Boy raised as a girl suffered final indignity

Globe and Mail ^ | 05/11/2004 | GRAEME SMITH

[RipSawyer]

I have heard both of these versions before but I cannot prove or disprove either. Unfortunately, the practice has become so ingrained that it seems natural to most people, when in fact nothing could be more unnatural. I am all for it as long as it is done of a person's own volition after they have reached an age at which they can understand what they are doing, pay the medical costs and accept whatever happens afterward. I am totally against it when performed on newborn boys.

[TontoKowalski]

I'm circumcised. So is my son.

I had no choice in the matter for myself, and I regret agreeing to have it done on my son.

I've know men who were circumcised as adults, and they have told me that the decrease in intensity of sensation is marked.

I believe that sexual pleasure is a gift from God; I concede that, like many of God's gifts, it is often misused. I can't help but wonder if I agreed to rob my son of a portion of that gift so he could "look like Dad."

[kaylar]

My mom was an RN back in the 1960s. She told me that one of the worst things she had to do was assist at circumcisions. The doctors insisted that babies that young couldn't feel pain, so the boys were circumcised without anaesthesia (sp?). She said she never could understand why they would go on making this claim, when the babies would scream themselves hoarse. I hope at the very least that they now use painkillers , or deadeners, or something.

This story really tears me up. Just a few days ago, I was mulling over rereading As Nature Made Him.As horrible as what was done to that child was, at least at the end he seemed happy-married, surgically reconstructed, open about the treatment, and the recipient of a sizable damage award. Now this.

[Marie]

there may have been as many as 100 other circumcision-related accidents causing permanent damage to, or loss of, genitalia.

My husband and I had a friend who had terrible damage from a botched circumcision when he was a baby. (The machine didn't cut. Rather, it ripped off most of the skin.) It took 4 operations to put him back together and, even then, sex was always painful for him. I still regret having my son "done". Honestly, the only reason I went along with it was that I had a friend in college who had to have one at 19 due to chronic infections. He was in agony for days and I wanted to spare my son the pain.

[presidio9]

[valkyrieanne]

I don't think it was on account of "Jewish doctors." But in the 19th century circumcision *was* recommended by doctors as a "cure" for masturbation. Occasionally girls were excised too, in both England and the US, for the same reason. Barbaric.

[Alouette]

I hope this is just an antiJewish canard

It's an antiJewish canard. The physicians who initially recommended routine circumcision were not Jews. Anyway, Jews do not have circumcisions performed by a doctor.

[Ditto]

Perhaps the most significant research is that of Dr. Stephen Moses in Winnipeg, Manitoba, who says a male who is circumcised is up to 9.6 times less likely to contract AIDS.

I have to wonder how much of that stat has to do with ethnicity than with potential disease vectors. AIDS rates tend to be higher among some ethnic groups due to a propensity to engage in unsafe practices who also are also less likely for cultural reasons to be circumcised.

Is it cause and effect or simply coincidence? I don't know, but I'd just be careful with that stat.

[Salvation]

What a sad story!

[wimpycat]

That statistic is a correlation, and as I learned years ago in my statistics class in college, "correlation does not prove causation". Besides, most men with AIDS do not live in the U.S., and most men in the rest of the world are not circumcised.