Last Words: Back Alley Circumcision With Jono Duffy

Full disclosure: I have foreskin, my boyfriend doesn’t, and for some weird reason neither does my father. I know that’s a lot of foreskin talk for an opening sentence but before I put my two cents in, I feel it’s important to know that a variety of dicks have been a part of my life.

I come from Australia, a country where non-religious circumcision fell out of favour in the 70s; so in, theory if you line up a group of naked atheist men in a room you can sort of age them (like the rings on a tree).

“Let’s flash forward to ‘post circumcision-ban Iceland.’”

The only thing I really have to say about this whole circumcision ban is that banning things doesn’t always work. Just look at how easy it is to get bad cocaine in Iceland. I’m not advocating the used of illicit drugs but if you ask anyone in this country how easy it is to get cocaine they will tell you it’s ‘super easy,’ but it’s bad. Now let’s flash forward to ‘post circumcision-ban Iceland.’

When you ban something it rarely goes away. Remember prohibition? Instead, people find new, interesting and often unsafe ways of getting it. The future could very well involve a foreskin chopping black market. Men in trench coats with rusty knives waiting on street corners to perform the procedure you need in a back alley, on a table that was probably used to harvest a kidney just an hour before. Is that what we want? Well is it?

I don’t have the answers, but I think we should take the time to appreciate the myriad of penises around. Some wear turtlenecks, some wear hoodies but if you give them enough attention, most of them will spit on you then fall asleep.

Read more Last Words here.