One Woman, One Cause
Marilyn Milos and NOCIRC
By Cat Saunders
Marilyn
Milos, R.N., founded the National Organization of Circumcision Information
Resource Centers (NOCIRC) in 1985. She is also the 61-year-old mother
of one daughter as well as three sons, whom she regrets were circumcised.
In this interview,
Marilyn talks about the devastating experience that opened her eyes to
the brutality of circumcision and led her to dedicate her life to eradicating
circumcision worldwide.
She also speaks frankly about psychological,
political, and religious issues related to circumcision; the harmful effects
of circumcision on sexual relations; the sources of denial that allow circumcision
to continue; and some of the fear-based myths that still persist with regard
to male genital cutting.
Cat: Would you talk about why you
had your sons circumcised?
Marilyn: Amazingly, my first husband
and the father of my first two sons was intact. When my sons were born,
the circumcision rate was still high in this country. My husband had been
self-conscious about being intact, so I think that helped sway him. Also,
the doctor told us that circumcision didn't hurt, took only a moment,
and was necessary for health. Why I didn't think about my husband's good
health, I don't know.
Cat: What changed your mind about
circumcision?
Marilyn: As a nursing student, when my
youngest son was ten, I saw a circumcision for the first time. I haven't
gotten over that experience. I never will. It was May of 1979. We students
filed into the hospital nursery to find a baby boy strapped spread-eagle
to a plastic board on a counter top. He was struggling against his restraints--tugging,
whimpering, and crying helplessly.
When the doctor
began the operation, the baby let out a piercing scream--his reaction
to having his foreskin pinched and crushed as the doctor attached a clamp
to his tiny penis. The infant's shriek intensified when the doctor inserted
an instrument between the foreskin and the head of the penis, tearing
them apart.
Then the baby started
shaking his head back and forth--the only part of his body he could move--when
the doctor used another clamp to (lengthwise) crush the foreskin, which
he then cut. This made the foreskin opening large enough to insert a circumcision
instrument designed to prevent the head of the penis from being severed
during the surgery.
During the last
stage of the operation, the doctor crushed the foreskin against the circumcision
instrument, and then, finally, amputated it. By that time, the baby was
limp, exhausted, spent.
To see part of a
baby's penis being cut off--without anesthesia--was shocking. Even more
shocking was the doctor's comment, barely audible under the piercing screams
of the infant: "There's no medical reason for doing this."
Cat: What do you think is the biggest
personal block that prevents people from realizing the truth about circumcision?
Marilyn: If there was just one personal
block, it would have been easy to stop circumcision. But there are many
fears that allow the denial to continue.
For example, what
man wants to hear that he was strapped down as a helpless infant, and
then, without any anesthetic, the best part of his organ of pleasure and
procreation was cut off and thrown in the trash?
What mother wants
to learn that her precious baby suffered needlessly, and that his first
developmental task--establishing trust--was undermined by a violent act
that he can only perceive as a betrayal by her?
What doctor wants
to admit that he has blood on his hands?
Cat: What do you think is the biggest
political block that prevents the outlawing of circumcision?
Marilyn: Religion.
Cat: I understand that Congress outlawed
female genital mutilation in this country several years ago, but that
this law is being challenged in federal courts now because of its gender
bias.
Marilyn: Yes. Our Constitution is supposed
to safeguard human rights for everyone, but so far, this protection includes
everyone except baby boys who are subjected to genital cutting
against their will.
Cat: What are the three main arguments
you give expectant parents when you advise against circumcision?
Marilyn: The foreskin is normal, protective,
sexual tissue. Circumcision is painful, has serious risks, and leaves
physical and psychological scars. Every baby has an inherent right to
the integrity of his own body.
Cat: How do you approach expectant
parents who want to circumcise their sons for religious reasons?
Marilyn: I tell them that Jews and Muslims
have themselves begun to question the practice. I refer them to what has
already been written by people of their own faith--for example, Ronald
Goldman's book, Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective.
Jewish women have also written powerful articles on the subject.
It's interesting
to note that in the Jewish Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides said,
"As regards circumcision, I think that one of its objects is to limit
sexual intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible,
and thus cause man to be moderate."
Do parents today
really want this?
Cat: As a nurse, would you talk about
the effects of circumcision on sexual relations between men and women?
Marilyn: The foreskin of an intact penis has a ridged
band just inside and encircling its opening. This ridged band contains
Meissner's corpuscles, which are like nerve receptors in the fingertips.
During sexual stimulation of
the penis, the foreskin's exquisitely sensitive interior band of nerve
receptors glides back and forth across the corona of the glans (the head
of the penis), which itself has a high concentration of neurovascular
end organs. Thus, the foreskin and the glans stimulate each other. The
loss of this foreskin-glans stimulation is probably why men who are circumcised
as adults say the difference is like seeing in black and white, rather
than seeing in color.
During heterosexual sex, the
intact penis is stimulated both by the vagina and this foreskin-glans
action. Therefore, the movements an intact man needs for stimulation are
small. Circumcised men, however, must stimulate whatever is left of the
frenulum (diagram information follows) in order to reach orgasm. The long
strokes necessary to stimulate the remaining frenulum take the man's body
away from the woman's mons pubis (pubic mound), so her clitoris isn't
stimulated.
Thus, the movement necessary
for a circumcised man to reach orgasm is not compatible with the movement
a woman needs to reach orgasm. No one talks about this potential cause
for deep tension in relationships. However, it's important to understand
that the natural mechanics of sex are disturbed when men are circumcised.
Cat: Would you give a brief historical "tour" of
the common myths that have been used to perpetuate infant male circumcision?
Marilyn: As early as 1860, when only .001 percent
of the urban American male population was circumcised, articles began
to show up in medical literature touting circumcision as an extremely
painful operation purposely done without anesthesia, in hopes of serving
as a preventative to masturbation, because masturbation was believed to
cause disease. Of course, it didn't work.
By the turn of the century, the
microscope had been developed and the germ theory of disease became the
new medical model. Fear of bacteria and lack of hygiene, then, became
the next excuses to circumcise.
During the 1930s, fear of penile
cancer kept circumcisers in business. That idea persists today, even though
we know that the penile cancer rate in circumcising America is the same
as that in non-circumcising Denmark or Finland.
The fifties brought the fear
of cervical cancer, but now we know that cervical cancer is caused by
the HP virus, not by foreskins. The sexual revolution of the sixties brought
the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, which we quickly learned were
not prevented by circumcision.
During the 1970s, people began
to challenge medical practices such as routine tonsillectomies, radical
mastectomies, routine episiotomies, and routine infant circumcision. When
medical excuses for circumcision proved invalid, the next fabricated excuse
was an emotional one: "You don't want your son to look different than
the other boys, do you?"
The latest fear--one that Western
pro-circumcision advocates are trying to promote in Africa--is the alleged
role of the foreskin in the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, this preposterous
notion is easily debunked by the fact that the U.S.A. has one of the highest
rates of both circumcision and HIV/AIDS. Obviously, if circumcision prevented
the spread of AIDS, our country would not have such a high rate of HIV
infection.
Cat: What keeps you going when the going gets tough?
Marilyn: The babies! If I stop for one moment, I have
time to think of my own babies strapped down, struggling helplessly against
restraints, and screaming. It's too much for me to bear, it was too much
for my babies to bear, and I don't want other babies or their mothers
to experience what we have experienced. It's that simple.
This interview was originally
published in Verve (March 2002).
Marilyn Milos, R.N., is the
founder of NOCIRC (http://www.nocirc.org)
and the organizer for the Seventh International Symposium on Genital Integrity,
held in Washington, D.C., in April (Child Abuse Prevention Month) of 2002.
See diagrams of the foreskin
at http://www.noharmm.org/anatomy.htm.
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