The Unkindest Cut
Eve Marx
Word Count 1255
When I told my husband I was going to write something about circumcision, in some minds the cruelest of all wounds, he promptly said, "No man will ever read this. The topic upsets them so much." Circumcision is often described as the unkindest cut of all, and foreskin activism (pro and con) is on the rise. While the topic of female circumcision continues to blow my mind, at the same time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask why, in this day and age, so many American males are, by default, cut. Reddit has devoted entire forums to the subject, including one titled, “Why is God in the Bible so obsessed with foreskin?”
My own awakening to this very special wounding happened when I was invited to attend the bris of a newborn cousin. I was twelve at the time and fully aware boys and men had penises, but I’d never seen one up close. I didn’t know what a bris was until my mother explained it was a party to celebrate a baby’s penis, which struck me as ludicrous but mildly interesting. I had no idea a scalpel was involved. The bris was held at the infant’s home, and I was assisting my mother’s sister, the baby’s aunt, in the kitchen, prepping platters loaded with sliced bagels, two kinds of cream cheese, nova, capers, and sliced tomatoes when one of the baby’s aunts from its mother’s side stuck her head in the doorway and said, “Come now, it’s time.” We followed her into the living room where the mohel, who was also a rabbi, stood draped in his religious finery in front of the baby’s bassinet. He said some words in Hebrew that I did not understand and a sharp blade was produced and someone held the baby and opened its diaper; in a flash, he cut its flesh. The baby howled like nothing I’d ever heard. I ran back to the kitchen, sure I would throw up. Why, why, why did they do that, I cried to my aunt. Because he’s a Jewish boy and that’s what we do, she said. To this day I still don’t understand how anyone could stomach bagels and lox afterward.
In college, I was friendly with a couple, Ellen and Billy. They were utterly cool and savvy, sophisticated sophomores when I was a freshman. I was romantically tangled with Billy’s best friend, and I admired, even envied, their tight connection which included their politics. They dressed like authentic hippies; Ellen was often barefoot. Billy had long, curly hair and a beard. He was a history major. She majored in sociology. They got engaged in college, and Billy went on to law school and was invited to join Ellen’s father’s prestigious law firm. But before they could get married there was a hitch: Billy would have to convert to being Jewish. He was born in the U.S., but his mother was a Christian German war bride and despite having been in the U.S. a long time, she was a reluctant English speaker and was European in her habits and chose not to circumcise her sons. To wed Ellen, Billy would have to pay a big price, namely the loss of his foreskin. To his credit, he manned up and underwent the procedure which is a very different experience for a guy in his twenties than a newborn. When I tried discussing this with my boyfriend, he said Billy was out of his mind, and he’d never do it, even if it meant losing the girl you thought you’d marry. I remember responding, “Lucky that your German-born parents saw fit to go All-American and did yours at birth.”
When I was hired to edit Penthouse Letters, I was astounded by how many readers were consumed with what was widely considered by them to be the unkindest cut of all. Almost every letter, and every week, there were dozens, opined on the unnecessity and cruelty of the practice. The letter writers were furious about their diminished sensation and how female demands on them to wear a condom meant they had two strikes against them in the pleasure department. Many writers contributed advice about their strategies for re-creating foreskin, all involving painful stretching techniques and a process currently known as foreskin restoration. Because circumcision was as popular a topic as pantyhose vs garters and sex with an ex, my boss urged me to publish a few circumcision/foreskin letters in every issue.
My one experience with an uncut cock was a guy I dated my first summer in Greenwich Village, a guy I’ll call Ron. Ron was what they used to call in Florida a cracker, but the guy could cook like an angel and was a chef on a private yacht. He was apartment-sitting for the yacht owner’s daughter, who had a really nice place on Jones Street where I had a summer sublet. His job included caring for the daughter’s two Dobermans; we met through the dogs because I can’t resist a Doberman. Ron and I hooked up a couple of times, but it wasn’t very nice because I refused to give him oral sex when I saw his uncut stuff. I’m not going to lie when I say it was the most awful thing I’d ever seen and I guess he was insulted when I said no way was I putting that in my mouth. His cooking, which was fabulous, was another story. I still think with a lot of fondness about his stuffed zucchini recipe.
When I gave birth to a baby boy thirty-six years ago at Yale New Haven Hospital, there was no question in anyone’s mind that the child wouldn’t be cut. I asked my obstetrician, who was the one doing it, if he would apply a dab of numbing gel first, and my doctor, who was normally kindly and indulgent, expressed his opinion that numbing was nonsense. “He won’t remember it anyway,” he said. “How do you know?” I said. “Maybe the pain of it is branded into his subconscious.” The doctor had a nurse apply a numbing agent and, labeled it anesthesia, and charged us extra for it.
A woman I met through a mom group when our sons were at the threshold of puberty confided one day that despite being Jewish, neither of her sons was circumcised. “It’s completely unnecessary and cruel, and it hinders their pleasure,” she said, sounding exactly like all those upset and angry letter writers I’d encountered fifteen years earlier. I told her I shared her concerns. She said she belonged to a small but activist group of moms against circumcision. She asked if I’d like to join, and I said it was too late. I’d already circumcised my son, and I wasn’t having another. I didn’t reveal my reluctance to write letters to the AMA or my county legislator protesting the practice or align myself with radicals who were so ardently pro-penis. Not having a penis myself, I thought, was a bit of a disqualifier. Later, I asked my son if, in the middle school gym changing room, anyone noticed anything different about Julian (not his name). He shrugged and said, “He’s not circumcised.” When I raised my eyebrows, indicating I wanted to hear more, my son became annoyed.
“It’s not like every kid in the locker room is circumcised,” he growled, clearly not wanting to discuss it. “Although most of them are.”
Aha, I thought to myself. Not everybody. A small victory for foreskin.
Eve is a journalist and author currently scraping out a tiny living crafting police reports for newspapers in New York and Oregon. She is the author of What’s Your Sexual IQ?, The Goddess Orgasm, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex and other titles bearing some relation to her stint editing Penthouse Forum and other ribald publications. She makes her home in a rural seaside community near Portland, OR with her husband, R.J. Marx, a jazz saxophonist, and Lucy, their dog child.
