Circumcision during another surgical procedure

@Nathan_S Is your father circumcised?

Do you think your little brother would have been circumcised as well if they could do it opportunistically during another surgery?

@Pecan_nutjob

My dad is uncut. Circumcision is not common in our place.

I dont know if my brother would have had same situation. But chances are more if he had to undergo an operation in same area.

@Nathan_S It's then very interesting that your parents chose to have you cut! Maybe it was your mother's idea!

During my primary school time a had a friend who got circumcised during his appendectomy.

Due to my interest we talked little about it back then.

What i remember is he was 5 years old, so before primary school, when it happened.

He didn't know it would happened to him, he woke up with a bandage around his penis.

Also he stated when the bandage came of he saw for the first time his glans.

So looking now back i would assume he had a phimosis and the fact he lived with his grandparents they just agreed what ever the surgeon suggests.

@lexxus My cousin, who was circumcised age 6 maybe 7 due to phimosis, also did not quite understand what he saw when the bandages were removed. First time I guess he had seen his glans beyond the tip.

Before 14 yo in USA the ok of your parents it enough for the doctor.

You have anything to say the law it like that.

I got circumcision at 11 and the doctor never asked me my opinion.

So if your parents whant you circumcised you will be circumcised.

If there is a medical reason, then I could see why doing it this way (during another surgery) might be something parents consider. However I still think talking about it should be part of it prior to the surgery, especially after a certain age and waking up after surgery and then discovering that something else was done, really shouldn't be the way to go about this subject.

@Anki The thing is, medical reasons for circumcision are a tricky subject. Except in the very particular case of paraphimosis, which is an emergency, circumcision for medical reasons is preventive action: one has a child circumcised for phimosis to prevent possible (but not certain) future issues such as balanitis or difficulties for maintaining erection (and such difficulties affect adult sex life, so they are pretty distant). Most boys who are circumcised for medical reasons have never had any trouble there, and it is actually possible that many would never experience difficulties. So maybe this should be discussed with them instead of having them circumcised by surprise, don't you think ?

@Anki: A lot of parents have their sons circumcised because they do not want / are not able to talk with their kids about sex or sexual themes as cleanliness of their unmentionable parts. The same parents are against sexual education in schools.

So maybe this should be discussed with them instead of having them circumcised by surprise, don't you think ?

That's exactly what I said ...

I still find it very surprising that talking about things like that prior to a surgery or in general is such a big deal. And yes, it should only be done if there is no other way when it comes to avoiding lasting medical problems and not just because the doctor at that moment thinks it would be an "easy" fix. Because you hear all the time, that problems in this area aren't present a few years later ... at least that's what I got from posts here and on other sites.

@Anki Very clearly, the idea is to take the kid by surprise so that he does not object.

I also suspect that physicians' insistence that phimosis is settled by age 6, including by surgery, is partially motivated by kids that age being malleable. An older child would require explanations, maybe object to what would be done. As I said, my cousin discovered what had been done to his penis AFTER surgery.

surprise so that he does not object.

Yes - I have no memory at all of it being done. With my tonsils, I have a little memory; but no memory of getting an enema beforehand for tonsil surgery (maybe I didn't?).

The thing with surprise circumcisions, is that much will depend on the country where they are performed.

This because in some countries, circumcision is part of the social construct how people see the ideal male. It is considered the normal and expected thing to do, even if there is no medical reason. So, youngsters who for some reason have fallen through the cracks, end up having physicians who cannot separate the medical from the socially expected and will do their utmost to propose circumcising, even if not needed.

This was apparently very much the case in the immediate years after WWII, when many doctors had been in the military where circumcision was a requirement and thought to be absolutely necessary to maintaining hygiene in the field. They brought these beliefs with them into civilian life and further propagated the notion of conforming to expected standards.

There are quite a few posts on this thread that mention circumcisions done to treat phimosis, and some of those even give an age in childhood or mention being a child. This puzzles me because clinically phimosis cannot be diagnosed until around age 17. From birth through childhood the prepuce is adhered to the glans. Essentially, they are one in the same organ. Forcing the foreskin to retract prior to the owner doing it on their own is considered an injury resulting in an open wound because it requires tearing apart the membrane between the glans and the foreskin. This adhesion dissolves and releases naturally, usually around the boy becomes pubescent, although it can take longer. Almost 100% of boys will be able to retract their foreskin on their own by age 17. Otherwise, the doctor can diagnose phimosis. So how are so many boys aged 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, and so on, being diagnosed and cut?

The most likely answer to this question is that doctors and parents don’t know that forced retraction causes injuries and that the foreskin will release on its own at the right time. Doctors and nurses are not taught the anatomy and function of the foreskin in medical or nursing school, only how to amputate it. The doctors and fathers themselves were cut as infants or children, so they never experienced how foreskin works. Parents were told that they were supposed to forcibly retract their sons to clean under the foreskin, when in actuality this was extremely painful for the boy, caused open wounds that exposed the boy to possible infections, and created fibrotic scar tissue in the prepuce making it harder to retract. Today there are various grassroots efforts and educational campaigns afoot to teach doctors, nurses, and parents the proper way to wash an intact boy and never forcibly retract their foreskin.

Another common theme in this thread is circumcision as the standard treatment for phimosis (stretching is mentioned, though). This has me wondering why it hasn’t been more common to treat phimosis with preputioplasty which relieves the constrictions in phimosed prepuce without amputating any foreskin? It is a minimally invasive procedure that can normally be done in a clinic or doctor’s office with local anesthetic.

Read more about preputioplasty on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preputioplasty

My guess is that only a few doctors are trained on the procedure or recognize it as a viable alternative. Certainly it doesn’t have the name recognition in popular culture that circumcision has.

I wonder how many boys and men given the option would choose this procedure over radical amputation of their foreskins.

I read about a gentleman who got circumcised during a vasectomy. His wife and the doctor told him at the time "lets go ahead and do a circumcision." He said he was more of a submissive type and decided not to fight the doctor or his wife. Apparently the wife was friends with the doctor and wanted her man cut.

I read about a gentleman who got circumcised during a vasectomy. His wife and the doctor told him at the time "lets go ahead and do a circumcision." He said he was more of a submissive type and decided not to fight the doctor or his wife. Apparently the wife was friends with the doctor and wanted her man cut.

Unlike the boys, the man knew what awaited him and agreed to it. However, he was treated like a child, and his wife was like a mother who knew better what the boy needed. However, vectotomy and circumcision, which are decided by the wife, are symbolic castration of the man.

They told my friend that the clinic would solve his foreskin problem but they didn't specify what they would do.

They told him half the truth. such a euphemism that they will solve the problem. It's better than saying nothing, but it's still unfair. Maybe the parents and doctors think they are sparing the boy from stress. But I think a 13-year-old should be informed.

They told him half the truth. such a euphemism that they will solve the problem.

Yeah. A penectomy would have solved the problem as well.

Being so sneaky sneaky about performing an undisclosed circumcision to a patient, even of that age, must mean that whomever gave permission, felt there must have been something 'unsavory' about the circumcision in not telling beforehand.

It was certainly not a very good lesson in honesty, something which parents usually insist upon from their kids, but will hypocritically let slide when it suits themselves. Talk about ethics.

It was certainly not a very good lesson in honesty, something which parents usually insist upon from their kids, but will hypocritically let slide when it suits themselves.

A boy treated this way will have a hard time trusting his parents in the future.

@FrankieT It's been a long while, but I believe I too was told that the hospital would solve my foreskin problem but not what would be done exactly!

Then in the future when you tell them theyre going for a trip to the beach, theyre actually going to a retirement home....

They told him half the truth. such a euphemism that they will solve the problem. It's better than saying nothing, but it's still unfair. Maybe the parents and doctors think they are sparing the boy from stress. But I think a 13-year-old should be informed.

I think that waking up from a tonsillectomy to find someone has secretly taken a scalpel to your penis might be the cause of some quite severe, ongoing stress. And if circumcision is such a fantastic, win/win operation, how strange that it would ever have to be done by deception or stealth.

And if circumcision is such a fantastic, win/win operation, how strange that it would ever have to be done by deception or stealth.

Exactly.

That is one of the reasons why there has been proposed legislation in some Nordic countries to only allow circumcision for strictly medical reasons only. Not even for religious exceptions. Not passed, but proposed.

Exactly.

That is one of the reasons why there has been proposed legislation in some Nordic countries to only allow circumcision for strictly medical reasons only. Not even for religious exceptions. Not passed, but proposed.

A possible downside to such legislation (if passed) would be overzealous parents getting kids circumcised in spite of the law by unlicensed physicians.

@Rigel Or in poorer countries with lesser standards of hygiene and anesthesia.

@agracier has a point. I've read the forums here, confronted my own personal history, and there indeed seems to be a pattern of avoiding requesting the consent of boys before circumcising them. This is of course the case of infant circumcision, but also in older boys… The urgent insistence on circumcising boys for phimosis at most at age 6-7 seems motivated by the fact that at that age, children won't ask too many questions and won't rebel. Or the vague description of surgery as "fixing the wee-wee" without being told how exactly. Or the circumcisions during other surgeries without telling the boy.

This puts me ill at ease.

A possible downside to such legislation (if passed) would be overzealous parents getting kids circumcised in spite of the law by unlicensed physicians.

Of course that would happen.

However, with school exams or during other medical circumstances, if it came to light that illegal circumcisions had taken place, then law enforcement comes into play with all the possible sanctions and punishments.

This is the same as happens with FGM of daughters living in the West, being taken to another country for the mutilation to be performed. Obviously it happens, but when found out, there is hell to pay.

Many years ago I had a vasectomy and, had it been possible to do so, I would have wanted to be circumcised at the same time. Unfortunately the option never arose.

I found a story from an issue of the Acorn newsletter from 1997, from a guy who had his tonsils removed when he was 7, and realized years later that he had almost been circumcised while he was under.

The first time I can recall any real sexual pleasure was when I was aged seven and in hospital waiting to have my tonsils removed. As I lay on my back in bed, along came a doctor who pulled the curtain round and proceeded to pull down the bed covering and my pyjama bottoms. He then carried out a very thorough and prolonged examination of my penis and balls. I remember well how he repeatedly pulled my foreskin right back and then as far forward as he could.

A few years later, he met someone who had been circumcised, and a few other boys from his school were cut:

It took several club meetings to work out how Keith’s cock had got like that. Later this was confirmed, as several other boys disappeared for a few days to have a ‘minor operation’. It didn’t take me long to work out that that doctor had probably been considering circumcising me.

There are a few other stories in the newsletter from guys who were cut while under for tonsilectomy:

I became a roundhead at about 7-8 years old, when I had my tonsils and adenoids removed and found that my most treasured possession had been “cut”. Neither at the time nor in the 40 years since have my parents offered any explanation. My son is a cavalier (naturally), and very proud to be one: he does not like roundheads!

Here is a link to the entire newsletter if anyone is interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VUESoz62YLc7gdT4mVOsTjErGHuRyznG/view