Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Hugo Schwyzer, in a follow up on his own decision to be circumcised at age 37 has gleefully seized on a pending NIH recommendation for universal male circumcision.

In October, I posted about my own circumcision. I also wrote about the ongoing research into the link between circumcision and the reduced risk of HIV infection; at that time, studies were still in progress.

The New York Times reports today that the National Institutes of Health is convinced: circumcision works, and they are now formally recommending the procedure. This is powerful and important news.

Let’s get to snippin’.

I’ve snipped his whole thing but you can see all the other generally interesting things he has to say here.

While I hold no position on the objective good or ill of non-religiously dictated circumcision (and trust me, I’ll ruthlessly censor censure moderate idle rehashes of the debate in comments) I do have some formal instruction in the ethics of medicine, science, individual autonomy, and informed consent. Consequently while I think it’s fine if people want to circumcise themselves I have ethical concerns about infant circumcision.

I naturally assume Hugo’s “let’s get snippin’” remark was intended to encourage his readers to snip themselves and not their children, but just in case I’d like to offer some clarifying remarks.

When my son was born we got to decide whether or not to circumcise him before we took him home. Our decision? If he wanted one he could get one he could get a paper route or mow lawns to pay for it himself when he was old enough to make that decision.

At the time circumcision was in serious decline, not least because insurers were no longer automatically paying for it. (Our doctor, like most doctors in our area, advised against it but said she’d follow our wishes.)

Since it looked like the procedure was on its way out I joked that by the time his generation came of age they’re probably be doing circumcisions in tattoo and piercing parlors and that kids would be doing it just to shock their parents.

Which, in a strong way, is similar to the main reason Hugo disclosed for circumcising himself: he wanted to make himself new and different for your wife, the same way many couples today mark their unions with similar, permanent physical alterations like… tattoos and piercings.

But, speaking very seriously had his parents made the choice for him he’d have been denied the obviously very real (psychic and spiritual… and, perhaps partly alt-macho?) fulfillment of doing so as a conscious decision when he were old enough to make that choice!

So why deprive others of their own chances to decide?

Other considerations: It’ll be ten to twenty years before boys born today will become sexually active. In his post Hugo’s reason for universal circumcision on infants is based on an assumption that it reduces the risk of HIV transmission. Can we say with authority that HIV will remain uncontrolled that far in the future? No. Furthermore can we say with authority that further research will only confirm and not refute the correlation? No. Can we say with authority that by then women born today and years hence still won’t have yet have the right to choose their partners or insist that they use condoms or be circumcised before having intercourse? No. And can we say with authority that the low-hygiene populations that would most benefit from circumcision today will have the anesthesia, the laser scalpels, and the antiseptic conditions Hugo benefitted from when they receive their circumcisions? Again, no.

For those, and for other fundamentally ethical reasons, it seems that to deprive an infant the right to decide on his own is therefore unconscionable.

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In comments on Hugo’s post Lynn Gazis-Sax mentioned that people most often become sexually active before adulthood. Most cultures, and most ethical physicians, hold that children are able to participate in decisions about their spiritual, economic, and medical treatment well before then. Therefore I don’t think it’s too much to ask to wait till you can actually ask.