I have written about this on a few occasions before.
I was circumcised, perhaps a couple of days after my birth, by the midwife who delivered me. I was born at a time when home births were considered to be the norm and when the majority of boys were circumcised (evidence - changing rooms in school gyms/swimming pools etc). It was a service offered by midwives, no doubt for a small financial consideration.
There was never any clinical consideration - it was the fashion.
It was not the fashion in continental Europe, however. My belief is that this was because English was not spoken in France, Germany, Spain, Holland ... or wherever, and this protected people in those countries from fashions being imported from the USA where circumcision was (and possibly still is) commonplace.
The reason for this was the advocacy - in the 19th century - for any practice which would reduce an individual's interest in sexual activity. And its High Priest was a physician: Dr John Harvey Kellogg. Kellogg also advocated placing a drop of phenol on the clitoris of baby girls. Kellogg believed that sexual activity used up vital reserves of energy and should be restricted to reproduction activity only. In order to ensure that such energy could not be stored in the body, he invented a breakfast food which, he believed, was of little nutritional value and would not provide energy which could be used for sexual activity: the corn flake.
I have no idea whether or not the removal of a highly innervated fold of skin from my infant penis has had any affect on my enjoyment of sex during my life but I did become very angry when I realised that I had been mutilated merely because it was the custom of the day. I did not direct my anger at my mother, she was only conforming to the prevailing norm. Since it had been practised by a qualified nurse, she would have believed it was for the "best".
My experience is not quite that of the unfortunate boys in the Philippines, but in its way was just as ritualistic and socially determined. I don't think it has caused me to experience PTSD but it has left me wondering ...
If I could ever get a free trip in a Tardis, I know one of the places that I would want to visit.
