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Jimmy Kimmel Gives a Sly Thumbs-Down to Circumcision

jimmy kimmelIn recent days, celebrity news has been aflutter with talk that Jimmy Kimmel “had surgery on his penis … twice!”  Though we don’t know exactly when, it appears that as an adult Kimmel underwent two “horrible” operations to reopen his urethra when “it just kind of closed up on its own.”

What nobody’s saying is that Jimmy almost certainly experienced not two but three horrible penis surgeries. And the first one – his circumcision – was responsible for the other two.

Meatal stenosis, the narrowing of the penis’s opening, is one of the most common complications of circumcision. It can occur years or even decades later, because cutting off the foreskin disrupts the normal blood flow in the penis, causing it to atrophy and scar over time.Do we think that a well-informed guy like Kimmel didn’t do some research on what caused his ailment? If you Google “meatal stenosis,” you’ll see source after source confirming that the condition virtually never occurs in intact (i.e., “uncircumcised”) guys.

So I think Kimmel does know, and I think he’s sent us a sly thumbs-down message about circumcision. Check out the coincidental March 15 release of his special Obama edition of “Lie Witness News,” in which, after she supposedly fails to spot the lie about “the President’s newborn son Marcus,” a pretty young woman boldly tells parents: ”You don’t have to circumcise if you don’t want to.”

You go, girl! And, Jimmy, thanks for giving us a heads-up!

Georganne Chapin

Author

18 Comments

  • Mama24-7

    March 25, 2015 1:13 pm

    I wonder if he’s come across foreskin restoration. Hopefully yes, so he won’t have a need for any further surgeries.

    • James

      March 25, 2015 3:04 pm

      If he watches the late night TV competition he probably knows about it, Jimmy Fallon referenced the Joy of Uncircumcising on his show last fall.

  • Mary Minshall

    March 25, 2015 3:01 pm

    I looked up Jimmy Kimmel in Wikipedia and found out that he is not Jewish, but, as the encyclopedia states, “the son of Joan (née Lacono), a homemaker, and James Kimmel, an IBM executive. He is, and was raised, Catholic, and as a child served as an altar boy. Kimmel’s mother is of Italian ancestry; two of his paternal great-great-grandparents, Theresa and Christian Kimmel, were German immigrants.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Kimmel

    I don’t know where this confusion originated, but I believe it may have come from a previous relationship Kimmel had with Sarah Silverman, who is Jewish.

    • Intact America

      March 26, 2015 12:36 am

      Thank you for the correction about Kimmel’s religious background. The mistake in the original post has been deleted.

  • TLCTugger

    March 25, 2015 5:34 pm

    Kimmel’s family is Italian and Catholic, not Jewish.

    • Intact America

      March 26, 2015 12:35 am

      Thank you for the correction about Kimmel’s religious background. The mistake in the original post has been deleted.

  • djbiviano

    March 26, 2015 12:05 pm

    Great post, Georganne! Kimmel does s
    eem to be running a sly campaign of awareness. It strikes me that the gullibility of the respondents reflects the gullibility of those who support cutting!

  • Richard Davis

    March 26, 2015 4:15 pm

    He could be a more more blatant if he’s opposed to circumcision.

    • Howard.

      March 27, 2015 11:12 am

      I agree – tell it like it is ! The problem with being so subtle is that message will go right over a lot of heads.

  • Gianluca

    April 2, 2015 1:07 pm

    I wonder how large is the incidence of meatal stenosis in the lifetime of a male circumcised at birth. The wikipedia article states that it is anywhere between 0 and 11%:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatal_stenosis

    Another article in MedlinePlus states that it is usually not noticed in boys until toilet training:

    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001599.htm

    It’s sad that parents are never fully informed about all risks and downsides of circumcision when handed over the consent form in hospitals.

  • Dr Doug Campbell

    May 21, 2015 1:39 am

    This is so disappointing. Whilst it is not clear why he had a circumcision, we know that most adult circumcisions are due to phimosis. Stretching of the foreskin using scientifically based tissue expansion is always preferable to extreme and permanent surgery. Phimosis can be cured at home with gentle foreskin stretching.

  • Chris Weaver (@crweaver987)

    May 28, 2015 8:14 am

    On a rare occasion when this urethra problem comes up, I’m always tempted to think of it as Hank Hill’s disease, referring to the King of the Hill’s lead character’s affliction which prevented him and Peggy from having more than just the one child, namely Bobby.

  • oogenhand

    July 31, 2015 9:00 am

    Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
    Meatal stenosis is the side effect of keratinization, which will also occur if you vigorously clean the genitals.

  • Tom Arnold

    August 4, 2015 3:11 pm

    So, if one reason why you’re against circumcision is the baby doesn’t want it, what are your thoughts on abortion? After all, shouldn’t the baby be able to choose if it lives or dies? Is that not the ultimate choice, life and death? And most importantly, whose choice is it to make?

    • TLCTugger

      August 5, 2015 12:36 am

      No matter when you believe human rights begin, they surely do not end at birth. Let folks work to end suffering in the ways they are best equipped to do so and there will be less suffering.

  • ianbrettcooper

    September 16, 2015 10:04 am

    I would be careful about giving Kimmel too much credit. He doesn’t seem too well endowed in the brain department.

  • Pingback: The Skinny on Circumcision - Papidaddy Dot Com

    December 28, 2015 3:14 pm

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Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.