Day 5: Circle-Cut

To circumcise or not to circumcise? Before Douwe was born, Jeff and I took a childbirth class that encouraged us to learn about all of the medical procedures that are a common part of labor and childbirth. The idea was that if we were informed ahead of time about the benefits and risks of various inventions like Pitocin, intravenous ports, pulse monitors, Vitamin K drops, immunizations, circumcision, episiotomies, Caesarean sections, epidurals, enemas, delivery beds and many other 21st century options, we would have a better time communicating our preferences and choices as they were presented in various stages of the delivery event.

One of the more strongly anti-circumcision articles we found likened the procedure to the practice of genital mutilation that is performed on baby girls in far away countries, and argued that one of several questionable motivations for circumcision is that it reduced the pleasure of masturbation. The pro-circumcision articles asked parents how would their sons feel after locker-room experiences of being an oddball, or would his future wife be disgusted, or would strange smells and diseases be a constant malady caused by all that extra skin. Obviously people can take extremely different perspectives on the matter. We agreed that if our child were a son, Jeff would have the final say on this decision b/c he, as a man, should have a richer understanding of the functions, aesthetics, and hygienic care of the circumcised and uncircumcised penis.

But back to the blood. I have not seen this procedure performed, but I imagine there would be a lot of blood flowing. I once saw a coffee table book that satired Martha Stewart themed parties: one event was a male son's birth and circumcision, and the mock menu item pictured was a tureen full of cocktail wiener slices floating in a red sauce.

The procedure became a Hebrew custom when Abraham’s God commanded it as a sign of the covenant relationship he had established with Abraham and household and descendants. Jacob’s sons used the procedure as part of a sneaky and brutal plot to get revenge on the clan of the man who raped their sister. The word circumcision seems so abstract, especially to a female who heard the word as part of religious instruction from a very young age and never really thought much about what kind of circle-cut it really was.

I still remember some National Geographic photos that startled and intrigued me as a child, photos of humans from various cultures that had unique customs for beauty or belonging in their community. Rings around the neck which stretched it very long. Shells built into the lower lip. Some sort of earlobe weights to make long stretchy, stringy lobes. Scar-designs on the chest or face. Bones through the nose. There was always a beauty to the photos, but I would shiver thinking about how fierce those people must be to accept the pain and discomfort involved in acquiring that mark of distinction. Maybe for them, like for the descendants of Abraham, it came down to the matter of participating in the ritual or being “cut off” from the group. I don’t know why circumcision was the mark that was chosen for setting the Hebrews apart as God’s covenant people. I wonder if the bloodiness of the ritual had something to do with it.