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WHAT THE SURVEY TELLS US ABOUT POWER AND CONTROL
Nahid Toubia describes the psychological effects of female circumcision to be subtle, buried beneath layers of denial, mixed with resignation and acceptance of social norms.
Toubia N, FGM and responsibility of reproductive health professionals. Int J Gyn Obst 1994; 46: 127–135
Alice Miller offers further insight, suggesting that being unable to defend themselves as children, they were forced to repress feelings, and by banishing ‘consciousness’ they come to idealize the custom, eventually justifying it as harmless and necessary. They can’t recall their repressed anger and have never grieved about what happened to them, so they inflict the same ordeal on their children without acknowledging their action.
Miller A, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence p. 74, Meridian, New York 1993
Miller also states that children who were once injured will later injure their own children, maintaining that their behaviour does no harm because their own loving parents did the same.
Miller A, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries, p. 139, Doubleday, New York 1990
All of these comments are true of male circumcision.
Ron Goldman examines other deeper issues when he states that circumcised fathers, when requesting their sons be circumcised for family/social conformity, may be projecting their own anxieties about feeling inferior to an intact son
Goldman RF, Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma, p.70 Vanguard, Boston 1997
Because circumcision is often not a voluntary commitment to group identity, but is imposed on children by adults, this suggests that circumcision is a form of social control.
A biocultural analysis by Immerman & Mackey posits that childhood circumcision results in glans keratinisation and neurological re-organization/atrophy of brain circuitry, and was perhaps a primitive effort to produce a male who is less sexually excitable, less distracted by individual goals of amorous exchanges, and hence more amenable to group authority figures.
Immerman RS, Mackey WC. A proposed relationship between circumcision and neural reorganization. J Genet Psychol 1998; 159: 367–378
This anti-sexual intent was made clear my Moses Maimonides and is repeated today by many Jewish rabbis and mohels.
The anti-sexual intent was resurrected by pre-germ theory physicians of the Victorian era who attempted to limit the mental, physical and spiritual evils of masturbation.
This is clearly a practice desired primarily to be imposed on children, but as we’ve seen, it has long-term effects on men as well.
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