The Tip of the Iceberg

Housman and his brothers were circumcised in 1873, when Alfred was 14, at the command of his father, who had recently remarried. His brothers "made open complaint...of the ill-treatment which had befallen them" according to his sister. Housman's own reaction is not recorded, but several facts are suggestive. His poetry is preoccupied with "lads" (who would virtually all have been intact) and their death by violence, he was fascinated by Greek and Roman antiquities, especially nude male statues, his work was the restoration of incomplete and mutilated texts, and he told an enquirer his poetry was the result of a physical condition.

Graves, Richard, "A. E. Housman: The scholar poet" 1979, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul (pp 21, 253)

John Maynard Keynes
Economist

Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes
Surgeon, scholar, bibliophile

Both were circumcised in childhood (Geoffrey at three; if at
the same time, Maynard was seven) to stop them from masturbating.
Geoffrey never forgave their parents.

- R. Darby, A Surgical Temptation, p 298

Alan told his friend [Fred Clayton] how much he resented having being circumcised, and also of his earliest memories of playing with the gardener's boy..., which he thought had perhaps decided his sexual pattern.

Source: Alan Turing: the Enigma of Intelligence
by Andrew Hodges, p. 77
Hodges maintains an extensive Turing homepage

At the age of seven, in 1914, about the time that he went to boarding school and his father went away to war, he was circumcised. ... Auden's operation remained an unpleasant memory.

Auden by R. Davenport-Hines, p31

Not too far from the Leith water
My mother saw the mandrake grow
And pulled it. A professor's daughter,
She told me some time after how
She had been frightened by a cow
So that the birth-sac broke too soon
And on the twenty-ninth of June
Prematurely I looked at the walls
And yelled. The Plunket nurse ran in
To scissor off my valued foreskin,
But one thing staggered that grimalkin:
Poets are born with three balls.

Letter to Robert Burns (1963)

At the age of six, Joseph Kallinger, an abandoned orphan later taken in by a Catholic couple in Philadelphia, had to go into hospital for a hernia operation. When he came home his father Stephen, a poor German immigrant working as a shoemaker, explained what the doctor had done.

For the rest of his life Joseph Kallinger ... was to suffer ... violent, overwhelming anxieties about the size and performance of his penis, with recurring episodes of impotence. ... the terror, and the rage against the terror, of being a 'No-Dick' set Kallinger's feet on the trail of the series of hideous sexual murders with which 'The Shoemaker' terrorised a 1960s America drunk on dreams of peace and love.

- Rosiland Miles, The Rites of Man p 42

My first memory? A first memory of violence, being circumcised at the age of three. There were good medical reasons for it, of course. [Perhaps.] Nevertheless, I remember it vividly - it was very unpleasant!

- quoted in Rosiland Miles, The Rites of Man p 37

"... I am circumcised, and I tell you something, I despise it. I despise it. I despise it."

A listener called in and said he had had genital crabs at one time and they were embedded in his foreskin. He claimed that he had to be circumcised because of it. [Isn't he lucky the crabs weren't embedded in his scrotum! Crabs (pubic lice, P[h]thirus pubis) infest only hairy parts of the body, not the foreskin: the call may have been a hoax.] He was only 19 years old at the time. Since he had had sex both before and after his circumcision, Howard asked him which was better. The man told Howard that sex was better after being circumcised. Howard was surprised to hear that, because he thought it would be better with the extra skin [not actually extra - standard equipment]. Howard bailed out on that call and said he didn't want to hear any more about that stuff. He took a break shortly after that.

"I may have foreskin-reattachment surgery.
I’ll either come back as a woman
or with my foreskin reattached."

Interview in OCWeekly

I lament the circumcision of my foreskin. A circumcision removes about 70 percent of genital nerve endings. That sounds like a party in my pants. There is no telling what lingering psychological effects I’ve suffered as a result of the pain experienced during my neonatal circumcision.

It’s vexing that the medical community allows the removal of a body part we could actually find useful. Why not circumcise my appendix at birth instead of my foreskin? My appendix could potentially kill me one day if it bursts and I don’t receive medical attention swiftly.

My foreskin posed no such diabolical threat. ... I say, save the foreskins.

Boston Metro March 1, 2006 or Alternavision, Feb 22, 2006

Ben Affleck was apparently circumcised after suffering some sort of injury when a doctor must have decided that removing his foreskin would be easier than repairing it. It was brought up briefly on the Daily Show, and Affleck said,

Louis Kirstein, deciding his first born son should be circumcised, calls in the family doctor instead of the traditional mohel, to carry out the procedure, but after botching the job, "septicemia set in, and Lincoln nearly dies.["] To save him, the sweat glands in his groin were surgically removed, leaving physical and psychological scars, locker-room concealments, and castration nightmares that would haunt Lincoln into adolescence.

- Gay City News, 17 May, 2007

To: circumcision_pro_or_con@yahoogroups.com
From: "philip"
Date sent: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:22:24 -0000
Subject: [circumcision_pro_or_con] ruined
Send reply to: circumcision_pro_or_con@yahoogroups.com

i was cut right after my 13th birthday before then i was proud of my uncut dic but was told by my Mom and Doctor how much better it would be to be cutwhat a LIE!  Now it is so ugly that i am ashamed to let anyone see it and there is almost not feelings in it anymore most times i cant even jack off for the skin is so tight and doesnt move at all and i go soft from the lack of feelings.  And the pain i suffered while it heal was almost embarable for weeks it hurt the head was so tender and hurt for so long from rubbing my briefs then the head peeled so bad as it dried out that it left sores it was horrible i hate my Doctor and Mom and always will for ever for what they did to me!

US News
December 19 , 2007

Circumcision

Posted by Benjamin in Addiction Wednesday December 19, 2007 at 02:11 PM

I am against circumcision because I was not circumcised until I was 45. They said I needed it for medical reasons. If I had it to do over I’d tell them to go to hell. I lost so much sensitivity it’s almost unbelievable. No one should do this to anyone unless there is no other way to fix the problem. An if there is no problem it should never be done. To me it is child abuse to circumcise a child for no real reason.

breastimus onYoutube, May 24, 2009

100% DONT CUT IT! I am polish/European and was born uncut. I moved to USA when I was 2 and felt different from other boys. I didn't like having foreskin so when I was 18 I got cut because I couldn't bare the insecurity. I'm no[w] 26 and TOTALLY regret doing it. I lost SOO much sensitivity. There is NO need to cut your foreskin. It's not JUST a piece of skin. It PROTECTS the penis. My girl and I are NOW expecting a baby boy and we are DEFINITELY NOT CIRCUMCISING!

Posted by gunner777 on Dallas Morning Views blog @ 8:56 PM Tue, Aug 18, 2009

At the age of 21 I allowed the US military to talk me into getting circumcised. It would prevent disease, they said, and I would be cleaner, which the girls would enjoy (not much clearer than that) and such.

What they didn't tell me was that intercourse would never be quite as enjoyable, that the reduction in sensation while excited would make the area feel almost numb compared to before, and that the increase in sensation when flaccid would lead to make the rest of life uncomfortable.

I still wish I had my foreskin back.

cirecire90 Wrote 6 months ago [February 2009]

i m jealous...i m cut n really m mad at my parents 4 having me circumsized...

My penis was butchered at birth and I resent it. Wait until men are 18 and let them make their own decision. Otherwise this constitutes forced genital mutilation. How did this barbaric religious practice spread to the general population?

queerty

No. 17 · Jesse
... I myself was originally not circumcised but when I was 12 I slowly began experiencing Phimosis, the closing of the foreskin, my parents ignored it even though I kept telling them I wanted to see a doctor about ti and it wasn't until I was 14 when it began to become difficult to urinate that I finally got to see a urologist, who told me before even looking at the problem that the ONLY way to fix it was circumcision, so I got circumcised and it was a terrible experience, especially since I was going through puberty, imagine having to avoid getting an erection because it would cause the stitches to dig into your penis, AND YOU'RE 14! The age when anything will cause an erection.

It was only after I finally recovered that I learned there actually WERE other ways to stop Phimosis and that my urologist had LIED to me! In order to push a surgery I didn't need.

And being one of the few people that can remember having foreskin and now doesn't have it, I REALLY miss my foreskin, it is terrible not having it, I lost 2 inches!

Posted: Aug 24, 2009 at 2:57 pm

No. 29 · unimac
I wish my parents never had me circumcised. I didn't care about it until a few years after I started becoming sexually active, and then it hit me like a brick wall…the fact that I had something removed from me, surgically, and that it has happened to millions of other men without their consent. I thought about it a lot and became upset about it. It is a serious problem and indicative, i think, of an obscene medical system.

Posted: Aug 24, 2009 at 4:10 pm

No. 49 · Jeff K.

I can't. At least not during normal sex. Only while masturbating. I was hoping to leave that detail out, but oh well. :/

Posted: Aug 24, 2009 at 6:32 pm

No. 51 · Nobody
F*** no. It's my body and I'm still annoyed that my parents had the audacity to cut off part of my dick.

Posted: Aug 24, 2009 at 6:47 pm

No. 52 · Shawn
@Nobody: I agree, but I more mad at the doctor than my parents

Posted: Aug 24, 2009 at 6:58 pm

No. 66 · Mark
My boyfriend is cut. No, he (unlike the other, uncut ones) cannot come unless with his own deathgrip, and yes, it was a very traumatic procedure for him.

Nobody in their right mind should be advocating circumcision especially in the industrialised world.

Posted: Aug 25, 2009 at 1:40 am

I certainly have enjoyed my share of foreskins, don't like the look of scars on cocks and regret the fact that I have to wrap the head of my un[?]cut penis in silk or some other supersoft material to protect it during sweaty physical activity. Despite the callouses developed on the glans of an uncut [sic a cut?] penis, my head gets irritated very easily, on into pain, making it difficult to ride a bike or run. So yeah, I have been a bit annoyed at my parents.

- ps onhomosuperior’s posterous August 29, 2009