[Login to see the link] (about moms checking our foreskins/circumcisions up close) got me thinking about all the conversations I've had with others about circumcision. I can remember each discretely because the issue is so close to me, having grown up intact in a circumcising culture (U.S.).
To keep this thread focused, I'm talking about routine infant circumcision (RIC) conversations.
1.
I'm past childbearing years now, but I'll never forget the first time I raised the subject with a friend who'd just told me his wife was pregnant. He and I were the same age, so I figured he was among the 85 percent circumcised in the mid-'60s. Also, he worked as a salesman in medical supplies. Likely he knew about circumcision clamps and dealt with doctors who were big fans of RIC.
We met for lunch without an agenda; just catching up after not seeing each other for months. About midway through the meal, his wife's pregnancy came up, and I asked, "Have you talked about circumcision?" That took some nerve, as I recall.
He surprised me by launching into a rant about how it wasn't necessary, how intactness is "how we're made," and that he and his wife had made up his mind to keep their son in one piece.
Taken aback, I still handed him an envelope with [Login to see the link] in it. In my awkwardness, I said, "Well, that was an easy sale." That was 18 years ago. We haven't broached the subject since.
2.
Another time, after my wife and I had settled in a comfortable area with lots of other young couples, I gathered my nerve and walked over to a neighbor's house. They welcomed me, but we didn't sit down. I simply blurted out that since they were expecting, I thought they should have all the information they needed in case they had a boy. Specifically, I said, about circumcision. Both of them eyed the envelope in my hand, and then I noticed the husband had taken what I would call a semi-aggressive stance next to me. Held eye contact directly and leaned slightly toward me. I took that to mean he wasn't open to discussion, but also didn't want to throw me out unless I crossed some line. I handed the packet to the wife, thanked them for their time, and left.
A few years later, another neighbor told us that couple's son had been admitted to hospital for a kidney infection. Seems he'd been holding back his urine too long, and that set him up for bacteria to make their way up his urinary tract. When the couple asked why, the doctor said, "Oh, sometimes boys just hold it when they shouldn't!" and he corrected the meatal stenosis by slicing the boy's meatus (urinary opening) with a scalpel, no anesthetic.
(Meatal stenosis is almost exclusive to circumcised males. The meatus, exposed 24/7 by circumcision, tries to narrow in order to protect the membrane lining the urinary tract. This is usually done by the one-way valve formed by the acroposthion, or foreskin overhang. The narrowed meatus hurts when urine streams through, causing the boy to hold his urine until some other pain forces him to micturate. The only answer is the scalpel. And there's usually an infection of the urinary tract that brings the matter to a doctor's attention. Happened to my nephew when he was 5.)
Side note: I let my wife talk to our other three neighbors before their next pregnancies came to turn. All three had their boys circumcised, one with a process the doctor called "less damaging," which means I don't know what, maybe less skin cut off? Another suffered a blood infection right after his circumcision that attacked his heart, damaging it so that he was put on the donor-recipient list and his parents were told he couldn't ever play sports. The doctor drew no link between the circumcision and the infection.
3.
A co-worker I barely knew announced her pregnancy, and a couple of days later I called her into a conference room and we sat down over the Fleiss article and a couple of others. She was a very attractive young woman, the kind that men flirt with even though she's married. I had to tread carefully, because any talk she might construe as having sexual overtones could be reported to HR and the bias would go against me.
So I kept the conversation about health and pain, noted that circumcision was on the decline, and said I wanted the best for her son just as she did. She thanked me and took the packet in a friendly manner.
Although I was dying to know if my efforts were successful, I didn't dare raise the matter again.
4.
Another co-worker, with whom I'd had a good, working relationship for five years, let me know she was expecting her second child, a son. I gave her the same packet, and she thanked me profusely, saying she knew nothing about circumcision and wanted to learn more.
The next time we crossed paths (she was in a different office), she pulled me aside. She said her husband had been circumcised so severely that his erections sometimes bled at the scar. Yet, he still wanted their son circumcised. She asked some probing questions, and although I'd always made a point of not bringing up my own circumcision status in these conversations, I divulged that I was intact and grateful not to have suffered as an infant nor as an adult. She said her family and his were all for circumcision, and she stood alone. I wished her the best and left the conversation wishing I could do more for her.
The idea hit me the next day. My wife came to visit the office with our infant son. I had told her about my conversation, and she jumped at the chance to support my co-worker.
She went over to the co-worker's office around lunchtime, and as you may know, when you show up with a baby every woman becomes your best friend. She introduced herself as my wife, and at some point asked if there was a side room where she could change my son's diaper. My co-worker took her to a conference room, and my wife asked her to stay.
As she changed the diaper, wife asked co-worker if she'd looked into circumcision. Then my co-worker got her first look at an actual foreskin. Her comment: "Looks normal to me." They wrapped him up, and that was that.
Until a few weeks later, when I encountered my co-worker again. In private, she told me she'd given her husband the articles I shared, and asked him to read them. Checking back with him in a couple of days, he hadn't looked at them. She said, "I need you to. It's important to me."
That's a key phrase, IMO. Instead of being confrontational over circumcision, she made the issue one of information. Are you going to read it? And she kept asking, every day or two, until he did.
He said he'd changed his mind. No circumcision for their son.
That was the only time I knew my efforts were rewarded with a change of plans.
5.
The toughest conversation was with my best friend. I dropped into town to meet him for lunch. I had so much difficulty getting around to the subject that I waited until we were in the car on the way back to the airport to mention the envelope I'd been carrying.
The words didn't come easily, and he made it harder by saying little in response. We never spoke of the matter again. I take that to mean his son got circumcised.
6.
I'd gotten known among intactivists in my area for my willingness to volunteer for baby fairs alongside the local, intactivist moms who usually staff those things. One told me my presence made a big difference in our favor, since it gave a more balanced perspective. Also, being a father gave me a level of acceptability; she thought parents didn't really want to hear about their son's penis from gay men, which make up much of the male intactivist ranks.
My work was rewarded when an author and intactivist had to cancel her talk before an audience of thousands at a feminist women's conference, hosted in my city. The organizers scrambled for a replacement, and somehow my name came up, even though I was nothing more than a local "director" for NOCIRC.
I showed up on a panel with two women. One was a victim of FGM, from Kenya. Her testimony, of being held down and mutilated at age 10, had half the room in tears. The next speaker, an academic, gave a dull, clinical run-down of genital mutilation around the world. Her dry, nonjudgmental style seemed to make the audience angry. Then she handed the mic to me.
By this time, I realized the talk I had planned was not going to fly. This almost all-female audience cared about FGM, not so much about RIC, and I've never seen comparisons of the two end in much other than a flame war. So I rewrote my speech as I spoke, first peeling off statistics about where RIC is practiced and to what extent, then went for the Hail Mary.
I said the key similarity between these practices was their persistence in the face of contrary evidence. Neither type of mutilation prevents disease, promiscuity, nor illness, and they both damage the victim's sexual function. But they persist, I posited, because of an innate need by many humans to control the sexuality of their offspring.
(See how that relates to the other thread here?)
My talk ended to roaring applause. The moderator opened the floor to questions, and the first one to stand was a gray-haired woman. She pointed to me and told the crowd I had changed her mind about RIC, and that when she returned home, she was going to talk with her pregnant daughter about circumcision. Two others chimed in with similar declarations, and then a few questions went to the other speakers.
I had perspired through my dress shirt, expecting polite dismissal at best from this crowd. Instead, I may have saved a few boys from involuntary circumcision.
I've had a few other conversations with parents-to-be, but they were similar to the examples above and not worth our time to cover.
How have your conversations gone?
