Response to Liza Wyles

by David Balashinsky

What is it with Romper and male genital mutilation?  Once again the parenting site has published a non-apology-apologia for it (the title is literally 9 Reasons Why I Won't Apologize For Choosing To Circumcise My Son).  And what is it with its author, Liza Wyles, and lists?   Of the many articles she has produced for Romper, I counted sixty, published just in the past six months or so, that consist of some sort of enumeration as reflected in titles on the pattern of 8 Reasons This, 9 Reasons That, and 10 Reasons The Other.   This style of composition seems to be prevalent among online magazines nowadays; possibly because one of its cardinal virtues is that it is conducive to brevity.  More likely, because the audience for these media platforms has had its attention span unnaturally stunted by early and excessive exposure to electronic interfaces and commercial media.  Yet another reason might be that the target audience may be presumed to be youngish parents with neonates, infants, toddlers and tweens abounding.  This is not an audience with much leisure time so a series of bullet points is probably the format that market research has shown is best suited to catching and holding such readers' attention.

Whatever the reasons, I will follow Wyles's pattern here, addressing each item in her list in turn.   First, however, I must preface my comments - which I offer as a refutation of Wyles's arguments - by observing that, like Wyles, I am Jewish.  This matters in the historical and cultural context in which the debate over the ethics and appropriateness of male genital mutilation is taking place.  As a Jewish man, I feel not only a particular right but a a special obligation to speak out forcefully against involuntary genital cutting, not only of Jewish males but of all males, females, and intersex children.  All of us, no matter our ethnicity, our sex, or our parents' religion, have an innate and an inalienable right not to have parts of our bodies amputated for non-essential, non-medical reasons.  

The fact that I am Jewish matters also in the present case because, of the nine reasons Wyles gives for having subjected her son to circumcision - or rather, for refusing to apologize for having subjected her son's penis to circumcision - about half of these have no more rational a basis than the momentum of tradition.  In other words, much as Ej Dickson did in the virtual pages of Romper last spring  (and please see my response to Ms. Dickson  here),  Wyles couches her defense of her decision to subject her infant son to genital mutilation in terms of its cultural (and, to a lesser extent in her case, religious) meaning.  This becomes problematical for those who oppose genital mutilation because recourse to arguments of "religious liberty" or "cultural significance" by those who defend it immediately places the question not only beyond the bounds of rational discourse but, more to the point, out of bounds for those outside the cultural or religious group.  In the case of male genital mutilation, which has been a part of Judaism and Jewish tradition for millennia, non-Jews who oppose the practice risk opening themselves to the charge of anti-Semitism: usually wrongly but sometimes rightly, for, of course, there are anti-Semites who oppose genital mutilation, just as there are anti-Semites who have written great music.   (The fact that some anti-Semites oppose male genital mutilation certainly doesn't make genital mutilation right.)  It is all the more important, therefore, that those of us  within the group who oppose male genital mutilation - and our numbers are growing daily - speak out against this anachronistic human rights violation.  Thus, I write as someone who has something in common with Wyles - something that is of more than just passing significance to our identities and experience. 

I also have something in common with Wyles's son.  Like him, I was subjected to genital cutting without my consent and for no more compelling a reason than the force of tradition.  Like Wyles's son, I did not have a bris (nor did I have a bar mitzvah; my parents were both confirmed atheists).  But, like Wyles's son,  I was born into a time and place - into a culture - in which cutting off part of a boy's penis seemed (and still - but, mercifully, less so - seems) perfectly natural.    

That is where the similarities between Wyles, on the one hand, and her son and me, on the other, end.  For, you see Wyles, undoubtedly, was allowed to grow up with her genitalia intact.  She will never have to wonder what erogenous sensations were forever lost to her before she could even experience them.  She does not have to look at her genitalia and be confronted every day with a scar instead of the healthy tissue that should be there but isn't because it was amputated.  In the quotidian moments of nakedness that we all experience - dressing, bathing, peeing - Wyles is never presented with the bizarre and ghastly sight of an internal organ converted through surgical means into an external one. 

Wyles fully anticipates opprobrium for her decision.  In her essay, she writes, "I can't avoid life's haters.  So I fully expect to get flak for choosing to circumcise my son and not apologizing about it."  Well, Wyles certainly doesn't owe me an apology.  The person to whom she really owes an apology is her son.  And, of course, perhaps his future sex partners, particularly if they are female.  And while I don't consider myself a hater, I do hate injustice and human rights violations.   And genital mutilation certainly ranks high on the list of human rights violations.  Turning to Wyles's list, then, let's take it point by point.  I will also, so to speak, turn to Wyles herself, and address the remainder of my comments to her.  Thus, Ms. Wyles, to your nine reasons why you won't apologize for having chosen to circumcise your son:

Because it had cultural relevance:  You write that "it just felt 'right' to have my son circumcised, as he is the son of a Jewish mother."  Female genital mutilation, too, feels "right" and has just as much "cultural relevance" for those who subject their daughters to it.  That doesn't make it ethical.  Moreover, without having been subjected to genital mutilation, your son would be still be the son of a Jewish mother and would be not one iota less Jewish himself.

Because it's what our families have done for generations:  My own family has a multi-generational history of pedophilia and incestuous childhood sexual abuse.  That's not a valid reason for continuing the tradition.   Similarly, slavery, the legal subordination of women,  discrimination against LGBTQ persons, domestic violence, severe corporal punishment of children, stoning, gladiatorial contests, public animal-fighting- and -torture spectacles and ritual human- and animal sacrifice at one time or another also have been practiced for generations (and some of these still are).  That doesn't make these practices ethical, nor does the fact that they persisted for generations constitute a sufficient justification for them to continue.  Forced genital mutilation belongs to this list of wrongs long practiced but that no longer have any place in a modern, civilized society. 

Under this listed rationale, you also state the following: "with circumcision, it felt like a testament to what our families have been doing, to no ill effect [emphasis added], for years and years."  Have you given your male forebears - both immediate and remote (since you speak of "generations") and all the male relatives in your cohort detailed questionnaires  concerning their sex lives, including their penile function and their overall sexual satisfaction?  If not, there is absolutely no way that you can make that statement with certainty, let alone as though it were an incontrovertible fact.  You, yourself, simply may be unaware of the ill effects, but that doesn't mean that there weren't and aren't any.   Infant male circumcision has been definitively associated with  adverse effects upon male sexual function,  sensation, and overall satisfaction.  You might also want to check with all the women in your family since studies have also established an association between male circumcision and several sexual dysfunctions or problems in women, including dyspareunia (painful intercourse), difficulty reaching orgasm and overall sexual dissatisfaction.  You should not blithely assume, simply because your relatives have not disclosed to you the most intimate aspects of their sex lives, that all is well, and always has been well, in their bedrooms.  In the absence of their having shared this personal and likely deeply embarrassing information with you - whatever the quality of their sex lives: whether great or not so great - only by assuming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence can you conclude that circumcision has had "no ill effect" on the sexual and emotional lives of the women and men in your family.  More likely, it's just not something they are apt to share with you at family get-togethers.

Because my husband was in favor of it:  What if your husband wanted to torture and beat your son because he thought he was gay?   Suppose your husband wanted to cut off some other part of your child's body, or perhaps pierce his nose or tongue, or have him tattooed?   What if it were not your son's genitals that we are speaking about but your daughter's?  And what if your husband wanted your daughter to undergo labiaplasty for cosmetic reasons?  (This last example strikes most of us as repellent and yet, the alleged aesthetic superiority of a surgically reduced penis is frequently cited by parents as a valid reason for subjecting their sons to radical prepucectomy.  Indeed, her anxiety that, without having undergone this surgery, her son might have "his penis compared to a Sharpei [sic] by a cruel future sexual partner" was actually one of the reasons that Ej Dickson gave for subjecting her son, Sol, to genital cutting [see links above].  To add insult to injury and to heap perversity upon perversity, Ms. Dickson is now a deputy editor at Men's Health Magazine.   What could be more Trumpian than to hire an advocate of male genital mutilation - which harms men's health, to say nothing of their sex lives - as a writer and editor for a media platform and magazine that, as its publisher claims ,  "inspire[s] health, healing, happiness, and love in the world" and professes to be "the premiere destination for wellness content with a purpose"?)   Would these other mutilations and non-therapeutic bodily alterations, too, be okay simply because your husband is in favor of them?  Let me anticipate your response here: these would fall within the category of things you "knew we had to be in agreement on," and you would never (it is to be hoped) agree to such things.  But what about two other parents who do agree that selective amputations of other body parts,  or tattoos or piercings of their child's body are properly their decision and theirs alone, irrespective of what the child herself may want.  What then?  

At the same time, the fact that your husband was in favor of subjecting your son to genital mutilation is no more convincing an argument in support of the practice than is the parallel argument that majorities of women in FGM-practicing nations continue to support that practice.  These are women, after all - and not coincidentally - who, like your husband, were themselves subjected to genital cutting, yet they support the practice and often in greater numbers than do their male compatriots.   This phenomenon is mirrored here in the continued support of male genital cutting by male victims themselves.  That's not a valid justification for mutilating someone else's genitals without her or his consent.  

Because our doctors supported it: A majority of the world's doctors actually oppose it.

Because there were no negative long-term effects [that] I was aware of at the time:  It's been known for over 150 years that removing the male prepuce adversely affects penile sensation. That's why it was advocated as a prophylaxis against masturbation during the 19th century when it was popularized in Great Britain and the United States.   Contemporary research has borne this out.  It has also been known for generations that there are many other deleterious sequela related to male genital cutting including but not limited to an increased incidence of meatal stenosis, an increased risk of sepsis, hemorrhage, and  death.  If you didn't know this when you subjected your son to genital cutting, it's either because you didn't adequately research it or because you were unable to put aside your bias when you did, and this led you to an erroneous conclusion.  (You certainly would not be the first person to fall into that trap.) At the same time, your lack of awareness of the negative long-term effects of infant male circumcision is entirely understandable, given that much of the discourse on this topic is heavily weighted by the mainstream media's reliance on and unquestioning deference to  the leading pro-circumcision professional medical trade organization in the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as the Centers for Disease Control, both of which essentially ignore the negative long-term effects of infant circumcision.  Yet these organizations' positions on non-therapeutic infant circumcision have been roundly condemned by bioethicists, attorneys, psychologists, human-rights activists and, of course, physicians.

Because it was what's familiar to me:  One could say the same of domestic violence.  Children who grow up in homes in which domestic violence regularly occurs are familiar with domestic violence.  They also often grow up only to repeat the pattern.  Familiarity with something harmful doesn't make it less so.  Often, we cling to the familiar even when we know it's not good for us because we derive a false sense of security from the very familiarity of it.  That is one of the reasons victims often remain in abusive relationships.  As with the argument "because it's what our families have done for generations," the mere fact that something has persisted or simply that one is familiar with it is not, in and of itself, a valid reason to go on doing it. 

Because it was what I thought was best when he was born:  Implicit in this statement is its antithesis: that, while you may once have thought cutting off part of your son's genitals was the best possible thing you could do for him (it sounds absurd when phrased that way, doesn't it?) you now no longer are quite so sure.  If that is true - and I dearly hope it is - you should consider that there is no shame in learning and growing.  It is something of a mantra in intactivist circles that when we know better, we do better.  I don't question your sincerity and I don't doubt that you did what you thought best at the time.  But that doesn't mean that it was best, and it doesn't mean that you should now dig in your heels just to save face.  It is far less blameworthy to be wrong and to learn from one's mistakes than it is to be intransigent.

Because I only need to do right by my family:  No - you needed to do right by your son. Male genital mutilation isn't a "family" decision just as it isn't something that the entire family undergoes.  You write in your essay - or list -  that "there are some decisions that are personal and affect only us."  But it didn't affect you  - singular or plural - it affected your son.  It was only he who had a crucial part of his penis cut off  -  not you, and not your daughter.  So please stop speaking about your son's unnecessary and irreversible genital surgery as though it were a harmless family affair in which all were equally involved, all had equal input, and all were equally affected.
 
And while I would never condone any violence or mistreatment of children, circumcision is a safe practice that didn't jeopardize our son's health:  Wrong on every count.  Cutting off part of your child's body in the absence of an emergent medical necessity is, by definition, an act of violence against and a mistreatment of your child.  Male genital mutilation is a harm in and of itself, even without the untoward complications.  It is no more "safe" for the victim than amputating any other body part would be "safe."  In fact, every one of the claims that you make on behalf of male genital mutilation, in this statement and throughout your essay -  it's "familiar," it has "cultural relevance," your "husband supported it," even that it's "safe" - can be be made of female genital mutilation now that  it, too, is being "medicalized" and increasingly performed in aseptic conditions by trained medical professionals.  As for "never" condoning violence or mistreatment - in effect you just did.  Or, if not condoning male genital mutilation, at the very least you just devoted a dozen or so paragraphs to justifying it.  But in this context, the distinction between condoning and justifying is a distinction without a difference.

Which brings me to some final thoughts.  You seem to want to have it both ways.  You write that you "only need to do right by my family and not those who judge me."  And you dismiss as "haters" those who may criticize you for having deprived your son of the right to grow up whole and to experience the full range of sensations and intimacy that are possible only with a whole and fully functional penis.  Thus, you seem to be going out of your way here to prove that you are perfectly unconcerned with the opinions of those who may disagree with your choice and with the rationalizations that you have given for it.  Yet, at the same time that you are professing scorn for such judgement, you appear to be inviting it.   If you truly are unconcerned with the opinions of others, why publish this list?  And why go to such lengths to justify the decision that you made?

The overriding impression one gets is that the groundswell of moral and ethical opposition to male genital mutilation has managed to resonate somewhere deep within the recesses of your conscience and that is why you feel compelled now to offer this strained and desperate-seeming defense of a dying, barbaric and inhumane practice.  Your refusal to acknowledge any error in having subjected your baby to this harmful, tragically irreversible and totally unnecessary genital surgery strikes me less as evidence of your confidence in the rightness of the decision that you made seven years ago than as defensiveness and overcompensation. 

Implicit throughout your essay is the acknowledgment that what you did to your son was harmful and unethical.    You, yourself, state that "Thinking about the act, it really is terribly cruel." "The choice should have been his. . . ."  And you anticipate the possibility that "He may grow up and hate us for this decision.  He will be justified in being angry that we made a decision about his body for him."  But, of course, it's not simply that you made "a decision about his body" but that you made one that was both harmful and totally unnecessary.   If the anger comes, that will be its genesis: your son's realization not only that something important was irrevocably stolen from him (and how much, he will only be able to guess) but that it was all for nothing.  That you deprived him of an important body part that may have tremendous value to him but for reasons that have meaning only for you.  If he had had cancer and the choice were between saving a limb and saving his life, I'm confident that your son wouldn't be angry at you in the least for having made a reasonable decision about his body on his behalf.  But a prepuce is not a birth defect and having one is not a pathological condition in need of surgical intervention.  And its removal was absolutely not necessary for him to live his life as a Jewish man in accordance with the values and beliefs that you instill in him and in harmony with all the other, non-harmful traditions that are meaningful to our people in which he may share and find fulfillment.  

You make much of your assertion that this decision was a "personal" one.  Indeed, this is one of the claims most often made by parents who claim a right to surgically alter  their children's genitals.  Thus, you write, "While we realize our decisions reach beyond the walls of our apartment, when it comes to our behavior and how we vote, and how diligently we recycle (very), there are some decisions that are personal and affect only us.  I am not beholden to the public when it comes to how I manage certain aspects of my children’s wellbeing."   Yet this assertion, too, is belied by your publishing this defense of infant male genital mutilation.   It is at best naive of you to think - and, at worst, disingenuous of you to pretend - that, in publishing your list of pro-MGM rationalizations, you are not giving aid and comfort to those who insist on perpetuating this inhumane and unethical practice.  One has only to read through the comments that appear under your post on Romper's Facebook page.  As so often occurs when someone publishes a commentary in a parenting site to the effect that it's my child and I can do what I want - it doesn't concern you or anyone else, the effect is to harden the opinions of pro-genital cutters and to embolden them.  Thus, while your decision may have affected only your son, your  publicly justifying your decision most emphatically is an act that reaches "beyond the walls of [your] apartment."  For you are not only validating, retrospectively, the decision already made by you and by other parents who, like you, subjected their children to genital cutting but you are giving your imprimatur, prospectively, to parents who have yet to make that decision.  Do you imagine that a parent like yourself, but one questioning the ethics of this genital surgery and whose decision hangs in the balance, is not susceptible to pro-genital-cutting rationalizations?  Such arguments may very well resonate with some parents.  Unfortunately, it is not they but their sons (and their sons' future sex partners) who will ultimately pay the price for your public rationalizations.  Who knows how many additional infant boys will be (and the men that they become will have been) subjected to genital cutting at least in part because of your words?  Not only your son but, potentially, many other sons, boys, men and women will have cause to be angry at you and to hate you - not for what you did to your son but for what you have implicitly encouraged others to do to theirs.

One of the things that most struck me about your post were these comments: "I can't have regrets.  If in the end it turns out to have been a mistake . . . I will need to deal with it."  Of course you can have regrets.  Anyone who has no regrets is someone who has never made a mistake,  or someone who has never learned from her mistakes, or, worse, someone who refuses to learn from her mistakes.   The brash tenor of your essay - the whole in-your-face, spoiling-for-a-fight,  I refuse to apologize attitude of it - makes me concerned that you are in that last category.  I hope not.  And the good news is that there is no need to be.  Most people on my side of the divide were once on yours.  I, myself, used to think circumcision was harmless and seldom questioned it.  But male genital mutilation, with all the bogus and hyped-up claims and pointless appeals to Tradition! is such a house of cards that all it really takes for it to come crumbling down within the mind of each of us is to question it.

Speaking as one Jew to another, and especially as one who has cast off the cultural blinkers that enabled me to accept what was done to me and what is done still to over one million unoffending infants annually in the United States, while I acknowledge the importance to you of the reasons why you believe you were justified in having your son's penis cut, I feel an even greater obligation - as someone who values human rights, personal autonomy and bodily integrity and, yes, as a Jew - to urge you away from such unenlightened thinking and toward a more progressive notion of Jewishness and a more universal conception of human rights.  Toward that end, I would like to point you toward three invaluable sources.

First, the educational video Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital, which is a recording of a lecture delivered by Ryan McAllister, Ph.D. that also includes a brief video of an actual circumcision.   In your essay, you recounted how the hospital where your son's genital surgery took place had a policy barring you from observing that which you refer to as a "procedure."  Once you have seen an actual male circumcision, you will readily understand why your hospital didn't want you to see it.  You will also understand how gross a mischaracterization of male circumcision it is to refer to it, as you did, as a mere "snip" and to the densely innervated and highly complex anatomical structure that is the prepuce as mere "skin."  Even though it is seven years too late for your son, I believe that, as Michelle Storms, M.D. (quoted in McAllister's video) has stated, "Any person who wants to subject a child to this  should be required to witness one first."  (There is, of course, much more to McAllister's lecture than this, and I would hope that you would listen to it in its entirely and with an open mind.)


Second: this account by Rosemary Romberg of her own personal journey from being a mother who had her sons' penises circumcised to an active campaigner against the practice.  Ms. Romberg is perhaps the preeminent exemplar of what is known in intactivist circles as a regret mom or a regret parent: someone who had her or his son's penis circumcised but came to regret it.  Sadly - but also, encouragingly - Ms. Romberg is not alone.  I refer you to the writings of Ms. Romberg (and to those of other regret moms) particularly because of your comment, "I can't have regrets."  These courageous women and men demonstrate not only that it is possible to regret having subjected a child to the needless pain and harm of circumcision but that - far from destroying these parents - this very regret was an integral part of their growth as parents and as ethical human beings.

Finally: I refer you to Beyond the Bris.  This is a website created by Rebecca Wald by and for "Jewish people who are united in the belief that circumcising healthy children is harmful and unnecessary. . . ."  In the pages of this site you will become acquainted with "the voices and faces of the pro-intact Jewish movement":  Jewish women and men who are "moving in what we feel is a more thoughtful, more ethical, and more Jewish direction. . . ."  Especially because of your comments to the effect that you had your son's penis cut because of your identification as Jewish and because of the history of this practice in your family (as well as in that of your non-Jewish husband's family) I think it important for you to hear what other Jews have to say about this custom.  The burgeoning movement of renunciation of this anachronistic practice by us Jews ourselves is animated not only by our deeply held conviction that it is unethical but that it is positively incompatible in the modern world with Jewish ethics and values.  In short, Jewish opponents of male genital mutilation do not feel ourselves to be less Jewish because of our opposition to this practice but more Jewish by virtue of our opposition to it.  We encourage you to join us.