Does Circumcision Encourage Rape and Other Sexual Violence?

My husband, who rarely vocalizes outrage at world politics, was visibly upset when he learned that African men were being told they had to become circumcised in order to avoid spreading AIDS. A well-read and uncircumcised man, my husband knew that he had “dodged a bullet” when he had been born in Africa while his father was stationed at a naval base there. The hospital had refused to circumcise him, and his parents never forced him to face the possibilities of the operation again.

Unfortunately, few parents are as well read as he is, and most Americans continue to have their baby boys tortured needlessly all for the sake of an ancient cultural tradition—circumcision, the removal of the foreskin over the penile glans, usually performed without anesthesia and often within hours of the trauma of birth. Psychologists continue to argue about whether or not the extreme pain and torture of circumcision leaves a lasting impression on the infants, with some arguing that the baby boys do remember, at least subconsciously, and warn that that violence on them establishes a pattern that can set the course for more violence, especially violence in relation to sex, in some men’s lives.

Dr. William Keith C. Morgan, in his “The Rape of the Phallus,” concurs with many of his peers—the “removal of the prepuce exposes the glans to foreign stimuli which dull [the] special [pleasurable sensation] receptors” (Journal of the AMA). Dr. Morgan likens the different sensations during penetration between circumcised and uncircumcised penises to pulling on a sock—circumcised men experience penetration something like “thrusting the foot into a sock held open at the top,” with every little bump being felt like a painful snag on a toe nail; whereas “the intact counterpart…[is like] slipping the foot into a sock that has been previously rolled up,” smooth and easy. Because circumcised men have the sensual receptors around the heads of their penises dulled by constant contact with the outer world, many circumcised men seek greater, and perhaps more painful, sensations to get greater satisfaction out of sexual intercourse.

The fact that circumcision dulls these receptors has been known for centuries. Dr. Robert Darby in his “History of Circumcision,” reports that laws were passed in the late 1800s requiring African American men to be circumcised because it was thought they were too ignorant to maintain proper hygiene and were so promiscuous that they were the ones primarily responsible for the spread of syphilis, arguments that sounds suspiciously familiar to the ones being used on the African continent today regarding AIDS. Dr. Darby also points out that “whatever the U.S. media may claim, there are increasing reports that AIDS is making rapid headway in the Middle East—that is, among Moslem populations where most of the males are circumcised,” clearly indicating that logic and scientific facts are not being used in the push to circumcise African men. In my survey of websites purporting phenomenal changes in the spread of AIDS (one site seems to claim the change in the rate of the spread of AIDS is instantaneous after circumcision—maybe the men were too sore to have sex for awhile?), most of the websites arguing vehemently for circumcision for African men were sponsored by conservative religious groups, many of which claim to be on the forefront of the “battle against AIDS.”

Significantly, the national and worldwide statistics for the number of men arrested for rape and other violent crimes, including spousal abuse, who are circumcised far outnumber those arrested who are uncircumcised, leading some experts to consider that circumcision could have a direct link not only to rape, but to incidents of incest and practices of sado-masochism, often called “rough sex.” Sadly, very little direct research has been conducted to verify the link between violent sexual behavior and male circumcision.

While some researchers feebly argue that mothers allow this violent act on their infant sons as some sort of retribution for being second class citizens in a male dominated world, increasing numbers of parents are choosing not to circumcise their sons. As Jeannine Parvati Baker revealed in her “Ending Circumcision: Where Sex and Violence First Meet,” “When I learned that only in dominator societies, in warring cultures, does genital mutilation of the young occur, I saw a way I could be a peacemaker - by fulfilling my central responsibility as mother. By raising peaceful sons, mothers could stop the destruction of our Earth. If mothers protected their boys from the unconscious initiation into the military cult, we would create a sustainable future” (Birth and the Origins of Violence).