Comments on: Circumcision or mutilation?

by: darkdaughta

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:04:04 +0000

Thanks for the posts you sent. I wrote a really long comment here and then realized that it would be a good post. Will you come over and read it some time?

If you’re okay with it, I’ll use the first part of this post where you talk about the exam. I appreciated your candour when writing about your response. Let me know what you think.

by: demetria

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:12:52 +0000

“During childbirth, existing scar tissue on excised women may tear. Infibulated women, whose genitals have been tightly closed, have to be cut to allow the baby to emerge. If no attendant is present to do this, perineal tears or obstructed labour can occur. After giving birth, women are often reinfibulated to make them “tight” for their husbands. The constant cutting and restitching of a women’s genitals with each birth can result in tough scar tissue in the genital area.” from Amnesty International

We have Labiaplasty in the US becoming more popular, do you think thier will be similar issues?? I do.
Great POST!!

by: The Student

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 22:58:25 +0000

I’m not a big proponent of circumcision either. Personally, I like little boys to be left exactly how they’re born, but again, I undrstand that there are a lot of cultural and personal reasons involved in choosing circumcision, and I don’t feel lik it’s my place to say. As a midwife, I’ll be learning how to perform the procedure, and will offer this service to my clients if they request it…but I really don’t think this is going to be my favorite part of the job, by a long shot. :-/ I definitely agree that the procedure is a lot less benign than people would like to think; even when you use Emla (an anesthetic cream applied to the penis about an hour before the circumcision) or inject lidocaine locally, the babies still end up bleating that terrible cry of absolute pain and distress. I’ve encountered so many families which choose circumcision just so that the son’s penis will look like the father’s, and my advice to them is that the father should actually *watch* a circumcision before deciding to do the same for his son. I don’t think many men have any idea how painful or violent or distressing it is to the baby, but I think seeing it might change their mind. Of course, circumcision for religious reasons is a different matter altogether…

Intersting website–lots of good reasources. Thank you for sharing! I knew that circumcision was used as a widespread act of war or domination in Biblical times, but I thought that practice was pretty much over these days. Ha, how foolish of me.
:-(

by: miriamjoyce

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:52:25 +0000

Oh, and it also endangers breastfeeding.
http://www.cirp.org/library/birth/.

OK. Enough out of me on this tangential and less-urgent topic.

by: miriamjoyce

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:44:19 +0000

Wow. That’s a really really hard one. I wonder if your original thoughts about making the patient retreat by starting off with the word mutilation might still be accurate, but once you bring up the subject, and keep asking questions about it that could lead from neutral to something more proactive. I dunno. Lots of disclaimers here about how I haven’t done anything like this in a clinical setting (well, nothing like this at all). It does strike me that having some sort of resource, like a support group, to offer could be a way of bringing up the idea that this is often considered a bad thing worthy of the name mutilation. I’d be interested to hear what you come up with, though I don’t really want to think that you’d see this enough to get used to it. I guess you may very well though.

Also, on a tangent, I will note that while there is certainly *no comparison* on the level of physical damage done, it’s not like male circumcision is a harmless little procedure. It too is done to infants who cannot consent, tends to be done without anesthetic, with infants often in too much shock from pain to cry (leading to the mistaken idea that it doesn’t hurt them). It does substantial harm to men’s sexual pleasure, and can have all sorts of medical complications. It has also been used as a tool of war, like rape, with mass forced male circumcisions having been done in India by British troops to mark men as slaves, and by people trying to forcibly spread their religious practices. (Lots of info at www.cirp.org.) There are even groups of Jews these days who are designing non-surgical bris ceremonies.