csua.org/u/48c -> dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/1998/10/26/26feature/index.html
Ollivier - - - - - - - - - - October 26, 1998 | W hen I told people that our newborn son would not be circumcised, I didn't realize that a tiny but vital part of his penis would touch off deeply held convictions about cultural mores, aesthetics, psychology, hygiene, father-son relations, American identity and thousands of years of biblical traditions. Aside from this brush with reality, however, the mushroom leitmotif of the circumcised penis remained the unequivocal, unquestioned status quo of my youth and of all my peers. It was the uncircumcised penis, with its strange fleshy retractability, that was somehow freakish, a slightly vestigial aberration, like being born with a tail or a set of gills. Years of living in Europe and being married to a French (uncircumcised) Catholic changed all that. Because only Jews and Arabs practice routine circumcision in Europe -- in fact, the United States is the only country in the industrialized world to practice it across the board -- I eventually grew so accustomed to the intact penis that a circumcised one now looks startlingly bereft. Still, when I told people in the States that our son would not be circumcised it was as if, in keeping his little foreskin intact, I was committing a perfidious impropriety: refuting both my Jewish and American identity and, in so doing, robbing my son of both. For all those who expressed their convictions, however -- the astonished Jewish relative, the slightly repelled girlfriend, the perturbed American husband -- a number of questions hung in the air, unanswered. How did circumcision evolve from a strictly Jewish and Muslim ritual to a standard medical procedure performed on a vast majority of American males, irrespective of religion? Why is the United States the only Western nation in the world to practice it routinely, despite overwhelming evidence debunking medical claims and enduring myths? More important, what exactly is the foreskin, what happens when we remove it and why do we continue to opt for circumcision? It doesn't take much to realize that nature didn't intend the foreskin and the penis to be separated at birth. Try retracting the foreskin of a newborn's penis and you're struck by the steadfast, tenacious grip it has on the glans, or head. The foreskin is sealed to its bounty like a silo, and only slowly, over the years, yields to full retractability. The foreskin contains thousands of highly sensitive sensory receptors called Meissner corpuscles, which are more abundant there than in any other part of the penis. Richly endowed with a profusion of blood vessels, it also has a ridged band of peripenic muscles that protects the urinary tract from contaminants, and an undersurface lined with mucocutaneous tissue found nowhere else on the body, which contains ectopic glands that produce natural emollients and antibacterial proteins similar to those found in mother's milk. With its frenar ridges and its thousands of nerve endings, the foreskin not only protects the glans, which in an intact male is extremely sensitive, it also accounts for roughly one-third of the penis' sexual perceptivity. In short, evolution has seen to it that the penises of all mammals come protected in a remarkably fine-tuned and responsive foreskin. After nine months of infinitely complex and elegant work at literally becoming whole persons, however, the majority of American newborn males have their foreskins removed. Curiously, in a culture where the rights of every living thing are vigorously endorsed by the vox populi, most parents opt neither to view nor to question the mechanics of this procedure. In cases where the prepuce is drawn tightly over the glans, a dorsal slit will facilitate applying the cone of the draw stud (the bell) over the glans. The prepuce is then pulled through and above the bevel hole in the platform and clamped in place. In this way the prepuce is crushed against the cone causing hemostasis. We allow this pressure to remain five minutes, and in older children slightly longer. Finally, what nature intended as an internal organ is irrevocably externalized. Perhaps for parents who don't watch a circumcision (the majority don't; But the fact remains that millions of American newborns routinely undergo this procedure, and most parents don't really know why.
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