VEGANGELICA

Oh, I didn't think you necessarily supported circumcision...but it sounded like you maybe didn't know of the benefits of having a foreskin, so I wanted to make sure you have a chance to learn information that I didn't know when I was your age or for many years afterwards.

I also feel it is important to note that when people cut off the foreskin, the foreskin *doesn't* function anymore. And there are many people who aren't happy with what is left...skin tags, painful erections, the scar, curvatures, discomfort during intercourse...plus, the knowledge that they were cut against their will.

Circumcising babies, also, isn't merely cutting: first, you strap down the baby's arms and legs on a circumstraint board (in a hospital circumcision); then you have to separate the foreskin from the glans, like sliding a knife under a fingernail. Finally, you crush or cut off the baby's foreskin, leaving the entire glans as a bleeding, open wound.

Pain anesthetics are *not* required by law during circumcisions of babies. In the U.S., many babies are subjected to cutting of their genitalia...and I do not hesitate to call it torture...without pain medication. In fact, even a doctor I interviewed about circumcisions he does in the Midwest told me he felt he was torturing babies when he didn't use any pain medication.

Certainly there may be more important causes than circumcision, though people can easily help work on different causes at the same time. I know circumcision is an important one to the boys and men who do feel harmed by what was done to them when they were powerless to make choices about their own bodies. I see the issue of circumcision very squarely as a human rights issue. And so, this issue is an important one to me, too. I know I would feel horribly violated if someone had cut off my clitoral hood (female foreskin) when I was a child.

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