alter my son’s body without his consent. I’m just still not sure why there are people who find it perfectly reasonable to infringe upon his rights that way.

-I’m not a person to see things as black or white the pro-circ radicals as bad as the anti-circ radicals, and Edgar Schoen certainly is not a person I would ever trust to perform a circumcision.

TurboFool said on February 27th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
“I do wish to clear up a misconception on your part, though: Circumcision is not “easily reversible” by any remote stretch of the imagination, and I don’t recall the P&T episode suggesting it was.”

-To someone like me who is not knowledgeable about the process of the foreskin restoration, P&T sure made it seem easy in that video by stating if you tug on the circumcised penis in a strategic way you will end up with a desired result that acts like an uncircumcised penis would. Like wise to someone who doesn’t know about the Jewish religion they would have thought that Rabbi was of the Jewish faith instead of being of Jewish decent but of the Christian faith. I also greatly appreciate your details on foreskin restoration as this is quite fascinating to me in how far such things have progressed and will continue to until a full restoration can be made.

“I will comment about your comparison between the horror of watching a circumcision, and the horror of watching an abortion. Ignoring any moral implications of either action (this is surely not the place for THAT argument), when comparing the visual observation (”…ever seen…”) of both acts, I personally don’t think a consenting woman undergoing a procedure not visibly too dissimilar from a typical gynecological procedure compares to the sight of a screaming newborn being forcibly strapped to a table, having a clamp applied to its genitalia, and a scalpel used to CUT 50% of the surface area of its penis away before it ever has the chance to use it. Again, this is ignoring any moral outrage you may be justified in feeling about either action.”

I agree with the fact “this is surely not the place for THAT argument,” however with the sheer ignorance of the woman making such a statement of that being the most horrific thing she has ever seen, I had to being up that subject. I also agree that it doesn’t compare to watching an infant circumcision, because one is not watching the abortion process as it is happening, however it has very real traumatic effects on a majority of woman who go through abortions which require years of counseling to deal with. On top of that it is much worse seeing, hearing and dealing with an infant who has jaundice or colic cry, or seeing any other medical procedure done on a infant or toddler which also requires to have them be strapped down in much the same way, if not more restrained.

Although I do still disagree with some points I really appreciate reading your knowledgeable input. I greatly admire the fact that you have every right to go off on a angry rant, but rather you have chosen to write with researched facts. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on the subject.

Cate Nelson said on February 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
“Brettney,
If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you would see that we don’t watch television. I haven’t seen any of the others in the “BS!” series. I simply thought we could end discussion of this topic on a lighter note. Hmmm…perhaps it’s only funny (and horrifyinh) to those who already believe in leaving babies intact?”

That is a tough transition since, to so many, this is not a light subject but I did acknowledge that by first stating “Penn and Teller are hilarious,…”

“And as I said in the comment section of my first blog on this subject, overwhelmingly, the consensus was: “It’s what you prefer.” They told us that medically, there was no reason to circumcise. Because my dh wanted his son circumcised, he was certainly looking for the doctors to back him up.
I simply couldn’t do “what I preferred” when it came to a newborn’s body. He can do it when he is an adult, if he so chooses.”

I appreciate reading that statement, as it holds much more reason then the whole 11 reasons not to circ blog post. This in part because the 5 reasons, the ones that were not just opinion, go back and forth based on the numerous studies out there.

Like the vast majority of the world’s males, my son is not circumcised. He’s happy and healthy.

Let’s please break this awful cycle of abuse.

For one thing (to cover the “reversible” aspect), the vast majority of what’s lost can never be recovered. The frenulum, which is the single most sensitive part of the penis and the part that anchors the foreskin to the glans, is amputated in most forms of circumcision, and completely impossible to restore. The frenar band, which the elastic-like skin at the tip of the foreskin that causes it to contract around the glans and keep it pulled forward to protect the glans, is irreplaceable. The particular cellular makeup of the inner foreskin, which is designed to protect and moisten the glans, is essentially gone for good, depending on how much of it was remaining after the circumcision and what method of restoration is used. The massive number of nerve endings that are lost in the roughly 50% of the surface area of the penis removed during circumcision are gone for good. In the cases of infant circumcision where the foreskin was forcibly retracted from the glans instead of allowed to part from it naturally over the years, the full sensitivity and mucosal makeup of the glans can never be fully restored to its original form. In fact, in the only study I’ve seen that used standard sensitivity-measuring tools (the filament-based techniques used for testing Diabetes patients) instead of heat or other odd techniques that don’t equate to sexual sensation, they found that when averaged out across all test patients, the single most sensitive part of the circumcised penis (strangely enough, the circumcision scar) was still less sensitive than the LEAST sensitive part lost from the uncircumcised penis. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg from my laymen’s perspective. There is more that’s irrecoverable. That’s one of the reasons why the community’s bandied about the idea of changing the term “restored” which suggests a full recovery to, perhaps, something like “regenerated” since some reptiles can regenerate lost limbs, but those limbs never operate as well as the originals.

As for the “easily” part, that word would be a bit of a slap in the face to any of us who’ve worked on foreskin restoration. Assuming you do your research well, your body’s the type that responds well to the procedures, and you happen to stumble upon a method that works well for you right away, you’re still looking at a minimum of about two years to reach the point where you can be as happy with the results as restoration allows for. And that’s two years of using your chosen method (taping, straps, weights, O-rings, etc., etc., etc.) every single day, without fail, often for 12-23 hours (gotta shower) per day. Now take into account the fact that most people don’t find the right method right off the bat, don’t have the perfect skin structure to make restoration move that quickly, will run into roadblocks and complications (including potential injury), have schedules or living situations that make restoring constantly an impossibility, can’t afford or don’t have access to the right supplies, etc., the process can take far, far longer. Some people have been actively restoring for five to ten years (or more)! Personally, I’ve been aware of and following the community for about 12 years now, and my initially very clumsy attempts have been going on and off for about eight now. Only recently have I finally put the effort into retrying the most promising technique with a more patient touch, and have had decent progress over the last few months. But at the rate I’m going, I’m still looking at probably two or more years before I’m comfortable with the results. And I may still need to change my method several times along the way.

This has been a real fear of ours within the movement that people would take our progress as a sign that circumcision’s reversible, and therefore restoring is still a simple choice when the foreskin’s already been taken from the child. Hopefully I’ve explained this well enough that you can understand that that truly is a misconception, and couldn’t be further from the truth. The only way to have a proper choice in your genitalia’s status is for it to be left intact for you to modify as you please. Anything else is merely a poor approximation of what was taken.

I will comment about your comparison between the horror of watching a circumcision, and the horror of watching an abortion. Ignoring any moral implications of either action (this is surely not the place for THAT argument), when comparing the visual observation (“…ever seen…”) of both acts, I personally don’t think a consenting woman undergoing a procedure not visibly too dissimilar from a typical gynecological procedure compares to the sight of a screaming newborn being forcibly strapped to a table, having a clamp applied to its genitalia, and a scalpel used to CUT 50% of the surface area of its penis away before it ever has the chance to use it. Again, this is ignoring any moral outrage you may be justified in feeling about either action.

Anyway, thank you again for respecting where I’m coming from, and I hope I’ve managed to educate you a bit beyond one P&T was able to inform you about. Restoration is an important action for those of us unhappy with our status, but it’s in no way a reasonable substitute for a proper choice.

The person you refer to is Dr. Edgar Schoen, and previously held the position of Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision. After he was replaced from the Chair of the AAP’s Task force on circ, they pulled their endorsement of the practice.

You may not like their choice of people on the show, but they are the people at the center of the debate.

Edgar Schoen is one of the two major public pushers of circumcision. His website is http://www.medicirc.org. The other pusher is Brian Morris, not a doctor but a biologist, his website is http://www.circinfo.net. Both websites are full of outdated data and full on lies.

You can have the view that it looks better, and I can’t argue with that, because it is subjective. But to argue that it is physically better for boys is proven wrong by the 70-80% of the men in the world that are not circumcised.