The master cutter of Bataan © 2005

IT started one Holy Week 45 years ago in Bagac, Bataan when young boys aged 8 to 16 went under the knife to experience the once-in-a-lifetime ritual of becoming a man. It became the youngsters’ rite of passage.

Those days, the “knife” was not a scalpel nor a pair of surgical scissors but a barber’s razor blade or a balisong (a native fan knife), sanitized by soaking in boiling water. Rubbing alcohol was not yet easily available in this small remote coastal town, located 151 kms. northwest of Manila. So, crushed guava leaves were used instead of disinfectant.

When he was 30, Guillermo Batol made a pledge to help young boys prepare for manhood. All that he asked them to do is have the courage to withstand the pain and to bring along with them a bayong (woven bag) filled with freshly picked guava leaves. He was then Bagac’s municipal sanitary officer.

Today, at 75 and retired, Batol is still transforming boys into men. Since he started his cutting frenzies 45 years ago, he has performed more than 20,000 circumcisions and is enjoying the reputation of being the most sought-after “master cutter” in Bataan.

With the advent of anesthesia, surgical scissors, and over-the-counter disinfectants, Batol finally gave his razor a rest. Every summer, he would buy anesthesia and hundreds of disposable syringes and anesthesia that he would use to circumcise boys. This time the boys are assured of less painful surgery.

Batol has also trained his sons-in-law to assist him during the rituals. Eventually, they will perform the procedure themselves, thus ensuring a continuity of the vocation.

Batol is perhaps the only man in the Philippines to have circumcised more than 20,000 boys and his feat is widely acknowledged. Indeed, residents of Bagac have suggested that Batol be nominated to the Guiness Book of World Records as the only man in the world to do the job with such frequency, consistency, and uniformity.

During summer, while a number of men in Bagac shed their blood in penitence, young boys give their share of blood letting at Batol's bamboo shed. After 45 summers, Batol is still performing an average of 300 circumcisions a year.

Batol’s yearly ritual has also become an attraction to tourists and visitors who flock to this coastal resort town every Holy Week to witness the ritual.

“Ask every man in this town who, but me, has turned them into men,” Batol boasted. “Most of them are grandfathers now while some have become leaders of this town.”

The master cutter of Bataan was published in the May 23, 2005 issue of Newsbreak magazine.

DID YOU KNOW THAT...

ACCORDING to the www.historyofcircumcision.net, circumcision began as a social ritual among a small number of tribal peoples in north-east Africa and the Arabian peninsular, and it later became the mark of initiation for two major religions. The pages in the website offer some leads on the early history of pre-medical circumcision, and considers the claims of some circumcision enthusiasts that these pre-literate societies were somehow motivated by hygienic or even scientific insights. A leading pediatrician demolishes the arguments in favor of this notion put forward by G.N. Weiss. There is also a scathing recent editorial from the South African Medical Journal describing the deaths and injury caused by tribal circumcision schools, and calling for action to "halt the carnage". Meanwhile, as HIV-AIDS spreads among circumcised populations, thoughtful people look for real answers.

Ritual circumcision: A social custom

A number of pre-scientific and mostly pre-literate tribal societies have traditionally practiced various forms of bodily modification, on both boys and girls, as a social or religious ritual. These are now understood to mark rites of passage from one stage of life to another, which is why the most common time for operations on the genitals is around puberty. It was only in the late nineteenth century that anybody suggested that these rites had a utilitarian rationale, but the idea soon became an article of faith among doctors who favored circumcision, and it still has currency in backward medical circles today.

The idea that ritual circumcision was motivated by concern for health was the invention of nineteenth century doctors. They knew nothing of anthropology, but they were keen to find a respectable ancestry for the new surgical therapy they wanted to introduce. Antiquity, they thought, conferred legitimacy. With the increasing frequency of circumcision as a medical procedure came growing interest in the origins of the operation as a religious or cultural rite. The anthropological view was that circumcision originated strictly as a religious requirement and had no medical significance at all. The ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1876) discussed the practice as a religious rite among Jews, Moslems, ancient Egyptians and several tribal peoples, rejecting sanitary or hygienic explanations in favor of a religious one:

Like other bodily mutilations … [it is] of the nature of a representative sacrifice. … The principle of substitution was familiar to all ancient nations, and not least to the Israelites. … On this principle circumcision was an economical recognition of the divine ownership of human life, a part of the body being sacrificed to preserve the remainder.

By the eleventh edition (1910) the entry has been turned on its head: "This surgical operation, which is commonly prescribed for purely medical reasons, is also an initiation or religious ceremony among Jews and Mohammedans": suddenly circumcision is primarily a medical procedure and only after that a religious rite. The entry explains that "in recent years the medical profession has been responsible for its considerable extension among other than Jewish children ... for reasons of health". By 1929 the entry is much reduced in size and consists merely of a brief description of the operation, which is "done as a preventive measure in the infant" and "performed chiefly for purposes of cleanliness"; readers are then referred to the entries for "Mutilation" and "Deformation" for a discussion of circumcision in its religious context.

An eccentric but well informed Victorian scholar of sexual curiosities, John Davenport, [1] considered that circumcision was "founded almost exclusively upon either religious or political motives", originating with the Ethiopians and Egyptians for unknown reasons and spreading from there to the Arab and then the Jewish peoples, and thence to Islam (Davenport 174). Even as he was putting forward such sensible ideas – broadly confirmed by modern research [2] – he noted that others were offering speculative theories which sought the origins of the operation in terms of practical outcomes. Hypotheses circulating in the 1870s included (1) dampening men's amorous propensities; (2) physical utility related to a hot climate (as already suggested by Acton); (3) to facilitate conception; (4) for hygiene and cleanliness; (5) as a mark of distinction (Davenport 178-81).

Biblical Data:

A religious rite performed on male children of Jews on the eighth day after birth; also on their slaves, whether born in the house or not. It was enjoined upon Abraham and his descendants as "a token of the covenant" concluded with him by God for all generations, the penalty of non-observance being "karet," excision from the people (Gen. xvii. 10-14, xxi. 4; Lev. xii. 3). Aliens had to undergo circumcision before they could be allowed to partake of the covenant-feast of Passover (Ex. xii. 48), or marry into a Jewish family (Gen. xxxiv. 14-16). It was "a reproach" for the Israelite to be uncircumcised (Josh. v. 9; on "the reproach of Egypt" see below). Hence the name "'arelim" (uncircumcised) became an opprobrious term, denoting the Philistines and other non-Israelites (I Sam. xiv. 6, xxxi. 4; II Sam. i. 20; compare Judges xiv. 3; I Sam. xvii. 26), and used synonymously with "tame" (unclean) for heathen (Isa. lii. 1). The word "'arel"

(uncircumcised) is also employed for "unclean" (Lev. xxvi. 41, "their uncircumcised hearts"; compare Jer. ix. 25; Ezek. xliv. 7, 9); it is even applied to the first three years' fruit of a tree, which is forbidden (Lev. xix. 23).

OUCH! © 2005