Circumcision Debate Comes to a Head.
One of California’s most controversial ballot initiatives — banning circumcision — has taken a turn for the racist, thanks to the mainstream debut of “Foreskin Man.”
A ripped-and-caped advocate against the (so-called) defilement of Jewish newborns, the unmistakably Arayan-featured superpower Foreskin Man battles the black-bearded, black-hatted “Monster Mohel,” a sinister snipper who — bloody scissors in hand — sets after helpless male babies in the name of religion.
Depicted in a comic book and online video clips, until late last week, “Foreskin Man’s” shaft-saving efforts had been relatively under-the-radar.
On Thursday, however, a San Francisco Chronicle column thrust the comic and its creators into the media spotlight.
“Nothing excites Monster Mohel more than cutting into the penile flesh of an eight-day-old infant boy,” the comic at one point reveals, snipped infants’ tears dripping from its panel.
The scene is a bris, the traditional Jewish ceremony in which a newborn boy’s foreskin is removed by a professional snipper (called a mohel) in the presence of several dozen fawning friends and relations.
Really, there’s nothing evil about it: The baby cries, the relations cry, pastries are served.
Created by Matthew Hess, president of San Diego-based MGM Bill (Male Genital Mutilation) and a central figure in California’s anti-circumcision campaign, “Foreskin Man” has garnered Facebook fans and Twitter followers — and with all its recent publicity, more on the way.
Many of these people don’t seem to be joking.
Of course, there are also detractors. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for its part, issued a statement Friday calling the comic “an advocacy campaign taken to a new low.”
And Abby Michelson Porth, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), said that while the imagery in “Foreskin Man” is offensive, it’s also completely unoriginal, “reminiscent of millenia-old stereotypes that have been used to persecute and oppress Jews.”
Hess, however, disagrees. “We’re not trying to be anti-Semitic,” he explained to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re trying to be pro-human rights.”
Though the procedure’s popularity has been on the decline — particularly since the early 2000s — circumcision is still very common in American hospitals; 40 to 50 percent of all male infants born in the U.S. are circumcised, according to
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And hardly a majority of those infants are Jewish: Jews make up only about 2.2 percent of the U.S. population.
Medical groups tend to be neutral on the subject of snipping, saying it’s a choice for new parents to make with their pediatricians.
The consensus is that the practice isn’t harmful and only briefly uncomfortable; not enough scientific evidence, though, exists to prove it should be mandatory.
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