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Marlee Geiger
Professor Kowalski
English 701
15 October 2012
Creating Men Through Circumcision and Subincision
Throughout the world, boys are being turned into men, often within seconds of either
state. Rites of passage, in order to create this new person, are often vastly different around the
world. However, this common theme of the rite of passage is in every culture, and every culture
does them in the same fashion, although the actions and symbols may be drastically different.
Rites of passages help to shape citizens into the people society wants them to be, and often
genders them along the way. The Australian Aborigines are no different to this rite of passage
process. For their boys to turn into men, they have a special ritual that takes months to prep and
execute properly. The finished product is no longer a wild boy, but a civilized man who can go
into society and have access to the same things that other men who go through this ritual have
access to.
The ritual is the Circumcision and Subincision ceremony. Many parts of the world are
familiar with circumcision, as it is quite popular among the Muslim population, Jewish
population, North America, Southeast Asian, and Africa (“Circumcision”). Normally, the
procedure to cut the foreskin off the penis would take place when the child is born in the United
States, however, in other parts of the world it does not get done until late in the boy’s life; as for
the Aboriginals. There does not appear to be any health reason that the foreskin should be cut
off; therefore, the assumption is that it is used as a rite of passage or for aesthetic value.
Subincision is mostly common in Australia due to the ritual made famous by the Aboriginal
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tribes, but can also be seen in Africa and South America (“Subincision”). Penile subincision
creates an incision underneath the penis from the bottom of the penile head sometimes as cutting
as far as the scrotum, and into the urethra (“Subincision”). The head of the penis and the meatus
are normally uninjured during this process.
As soon as a boy reaches puberty the circumcision ceremony starts to take place. This
ritual is many months in the making. When the boys are chosen for the ritual they are taken from
their mothers who sing and dance as the boys are taken to the desert (Matthews 624). This is a
kind of funeral for the boy who is going off. The performance is the initial breaking apart from
the previous self by making the boy’s world unfamiliar by seeing a funeral for his previous self
(Davis-Floyd 107; 111). Their mothers and other women then leave the boys in the hands of
tribal elders and other youth who have already overcome the ceremonies, only men who have
