Penile subincision

Operation of Subincision, Warrumanga Tribe, Central Australia

Start subincision

A penile subincision.

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 Australia, but also in Africa, South America and the Polynesian and Melanesian cultures of the Pacific, often as a coming of age ritual.

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 or squat while urinating. The scrotum can be pulled up against the open urethra to quasi-complete the tube and allow an approximation to normal urination, while a few subincised men carry a tube with which they can aim.

Cultural traditions

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

Another indigenous Australian term for the custom is mika or the terrible rite.

Indigenous cultures of the Amazon Basin also practise subincision, as do Samburu herdboys of Kenya, who are said to perform subincisions on themselves (or sometimes their peers) at age seven to ten. In Samoa, subincision of the foreskin, skin located along the tip of the penis, was ritually performed upon young men, as in Hawaii, where subincision of the foreskin is reported to have been performed at age six or seven.

Penile-penile penetration

A subincized penis can be penetrated by another penis, provided the latter is sufficiently small. In some Australian cultures, one traditional practice involved the penetration of an elder's subincized penis by the unsubincized penis of a young boy who was usually under age 7. Some authors have theorized that this was the original purpose of subincision.

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.

See also

• Genital bisection
• Modern primitive
• Body modification

References

General

• Roheim, G´esa (1949). "The Symbolism of Subincision". The American Iago. 6: 321–8. 
• Bettelheim, Bruno (1962) Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier.
• Farb, Peter (1968) Man's Rise to Civilization New York: E. P. Dutton p98-101.

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. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.2002.tb02806.x. 
• Hogbin, Ian (1970) The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland

Australia

• Basedow H. (1927). "Subincision and Kindred Rites of the Australian Aboriginal". J Royal Anth. Inst. 57: 123–156. doi:10.2307/2843680. 
• Cawte JE, Djagamara N, Barrett MG (1966). "The meaning of subincision of the urethra to aboriginal Australians". Br. J Med. Psychol. 39 (3): 245–253. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1966.tb01334.x. PMID 6008217. 
• Morrison J. (21 January 1967). "The origins of the practices of circumcision and subincision among the Australian Aborigines". Medical Journal of Australia: 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 DJ (September 1983). "Ritual mutilation. Subincision of the penis among Australian Aborigines". Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 4 (3): 227–9. doi:10.1097/00000433-198309000-00009. PMID 6637950. 
• 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. 

External links

• Commons.wikimedia.org (Warning: shows picture)
• A mention of penile subincision in Hawaii during the early Twentieth Century
• A mention of penile subincision among Papuans
• Rickharrison.com
• "The story of my subincision" at Kuro5hin.org