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Penile subincision is a form of body modification consisting of a urethrotomy, in which the underside of the penis is incised and the urethra slit open lengthwise, from the urethral opening (meatus) toward the base. The slit can be of varying lengths.

Subincision is traditionally performed around the world, notably in Africa, South America and the Polynesian and Melanesian cultures of the Pacific, often as a coming of age ritual. The practice has been taken up in the western world in recent years for the purpose of sexual pleasure or aesthetics.

Disadvantages include the risk of surgery, which is often self-performed, and increased susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The ability to impregnate (specifically, getting sperm into the vagina) may also be decreased.

Subincisions can greatly affect urination and often require the subincised male to sit while urinating. The scrotum can be pulled up against the open urethra to quasi-complete the tube and allow "normal" urination, while a few subincised men carry a tube with them to aim with.

Contents

Cultural traditions

Subincision (like circumcision) is widespreadcitation needed in the traditional cultures of Indigenous Australians, and is well documentedcitation needed among the peoples of the central desert such as the Arrernte and Luritja. The Arrernte word for subincision is arilta, and occurs as a rite of passage ritual for adolescent boys.citation needed It was gifted to the Arrernte by Mangar-kunjer-kujaIt, a lizard-man spirit being from the Dreamtime. A subincised penis is thought to resemble a vulva, and the bleeding is likened to menstruation.1

This type of modification of the penis was also traditionally performed by the Lardil people of Mornington Island, Queensland. The young men who chose to endure this custom were the only ones to learn a complex ceremonial language, Damin. In later ceremonies, repeated throughout adult life, the subincised penis would be used as a site for ritual bloodletting. According to Ken Hale, who studied Damin, no ritual initiations have been carried out in the Gulf of Carpentaria for half a century, and hence the language has also died out.2

Indigenous cultures of the Amazon Basin also practise subincision, as do Samburu herdboys of Kenya, who are said to perform subinicisions on themselves (or sometimes their peers) at age seven to ten. In Samoa, subincision is traditionally a coming-of-age ritual. In Hawaii, subincision of the foreskin is reported to have been performed at age six or seven.

Related modifications

  • Splitting the urethra only to the base of the glans is called meatotomy.
  • Some people split the top of the penis as well, to achieve genital bisection.
  • Splitting the glans, but not the shaft, is known as headsplitting.
  • Splitting of the top of the penis only is known as superincision.

External links

See also

References

  1. ^ Myerhoff 1982: 122
  2. ^ Ken Hale. "Damin". Retrieved on 2008-08-16.

General

  • Roheim, G´esa (1949) The Symbolism of Subincision. The American Iago 6:321–328.
  • Bettelheim, Bruno (1962) Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier.

Polynesia

  • Firth, Raymond, (1963) We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia. Boston: Beacon.
  • Martin, John (1981) Tonga Islands: William Mariner’s Account. Tonga: Vava’u Press.
  • Diamond, M. (1990) Selected Cross-Generational Sexual Behavior in Traditional Hawai’i: A Sexological Ethnography, in Feierman, J. R. (Ed.) Pedophilia: Biosocial Dimensions. New York: Springer-Verlag, p422-43

Melanesia

  • Kempf, Wolfgang (2002) The Politics of Incorporation: Masculinity, Spatiality and Modernity among the Ngaing of Papua New Guinea. Oceania 73(1):56–78.
  • Hogbin, Ian (1970) The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland

Australia

  • Cawte JE, Djagamara N, and Barrett MG (1966) The meaning of subincision of the urethra to aboriginal Australians. Br. J Med. Psychol. 39: 245-253.
  • Morrison J. (1967). The origins of the practices of circumcision and subincision among the Australian Aborigines. Medical Journal of Australia, January 21, p. 125-7.
  • Montagu, Ashley (1974) Coming into Being among the Australian Aborigines: The Procreative Beliefs of the Australian Aborigines. 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  • Pounder, Derrick, J. (1983) Ritual Mutilation: Subincision of the Penis among Australian Aborigines. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 4(3):227–229.
  • Abley, Mark. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.

Africa

  • Margetts, E. L. (1960) Sub-incision of the urethra in the Samburu of Kenya, East Afr Med J 37,2:105-8
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