Father,
I’m sure this letter will take you by surprise. You’ve never heard me talk like this before. I’ve tolerated crap from you before, such as being accused of being both homosexual (you were a homophobe and once said all homosexuals should be put up against the wall and shot) and a (heterosexual) sex maniac, but nothing comes close to what you did when I was a helpless infant.
If you still have no clue what I’m talking about, then I’m referring to your decision to have me circumcised.
I would really love to hear you try to defend that decision, because I know you don’t have a leg to stand on.
So, where to start?
Well, I remember you once telling me that circumcision was “just a quick snip”.
In spite of what you told me (which is probably what a doctor told you as you have few original thoughts of your own), it is not even close to being “just a quick snip”. It is an excruciating, barbaric procedure that is performed on young children who are strapped down, medically raped, and mutilated, all while fully conscious. I know you are a technophobe, but there are videos available these days that anyone can watch about any subject you could think of, and these include live videos of circumcision operations. I dare you to watch one of those and still say it’s “just a quick snip”.
If a doctor or nurse told you I slept through it, they were lying. Babies who are subjected to this horrific procedure scream so violently that they pass out from shock. Although I suspect you too were circumcised as a child, how would you like it, as an adult, if someone cut off your foreskin without anything other than a topical anaesthetic that does almost nothing to dull the pain? Do you really imagine you would sleep through it, without a sound?
So, I have to ask you, why the hell did you agree to have me mutilated like that?
You are probably shocked that I would use the word “mutilated”, but that’s exactly what it is!
Circumcision is not a therapeutic operation – because my foreskin was perfectly healthy at the time, and therefore did not require any form of treatment.
It is not medically necessary, regardless of what any doctors might have told you. (No medical association in the world recommends it.)
It is irreversible – once you’ve been cut, you have lost the most sensitive part of your foreskin, forever.
It might surprise you to know that the foreskin has over a dozen functions, and while many adult men say they have a perfectly satisfactory sex life, they have no basis for comparison because they have never had sex using an intact penis.
When I first had sex, I enjoyed it, but it was not the earth-shattering experience I’d been led to believe it might be. Maybe that was the first indication that circumcision had permanently ruined my chance of a fulfilling sex life, except I didn’t know enough to connect the dots back then.
It might indeed be satisfactory, but sex with an uncircumcised penis is so much better for both the man and the woman.
And, finally, circumcision leaves you with a deformed and scarred penis for the rest of your life.
If that doesn’t qualify as mutilation, I don’t know what does.
In addition to that, circumcised men are proven to have increased risks of erectile dysfunction, which typically becomes worse with age. And yes, now I’m middle-aged, I can tell you that the results of your inhumane decision to mutilate me are causing problems.
Now, you may say that you had no idea circumcision was so barbaric or caused so many problems.
And I don’t care about that, because that’s not really the main point.
Maybe you made the decision because the doctor either lied to you or misinformed you about the procedure (because doctors who perform circumcisions know precious little about the foreskin, other than how to amputate it). It had been known for almost ten years before I was born that removing the foreskin was not recommended – and yet you still chose to let them amputate the most sensitive part of my penis.
But I don’t care about what a doctor did or did not tell you either.
Another common reason for circumcising a young boy is so that he looks like his father in the penis department.
I hope to hell that’s not why you did what you did! Because if that was your reason, then fuck you! Why on earth would I want my penis to look like yours? Was it a form of revenge – you were circumcised so you thought I should suffer too?
Or did you make a life-changing decision for me because my mother preferred sleeping with circumcised men?
I hope and strongly suspect that wasn’t the case, given she was likely a virgin when you married (yes, I remember you bragging about sleeping around as a bachelor but wanting a virgin for a wife). I mean, why should a mother’s personal sexual preference for a mutilated penis result in her son’s healthy foreskin being amputated? (By the way, women typically prefer uncut men because it is more pleasurable and less painful for them.)
Maybe you were fed that bullshit argument about circumcised penises being easier to clean? If you couldn’t be bothered to learn how to teach me to clean an intact penis, what gave you the right to think you could prepare me for the real world, with all of its much greater challenges?
Here’s the real point: every single human being has a right to bodily autonomy. Only I get to choose what is done to my body.
Now, you may say it’s the parents’ rights to do what they think best, but a parent has no rights in this respect – only duties.
And it was your duty to protect me rather than doing what you wanted with my body.
Sadly, you chose not to do that. Instead, you:
- allowed some quack to permanently mutilate my penis
- violated my right to an intact body and took away my choice as to whether to be circumcised or not once I was old enough to understand the risks and benefits. (By the way, there are few, if any, benefits, but there are plenty of risks, including death!)
- condemned me (and my sexual partners) to a lifetime of sex that would never be as satisfying as it should have been.
If they had all the facts, no one would choose to be circumcised, either as infants or as adults. (Some adults today, who escaped circumcision as infants, do choose to have the operation performed, without being told all the risks, of course, and almost all of them regret it afterwards.)
I agree that parents do get to choose things such as what to feed their children, and what clothes they should wear, when they’re too young to make their own choices. But you do NOT get to choose an elective, non-therapeutic surgery that cannot be undone and that causes permanent harm and trauma.
As I said earlier, you would probably reply that you weren’t aware of any of these facts (or maybe you were and did it anyway, because you were not a good human being), but that’s immaterial. You made a decision about my body that was never yours to make. And for that, once again, fuck you!
So if you are getting the impression I’m angry, then well done! Yes, I bloody well am angry. Furious, in fact.
You were sexist, racist, and misogynist, and you didn’t like anybody who came from a foreign country or didn’t speak English, or anybody who was disabled. I don’t know what sort of role model you thought you were for me, but I soon decided that I did not want to be anything like you. I have actually gone out of my way to be as different to you as I can.
But there you are, and it feels as though you’re still screwing me around from beyond the grave. I mean, what sort of sick bastard allows anybody to cut off part of his son’s penis?
However, I digress. Let me finish by saying this: I only wish I could have this conversation with you in person because I would enjoy watching you try to defend the barbarism you sanctioned and seeing the realization sink in that if I’d found this information out before you died, I would have confronted you about it and then never have spoken to you or seen you ever again.
Your outraged, mutilated son.
