 | Pagtutuli |
| Pagtutuli |
A few decades ago, genital incision of Filipino boys (pagtutuli) was purely a traditional custom. An amateur (manunuli) would perform it on local boys (as shown in Kidlat Tahimik's 1977 film about his childhood, "Mababangong bangungot" [The Perfumed Nightmare]). In some areas, the boys sit astride a banana log into which a wooden plug has been inserted as an "anvil". The traditional rite is only superincision, a dorsal slit, removing no tissue (but with variations).
More recently pagtutuli is becoming medicalised (and commercialised).
Medicalising the custom, as elsewhere, also often involves increasing the damage to removal of the entire foreskin. The intermediate step of questioning the need for doing it at all has been strangely bypassed.
Routine circumcision anywhere is always of babies or pre-adolescent boys - the great majority of men who have experienced sex when they have a foreskin would never tolerate having it removed. In the Philippines, it has strong elements of a "rite of passage" to manhood, though once he has healed, very little about a boy's life actually changes. At present, peer-pressure, parental pressure, medical pressure and the stigma against being supót (intact) make childhood circumcision almost - but not quite - inevitable.
A wide variety of organisations now organise "operation tuli" - mass circumcision sessions - as a charitable venture.
Despite the fact that circumcision is completely alien to Christianity, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines holds operation tuli - as part of its "healing ministry"!
- Bohol Sunday Post, May 7, 2000 |
Another anomalous link to Christianity is that tuli is often done on Black Saturday, the day after Good Friday, on which some extremists flagellate themselves and some have themselves crucified. It would be interesting to know the links between these two painful blood-rituals.
The Philippines are predominantly Roman Catholic, and historically the Church has been implacably (and irrevocably) opposed to circumcision. In spite of this, an "Operation Tuli" at the Central School in San Jose Del Monte on April 29, 2001, was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, and the Catholic Women's League.
Other mass pagtutuli are sponsored by local bodies such as the City Health Office of the Island Garden City of Samal. In Poblacion Peñaplata, on two days in April 2000, more than a hundred boys were circumcised. The city's information officer wrote
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Yes, it is not trivial and recuperation takes time - another reason one might think to question it.
Congresspeople (such as Leyte Rep. Alfred Romualdez), Rotary (such as District 3790, San Fernando, La Union), and university fraternities such as Samahang Alpha Phi Omega ng Cainta or SAPOC and Phi Kappa Mu also sponsor them:
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Doubtless the organisers feel they are performing a service - they may feel they are protecting poor people from incompetent practitioners - and in return, the prestige of an organisation such as a university fraternity impresses the boys with the "rightness" of the rite they undergo. Neither group is motivated to question circumcision.
Dr Edward Cagape, who writes a medical column, has listed a page of "circumcision myths"
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CIRCUMCISION MYTHS Between you and me, Pards, there are a lot of myths concerning circumcision that to this day, many of you think they are facts no matter how ridiculous. Some parents think that having their children circumcised could make them taller or bigger. What could a piece of skin in the penis do to stimulate growth? The truth of the matter is, no matter how long the prepuce is cut (ininglis for the supot of the Penis), hindi ka pa rin tatangkad kung bansot ang tatay at nanay mo. [you will not be slender if your father and mother are 'stunted'.] Because most circumcision is done at the age when boys grow in spurts, fast growth would be attributed to the circumcision. Eh, bakit yong pisot/supot kong compadre, tumangkad man lagi!! [Hey, why is my pal intact/prepuced, will definitely grow tall!!] Some parents think that by circumcision, the boy’s testicles would develop and so would the size of his penis. Fathers have this ambition of which they have not accomplished probably. No, Pards, kung ga-tsureso talaga iyang arian mo, ga-tsureso din yong sa anak mo paglaki niya. [if your property is really as big as a sausage, your son's would also grow as big as a sausage] [This is not true.] Nenita’s ba or Swift doesn’t matter. But if yours is a miniature statue of Liberty so would your sons. No amount of tuliation could do something about the size. [In fact of course, cutting part of the penis off makes it smaller. It's not rocket science.] The testicles by themselves descend ... Some Japanese men practice the so called "Bayag dunking" to prevent accidental impregnation ... [They don't practise circumcision, though.] They immerse their bayag on hot este lukewarm water to slow down sperm production. This kind of birth control has never been practiced by our POPCOM probably because the incident of malasado bayags could rise in the process. You know our people, they exaggerate things when they think it could be beneficial to them. [Pretty much what has happened with circumcision: it can have benefit in certain very rare cases. Irrational forces made it universal in the Philippines, as elsewhere.] Parents have forgotten the main purpose of this ritual; that is to clean and expose the head of Liberty. That’s all. It has nothing to do with height or weight nor the future size of the statue of Liberty. ‘,,,,,,buntag [morning] na , Sir!! |
...but he missed the biggest myth of all, that there is any need to do it.
The claim that the intact penis is "dirty" is highly offensive to intact men. When this was pointed out, Dr Cagape replied:
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It is not the penis that is dirty. It is the smegma that accumulates at the neck of the glans penis. This has been shown to cause cervical cancer. |
What remedial action does Dr Cagape recommend for women's smegma, which is more plentiful and smells stronger than men's, and would be just as carcinogenic (if either were)? He has not replied.
In another of his 'humorous' columns, he writes of a six year old demanding the operation.
At first he doesn't see the little boy, who is very confident.
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“Imong gilimpiohan na ang imong sandata?” [Have you cleaned your tool?] "Limpio na, Doc!! Tan-awa pa?” [It's clean, Doc!! Do you want to see ?] I did not have any reason not to look. So, I did right then there in standing position ( for those who did not read from the beginning, please do. You might misinterpret me. I do not do standing position……in physical examination that is) [Does anyone else think a sexual joke at this point is creepy?] It was really clean all right. The prepuce (foreskin) was already retracted and the glans penis (ulo
sa German ['head' in German - but "glans" is Latin, not German]) was shining like the bald head of Pugo. "Gusto ko German cut kay makalipay!!" [I want the German cut, and how!] "Hala, Becker (5th seed German [and intact] tennis player), higda na!!" [Come and lie down, Becker!] Most of the time the fathers accompany their children for circumcision. The reason for this is obvious……. They want to see how they fared when they had their won circumcision. If the father does not look when I make the cut, I am sure as Ramos that he had a hard time with his own. But when the father assures his child that it is alright and comfortably watch, he had a wonderful time during his own experience of a lifetime." ["A wonderful time"? "Experience of a lifetime"? Reality check, please. We are talking about having part of one's penis cut off. There is no guarantee whatever that a boy's experience will be the same as his father's.] |
While some boys may clamour for tuli,
The ethics of a doctor performing that or any cosmetic operation at a child's request are highly debatable. A doctor who did so in almost any other country would certainly be struck off.
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"Circumcision is a common thing for ages 8 to 10, not 6. I do not recommend it for this age because they are mentally not prepared. But if they are mature enough to have it, I will." |
Some may call it "mentally prepared", others "brainwashed".
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"There several ways of doing circumcision. It does not matter what technique your doctor would do. You and I know very well that it is not the size, the shape nor the palamuti that makes it. It is the foreplay that counts." |
There are other views of the effect of circumcision on sexuality, and women with intact partners may have other opinions.
Now a few ambivalent voices are being raised against tuli.
Following the AAP's 1999 statement, on April 20, 1999 in his column Pinoy Kasi! ("Because we're Philipinos!") in the Philippines Daily Inquirer, Michael L. Tan (the Philippines' foremost medical anthropologist) wrote:
The AAP recognizes that the decision to circumcise may be based not just on medical factors but also on cultural, religious and ethnic traditions. Since there seems to be little medical rationale now for the procedure, Filipino parents, and their sons, will just have to decide if the cultural stigma of being supot is serious enough to warrant the penile guillotine. |
Two weeks later, responding to reaction to the first article, he rebutted many myths about pagtutuli, but repeated some (including "a little piece of skin")
Is it true you won't grow if you don't get circumcised? Does circumcision fatten you up? ...Last words to sum things up: If it hasn't been done, maybe it shouldn't; and if it's done, then it's done. Don't sweat the small stuff. |
Dr Tan has written two more columns on pagtutuli, one in the Inquirer of May 23, 2002, called "Circumstitions" 
, the other in the Inquirer of May 17, 2006. If that link doesn't work, the article is here.
Jaime Licauco wrote in the same paper on March 21, 2000:
...I would vote against circumcision. After all, if God had created the foreskin, there must be a good purpose for it. So why cut [it] off? |
Another doctor, Reynaldo O. Joson, M.D. (chairman of the Dept. of Surgery at Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center) has written a three-part series in the Manila Bulletin (May 28, 2002) discussing how to break the habit.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
If those links don't work, the three parts are collected on one page here.
Virginia Beck of Hawai`i wrote to Medscape on July 17, 2000:
...My observation is that if the prehistoric genetic patterning has sufficed for some 10 billion humans to date, we don't need to upgrade the model through crude, traumatic interventions.
HealthBeat, the official publication of the Republic's Department of Health, has an article, "Circumcision, the "Uncut" Version", by Glen Ace S. Ramos
A Filipina living in New Zealand writes:
Since virtually all Filipino men are circumcised, they have no way of knowing that this is false. Clearly, conformity is the main issue here, and if Filipino men are ever going to enjoy the experience of a whole body, some parents are going to have to go first, be exceptionally brave and strong, and resist the pressure of family, friends and neighbours. Their sons are, too - but the experience of other men in this position has shown that they grow up to be stronger and more individual as a result.
A New Jerseyer writes:
An Australian who has witnessed many tuli writes:
It may be that a large number of people - boys and/or their parents - are just on the brink of refusing pagtutuli and only need to know that there are others in the same position to begin to put their beliefs into (non-)action. They will need to be unusually strong-willed to resist peer-pressure, but the Internet provides a new and effective way for them to get together - Supót Support-Groups. Here are links to such groups:
Feedback about this page would be welcomed, especially from the Philippines and especially from any people or groups questioning or opposing pagtutuli.
Related pages:
Policy Statement For the record, the author of these pages is firmly opposed to all involuntary circumcision, the Filipino variety no more or less than any other, and has no issue with any other aspect of Filipino culture. - HY
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