Thursday, July 21, 2011

Burning questions I need someone to answer

Please comment if you have the answer to any of these questions. They are keeping me awake at night...

If circumcision is no big deal how come every time I forget to sleep with my foreskin restoration device attached I am anxious and irritable for a good part of the next day?

If circumcision is performed in the child's health interests how come every time I spend significant amount of time reading circumcision related blogs I come across someone who, as a result of his very "tight" circumcision experiences horrific pain every time he gets erect, much less tries to reach ejaculation.

If circumcision is such an important part of the Jewish and Islamic religion could someone please explain to me why it's so important to God that everyone has an exposed, callous glans? I'm also wondering how he sits through watching all those circumcisions performed in his name. I mean he is omnipresent after all so that means he gets to see and hear every one of those screaming babies AND since he is also omniscient that means he knows exactly how much pain and sadness and betrayal each of those tiny little babies feels. Say what you will about us atheists. It certainly requires less ethical gymnastics.

How come I never see any studies done by intact doctors from Europe "proving" how great circumcision is? Is it within the realm of possibility that the foreskin-less docs in the US and Israel are hell-bent on proving the evils of the foreskin just so they personally can feel better about not having one?

If foreskins are as bad as US doctors make them out to be how on Earth did the human race survive before some self-mutilating weirdo first decided to experiment with the idea of hacking off part of his own penis? (wonder what that guys parents did to HIM huh?)

Can anybody tell me where my foreskin is? Really. I'd like it back. I mean, it is mine after all. Isn't there some kind of inalienable right to body parts? I mean, it's not like it was some cancer-ridden lesion. It was a perfectly good foreskin. Wait, why are you giving me this skin cream. I don't want this, I just want... Oh. Yuck.

If circumcision is such a great idea how come no one is circumcising their dogs? I mean if you're willing to drop $250 at Petco on the latest food and toys for him, why not prevent penile cancer while you're at it?

Who really signs up for cutting penises? I mean seriously. It's kind of like being the defense attorney for a serial child rapist. Yes, someone has to do it but why would you want to be that person? Even for the people who have convinced themselves it is ethically ok to mutilate baby penises you would think they would be a little put off by the screaming and crying and seizuring and bleeding. You would think that would put them off enough to consider a career change.

And the number one burning question I have:
If circumcision is no big deal, how come even though my foreskin is only like maybe 15-20% restored my sex life is DRAMATICALLY enhanced. I mean it was great before but HOLY SHIT.

6 comments:

  1. "If circumcision is no big deal, how come even though my foreskin is only like maybe 15-20% restored my sex life is DRAMATICALLY enhanced."

    I have a theory about this. I think the enhanced sexual feeling is not a direct result of stretching. I think it's a result of keeping the glans and the remnant inner foreskin covered.

    I think that when the most sensitive parts of your penis are rubbing against your clothes all day, your central nervous system finds a way to shut down all that input from your penis. It's kind of like what happens when you overload a circuit in your house.

    Or I guess it's kind of like what happens when you scrape up your toe on a long hike and you don't notice until that night when you're sitting in your camping chair with a beer in your hand. Your central nervous system shuts down all the input from that scraped up toe. It says "Well, all this input is getting counter productive. I'm shutting off all communication with that toe."

    I think something similar happens with your penis if you're circumcised. I think your central nervous system finds a way to block all that input coming in from your penis all day long. It just says "Enough with the input. No more input. No more communication with that penis down there."

    And that can be a problem when you're having sex right? Because your central nervous system doesn't want to cooperate.

    But I think what happens is when you start covering up, everything starts working more normally, more like the way it would work if nobody had ever cut off your foreskin.

    That's my theory anyway, if you want to call it a theory. Maybe it's more like a hunch. But a lot of fruitful scientific investigation begins with a hunch.

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  2. "Who really signs up for cutting penises?"

    Obgyns, who never follow up on the babies they cut and who learn nothing else about the male body. If a baby has penis problems of any kind, it gets taken to a pediatric urologist, not to the obgyn who cut it.

    "It's kind of like being the defense attorney for a serial child rapist."
    LMAO!!

    "Yes, someone has to do it but why would you want to be that person? Even for the people who have convinced themselves it is ethically ok to mutilate baby penises you would think they would be a little put off by the screaming and crying and seizuring and bleeding. You would think that would put them off enough to consider a career change."

    In the 1970s, I decided I simply could not join the profession that circumcised millions of babies without anesthesia, with a clear conscience.

    Part of the process of becoming a doctor is one of socialisation. Medical students are socialised to shut down their feelings and do this or that "because the science tells us that this is what we need to do, regardless of how disgusting you think it is." The Washington Post published a photograph of pretty young women residents in a DC hospital, with long blond hair and intent studious faces, bent over a table and performing circumcisions on neonates. When I saw that, I thought to myself "Those girls have traveled very far from their natural instincts to love and cuddle babies. They also have no idea of the sexual properties of what they are cutting off, because they have never made love to an intact man." Given how earnest and wholesome those young women looked, it is possible that some were even virgins. But here they were, altering forever the sex lives of those baby boys and that of their future sex partners.

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  3. What's sad is that God doesn't *actually* require removal of the foreskin.
    All he required was a drop or two of bloodshed. Still barbaric, yes, but... not nearly as extreme as removal of the entire prepuce.
    Unfortunately, nobody seems to really know this.

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  4. Religiously: I am a Christian, and I do not circ my boys. The Jews were called to do it to be set apart by God. It was a mark. However, it was not the same as circumcision today. It was a snip, not a removal. God did not intend it to be barbaric.
    I have no idea why the Muslims do it. But I do know that it is what it is today because some religious nutjobs decided that they could stop people from masturbating and wanting sex by removing it. That is why it is what it is today.
    After Jesus came and died for us, we are no longer called to circumcise. It is unnecessary, but the Jews mostly do not believe, so they keep doing it.

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  5. I wanted to offer some information that I found in my own research about circumcision, regarding this question;
    "If foreskins are as bad as US doctors make them out to be how on Earth did the human race survive before some self-mutilating weirdo first decided to experiment with the idea of hacking off part of his own penis?"

    I have been researching circumcision for almost a year now and have an intact husband and two intact sons. I have had great difficulty even grasping how this all came about and how people continue to perform this. This website (which is a book with four chapters) has offered some interesting ideas on the subject.
    http://www.male-initiation.net/welcome.html#start

    I like his middle ground approach to the topic and his acknowledgment of phimosis. My brother was circumcised at 23 years and reported that his sexual encounters were more pleasurable and less painful, and while he isn't sure if he was suffering from phimosis or skin bridges or not and I was unable to obtain that information, this was what got me interested in an evolutionary perspective on circumcision.

    Thank you for speaking up. Your courage will change the world.

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  6. And indeed Tori, how exactly people outside the US are not extinct from penile cancer, HIV and whatever else because they don't routinely circumcise!

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