Desmond Morris
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Desmond Morris (24 January 1928 in Purton, Wiltshire, United Kingdom – 19 April 2026 in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland) The late Desmond John Morris, Ph.D., was a British zoologist and ethologist. He became famous by applying the methods of animal study to humans.
Morris was a strong opponent of all forms of genital cutting and sexual mutilation, including child circumcision.
Early life
Morris was born in Purton, Wiltshire, to Marjorie (née Hunt) and children's fiction author Harry Morris.
He attended Dauncey's School
Adult life
Morris enlisted in the British Army for two years at age 18 in 1946 to perform his national service.
Articles
Morris wrote articles throughout his long life. His prodigious output is indexed on his website. Please see Selected Articles.
Books
Dr. Morris is credited with the authorship of 104 books. For a complete list see books.php Bibliography
Morris, Desmond (1985): Bodywatching. Random House. ISBN 10-0517558149. Retrieved 4 June 2026.- Morris, Desmond (1994): The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species. BBC Publications. ISBN 10 0563370211. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- Morris, Desmond (1997): The Human Sexes. Netwook Books. ISBN 10 0563383585. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- Morris, Desmond (1999): The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal. Delta. ISBN 10 0385334303. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- Morris, Desmond (2007): The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body. St. Martins Griffin. ISBN 10 9780312338534. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- Morris, Desmond (2009): The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 10 0312385307. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
Commentary on male and female genital cutting and genital mutilation
Comment on Circumcision and Genital Mutilation
Desmond Morris
For thousands of years, in many different cultures, the genitals have fallen victim to an amazing variety of mutilations and restrictions. For organs that are capable of giving us an immense amount of pleasure They have given us an inordinate amount of pain.
The commonest form of assault they have suffered is male and female circumcision. This strange mutilation is older than civilization and was probably well advance in the Stone Age. Although it is a piece of deliberate wounding of children by adults, it has been done with the best of intentions. Over the millennia it has cause countless deaths from infection, but its advantages have always been said to outweigh the risks involved. These alleged advantages have varied from epoch to epoch and culture to culture, but recent re-examination has shown that they are all imaginary.
It has been claimed that one of the oldest reasons for performing male circumcision—the removal of the foreskin—is that it provoked immortality in the shape of life after death. This odd notion was based on the observation that when the snake sheds its skin it emerges with glistening new scales and is “reborn.” If the snake can enjoy rebirth by the removal of skin, so too can the human being. For snake read penis; for snake-skin read foreskin.
Once male circumcision had become traditional it no longer mattered whether the old beliefs survived. Being circumcised was not the badge of belonging to a particular society. The ritual mutilation spread and spread. Ancient Egyptians were doing it as long ago as 4000 B.C. In the Old Testament, Abraham demanded it. Arabs circumcised as well as Jews. Mohammed was said to have been born without a foreskin (which he may well have been, as this condition is not unknown to medical science), a claim which automatically doomed the foreskins of his future male followers.
As the centuries passed, religious arguments gave way, for many to quack medical arguments. The possession of a foreskin was said to cause “masturbatory insanity.” Other medical horrors resulting from its retention included hysteria, epilepsy, nocturnal incontinence, and nervousness. Such ideas survived into the early part of the present century and even led to the formation of an Orificial Surgery Society devoted exclusively to the “modifications” of offending genital as a means of preventing mental illness.
When at last this nonsense was on the decline a crisis arose. What new reason could be found for mutilating children’s genitals? The solution had to be one that suited the rational climate of twentieth-century scientific inquiry. The answer appeared in The Lancet in 1932: foreskins caused cancer! By the end of the 1930s 75 per cent of the boys in the United States were being circumcised; by 1973 it was 84 per cent; by 1976 it was 87 per cent. Cancer had become the secular version of hellfire and brimstone, the perfect weapon for the anxiety makers of a post-religious society.
To be more precise, the claim that the “debris” called smegma which collects under retained foreskins could cause cancer of the penis and also cancer of the cervix of the wives of the uncircumcised. The paper which started this false rumour was founded on faulty statistics, but nobody minded because here was a plausible new reason for slicing away at the infantile penis. Subsequent experiments, however revealed that there is nothing remotely carcinogenic about the smegma produced under the fold of the foreskin, but they were widely ignored. Other investigations showed that women whose uncircumcised husbands always wore condoms were no more or less likely to develop cancer than those whose husbands never wore condoms. But again nobody wanted to know. In one country where there was no circumcision at all was compared to a country in which all males were circumcised. The results showed, to the relief of the foreskin snippers, that prostate cancer was higher in the uncircumcised country. Unfortunately this form of cancer is a disease of elderly men, and when a correction for age distribution was made the figures showed that this disorder was actually more likely in the circumcised country.
Not only was the cancer scare completely without foundation, but the operation of foreskin removal continued to prove a distinct health hazard for small babies. There were many cases of haemorrhage, ulceration of the urethra, surgical trauma and local infection. In rare cases, foreskin removal resulted in the death of the baby. There were also more subtle effects with possible long-term implications: following circumcision male babies showed an increase in the level of hormones related to stress; sleep patterns altered; there was more crying and more irritability.
Despite all this, “medical” circumcisions continued (and still continues) at a merry pace in certain countries where private medicine is the rule. In Britain, significantly, there was a dramatic decline in the operation following the introduction of the National Health Service scheme and free treatment. It is impossible to refrain from asking why it should be that the operation sank to a level of less than one per cent (only 0.41 per cent of male babies in 1972) in a country where there was no financial gain to be made from it, while in the United States, for example, in the same year, over 80 per cent of male babies were circumcised, at an annual cost to health-insurance companies of more than $200 million. The new deities demanding circumcision appear to be more fiscal than sacred.
Young females have also been assaulted in this fashion. This has been rare in the West, although as recently as 1937 a Texas doctor was advocating the removal of the clitoris to cure frigidity. The harshest traditions of female circumcision are found in Africa, parts of the Middle East, Indonesia and Malayia. It is a staggering fact that, far from being an ancient memory, the practice of cutting away all or part of the external genitals of young females is still going on in more than 20 countries.
No fewer than 74 million women alive today have been subjected to this mutilation. In the worst cases, they have had their labia and clitoris scraped or cut away and their vaginal opening stitched up with silk, catgut, or thorns, leaving only a tiny opening for urine and menstrual blood. After the operation the girl’s legs are bound together to ensure that scar-tissue forms and the condition becomes permanent. Later, when they marry, these females suffer the pain of having their artificially reduced orifices broken open by their husbands.
The effect of this practice is to dramatically reduce sexual pleasure for wives in the countries concerned, which may be its hidden significance. A side-effect is the high number of deaths and serious illnesses cause by the unhygienic conditions under which the operations are performed, especially in such countries as Oman, South Yemen, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, southern Egypt, Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and Mali. The continuance of such practices in the twentieth century against a background of modern enlightenment is clearly going to puzzle historians of the distant future.
—Desmond Morris (Circa 1985)
Videos
Desmond Morris (Writer))
Male genital mutilation ritual from Desmond Morris - The Human Sexes
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Desmond Morris - Avoiding death for the second time (3/37
Desmond Morris passes away (1928 - 2026) (UK) - UK News - 20/Apr/2026
Death
Following the death of his wife, Ramona, in November 2018, Desmond Morris left his home in Oxford in June 2019 and moved to County Kildare in Ireland to live close to his son, Jason, and his family there.
He passed away there at the age of 98 on 19 April 2026.[1] [2]
External links
Official website. Retrieved 4 June 2026- Wikipedia article: Desmond Morris
References
- ↑ Radford, Tim (20 April 2026).
Desmond Morris Obituary
, The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2026. - ↑ Woodhouse, Sam (20 April 2026).
Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98
, BBC. Retrieved 5 June 2026.