RITES OF INITIATION: CIRCUMCISION
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Circumcision” is the second of the three parts of “Rites of Initiation”, the fourth section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.

Many reasons have been advanced for circumcision. The removal of the foreskin is supposed to result in a more hygienic penis, as smegma, a whitish secretion that collects under the foreskin, product of small glands, and other matter may accumulate in its fold, causing inflammation and even cancer. Then, too, circumcision is supposed to make masturbation more difficult and even prevent it. Finally, the uncovered skin of the glans becomes rougher and coarser and thus less sensitive; the result is supposed to be that the male will need a longer time to reach orgasm and will give his female partner more pleasure.

Nicholas Carter in his book Routine Circumcision, the Tragic Myth^[1] writes that none of these arguments can stand exam-ination. A boy should better be taught how to keep this part of his body clean. As to prevention of masturbation, there is no reason to do this; besides, circumcised boys are no less addicted to this activity than the uncircumcised. The prolongation of intercourse can be acquired more effectively by learning its techniques.

Sutor was convinced that the foreskin, compressing the glans, “interfered with the free development of the young boy’s organ” so that circumcision would help the penis grow.^[2] Westermarck suggested that the operation was performed to make the penis more attractive.^[3] The operation makes the boy a man and gives him the appearance of sexual maturity.^[4] It is, of course, a matter of personal taste whether a circumcised penis is more attractive than an uncircumcised one. Ellis is certainly wrong when he calls “insistence on the naked sexual organs as objects of attraction (…) comparatively rare, and confined to peoples in a low state of culture.^[5] Homophiles in the civilised parts of the world, too, consider the appearance of a man’s penis an important factor in evaluating his beauty.

In some cultures circumcision is not an obligation but a matter of free choice, so that some boys are circumcised and others still possess their foreskins. It is a fact that girls tend to prefer the circumcised. Explorers “commented on how rapidly circumcision is spreading among the African Asande because the women prefer it. Circumcision is a recent introduction; it is, however, tending to become general in the Congo and is spreading in the Sudan…it has no religious significance, but is insisted upon by the women, who like it. A thirteen-year-old African Sebeyi boy told Bryk that everybody wants to be circumcised because it is beautiful and because the women reject uncircumcised men as sex partners.^[6] In his study of the blacks living on the Ubangui in Central Africa, Vergiat describes how uncircumcised boys are always teased by the ganzas, the circumcised ones, who call them cowards and idiots. Often a boy is driven to tears if his father will not permit the operation.^[7]

74  While the Congo was still a colony, the Belgian authorities tried to ban circumcision among the Asande because for a few weeks after the operation the boys were incapable of working; violators were punished by a severe beating. On the request of an ethnologist, one local commander asked for three circumcision volunteers so that the explorer could take photographs. Although they realized that the operation on their fully mature and well-used penises would be extremely painful, candidates competed with one another to be one of the lucky three.^[8]

Sometimes, in some cultures, boys circumcise themselves, or friends do it to each other.^[9] 

The operation is performed in various ways. “The most rudimentary form of male circumcision is a simple gash of the prepuce (…) In Tonga the operation is performed by the simple process of tearing the prepuce with the hand (…) Among the Somali, Masai, Wajagga, and a few of the Kikuyu, a similar cut is made on the upper part of the glans, and the resulting flaps of flesh allowed to hang down.^[10]

On Serang in Indonesia it is done “without any festivity and only at the urgent request of the girl to whom the young man is betrothed. It is believed that it will increase the pleasure for both of them during intercourse. The operation is performed when the first pubic hair appears. An old man, the so-called Tukaano, pulls the foreskin forward, inserts a piece of wood in the aperture, puts a sharp knife upon it and gives it a blow with a second piece of wood, so that the split skin hangs down on both sides. Immediately afterwards the boy hurries away from the place of circumcision, which is outside the village, goes to his girl and introduces his wounded member into her vulva. He and his girl stay in this position for two days so that the wound may heal. If it is difficult to insert the penis because the foreskin has been cut too deeply, the girl asks one of her friends whose vulva has already been widened through childbirth to take her place until the bleeding has stopped.^[11]

Most often the foreskin is removed completely. Merker tells of the Masai Negroes, “Some weeks before this happens you see boys carrying a lot of ornaments, dancing, singing in their own corrals or in their neighbours’ and so expressing great joy that they will soon attain the privileged rank of warrior.” On the day of the operation “all the boys to be circumcised come before sunrise to a place near the corral which has been chosen by the three or four men required to perform the circumcisions. At the same time the warriors make their appearance. Because the operation is so painful it is performed during the coolest part of the day. The boys sprinkle each other with cold water to lessen the sensitivity of the flesh.” Stoll adds, “The operation is performed by professionals, old men who roll back the foreskin and cut it in a circle at its base below the glans. They then split it downwards so that the two pieces of skin hang down in their length on both sides. Half of this is removed with a knife, the rest being left to shrink over the next two weeks as it heals to form a uvula-like appendage. Boys who have not yet been circumcised often want to appear as if they had, out of vanity. Thus they rub into their glans the stinging juice of the spurge plant; the swollen tip prevents the foreskin from returning to its usual position and the boys walk around with their glans’ uncovered imitating their circumcised comrades.^[12]

With the Aranda tribe in Australia the witch doctor removes the entire foreskin with a stone knife.^[13]

André Droogers, in his doctoral thesis^[14] gave a detailed description of the very complicated rites of initiation as they are still performed by the Kisangani of Zaïre. Prior to the operation the boys dance on the roofs of their homes so that they can be seen by everybody. They make thrusting motions with their hips in imitation of intercourse. As they do this they take off their loincloths to show the swinging of their penises. Each boy now declares, through gestures, whether he wishes to be circumcised with a single cut or whether he has chosen the much more painful three-stage operation (which brings him general admiration). The circumcision itself is performed on the river bank, accompanied by a roll of drums to drown out any cries of terror and anguish. Until 1970 a simple kitchen knife was used; now it is done with a surgeon’s scalpel. The witch doctor examines the length of the foreskin, pulls it forward and, quick as lightning, cuts the part extending beyond the glans. If the boy, to prove his courage, begs to receive the three-stage circumcision, an assistant takes the remaining layer of skin which is turned toward the glans, tears it lengthwise, while the witch doctor cuts the pieces off on the right and on the left. If the boy shows no signs of pain or fear the men surrounding him shout loudly with joy and beat the river’s surface with sticks. Most of the boys have their wounds dressed on the spot; only two remain unbandaged and have to walk naked through the village with their bleeding penises visible for all to see. After this the wounds are nursed in a camp outside the village. The boys are much more afraid of this ‘cure’ than of the circumcision itself, for now various caustic substances are rubbed into their wounds – red pepper, and nowadays also the medications of our civilisation: tincture of iodine, Mercurochrome, potassium permanganate and pure alcohol. Many a courageous knight of the three-stage operation, who stood his circumcision unblinkingly, is now reduced to screams, so terrible is this torture. The initiated sleeps face-downwards on a wooden bed with a hole in its centre through which the penis hangs down. Throughout their whole stay in this camp the boys are tormented by the men in various ways in order to harden them. They are also taught songs celebrating intercourse with ‘a nice hairy cunt’ or with lines like ‘Balls and cock are in violent motion. Oh, cunt! Oh cock!’ Usually two weeks suffice for recovery. Immediately afterwards the boy, under the guidance of his godfather, has to copulate with a woman he is not destined to marry. As soon as he has accomplished this it is announced publicly.^[15] Among the Kikuyu in western Africa, “the newly circumcised boys, in groups of fifteen or twenty, attack and rape old women and finally kill them.^[16]

The most horrible way of circumcising a boy is practiced by the Yesidi tribe in Yemen. “The patient (…) is placed upon a raised ground holding in right hand a spear, whose heel rests upon his foot and whose point shows every tremour of the nerves. The tribe stands about him to pass judgement on his fortitude.^[17] The operation is performed when the boy is 15 to 20 years old, in the presence of his bride, who may repudiate him if he screams or weeps.^[18] A barber with a razor-sharp dagger approaches the victim, who is stripped naked. “First he makes a shallow cut, severing only the skin across the belly immediately below the navel, and similar incisions down each groin; then he tears off the epidermis from the incisions downwards and flays the testicles and the penis, ending with amputation of the foreskin. Meanwhile the spear must not tremble and in some clans the lad holds a dagger over the back of the stooping barber, crying, ‘Cut and fear not!’ When the ordeal is over, he exclaims, ‘Allaha Akbar!’ and attempts to walk towards the tents, soon falling for pain and nervous exhaustion, but the more steps he takes the more applause he gains. He is dieted with camel’s milk, the wound is treated with salt and turmeric, and the chances in his favour are about ten to one. No body pile or pecten ever grows upon the excoriated part which preserves through life a livid ashen hue.^[19] 

The Poro girls of Liberia are “circumcised” too: their clitorises and labia minora are removed, cooked and given to the boys to eat; similarly, the foreskins of the boys are cooked and eaten by the girls.^[20] The Oveherero, a black warrior tribe in Africa, used to amputate the genitals of conquered enemies, cook them and give them to the circumcised boys as body-building food.^[21]

Nearly everywhere, those manhood rites which include circumcision are concluded with a celebration in which everyone has unrestrained public intercourse; the newly-circumcised boys receive preferred attention from the women. ^[22]

Continue to Rites of Initiation in Western Society

^[1] Trainor, D., Molestors Use Denial to Justify Actions. Psychiatric News 11, 16: 6-7, 1979,  [Author’s reference]

^[2] Sutor, J. (Docteur Jacobus X.), The Erogenous Zones of the World, by a French Army Surgeon. New York: Book Awards, 1964, 247. likewise,  Laroche, G., La puberté. Paris: Masson, 1938, 46. [Author’s reference]

^[3] Ellis 1914, IV-159 [Author’s reference, not identifiable in his bibliography]

^[4] Ashley Montagu, M. F., Ritual Mutilation Among Primitive Peoples. Ciba Symposia 8, 7: 421-436, 1946, 425. [Author’s reference]

^[5] 1914, IV 158 [Author’s reference, not identifiable in his bibliography]

^[6] Bettelheim, B., Symbolic Wounds–Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier, 1962, 99. Bryk, F., Neger-Eros. Berlin: Marcus & Weber, 1928. 60. [Author’s reference]

^[7] Vergiat, A. M., Les rites secrets des primitifs de l’Oubangui. Paris: Payot, 1951, 68. [Author’s reference]

^[8] Czekanowski, quoted byBryk, F., Die Beschneidung bei Mann und Weib. Neubrandenburg: Feller, 1931, 50. [Author’s reference]

^[9] Gervais, P., C’est arrivé dans la Sierra Leone. Paris: Albin Michel, 1957, 118 [Author’s reference]

^[10] Loeb, E. M., The Blood Sacrifice Complex. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1974,  13. Ashley Montagu, M. F., Ritual Mutilation Among Primitive Peoples. Ciba Symposia 8, 7: 421-436, 1946, 427. [Author’s reference]

^[11] Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, 509. [Author’s reference]

^[12] Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, 510-511. [Author’s reference]

^[13] Treffz, H. A. W., Homosexualität in Indonesien und Ozeanien. Him 7: 18-19, 1972, [Author’s reference]

^[14] Droogers, A., De gevaarlijke reis-Jongensinitiatie bij de Wagena van Kisangani (Zaïre) , Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 1974 [Author’s reference]

^[15] Droogers, A., De gevaarlijke reis-Jongensinitiatie bij de Wagena van Kisangani (Zaïre). Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 1974, 91-92, 114-115, 117-118, 149, 152, 154, 165, 170, 175, 211. [Author’s reference]

^[16] Bettelheim, B., Symbolic Wounds–Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier, 1962, 93. [Author’s reference]

^[17] Burton, R. F., Terminal Essay Upon the History of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. London: Burton Club, 1886, XII-91. Ashley Montagu, M. F., Ritual Mutilation Among Primitive Peoples. Ciba Symposia 8, 7: 421-436, 1946, 429. [Author’s reference]

^[18] Bryk, F., Die Beschneidung bei Mann und Weib. Neubrandenburg: Feller, 1931, 114. [Author’s reference]

^[19] Burton, R. F., Terminal Essay Upon the History of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. London: Burton Club, 1886, XII-91 [Author’s reference]

^[20] Bettelheim, B., Symbolic Wounds–Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier, 1962, 94. [Author’s reference]

^[21] Jensen, A. E., Beschneidung und Reifezeremonien bei Naturvölkern. Frankfurt am Main: Strecker & Schröder. 1933, 53. [Author’s reference]

^[22] Jensen, A. E., Beschneidung und Reifezeremonien bei Naturvölkern. Frankfurt am Main: Strecker & Schröder. 1933, 27. [Author’s reference]