Lindsey: I'm Dr. Lindsey Doe, Clinical Sexologist, and host of this sex-curious show, Sexplanations.

[intro]

Today, I want to read from this book, Sexy Origins and Intimate Things, which a friend gave me. This edition is from 1996; the newest is 1998. Still dated, but we're talking about history here. I contacted Charles Panati and asked him if it would be okay to read word-for-word part of his chapter on penises, and he gave me permission. Let's do this; I promise to sex-edu-tain you.

Chapter 3, "A Hard Man Is Good to Find. Jewish Foreskin Ritual; Genesis 17:10-14, C. 1400 B.C.E. A 5-minute operation one within days of an infant's birth and without his consent marks a male for life. For doctors, circumcision is a highly profitable operation. It is America's most common surgical procedure. For parents, to circumcise or not is a vexing question since medical evidence suggests that removal of the foreskin of the penis has negligible health benefits so long as a man practices good hygiene."

The word 'circumcise' comes from the late-Ecclesiastic Latin 'circumcidere - to cut around.' Though the word is rooted in the church Latin that developed during the early centuries of Christianity, the practice was of Semetic origin prescribed in Hebrew scripture when God says to Abraham, 'This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and with your seed after you: Every boy among you shall be circumcised... It shall be a token of the covenant between you and me... He who is eight days old shall be circumcised... And the uncircumcised child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, his sour shall be cut from his people, for he has broken my covenant."

That's from Genesis 17:10-14, which I looked up in my childhood Bible, "He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised... And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

[back to Sexy Origins...Things] "Jewish infants have been routinely circumcised for three millennia. To this day, Jews refer to the circumcision initiation of a newborn into Judaism on the eighth day after his birth as a "B'rith," meaning "pact." The absence of a foreskin became the indelible signature on a spiritual contract imprinted into the genitals of every male. Circumcision also became a sign of "the Lord's divine protection" over the Jewish people.

Among the ancient Israelites, circumcision initially had nothing to do with health consideration. Some people believe that God instituted circumcision; others, including many modern biblical scholars - especially feminist ones - disagree. They claim that circumcision was the idea of male Israelite priests as an effort to start an exclusive, all-male club, the Jewish priesthood, that could receive no female since initiation was sacrifice of the foreskin. 'Once, women were priestesses in the near East,' writes one feminist scholar. 'To get rid of them, a Levite clan of male priests dreamed up the rite of circumcision. Soon, there were no more priestesses.'"

"Christ's Foreskin Cures Infertility." Hoo. "Herodotus - the fifth century before Common Era, Greek historian - wrote that circumcision could prevent penile infections and supplant the need for regular washing. This was the first medical advice on the subject. By the time of Christ's birth, the practice was being advocated for both religious and hygienic reasons. Being a Jew, Christ was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, which the early Christian church would elevate to the 'feast of circumcision' later dated January first." So, January first, the "Feast of the Circumcision."

"For centuries, dried rings of skin alleged to be "Christ's holy prepus - Latin 'praeputium,' meaning 'foreskin' - were venerated as sacred relics by dozens of churches throughout Europe. Many churches claimed to have the original. Others claimed to have relics by association. Human foreskins that had once touched Christ's skin." [chuckles] Anyone else like, "Huh!?"

"Pastors use these relics to bestow -

"- relics to bestow fertility on barren parishioners as well to lessen the pain of childbirth since Christ's mother, it is said, never experienced labor." [pauses] Okay.

"The best known relic of Christ's prepuce at the Charis Abbey Church is said to be responsible for thousands of pregnancies." Jeeesus foreskin!

"'Manliness Myths and Circumcision; Greece, Fifth Century B.C.E.' Myths began to surround the Jewish religious ritual of circumcision. In the first century, Philo of Alexandria - a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher -  taught that circumcision facilitated conception. 'By the penis being circumcised, the seed proceeded in its path more easily, neither being scattered, nor flowing on its passage into what may be called the bags of the prepuce.'

Philo asserted that people who enforce the practice, mainly Jews at the time, would be the most prolific on Earth, destined to be the most populous and influential race. This was an appealing promise for any man who wanted to rise up in station. Philo promised, in effect, that circumcised men would eventually rule the world. Philo himself was circumcised."

"'The Embarrassment of Jews at the Gym.' Not all Jews in Philo's time were proud of their penile signature. When Hellenistic Jews living in the Greek lands shared the gymnasia with their uncircumcised Greek friends exercising in the nude, unavoidably revealing their 'mark of distinction,' they often became the butt of ridicule. Flouted for being "demanned", still worse was the charge that Jewish men seemed to have constant semi-erections, the result of overly tight circumcisions.

Many Jews living in Greece underwent the unpleasantness of reconstruction therapy to restore genital foreskin. The procedure was known as 'stretching.' The residue of foreskin was forcibly pulled up over the glans penis and tightly tied. The mildly painful treatment was continued until a Jew had sufficient surplus skin to conceal the 'seal of Abraham.' From a religious standpoint, such a man was no longer a Jew."

"- a Jew. His soul, according to Genesis, was cut off from his people since he'd broken his covenant with God."

"'Why Christian Males Are Circumcised; America, 1890s.' In the decades following Christ's death, Gentile men wishing to convert to the new faith of Christianity balked at the thought of having their foreskins removed. Prior to the advent of antiseptics and anesthesia, the surgery performed on adults was both dangerous and painful and intimidating. Saint Paul realized that this ritual requirement was preventing many grown men from becoming Christians. The evangelist allowed make converts to forego the surgical cut for what Paul termed 'a circumcision of the heart' - a fervent desire to become a Christian.

Paul maintained contact with the major Christian churches of the day, and in his epistle to the Romans 2:28-29, he allowed circumcision 'of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter.' In 60 C.E., after two years after Paul wrote the epistle, the apostolic council ruled that that Gentile proselytes could retain their foreskins. In time, the sacrament of baptism became the covenant of pact for Christians that circumcision was for Jews. For the next 1800 years, Christian males were never circumcised, not in Europe where the practice is still uncommon or in the United States.

Why then are virtually all American Christian males circumcised?"

I want to pause here; I did look up current stats on circumcision: 80% of the State's males are circumcised, but it's down to just about 50% of newborn males becoming circumcised.

"'Constant Horniness or Satan's Curse?' Most Amercian parents don't realize that prior to 1900, Christian infants were never circumcised; it simply wasn't done. Routine circumcision was adopted gradually as the result of two factors: The Victorian era's strictures against masturbation and the medical community's belief that 'this odious form of self-pollution' could be restrained by removal of a boy's foreskin."

So, the Victorian era being against masturbation and the medical community's belief that by taking away the foreskin they would no longer "self-pollute" - a.k.a masturbate.

"19th century doctors convinced Christian parents and priests and preachers that a tight, gripping foreskin put a male in a state of continual arousal. The issue of cleanliness initially played no role in the matter."

[L translating in layman's terms] So, if you have a foreskin and it's tight and it's really gripping the penis, then these little boys are going to be turned on all the time, so we should remove the foreskin.

"The man who popularized the practice among non-Jews was the British surgeon and pathologist Sir Jonathan Hutchinson. A pioneer in the study of congenital syphilis, Hutchinson was an authority on eye and skin diseases, especially leprosy." Which used to be popular in Bible-times; not so much anymore. If you don't know what it is, it's a bacterial infection that can lead to nerve damage and lesions on the skin. 

"Outside his specialty, he maintained that masturbation was a detriment to spiritual and mental health."

So, he is on eye and skin diseases, but he's making recommendations that about masturbation as a medical provider.

"Almost two decades before, he was knighted in 1908. He published On Circumcision as preventative of Masturbation. The first position paper for routine modern infant circumcision. Thus, the fundamental reason behind the practice was not so much medical as religious after all; not as a covenant with God but to prevent a boy or grown man from giving his soul to Satan." [whispers] Masturbating.

"Only later did doctors affix to the procedure a health rationale. After Hutchinson's paper was printed in America, parents begged physicians to circumcise their infant sons. There are many accounts of adult males willingly submitting to the surgery in the hope of breaking themselves of the habit of masturbation. British psychologist and pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis thought the idea of routine circumcision was utter nonsense -"

" - arguing, '99% of young men and women masturbate occasionally, and the hundredth conceals the truth.'

By the 1920s, a standard American medical text claimed that a foreskin 'leads to nocturnal incontinence, wet dreams, hysteria, hyperactivity, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness.' The year the film Gone with the Wind was released, 1939, the standard text on pediatrics - Holt's Diseases of Infancy and Childhood - stated that masturbation was medically harmful and advocated the remedy of circumcision in boys."

There are people still alive who were told that. In case it wasn't clear, this channel is not anti-masturbation.

"'How Hostpical Births Made Circumcision Routine in America.' The practice of routine male circumcision went hand-in-hand with another 20th century phenomenon - hospitalization for childbirth. In the 1900s, less than 5% of American women delivered in hospitals; by 1920, the figure stood at 40%, and a decade later, it was up to 75%. For the first time in history, most infants were not being born at home.

With the new mother recovering from delivery at one end of a hospital and the father isolated in the living room, parents often had little say about and even less awareness of what was being done to their newborn son. The infant was given to the mother already circumcised, and she assumed that was standard procedure - surgery performed in the best interest of her baby. Few questions were asked in a era where doctors were revered without reserve."

[groaning] I think we're still there.

"It is no coincidence that the circumcision of male infants became widespread during the period when nearly all U.S. births took place in hospitals. Whether the fact that doctors charge for the surgery influenced their belief in its benefits is always open to debate and may never be thoroughly discredited.

Today, circumcision is an elective procedure. A recent study concluded that uncircumcised infants and adult males run a slightly higher risk of urinary tract infections if the area under the foreskin is not cleaned regularly. An open wound -"

"An open wound from a serious infection can become a site for entry of a more harmful bug like the AIDS virus.

A 1998 report suggested that the spread of AIDS among heterosexuals in Africa might be due to the skin lesions beneath the foreskin, the result of careless hygiene. However, proper hygiene seems to place cut and uncut males in the same risk categories for all kinds of infections and sexually transmitted diseases."

"'Male Genital Rituals; Worldwide.' Today, the whole world knows about the horror of ritual female circumcision - cutting away the clitoris and most of the external genitals. The 'clitoridectomy,' as it's called, is performed on young girls in Africa, India, and Egypt in the belief that it lessens a wife's sexual arousal and diminishes her desire for extramarital affairs. Since it makes intercourse so painful, it also discourages virgins from having sex before marriage. In Egypt, about 80% of young girls are circumcised before puberty, usually by a village woman in unsterile conditions and without anesthesia. The medical complications from the surgery - shock, hemorrhage, infection, tetanus, blood poisoning - are a nightmare. 'Islam says circumcision for men is a tradition of the Prophet,' says Egyption cleric Sheik Taha Gad. 'Men are obligated to emulate the Prophet and be circumcised. For women it is a virtue.'

Less well-known are the rituals of male genital mutilation. These are seldom discussed in the media because traditionally, journalists have traditionally been males, and men can be squeamish when it comes to any kind of penile surgery. Some rituals are ancient, others are still performed, many leave the penis in unusual shapes. Some involve the testes."

Yeah, let's get into it; let's keep in mind that this is from 1996, these things might not still be going on, but here are some cultural practices of circumcision throughout time.

"'Dumbo Dick.'" Written as it is by Charles Panati. "Polynesians slit the foreskin lengthwise at puberty. This is a form of partial circumcision that leaves a large, fleshy flap of skin around the glans or head. Flaccid, a penis at its tip looks like a fan. Erect, it resembles -"

"- resembles  Dumbo the elephant - all ears.

'Nut Case.' Most of the civilized world knows that a man's sperm count is a factor in achieving conception. The average ejaculate contains about 500 million sperm, most of which die before they even get near the egg. Only a few have a chance to implant themselves into the egg. Only one makes it. Since more sperm means better odds, two balls are better than one. Except among some African peoples.

In parts of equatorial Africa, a father who wishes to have a large family has one of his testes removed; this is done in the belief that he will be more potent because the removed testicle is burned as an offering to the god of fertility.

'Strength in Sperm.' In ancient Greece, the most talented discus throwers, runners, and wrestlers would stretch the foreskin over the top of the glans penis and tightly tie it off. This prevented the athlete from having intercourse or masturbating since even a slight erection was excruciatingly painful. Athletes believed then and some believe today that retaining sperm increases physical prowess.

'Prick Piercing.' In imperial Rome, musicians and actors often pierce their foreskin to have golden rings, coins, and other charms inserted. Men boasted of the number of rings in their foreskin, which were supposed to enhance a woman's pleasure during intercourse. For centuries, the practice all but vanished until recently." 

"Recently" as in the 1990s.

"Penis piercing and vagina piercing have returned as a sexual trend among teenagers; they, too, report that it enhances the pleasure of intercourse.

'Silver Bells.' The Peguans of south Myanmar have for centuries surgically implanted tiny metal bells under their foreskins during dongs into ding-dongs. The advantages are two-fold: The tinkle of bells is a festive turn-on for women who also like the hard feel of the bells during intercourse. Bells also give the man's penis extra girth.

'Whisle Cock.'" 

Okay, I want to make sure you understand this.

"In several African societies, only the chief and his eldest son and sometimes the eldest sons of prominent tribal members, were permitted to father children. To make certain -"

"To make certain that no lesser males impregnated women, men had to traverse surgical cut made across the urethra at the juncture where the penis connects with the scrotum. A man could still get an erection and ejaculate, but his semen - like his urine - never shot out from the top of his penis but dribbled from the incision. Europeans who first saw a penis with a hole whittled at it's base dubbed it a 'whistle cock.' 

'Long Dong Silver - Eighteen Inches and Growing.' Porn star Long Dong Silver claimed to have an 18-inch member. Many men in one part of the world actually do. As noted, a boy's penis starts to grow at puberty and reaches adult size by age 17, except for boys of the Karamojong people of northeastern Uganda." My apologies if I'm mispronouncing anything, including English. 

"Starting at puberty, the boys - who go around naked - have weights tied to the ends of their penis. When a boy gets accustomed to the pain of a light weight, it is replaced by a heavier one. The weights are circular discs sculpted from stone. They have a hole at the center through which they're tied to the end of the penis. The combination of penis and disc resembles a clock's pendulum and swings as freely. It is common for a teenage boy to eventually carry around a 20-pound weight or more. 

By the age of 17, his penis can easily measure 18 inches. As impressive as that sounds, there's a catch; what the boy gains in length, he loses in girth, since the spongy erectile tissue that lines the shaft of the penis does not multiply but only stretches. Stretched penises can get annoyingly long; Men accidentally sit on them, most men take to tying their rope-like members into knots and double-knots. For Karamojong women, long, skinny penises are a turn-on.

'The Link Between Burned Foreskin and Perfume; Pre-Judaism.' In several parts of the world, men are still burning foreskins as tokens of good luck. The practice is ancient and predates circumcision by many centuries. Many people's believed that nothing good in life was free; a god or goddess had to be paid for the gift of a plentiful harvest or a bountiful offspring."

"A man's sexual prowess was viewed as a gift from the god of fertility. To maintain his virility, a man sacrificed a small part of his instrument of propagation - the smallest part possible. Among many clans, a bit of the excess skin at the top of the penis - not a full circumcision - seemed a fair payment. Cut off with a sharpened stone, a bit of foreskin became a burned offering.

To reduce the stench of burning flesh, incense like frankincense and myrrh were tossed into the flame producing 'perfume' - the origin of this appealing word which represents the multi-billion dollar fragrance industry is from Latin: per + fumus, meaning 'through smoke.' Perfume originated to mask the scent of burned offerings. Large quantities of perfume were doused on the burning innards and carcasses that were also offered to various gods.

Egyptian writings and drawings from 300 B.C.E. attest to the custom of offering foreskin with perfume. In most ancient rites, boys were circumcised not at birth but when they reached sexual maturity and were about to marry. The Arabic term for 'bridegroom' - chatan - supposedly derived from the ancient expression for 'husband is cut (circumcised). Burned foreskin was the fee a husband paid up front, so to speak, for the guarantee of fatherhood.

'Foreskins as Dowry.' Perhaps the worst case of genital mutilation occurred around the 11th century B.C.E. when 200 men were slaughtered for their foreskins. The gruesome tale comes from book one of Samuel. Samuel, last of the Hebrew judges, was the nation's leader before Saul, the first king, was anointed. Times were bad, religious worship was at a low, the economy in shambles, and the Philistine army threatened to destroy the nation of Israel. Saul, who was to commit suicide, rather than be captured by the Philistines, assigned David a formidable task.

'And Saul said, Thus shall you say to David, The kind desires no dowry, but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged for the king's enemies... Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew two hundred Philistine men, and brought their foreskins and gave them -'"

 "'- foreskins, and gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son-in-law.'"

That's it! Sexy Origions and Intimate Things. Thanks for letting me read it to you, because I really appreciate the fact that Charles Panati did so much research on this and he organized it, and I'm grateful that I get to share it with you. It's cool when your heroes are still alive and you can email them and ask them permission to read their book.

Thank you to everyone at patreon.com/sexplanations; it means a lot to me that you make this channel possible and you give me creative freedom to do things like read Charles Panati's book. If you're seeking more Sexplanations, you can also check out the podcast at "Sexplanations Podcast" on all the places including YouTube. And it also has a patreon page: patreon.com/sexplanationspodcast.

[outro, bloopers/extras reel]

Holy prepuce, Latin, pre-puh [noises], and the ninth- [noises], come to me Charles Panati and give me your clarity of voice. Don't pass out, don't pass out. Don't pass out, a-don't pass out. Asked in an era when doctors were revered without [burps] excuse me.

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