Was it important to the story whether or not Joseph was also a virgin? If not, why not? Did it matter to Mary? Was he too experienced and known about Galilee as a bit of a playa? Was Joseph into some weird shit she just wasn’t up for? Perhaps she was nervous because he had never done it before and might not know what was supposed to go where. Why is it only a virtue in a woman to have never got it on with a member of the opposite sex? Because the Bible tells us so. Written by intellectuals who found the idea of sexual competition with more virile men too much of a threat, so they rigged the game by loading the girly side of the dice with shame for all eternity. ‘You can only be good and nice and virtuous if you come to me untouched by bigger boys who might make me feel inadequate.’ Joseph the virgin would make just as good a role model as Mary. His blushing, spotty face would make just as fetching a statue, though I suspect graffiti might become an issue – male virgins aren’t seen as innocent and demure and something to be admired; instead they are seen as somewhat desperate and pitiable with the possibility of losing control at the merest whiff of something sexual. Culturally speaking, the constant repetition of Mary’s virgin status carries the potential for so much damage to the esteem of women and what their bodies are able to do. I’m not sure that the story would be more helpfully told if Mary was a right old slag who put it about like it was going out of fashion, blowing the inn keeper round the back of the stable in exchange for an extra blanket in the straw, but neither does her virgin status recommend her to me as anyone special.
God is not only fascinated with what we do with our bits and pieces, but with what they look like too. When you consider it, lopping the end off a boy’s penis is a very odd thing to do indeed. We don’t cut any other bits off; it’s just the foreskin. There is, as far as I know, no tradition in or out of religious practice where an arm, fingertip or eyelid is removed from young men. This excludes those removed by land mines and cluster bombs. Though many of these conflicts are inflamed by religion, it’s not strictly a religious rite to have BAE Systems leave one of their goody bags lying about in a playground.
Circumcision is important to two branches of Abrahamic faith, Judaism and Islam. For Jews it is a commandment and for Muslims a religious tradition. If you love God, cut the end off your penis. Must I? I wasn’t really thinking of loving God in that way. I had been hoping for more of a platonic arrangement, to be honest. But according to many religious texts, God is adamant that the foreskin must be dispatched as promptly as possible before it offends the almighty. It’s not clear what God expects the foreskin might do. Rear up and pull funny faces at Him? It was a condition for Abraham that he must circumcise himself. Perhaps God wasn’t satisfied with Abraham’s reaction when He demanded that he spill his son Isaac’s guts as a prank sacrifice. Even the most barbaric gang initiations don’t go as far as Abraham’s all-powerful gang leader. Having established that Abraham was like so many eager-to-please, easy-to-bully suck-ups, God thought: Hmmm, I wonder if I can get him to hack the end off his cock? Wow, I’m bored today, I should have taken longer over the creation, I’ve had nothing to do since, apart from a bit of tinkering and light murder. God explained to Abraham, ‘You must take the chosen people into the promised land. I have chosen you, Abraham, to lead the Jews into the land of Israel, but before you do, I would like you to cut the end off your penis using a stone.’
A stone? Wow! Now, my first response to that would be to say, ‘No, God, you’re all right, the Jews are a smart bunch of lads and lasses, I’m sure they’ll find their way into the promised land without having to hammer out my freshly severed foreskin and fashion it into a crude map, so let’s just leave my old fella out of this and call it quits, eh?’ But Abraham was keen to impress God and God was keen to be impressed, so the sensitive tip of Abraham’s presumably sandy knob had to go. Resistance would have been futile anyway, when God sets His mind on something there’s no stopping Him until He changes it back again. Most modern therapists would diagnose God as a bipolar, narcissistic, sexually deviant psychopath with violent irrational outbursts, and then written in the margin it would say: Beyond conventional help – do not fuck with this patient! So, Abraham’s faith and his hand formed a conspiracy against the rest of his being and sought out his trembling and flaccid penis from beneath his robes and placed it against a large flat rock. From limited experience of nerve-racking situations, Abraham’s willy would have been retreating up inside his pelvis as fast as it could manage, but to no avail, as Abraham was very clear that his polo-neck-clad member must now move into summer attire and become a Heaven-approved V-neck …
Down came the sharpened stone and the rest of what transpired, as some very confused and worried-looking Jews looked on in horror, needs no further description. Suffice to say that, many universes away, an alien making a deal with his own God about the green and purple hood on his spiral appendage looked up at the sky and asked, ‘Did you hear that? That sounded a lot like a scream, didn’t it? Did you hear a scream? No? Really? Now what was it you wanted me to do to my flangambulous glidnok?’
Abraham was an adult; it will have smarted a bit. Children mind terribly when their genitals are snipped, they cry out in pain, but a fully grown man … with no anaesthetic … with a stone … in the desert … Well, when you fully realize that’s what the Jews had to go through, even the harshest anti-Semite would have to conclude, ‘Israel does belong to them, and frankly if you’re willing to do a testicle the same way, you can have a chunk of Syria too.’
When Jews are described as the ‘chosen people’, I hope for their sake that being chosen amounts to more than a bacon-free, half-cocked poke through a hole in the sheet. Anti-Semitism is a passionate hatred. Violent, ugly and irrational. Having known very few Jews growing up, it was only as an adult that I witnessed anti-Semitic abuse first-hand. I saw an email sent to a Jewish columnist whose writing and muddle-headed opinions I have no time for whatsoever, if truth be known most of what she writes sickens and confuses me, but seeing this email was a shock, doubly so when she explained that this type of threatening craziness was a regular occurrence for many Jews in the media. It made me ask questions about my own relationship with Jewish people. Do I have a view on the Jew? They’re often funny, I know that, but what else? Being a Jew can mean many things. It’s a faith group and a race (perhaps tribe is a better word, when it’s clear it’s not being used in a derogatory fashion); for some I know being a Jew is a way of behaving and a preference for certain types of food and little else; for others it’s a life sentence. I suppose because I don’t believe in God I struggle with the idea of a large group of people defining themselves (at least in part) as ‘chosen’. It’s not a full-blooded resentment I feel towards that notion but it has the makings of confusion, resistance and piss-taking. I asked a Jewish friend about the whole chosen-people thing and if he thought it was that idea that was fuelling much of the anti-Jewish feeling history has maintained. I said it could be perceived as arrogance. He told me I had it wrong and that it wasn’t that the Jews were chosen by God, it was that God had been chosen by the Jews. I told him he wasn’t helping and decided not to refer serious questions relating to death, hatred and fear to fellow comedians.
Jews are not special. There are plenty who think they are but they’re not. At least no more special than anyone else. They’re unique, and interesting, but despite what the Old Testament says, Jews are not special. Some Jews are nice, others are not. Some French people are nice, others are very French indeed. A tragic history, a much-disputed celestial promise and a good recipe for chicken soup are all to be recognized, discussed and respected, but these things do not make Jews special.
Frankly the idea that God called the Jews to one side and told them He was their God exclusively seems to have been profoundly unhelpful to everyone. It’s so awkward, for one thing. What did God do? Whisper to the Jews so none of the other tribes could hear? ‘I love you lot, you’re my favourite ones. Sshh, don’t tell the others, they’ll be so cross. But really, who
can blame me? Look at you lovely people. I ask you to wear little hats, you wear the little hats. I make you schlep across the desert, you schlep. I ask you to lop off your foreskin and, hey presto, you have it done within days of birth. Some of you even use your teeth. I can’t help myself – you are some great Jews … Listen, for the Goyim, I’m just going to play jokes on them – it’ll be our little secret. For these ones here, I’ll send a beardy wonder boy to pop out of a virgin, they’ll think he’s my son, they’ll nail him to a cross and never fully understand why. And they’ll keep on moving the date of Easter, hilarious. Those ones over there, I’m going to give my final instructions for mankind, my last will and testament, to an illiterate paedophilic goat-herder in a cave. Don’t draw him, they’ll go bat-shit crazy. Good japes, huh? Only you Jews will be in on the joke. Because I love you so much. Because you’re my favourite ones, what I’ve done is I’ve set you aside your own piece of land. It’s over there amongst all those furious Arabs, good luck!’
God is the worst estate agent in the world ever. Not even Foxtons would take Him on. I know it’s wrong to compare the plight of the Palestinian people to someone who’s been gazumped, but I’m middle class so it’s literally the worst thing I can imagine happening to anybody.
It’s by no means only Jews who are circumcised. I think they went first but these days most American men are and almost all male Muslims. You see – the USA and the Islamic world have so much in common. Surely they could find some means of understanding each other … If only one American and one Muslim would each take out his penis and, looking into the eyes of the man they claim to have so much enmity towards, say, ‘Look, look at my penis. It is the same as your penis, my brother. Ugly, maimed, wrinkly and flaccid. These are our penises. Let us be friends based on a decision that was made to slightly shorten our manhoods before we had any say in the matter.’
Because this story is a personal one I feel I must reveal (albeit only on the page) that I too am circumcised. I thought this was the only version of penis that existed in the world until I went to school aged seven and was puzzled by the number of deformed boys with frankly hideous growths hanging off their bits. Poor lads, I couldn’t imagine how they went about their day, let alone managed to have a pee without spraying it all over the place like a broken hydrant. So if you have been reading this feeling uncomfortable about your circumcised penis, you are by no means alone. If you lost yours to some ancient or unsettling religious tradition, then count yourself lucky. I lost mine in a bet. That’s the last time I drink in a Wetherspoon.
I don’t miss it. I have never sought to track it down and reattach it to my body. I’ve grown since it was taken off so I doubt it would fit anyway. I believe it’s somewhere in Guildford. For all I know the Post Office have it and are using it to bundle letters together before stealing them. I’ve never experienced phantom limb syndrome with my missing foreskin. I applied for a grant as an amputee but it was turned down by the council, despite several letters, three pictures and a personal appearance at county hall leading to an arrest for indecent exposure. I said it’s not indecent, it’s circumcised; I didn’t do it to myself. In the end they worried they might be seen as being religiously insensitive so they let me off and I got a special parking badge for partial amputees. So that’s nice. It can be a little bit awkward if the warden asks you to show where the disability lies. Don’t poke it through if you’ve got electric windows on your car. You could easily hit the button with your knee and no one wants a second one, do they?
It is claimed that circumcised men lose sensitivity when it comes to sex. I don’t recall ever having got halfway through intercourse and losing interest because my broken penis just wasn’t feeling it. I did once stop for a slice of pie but I think that has more to do with the eternal excellence of pie than a dull cock.
My circumcision had nothing to do with religion. Unless my parents have done a spectacular job of concealing our Judaism. I’m told the reason I was circumcised is simply that all the male Brigstockes have been ‘done’ for several generations. We’re just one of those families. We all also have the middle name Owen … for anyone who wanted a moment’s relief from the constant references to penises (penii?). The practicalities of it and the medical thinking for or against it seem not to have made much difference to those who elect to do it to their offspring or themselves, but the religious tradition fascinates me.
We’re told that man is made in God’s image. So is God circumcised? Is the foreskin the one mistake in God’s design for man? Is it the flaw that fascinates and somehow enhances the work of the Lord? If women were asked to nominate one part of a man’s body that looks like it may have been placed there in error, if you weren’t nominating the entire penis, I’d like to think the foreskin would be quite a strong contender, perhaps along with the male nipple and the appendix. At one of the God Collar tour shows, in Norwich, I raised the idea that the only truly superfluous part of a man was probably his foreskin, and a very determined young lady shouted, ‘What about the head?’ I told her that historically men have had quite enough trouble thinking with our dicks without removing the head altogether. But she seemed adamant the head should go. Trouble at home. I only hope she had enough mercy in her to cut off her partner’s head while he slept before doing anything similar to his penis. Turning up at the gym with your head missing might well rate a stare or two in the locker room, but a partially amputated cock will get you mocked.
Man is made in God’s image and yet we’re told we’re supposed to remove one bit of ourselves. Why? Maybe man is made in God’s image, but the original model for man came in the form of an Airfix modelling kit. Something I was very keen on as a child. The pieces arrived in a box with a Spitfire on the front and were all held together in a moulded plastic frame. You then had to gently prise the bits off the frame and assemble them in the right order. The trick was to identify the point where the plastic had been attached to the frame and file off the little sticky-out bit that spoiled the look of the finished model. Maybe when God made man we were attached to the frame by the penis and he forgot to file that bit off before putting all the pieces together.
Whichever way you look at them – through the prism of humour, in a court of law, as a drunken debate in the pub with friends, as a motivator for armed conflict in the pub with friends – many of the rules and traditions of the faiths are strange and impractical. So many of the ideas that once served a purpose are now out of date. Perhaps grains of desert sand blowing about under one’s robes might once have made a pious man with itchy bits conclude that God was sending a firm message with regard to the foreskin, but that all changed with the invention of elasticated pants. The Qur’an, Bible and Torah should have a ‘best before’ date stamped on the back and the Old Testament stories a firm ‘use by’ date, with explicit instructions on how to dispose of it safely. If you think car batteries, paint and fridges make landfill sites unpleasant, wait until you see what pernicious toxins would seep out of a lump of discarded scripture. The question is how long could you leave a religious text before it was unfit for human consumption? With the pace of change in the modern world, I’d suggest that most religious books would have about the same shelf life as a yoghurt.
Any writing that seeks to answer the questions humans are driven to ask has to do it for all time. It must be conservative and speak to an eternal truth. If it doesn’t, it will be hard for people to revere it, and the second bestselling book in the world (after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) must be revered or it is nothing. The Qur’an doesn’t suggest that women be secondary to men until the rise of feminism, with a footnote suggesting the issue should probably be looked at again at that point. It would be better if it did. That’s part of the trouble with insisting that it’s the perfect word of God. No edits, redrafts or amendments. The Bible would be vastly improved in my view if it contained a gay love story or two. No pictures, nothing graphic, no ads for Aussie Bum fitted pants or Donna Summer CDs, just an affirmation
that any God described as ‘Love’ is capable of loving any consenting adult couple without resorting to smiting and His tiresome eternal tut. How about a page or two in the Torah where someone’s child turned out to be wiser than the parents, as is almost always the case in families where education is cherished?
Copies of ‘self-help’ books, which sell with such sufficient regularity that I predict the world should be fixed some time later this year, would never catch the eye of the needy and doubtful if their back sleeve promised to ‘make you feel better … for a bit’. ‘Overcoming grief for ever’ (except weekends when you have more time at home to think about the terrible chasm of sadness left in your life since the death of a loved one). Imagine a Paul McKenna book promising to make you thin … until you pass your next buffet, then all bets are off unless you also buy Paul McKenna’s Overcoming Buffets. Come to think of it, I suspect this is exactly how a great many self-help books work. Read this book so you know what’s wrong, then buy these books so you understand how buying these books will give you the strength to buy these ones …
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