Why Infantile Circumcision is Dirty and Wrong

If there's one thing I hate, it's the damn near customary American practice of circumcising newborns. If we can skip the formalities and go straight ahead and watch a newborn being cicrumcized I think you'll get all the convincing you need without having to read a word that I'm about to say.

Right off the bat, here are two disclaimers:
1) I was circumcised as an infant, so what follows are not the ramblings of an upset uncircumcised fellow who wishes he fit in with the majority of American males. And no, I'm not writing this because I'm bitter at my parents for deciding to have me cut; I have no ill will about the fact that I've been circumcised. The reason that I am so adamant about the subject can be equated thusly: My stock broker convinced me to buy some shares in CIRC INC., but it turned out that they're a hopeless corporation and I lost all my money. So even though there's nothing that I can do to get my money back, I'll do my best to warn all other investors not to buy CIRC shares and maybe, once everyone finally understands that this corporation serves no purpose, they'll go out of business.
2) Let's ignore ritual religious circumcision. I've got no specific beef with the Jewish faith (although I don't always see eye-to-eye with any organized religion, but that's another blog post for another time), and for the sake of simplicity I'm going to exclude Bris circumcisions from my rant.

The only reason we still circumcise our babies is because of rampant misinformation and shallow (not to mention illogical) cosmetic motives. The advocates of infantile circumcision base their stance on the claim that a circumcised penis is cleaner and less prone to infection and/or that it "looks nicer."

To address the former, we'll analyze the major health detriments that the pro-circumcision camp claims will befall the uncircumcised masses. It is true that there are a variety of foreskin problems that can plague a child in his first year of life (non-retracted foreskin, acute balanoposthitis, to name a few) that can in fact be cured via circumcision. However, many children under the age of 10 will encounter a problem with their tonsils ("kissing" tonsils, tonsiloliths, tonsillitis) but do doctors remove every newborn's tonsils at birth just in-case one of the problems eventually arises? Of course not. Unnecessary surgery is not performed to remove any other body parts that may one day be troublesome. And for good reason: when a problem does arise, the organ can simply be severed at that time and the less surgery one undergoes the better as all surgery comes with the risk of complications and infection.

Another claim is that the uncircumcised male is more likely to transmit and receive HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections. This is true. The movable nature of foreskin makes it prone to microscopic tears that make blood-to-blood or blood-to-discharge contact more likely. So if you plan on raising your child to believe that having unprotected sex with a partner who can't be trusted to disclose their sexual history and infection status, then by all means have him circumcised. Furthermore, a man with a larger penis has more surface area of skin that could possibly have unnoticeable tears that increase the probability of HIV transmission. So why not chop a few inches off of your newborn's penis to reduce his risk even more? The fact of the matter is, good parenting and sexual education enough to instill the fact that he should always wear a condom when partaking in casual sex (or sex with a known-infected partner) is all it takes to reduce your son's risk of HIV infection even more than it would be reduced by slicing off his foreskin.

And what of the cosmetic factor? In my experience, this is a circumcision excuse largely supported by women. I have interviewed too many of my peers on the subject, and it is almost always a woman who says that she would certainly have her son circumcised because "it looks nicer" or "uncut is gross" or she "wouldn't want him to be a freak." This continued perpetuation in American culture that uncircumcised males are somehow disgusting or unnatural not only does the uncircumcised population a disservice (and a blow to their self-esteem) but it is completely unfounded. How is it in any way unnatural for a man to not have a portion of the skin on his penis cut off? Isn't it quite the opposite? Furthermore, it is my firm belief that a large percent of the women claiming a cosmetic preference couldn't tell the difference between a circumcised and an uncircumcised penis because they have either never seen an uncircumcised one or were unaware that it was (here's a diagram, to clear up any discrepancies [NSFW]). This kind of discrimination is both unfounded and frustratingly ignorant.

In closing, I'd like to suggest a few simple alternatives to having your child circumcised:
-Wash under his foreskin (as soon as it becomes retractable) just like you wash any other part of his body, and then instill the value of always keeping it clean (again, just like the rest of his body) once he is old enough to wash himself. In America, our access to resources for maintaining good hygiene have done nothing but increase over the last century, and yet statistics show that circumcision rates have increased exponentially. If a dirty (leading to an infected) foreskin was a problem to be solved with circumcision at the turn of the century when fewer Americans had access to toiletries, then shouldn't more babies have been circumcised then? Widespread misinformation has resulted in the opposite. More and more babies are circumcised every year, despite the fact that fewer and fewer will be prone to problems because soap and water is affordable to every American today.
-Teach your child about safe sex. That will do more good to preventing him from getting HIV than having him circumcised with that excuse will.
-Educated yourself and your son about circumcision and the reasons it is performed, so he is prepared to enter a world where many women have an unfounded prejudice against the uncircumcised among us


Addendum

For the Jewish among us, I think it would really just be better to let your sons choose to get circumcised at adulthood. Isn't it more spiritually meaningful for a grown man to accept his faith by voluntarily removing his foreskin than it is to force it on an 8-day-old infant? I know that G~d specifically said that it had to happen 8 days after they're born, but Abraham was 100 when he circumcised himself. Besides, if we're going to stick word-for-word to the text, Genesis also says that you must circumcise all your sons, "including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner." We don't think it's morally just to purchase foreign children anymore, so maybe it's time that we realize that infantile circumcision isn't morally just either.

One big thing I didn't mention is the fact that sex is more pleasurable for an uncircumcised male. There are more nerve endings because there is more skin to contain them. It's cruel and unusual to lessen a man's enjoyment of sex because his mother wants his penis to look "prettier," no?

Circumcision advocates can claim that it is best to perform the procedure when the boy is still an infant because he can't feel it or he won't remember it. If my friends got me drunk and then cut off my left ear (because they thought I would look better without it or because ears get dirty without regular cleaning so I would be better off without it) I definitely felt the pain, but I won't remember it the next day when I come to. But in the end it was still a useless, potentially risky surgery and I'll never get that ear back.

One last thought: something can always go wrong during the procedure. David Reimer, who would go on to become a landmark test subject in the learned gender identification field, had most of his penis accidentally severed when doctors tried to circumcise him at 8 months old. The fact of the matter is that a baby's penis and foreskin is so much smaller than an adult's that the surgery requires much more precision and is therefore safer when performed on an adult male.

References
http://www.jesuswalk.com/abraham/6_circumcision.htm
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/circumcision.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2813gender.html